The Organic Home Garden

In The Organic Garden This Hot Summer Week

Well here we are past the mid point of January and several weeks of very warm weather with today being the second day in a row over 42 degrees celcius. Tomorrow promises to be around 37 and it might even rain – the first time in 57 days!

We have broken some records this month on the summer temperatures and rainfall front. Normally this spells disaster for the vegetable garden but this year I seem to have had a win! My plans and preparations have saved the day and I have suffered minimal losses in the garden. A few lettuce plants got fried, a few capsicums burnt but generally all is well.

This zucchini plant has a little stress (as seen by the white fungal infection which I will treat with milk)

Beetroot and spring onion doing fine under the shade cloth. Oh yeah, that’s Dill growing in the front there!

Tomatoes doing fine, little sun damage and nice and plump.

The eggplant are thriving and we are enjoying them on and off the BBQ!

The next round of Cucumbers doing very well and a few lettuce in between them and the broccolini.

Will pick our first ever grapes tomorrow if it rains other wise the next day it cools down.
The cloth is to cover them on the hottest days, otherwise they are raisins!

Picking and Preserving the Corn Crop

Last week we picked the first of the corn to have cooked on the BBQ for Margit’s birthday. Today I picked half of the remaining crop to preserve for eating in the winter months. It seems so far away right now, but warm buttered corn on a cold winters day is some fine comfort food! The following photos demonstrate the procedure for preserving them in the deep freezer.

A very successful crop of corn this year it was 42degrees when I took this photo – corn was quite happy!

A sharp broad knife makes cutting the corn much easier.

Strip the cobs of the leaves and the filaments.

Cut into convenient bite sized cobs.

I had a big pan of water coming to the boil and ready to go as I finished chopping. The corn goes in for 5-6 minutes only to just partially cook them. (This stops freezer burn)

This bucket has a little ice and cold water ready to cool the blanched corn cobbettes.

The corn is bagged in lots of 6 for a dinner serve, dated and placed in the freezer. There is some lovely organic beef and free range pork sitting next to them!

That’s it, all ready for the coming winter. The rest of the crop we will eat raw and BBQ – and also give a few away to some lucky neighbours and friends!

I wish the best for the rest of the week – we expect more hot weather in the mid-30’s this weekend so the heat is on in Perth!

Take care,
The Organic Gardener

Now all good gardeners know that when the crops are in season or things go really well you often have far more than you can eat. I regularly give away organic vegetables but sometimes they are just too nice and I have plans to eat them later in the year. This is where a good deep freeze and a few preservation techniques are essential.

Bumper Organic Beans

An example was this weeks harvest of beans. 2 kilograms of organic beans are more than most couples can manage in one week and 500grams to Jess and the neighbour still leaves me 1 kilo to eat! So I have to prepare them for freezing since freezing them is the most effective way of retaining the nutrition they have to offer.

I turn to an old trick my mother applied to the organic vegetables that dad produced when we were kids – blanching.
Blanching is simply a system of par-boiling vegetables so that they are just starting to cook but not quite. This does a number of things – improves colour, flavour and neutralises enzymes and any bacteria that might spoil the food.

This technique is very useful with crops that tend to grow rapidly and yet may not be eaten everyday (silver beet, beans).
Today I have both beans and silver beat in abundance and we have had a feed of both in the last few days so other vegetables (like my turnips) that are best eaten fresh are on the menu.

The technique is very simple and yet very effective.

Blanching Organic Vegetables

First step is to clean and chop the vegetables in question.
Simply rinse and the remove hard stems and blemished leaves.

Next we get a big pot of water, boiling like mad, drop in a handful of vegetables – not too many – you want to keep the water boiling as much as possible – it should just go off boil for 30seconds or so and then come back.

Now the magic is in this next step. You get it right here or you have cooked dinner for tonight!
In the first few minutes of boiling the vegetables change colour for a very short period. In the case of the silverbeet here a lovely lime colour appears in the stems. As soon as you see this get them out!
They go straight into either running cold water in a colander or into another pot of cold water. If you get it right then the colour stays in the vegetables. Like in these silverbeet leaves. The sooner they get cool the quicker they stop cooking.

Now what I do is squeeze the leaves into a ball working all the water out that I can. The less water in the leaves when you freeze them the better.

I let them sit for a moment while I drop in the next handful of leaves in the now boiling water.

Into the Freezer You Go

The next step is the easy one – get the freezer bags out and write on them the date and contents before dropping into the deep freeze!

This is our little box freezer. I prefer this style since the cool air is trapped inside even when you open the lid. (Physics 101 denser cooler air sinks!)

So here are the beans and silverbeet in their final resting place, for a few months anyway. You can see a few packs of chicken and Kangaroo in there as well. Oh yeah on the right there are several bags of yummy Mulberries from last season! (Mmmm looking at this photo reminds me I must defrost this thing sometime soon!)

Here they are in close-up just in case you missed them. We will be having a warm apple and Mulberry pie in the depths of winter with some nice cream or ice cream. A little burst of sunlight in the middle of the grey winter days!

Oh yeah if you are wondering how deep freeze the freeze is – here you go! -13degrees Celsius.

Yep I Eat Game

A few of you maybe surprised to see that I eat a little Kangaroo. Yep I’m no vegetarian, though I do eat lots of organic vegetables.
I spent the first 20 years of my life on a farm and not only was involved in the raising of animals for the markets but also the culling and butchering of such. I spent many Saturday afternoons with my dad processing sheep, pigs, chicken or a steer for our table. If we did not do it we did not get to eat. Simple!

What I have realised, however, over the last 30 years is that the running of cattle and sheep (imported species) in Australia has led to the degradation of millions of hectares of land . These hard hoofed animals are not suitable in all areas of this country. So when I saw that some brilliant entrepreneur could see a profit in harvesting native animals to feed us I was for it!

Cows and sheep are great in some areas of high quality farmland that is more like the rich pastures of Europe that they came from. Soft footed low impact native animals are better in the marginal areas of farmland that the cows and sheep tear apart.
There is room for both in this great country.

Secondly the energy and greenhouse gas component is hugely minimised when you harvest the natural species and avoid the lot feeding model that the American beef manufacturers have “perfected”.

Well that’s my soapbox for today!
Enjoy your out of season vegetables and fruit.

John

Here we go then with my first post on the Organic Gardener Cooks.
This week I thought I would show you how I prepare silverbeet for the table. My wife has a number of recipes that use silverbeet. It can be eaten straight with a little sour cream but on it’s own it is a little strong. Our favourite method is in a quiche or a pie.

Pick Your Organic Silverbeet First

Ok the best time to pick the vegetables is in the early cool hours of the day when the moisture levels in the vegetables are high. If the weather is like today, storms and tonnes of rain, then you can pop out between showers and grab some leaves.

I prepare it outside since there is so much silverbeet and the kitchen is not the biggest. I cut the stems out of the leaves and then wash everything. The stems of course go into the worm farm sitting next to the table and they will enjoy that for the next few days!
Yes you can cook the stems and they are reasonably edible and when picked at the right time tender. They have a strong taste so we just recycle them since we have huge amounts of silverbeet and spinach anyway!

To The Kitchen

We have a large stainless pot and it can hold a lot of water or vegetables and so ideal for the next step.
I boil 1-2 litres of water in the kettle and and put a little in the base of the pot and get it all boiling. I then drop the silverbeet in the pot (only enough to fill it by a third.) and pour the boiling kettle water over the top.

Boil it strongly for 2 minutes or when the leaves change colour to a vivid green. Don’t over boil since we are not cooking here just blanching the vegetable.
Have a colander ready in the sink and scoop out the silverbeet into the colander. Then run some cold water over the lot to stop the cooking process!

Notice the colour of the silverbeet at this point!

Next step is to now squeeze out the water from the silverbeet and let it rest before bagging up for the freezer.

We freeze a fair bit of ours because there is always more than we can eat. Our friends and family don’t mind receiving frozen vegetable like this since it is ready to cook!

Now I repeat the whole process for the rest of the leaves. Today’s haul required two more rotation since I had a huge pile of silverbeet.

Dinner Tonight

So here is a recipe idea for organic silverbeet or English spinach.

Chop up the silverbeet and mix with feta cheese and stuff enough of the Cannelloni for the dinner crowd.
you are feeding tonight.

We lined the cooking basin with egg plant from the garden first and then laid the Cannelloni on top.

Next you need a sauce – garlic and tomato – or in our case a jar of garlic sauce we had in the cupboard.
This is poured over the top

Finish off with a nice cheese – a tasty mozzarella tonight!

Cover your dish with Al foil, cook for 45 minutes in the oven set at 170 (fan forced) – keep an eye on it since your oven may vary a little.

Cannelloni with Organic Silverbeet

Here it is and I am off now to eat some!