Bring on Autumn's chill

AUTUMN is so cool.

Summer has been great, but I'm ready for this lovely cooler weather...

After a long, hard, hot few months, these cooler autumn days are a huge relief and joy.

Sultry days and hot, sticky nights have their place, but crisp mornings, sunny afternoons and cool evenings mean goodbye sweltering in T-shirts and hello jumpers, log fires and warming soup.

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Autumn in your patch

THOSE stalwart folk at Sustainable Gardening Australia are at it again - this time with heaps of good ideas for getting our veggie beds all sorted.

But although my veggie garden needs some attention - and more rain, I concentrated on the front non-food garden today.

Not a lover of chocolate, after breakfast I spent Easter Sunday weeding and replanting the front nature strip garden after it was decimated by the local council when they constructed the (unwanted) footpath in our street.

Good old native iris - it divides easily and is a great plant, enjoy and neglect options and produces lovely flowers.

Thankfully, while the poor old grevillias were upended roots to sky (they have been replanted but it's not looking good), the bottle brush and hakea survived. So this afternoon I divided and planted out loads of native iris which if grows a smidgen as well as it has in the front garden, will soon grow nice and bushy and keep any weeds out.

Hopefully we will see some rain tonight and the grevillias will recover, thrive and survive.

Sunday brunch

FRESH from the oven Saxon Hot Cross Buns from 3RRR were a great success - a nice and chewy texture with the cranberries and orange peel giving the buns a lovely fragrance.

Best enjoyed fresh from the oven or toasted

However, Sunday brunch is not just about buns at the Jan Juc Surf Shack.

No sireee.

The preferred brunch menu during autumn can range from rolled oats porridge with some blueberries, Greek yogurt and passion fruit - low cost high taste - through to pancakes with lemons from the neighbours and sugar, or sourdough toast with Darryl's Dry Roasted Peanut Butter which it leaves the others which are way too oily in it's wake like steeplechaser Moss Trooper racing against the donkeys. 

Another favourite is poached eggs from the gals on sourdough with fresh spinach and corriander.

Hot fresh coffee is not optional, as are the Sunday papers and back issues of the New Yorker.

Meanwhile, the feather riot are served left-over pancakes or toast, before allowed out to chase insects.

Any leftover buns will be toasted by the fire and eaten later.

Heritage Apples

AUTUMN is the perfect time to enjoy an apple, especially a delicious heritage apple.

So heritage fruit lovers will be thrilled that on Sunday March 21 between 5-7pm tastings of heritage apples will be conducted at Pettys Orchard in Templestowe.

Chat to fruit growing experts and learn about growing your own apples and other fruit.
For more information: www.heritagefruitssociety.org.au
Petty's Orchard has over 100 varieties grown in the Heritage Apple Collection.

Autumn bliss and community radio

NOW the Indian summer appears to have melted away, it's finally a proper autumn - cool evenings, crisp mornings and sunny days. Perfect for turning over the compost and digging it in to some garden beds in preparation for planting while I listen to the wireless.

Five of my six bins are doing well, so I shall empty out the recalcitrant bin and distribute the contents amongst the others and start again.

This always puts the feather riot in seventh heaven - they cawk and sqawk their way through the decomposed material, pulling out worms and beetles with gay abandon. (It makes a nice change form them escaping into the potato bed and trying to dig up all the kipflers!)

This week I'll also pull out the last of my tomato plants and do some much needed weeding - and show my support for community radio.

BTW, today is a great day to show your support for community radio -

3RRR, and community radio in general, is facing a tough time and needs your help.

3RRR  is not asking for your financial support this time around, just 30 seconds of your time to sign up to the campaign at committocommunityradio.org.au

The Community Broadcasting Association of Australia requires funding of $3.6 million per year to maintain digital radio infrastructure for the 37 metropolitan community radio stations that hold digital licenses. Having previously committed to the full amount of funding, in the May 2012 federal budget, the Government committed to only $2.2 million per year, for four years, leaving a $1.4 million per year shortfall.

The Commit to Community Radio campaign has been established to get this $1.4 million shortfall addressed. At only about $40,000 per station per year, it’s really not a lot of money in the scheme of things, but other stations aren’t as well supported as Triple R and the transmission infrastructure is shared, so we’re committed to a “one in, all in” approach.  Unaddressed, this shortfall is likely to see community digital radio services switched off.

So make like the feather riot! If Layne, Ledger, Philly, Gidget and Hilda can show their support, you can too.

Autumn = Risotto

Here's a risotto recipe based on a Donna Hay classic - mine uses heaps more garlic and greens but less stock.

Autumn is bliss.

Sunny days, cool evenings, a chill in the air.

Good surf starts rolling in, the tomatoes are over and your beans and peas start climbing towards the heavens.

Time to check you have ordered firewood, give your woollen dressing-gown a nice wash in wool mix so it's ready for the first chilly morning and think about moving past steamed veggies and salads for dinner.

So here's a cracker recipe for risotto I made it for some friends last night.

It's great when you are busy talking non-stop; discussing books, chook raising, politics or where to go snowboarding / surfing / cycling, as you just combine the ingredients and put it in the oven.

I love using my gorgeous, reliable blue Le Cruset casserole dish as I can cook the bacon, garlic and mushrooms, add the rest of the ingredients, before placing it in the oven. Once its cooked, it can go on the table and everyone can help themselves.

(In this instance I used beef stock as I thought I might give the hens the leftovers and I obviously do not feed them anything containing poultry.)

Baked mushroom, bacon, kale and spinach risotto

1 Tblsp olive oil

4 cloves of garlic, crushed

400g button mushrooms, roughly chopped

4 rashers bacon, rind removed, roughly chopped

1 ½ cups Arborio rice

4 cups chicken stock

100g baby spinach leaves

20g finely chopped kale

1 cup (80g) finely grated Parmesan

20g butter

Sea salt and cracked black pepper

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (355°F).
2. Heat oil in a non-stick frying pan or casserole dish over medium heat.
3. Add bacon, cook until nearly brown
4. Add garlic and mushrooms and cook for five minutes or until browned.
5. Place in a medium ovenproof dish with the rice and stock and stir to combine.
6. Put the lid on or cover tightly with aluminium foil and bake for 40 minutes or until most of the stock is absorbed and rice is aldente.
7. Stir through the spinach, kale, Parmesan, butter, salt and pepper.

Serves 4 (Leftovers freeze just fine, but it's unlikely you'll have any!)

Grow gorgeous garlic

Harvesting your own garlic is one of the joys of gardening.

Pulling up the bulbous cloves, hanging them to dry, sharing with friends the scrumptious taste of your own garlic – well, it’s up there with growing heritage tomatoes with basil, keeping chooks and eating passionfruit straight off the vine.

St Peter of Cundall has a great article on the ‘stinking rose’ as it is sometimes known in the latest Weekly Times.

Always plant more than you think you will want - once your mates get a taste they'll be asking to swap you some of their extra pumpkins / lemons or homemade bread for it. The more garlic you plant the better it gets! I find that it’s a good plant to have around roses too.

Don’t use supermarket garlic as planting corms – unless you are sure that you are purchasing 100 per cent certified organic  they could be full of nasty chemicals. Better to get them from a reliable supplier such as your local nursery or someone like Diggers.

Start planting garlic and once you tatse it you’ll never go back to horrid, supermarket garlic again.

Autumn Joys

It’s an exciting time in the garden. Sure, the tomatoes are looking a little ragged and the corn is drooping a bit but all the rain has meant that it’s greener than normal.

Gidget is already keen to get out and turn over the summer veggie bed.

Now is the time to pull out the old veggies, replenish the soil and get in the winter and spring crops. This weekend I will pull out on bed of tomatoes – the heritage varieties which di so s well and then let the chooks go to work! By giving hem a few hours a day for a week or so in this patch I’ll meet the twin aims of turning over the soil and give the girls some bliss as they eat all the bugs and leftover fruit! Their droppings are also a bonus. Plus I will fork in some compost and then plant the brassicas - there's nothing better than fresh broccolli

The fruit trees will get a light prune, the roses will be have black-spotted leaves removed and I’ll also plant a heap of garlic. We enjoyed a bumper crop last year and I’m going to plant two beds this time as it’s such a popular item in the “local barter swap”. One lovely neighbour mows the grass walkways between my eight vegetable beds in exchange for a few bunches, another swaps me her home-baked bread while another gives me gorgeous nashi apples. Everyone wins!

Nest week I’ll go into the joys of bartering and swapping tools and skills and how it makes gardening all the more fun and productive.

Autumn harvest!

The last few days of summer were spent harvesting tomatoes to make a ripper sauce. I look forward to those cold dark winter nights when I’ll open the lid of the jar and a burst of flavour will erupt, taking me back to when I picked kilo after kilo of the red and yellow cherry, Roma and other varities, the sun on my back and the sound of the hens clamouring for the left-over fruit that didn’t make the cut.

Some of the yummy cherry tomatoes ready to be taken into the kitchen and tunred into sauce.

It’s been a slow growth season thanks to all the rain and low temperatures, so I still have about 40 tomatoes bushes yet to flower and another 30 still seedlings. As I follow the crop rotation plan, the brassicas (love broccoli!) will follow the tomatoes in these beds. I’m planting them in pots, ready to transfer them as soon as I can. I think I’ll be building a mini-greenhouse to see them through the next couple of months.

While it’s been a funny old summer, it’s been a good one too – swapping cakes and veggies with my firends for preserves; my good neighbour mowing my lawn in exchange for eggs; baking bread and adding my own herbs; seeing blue wrens in the Asian greens bed, flitting and flirting about from soil to birdbath.

With all the horrors in the news, it’s good to have somewhere quiet to sit and reflect on what’s important in life. No matter if your garden comprises a couple of acres or a few foam boxes on the back steps, it’s a wonderful place to go to take a deep breath.