Making some changes

The past week has been a time of reorganisation and consolidation in my kitchen garden. When I first started, I had a few herbs that I either bought, or was given by relatives. I put these into the ground wherever I had a space to fill. There was no real planning or preparation. As I got more herbs and vegetables, I realised this wasn't going to work.

There were two main reasons for this. Firstly, there were some plants I wanted to put in particular spots, and some I wanted to group together. My earlier plantings prevented this because there was something else already there.

Secondly, I realised that I have a very heavy clay soil, and the herbs that I had planted were growing very slowly, if at all. I needed to add some compost to try and break the soil up a bit, and also to provide more nourishment for my plants.

So the past week has seen me dig up most of my herbs and transplant them into pots. I then dug up the garden bed down to a foot deep, turning over the soil and adding two bags of organic compost. In the process I discovered a lot of 'rubbish' in my garden - large rocks, broken bricks, broken glass, bits of cement sheet, chicken bones, and roots of old plants. All this was pulled out, and some Blood and Bone, and Dynamic Lifter pellets mixed in with the soil and compost.

A couple of days later I was ready to start planting again, and this time put a bit more thought into where I would locate everything. My garden bed is up against a wall, and the first thing I did was to put in a trellis for some tomatoes. I had seen a lot of interesting varieties of tomatoes in the nursery, and wanted to put in one of each, so I now have about three metres of trellis with six varieties of tomatoes spread out along its length.

The rest of my herbs were then planted around the base of the tomotoes, starting with the oreganos down one end (four varieties), then some marjoram, thyme (four varieties), and parsley. I still have some coriander in a pot, which I may put in another section of the garden, along with the basil and mint which I didn't dig up at all. They were doing fine where they were, so I decided it was best to leave them.

While doing all this work, I also put in some galvanised steel garden edging to stop the water running off onto the garden path. This also enabled me to build up the garden beds a little.

Each of my plants is still very young, but the garden already looks a lot better with the new arrangement. Once the plants are established in their new location, and are ready to start picking, I will write more about each one. For now, it's a matter of waiting, watching and watering as they grow.

Birds and aphids

While not strictly part of my kitchen garden, I do have a couple of rose bushes growing in my garden. Unfortunately these are currently infested with aphids, which may at some point become a threat to the edible plants I am growing.

I have had some mixed success in controlling these with a white oil spray that an uncle gave me, but I don't really like to use chemical sprays. After all, the whole point of growing your own food is to avoid the chemical cocktail that comes with shop bought produce.

I've decided to give the aphids free reign of my rose bushes, because I figure that while they're feeding on that, they're staying away from the plants that I like to eat.

However, yesterday I found I had a new ally in the control of these pests - the Red Wattlebird. While sitting in my room, I noticed one of these birds fly into one of the rose bushes, and I was able to watch it closely through the window. To my great surprise, the bird was feeding on the aphids.

The Wattlebird is a large Australian honeyeater that feeds on nectar and insects, so I guess it must find the aphids a sweet treat. In addition to keeping the aphids in check, the Wattlebird would help to pollinate some plants as it feeds on the nectar from the flowers in my garden.

So the Red Wattlebird is now a welcome sight in my garden, as long as it stays away from the fruit that will be appearing over the next few months!

(Photo of Red Wattlebird courtesy of Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Wattlebird)

Brandied cumquats

Cumquats are a small citrus fruit popular in many Australian gardens for their compact size, attractive foliage and fruit and the ease with which they grow.


I don't have a cumquat tree in my garden, but there are 3 or 4 in my neighbourhood. Surprisingly, these seem to be largely ignored by their owners, as the fruit either falls to the ground to rot, or shrivels up on the tree.


A friend of mine once told me about the brandied cumquats her mother used to make, and with memories of this, I decided to rescue some of these neglected fruit and have a go at brandied cumquats myself.

The method is very simple - take an equal weight of cumquats and sugar, put them in a sterile jar, and top up with brandy. The jar will need to be shaken a couple of times a day until the sugar dissolves, and then left to sit for a couple of months.

One recipe I have suggests adding a vanilla bean. Having enough cumquats to make a second jar, I tried this as well. This also got me thinking about what other flavour ingredients I could use, and I decided to pick a few more cumquats and make a third jar with a couple of cinnamon sticks thrown in.



When ready, the cumquats are apparently very good with ice-cream, or baked into cakes and desserts. The resulting brandy liqeuer is supposedly really nice as well. I will of course confirm this when I start eating mine in a couple of months!

Cumquats can be made into a marmalade as well, which is one of my next projects.