With the warm Spring weather the jalapeños have been very productive, so I have more than I can cook with and give away. It was time to get creative and try ‘cowboy candy’, sweet pickled jalapeños. I’m glad I did.
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Ever since we first started coming North for Christmas I have been struck by these trees with their masses of white flowers. They are common along roadways in the Northern Rivers. They are the local Christmas tree, and almost look like they have taken a heavy fall of snow. Eventually I found out that the tree has the unpromising name of brown kurrajong. The botanical name is Brachychiton populneus. We are more familiar with Brachychitons here as the very showy flame trees, which lose all their leaves and are covered in red flowers,…
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You can probably never have too much thyme. Part of the plan for my herb garden was to have a section of low growing and fragrant herbs like thyme under the clothes hoist. With our second Spring finishing after sowing it the first Winter, it’s almost what I envisaged and filling in nicely.
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My Spring Chioggia (candystripe) beetroot crop did well, but with the weather warming up it was time to pull the last of them. Because of their red and white rings I have only been using them as carpaccio, but as we had so many it was time to try them cooked.
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We have been here at Hill House for a year and a half now, and have finally opened up as much of the property as we need to for the while. The first year involved a bit of literally pushing through walls of grass, lantana, and other weeds to discover what was beyond the few tracks and the house area. Then once we knew it was safe, slashing with the tractor. So with the Spring mowing under control it seems like a good time to introduce the property with a…
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We have an old shade house that had been overgrown by a mulberry tree in the old food forest. It was too shaded for even weeds to grow, but fortunately easy to deconstruct and move. Now the the ‘Midlevels’ garden has become the main kitchen garden, we have been busy moving the shade house for the second time to what I hope is its permanent position. Why have a shade house? You probably can’t have too many ‘houses’ in the garden, each with a special microclimate. A shade house is best for…
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I’ve got into a routine for turning hay into compost, after trialling a few alternatives. It involves using it as bedding in the chicken house. Now that the warm wet weather has returned, it’s time to start the process again.
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We were given a huge bag of homegrown potatoes recently, which are beautifully creamy, so I thought I’d try potato sourdough. After a bit of tweaking I’m very happy with it. I would rate it as an advanced bread to try, as it relies on a feel for the dough consistency.
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It’s a year since we got water to a cleared paddock half way down the hill and the ‘Mid-levels’ garden was begun. After fencing (about 230 square metres) and lot of digging it has become our main kitchen garden. The garden area keeps expanding beyond the original fenced patch, including the addition of two greenhouses and an aquaponics system. Along the way I’ve learned a lot as the seasons made a full turn.
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It’s a warm climate for cabbages here, and I thought my first Winter crop had failed, but they’ve come good with the Spring sunshine. I’m in the early phase here of trying out what will grow and learning what each crop needs in our conditions. This Winter I added cabbage to the mix. The cultivar I tried was ‘Early Jersey Wakefield’, an early maturing sugarloaf type.
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