OVER THE FENCE

ONE of the loveliest things about walking or cycling to work is looking at what everyone else is growing in their gardens.

 

Roses rambling over fences, lemon trees showing their bounty as you walk past a gate, even tomatoes soaring a good couple of metres up, in this case. even growing above the lattice nailed to the timber fence. 

 

While dashing along Carr St last night, I stopped to admire this tomato which was enjoying the sunshine. It was taller than I am (not hard at 5'3") and covered in flowers which bodes well for a later summer harvest.

 

I can understand why people want privacy in the gardens, but sharing your trees, shrubs and flowers looks and scent is one of the great benefits of gardening all year long.

 

You say tomato...

Making your tomato sauce out of ingredients you picked a few moments earlier is one of life’s heady pleasures. In fact it’s so damn good it’s a wonder the club of Rome haven’t put out an edict banning the activity.

After all the rain, Sunday's sunshine was bliss.

So I spent most of the day harvesting some of the nine varieties of tomatoes I grew over summer – as you can see this batch was mostly cherry and Tommy Toe.

It’s great as a pasta sauce base, or as a pizza spread or to enjoy on home made bread fresh out of the oven - Alas, I gave the chooks the leftover bread before I remembered to photograph it for the blog.

This time I used an adaptation of a Stephanie Alexander recipe From The Cook's Companion – it works a treat.

And the photo? It has not been digitally altered, this is a the colour of the tomatoes and they smell and taste amazing.

Ingredients

2 kg ripe tomatoes, roughly sliced

4 brown onions, sliced

10 garlic cloves, crushed then sliced

1 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil - check out olive oil via consumer watchdog CHOICE 

Salt and black pepper, freshly ground

A large handful fresh basil or oregano leaves torn into small pieces – I like to add both

Method

Heat oven to 180c

Tumble tomato, onion and garlic with oil and put into a casserole dish with lid

Bake at 180C for at least one hour until the tomatoes have collapsed, their skins are wrinkled and golden-brown, and juices are flowing – it will smell divine.

When tomato and onion are soft, press everything through the coarsest disc of a food mill. If I am making a pasta sauce straight away then I’ll add the skins to give some more texture…

Season to taste and add the herbs.

This freezes well.

Share the love…

Community gardens are a great melting-pot of your neighbourhood. Residents of all ages, professions and backgrounds come together to grow food, share ideas, seeds and conversation as they plant, weed and harvest.

When I rocked up to the Danawa Community Garden in Torquay, I was delighted to find a like-mined group of people who are some of the nicest gardeners I’ve ever met.

Some of the great people who keep Torquay's Danawa Community Garden growing.

Community gardens are places where people don’t give a toss about the car you drive, the size of your house, the brand of your jeans or which footy team you follow.

OK, they do care if you follow the Cats or the Bombers. But they are also places where the ability to grow really good corn, a sweet tomato or a fantastic heritage pumpkin far outweighs the size of your plama TV or which school your kids attend. As it should be.

If you can make a good, hot compost heap, advise on permaculture, chooks, bees or how to build a worm farm - or want to learn - you’ll be welcomed with open arms.

And while not everyone at the community garden may qualify as your new best friend, you’ll meet a fantastic array of people who really care about the important things in life; growing delicious and nutritious food, bees, worms, chooks and enjoying a cuppa while talking about compost.So pull on your workboots, pick up your gloves and prepare for a great gardening adventure!
Find out where your local community garden is here or if there's not one listed, contact your local council.

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.