I’ve noticed that a couple of corms of garlic that hid in my garden and escaped harvesting have sent up green shoots. So I guess…
I can’t say this is fast and easy. It’s a long slow Sunday afternoon recipe, and it creates quite a bit of washing up! But there’s a good return on investment – for an hour or so of Sunday afternoon baking, you can have several very healthy dinners and lunches made ready for the week.
This week’s Challenger uses pecans and apple (both in season) and a secret ingredient – beetroot.
For large seeds like peas, it is not worth the seed germinating stage. I plant directly into a seedling raising mix that is mostly good compost with a bit of creek sand for drainage. For alkaline lovers like peas and beans I add a bit of wood ash to raise the pH.
You can tell we’re heading towards the southern hemisphere Halloween – we have pumpkins in such abundance that you can see where the idea of cutting faces in them came from.
The box is full of a home-made seed germinating mix, mostly creek sand with a bit of compost for water retention. I like using mowed cow pats better – I collect old, dried cow pats and run over them with the mower to yield a catcher full of shredded cow manure. It has few nutrients to speak of but holds water beautifully.
Squid are generally a fairly safe choice – they breed fast, die young, and may even be over-filling their niche as their natural predators struggle to maintain their populations.
This is an Indian style oil-based pickle that is fantastic on the side of a vegetable curry, and really really good with cheese on bread.…
The dam is full of azolla – a little water weed that I encourage because it is symbiotic with a nitrogen fixing bacteria. Like legumes, it can grab nitrogen out of the air and stabilize it in a form that feeds soil and plants that are not so handily endowed with an in-built fertilizer factory.
My perfect storm is at an end, and life is returning to its usual very busy but kinda balanced state. To celebrate, I used this…