I bought a cinnamon tree. It’s a small tree – two to five metres – and attractive with its glossy green leaves and red new growth. And it needs to be pruned hard. So I should be able to find a spot for it somewhere even in this little suburban garden. But some research about cinnamon being “a potent botanical for complicated UTI” struck me.
First of the season’s pawpaw (papaya) for breakfast this morning, with Cavendish banana, black passionfruit and homemade yoghurt. The pawpaw in last year’s winter fruit bowl had more black spot but this year I think I’ve beaten it.
This morning on my picking walk, I picked silver beet, lucullus, chives, spring onion greens, nasturtium leaves, dandelion leaves, chickweed, scurvy weed, aragula, leaf amaranth, sweet potato leaves, lemon basil, dill, oregano, parsley, sorrel, curly kale, dino kale, rocket, warrigal greens, molokhia. So I made a last minute pie to take to a picnic lunch.
We made bamboo biochar on the weekend. There’s some impressive science behind the idea that biochar, and especially bamboo biochar, might be a cheap, fast, effective way to remove huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and add it to the soil. And biochar does such good things for soil quality.
I don’t plant the supermarket kind of large head broccoli any more. It’s too slow, too short a season, to low a yield, too prone to pests and diseases. And broccolini fills the spot so much better. I have two favourite kinds, favourites for different reasons.
I continue to be astonished at the quantity of food we can produce on our little suburban block. We harvested over 20kg of tamarillos today, and this is the third pick of the season, with another to go. here’s a huge bunch of Cavendish bananas ripening on the back deck, and a smaller bunch of Ladyfingers. The lemon tree in the verge planting has its first real crop just starting…
Traditionally, corn silk tea is used for urinary related problems – things like cystitis, kidney stones, prostate problems, bedwetting. I’ll keep some dried silks on the shelf and keep it in mind in case of cystitis, but the reason I like drinking corn silk tea routinely is that it reduces LDL or “bad” cholesterol levels, without at the same time affecting HDL or “good” cholesterol. I have the genes for…