New Potatoes

We planted lots of potatoes this season, with having a new garden and a lot more room we decided to put in potatoes.
Tim can only eat potatoes that are boiled or baked whole, as they don't get absorbed as quickly as mashed or sliced, so he doesn't suffer from dumping syndrome if they are whole when cooked. Hence what nicer way to eat potatoes.... than new.

We planted two varieties Swift  1 Kg and Jersey Benne. 2 Kg in early Sept.

Swift* Oval, Smooth & White skin, Creamy yellow flesh, Waxy, Fast growing with exceptional taste. Great
for growing in containers.
Will not discolour or disintegrate on steaming.
Very early variety, approx 90 days

Jersey Benne* Oval, White skin,White flesh,Waxy. A medium cropper that can be grown in most soils. Great for growing in containers.
One of the most popular
varieties for mashing or boiling.
Early variety, approx 100 days

Over all I think the Jersey Benne have performed the best and taste the best too.

We planted a second crop of Jersey Benne another 2 Kg in October to extend the season.

We have been bandicooting the plants up until now, so we could have a few meals without digging up the whole plant. Including Christmas day. This is the dig of the first row, which I shared with my sister and her family.

Strawberry Pallet Garden

I made a pallet garden for my strawberries, I wasn't going to plant strawberries in this garden because they take up so much room for little reward......until I saw this idea on the web.
It took 2 and a half pallets to make it, after deconstructing 2 pallets and then remaking up the other.
I should have filled it when it was lying down in hind sight, but as per decided to bolt on and managed to make it harder than it needed to be.
Needless to say I will not be making another anytime soon.
Mission accomplished!

The end result hopefully will be nice juicy strawberries that haven't taken up half the garden. Hopefully my Labrador will not eat too many either... As they are at the perfect height for her to scoff.

I've Been In The Garden.

My time lately has been in the garden, and looking after Tim, he has had a rough time of it of late. So sorry for lack of posts.
I have been flat out clearing and making space for the fruit trees, in my new garden. I had for make the most of the planting season, so that meant pruning and digging out 30 roses, which I donated to my parents church. Removing alot of over grown conifers and scruffy plants.
I have just completed planting all the fruit trees and bushes. Of course there has been the un ending trips to garden centres and growers, and the head hurt of choosing what to grow.

I have settled on

Double grafted Apple
Flatto Nectarine
Flatto Peach
Apricot
Greengage
Cherry
Blueberries
Black Currants
Red Currants
Raspberries
Blackberry
Loganberries
Boysenberry
Asparagus

I have planted a full compliment of herbs, and the vege garden is starting to feed us. I have put in plenty of greens of all varieties.
So I will be supper busy in the coming summer seasons when all these start producing.
Roll on summer!

Love This!

Posted on "The Farmacy" facebook page. I absolutely agree!

The Big Move South

Hello, long time since I last posted, yes I know...., but I have been very busy with our move to the South Island. We have relocated to Christchurch to be nearer family, for their support and help with Tim's ongoing health challenges.

Our daughter has finished Secondary education, so this made the timing perfect to move on, our son has changed schools, with 2 years to go, and is very happy with the change.

It is fabulous to be back in our home Island, we have bought a nice warm sunny home in a fragile city.
Christchurch is recovering from major earthquakes two years ago, the people are just amazing and it's lovely having family so close. Sadly my big beautiful "Snow" (cat) has done a disappearing act, I'm hoping this is a temporary thing.

I have picked some crab apples from my Dad's garden and will make jelly today hopefully.

Quinoa

Hello, I know it's been awhile.
I have been very busy of late, with Tim in and out of hospital, the close of the winter sports season with my children and some spring gardening.

One thing we have been eating lately is Quinoa. I bought some Quinoa linguine pasta recently and it was very yummy. Went down a treat with all of the family. Tim because it was Low GI, George because it is wheat free and Harry because interestingly he found it to be very filling, which is great when you are feeding a teenage boy. I liked the flavour profile, and also found it filling.

We also had Quinoa with Clams which was amazing and tasty.
I made a paste out of spring onions, garlic, chilli and anchovies, sauted the paste then added clams, poured in a glass of white wine, put a lid on pan and tossed until the clams all open(this takes about 1 minute).I discarded any clams that didn't open. Stirred in a cup of cooked Quinoa. Tasted for seasoning.Sprinkled with sliced spring onions and chopped chilli. Served immediately.
This was so yummy.(I

I have been adding Quinoa to soups and casseroles alot of late to thicken them up.
I can't use potato or kumara to do this as it changes the GI rating of the soups, and this then affects Tim.
I have found this out by trial and error.
I'm not a nutritionist but I have worked out that if you change the form of some carbohydrates (ie: whole cooked potato to mashed potato) this process shorten the molecules, which then get absorbed by the body alot quicker and this then in turn is what makes Tim so unwell.

Spring is in the air, and I can't wait.

I have put some spring veges in the garden, cos lettuce, spring onions, coriander, parsley, celery.

My leeks are very yummy and getting eaten up by alot of my friends too.

Celery growing.

Well.... the slugs got my celery in the garden, I discovered I could grow celery from an old base that I had just bought at the fruit shop, instead of throwing it out to the compost bin.

I put it in a saucer of water until the center sprouted (about a week), then potted it up in an old tomato paste tin. I'm hoping that it will just keep growing and if I use the outside leaves it will become a perpetual celery plant.

However, we do use a lot of celery, I think it might be a cool way of having some celery at hand, I will have to grow more bases or grow some plants in the garden. I use most of the celery for making chicken stock.

Nice way to get something for nothing, and it reminds me of the growing experiments I used to do with the kids when they were little. You could probably use any vegetable that has a similar base structure.
eg: pak choy.

I know you can get spring onions to regrow from the roots just in a glass of water.
Experiment a little and see what happens.

Seasonal Eating

One thing I am passionate about is eating the current seasons food, being a horticulturist has given me the knowledge to be able to achieve this quite easily. Well like everyone I have the best intentions, but don't always get around to it all, as you saw from the picture of my leeks being kept cosy by the weeds.

However, I have fruit trees that are always producing seasonal fruit, Summer sun produces the boysenberries, raspberries, blackberries, then the figs come on, with apples next (3 varieties). Mandarins come ready as the first of the autumn/winter colds and flu's start. I have grapefruit now falling off a very old tired ugly tree, that just keeps giving me fruit. It has looked like this for the 12 years that we have been in this house. We have an abundance of lemons year round as well as rhubarb.

Vegetables at this time of year I have are spinach, brussel sprouts, beetroot, celery and leeks. Given our temperate climate I manage to keep rocket, spring onions and the last of the capsicums over wintering.

I like to have herbs on hands too, parsley, oregano, thyme, rosemary are the firm favs. I am finally just growing what the family likes.

Summer all the salad veges, tomatoes, chillies, zucchini and beans. I might vary it a bit this coming season.

I try to only buy other veges that are in season at that time, I believe that the food ripens as our bodies require it. Our household very rarely gets the winter bugs and if we do they aren't very major.

We also eat a lot of garlic and onions, of which I grew onions last year, but because of the lack of space for the time in the ground, and how many we use, I think I will just keep buying them. Garlic, I am growing a lot this season to I can see if I can grow enough or whether I will just stick to buying them like the onions.