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A large pile of leafy greens, lots of different shades and textures, all of the named ones pretty identifiable in there. At the top, you can just see the bottom of an EzyYo container with some yoghurt in it, a blue plate with a block of white cheese, four eggs, and a bowl of red cherry tomatoes. On the right, you can see half of an unbaked pie crust filled with baking paper and beans ready for blind baking.

Picnic Pie

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.

A green tarpaulin covered in fragments of black charcoal with a shiny surface.

Bamboo Biochar

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.

First of the Season Broccoli

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.

In the centre of the image is a large wooden carved fruit bowl filled with ripe Ladyfinger and Cavendish bananas, orange-red tamarillos, lime green guavas and yellow passionfruit. In the foreground and background are more tamarillos.

Autumn Fruit Bowl

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…

Jars of dark red sauce, labelled "Tamarillo Sauce April 2023"

Tamarillo Sauce

Tamarillos are like a sweet, tart tomato in a tough skin. If you like tart fruit, they are good to eat just out of the hand. To my mind though, the highest use is for tomato sauce. In the tropics and subtropics, fruit fly make bulk organic tomatoes a bit of a challenge. I grow cherry tomatoes for eating and cooking fresh, but I’ve moved to substituting tamarillos for preserving.

Cob of corn on a corn plant showing the fine corn yellow silks emerging from its top.

Garden Pharmacy – Corn Silks

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…

Water in a light cream coloured container with dozens of little black tadpoles in it, and some water chestnut reeds.

Mosquito Control

Striped Marsh Frogs moved in of their own accord. They don’t mind urban environments except that, like all frogs, they are highly sensitive to RoundUp ®. Use RoundUp to get rid of your bindii-eyes or lantana, and you end up having to use insecticide on your skin to ward off mosquitoes. And then snail bait. And then whatever it is they use against malaria plasmodiums and rat lung worm.