Dear cabbage white butterflies

Did you think we were running a breeding program? You might well see armies upon armies of your young feasting on our kale leaves as you flutter and hover, but that's not to say you are welcome to lay your eggs in the hope they'll hatch and fatten up nicely.

I am trying to feed my young, not yours. So with that in mind we've planted our own white butterflies to fool you – you apparently don't like competition so we're hoping you'll clear off somewhere else.

Only thing is it did fool you. You left our kale alone and today I caught a few amongst the wild rocket and one of your fat teenagers with his head buried inside my biggest tomato. Since when were you interested in tomatoes?

Tomorrow I'm going to scatter eggshell and make more friendly butterflies* for the tomatoes and rocket. Hopefully, you'll leave the garden for good.

In the meantime, whose chickens would love a bucket full of delicious green caterpillars? High in protein, organic... and hand-picked, of course.

*I made the butterflies by cutting out shapes from used cream cheese pots, then cut slits to attach to sticks. Large pieces of eggshell are also meant to confuse the butterflies and with any luck they'll lay their eggs somewhere 'safer'.




Working with nature

It doesn't take much nowadays to get me excited about the prospect of a few hours in the company of other adults (excited beforehand and then I fall asleep, huh?).

A council-run composting and worm farm workshop. Riveting, don't you think?

Well, it was. Even more riveting was the fact they were giving away free compost bins and worm farms. What a fabulous thing for a council to organise.

The local CWA hall was packed on Wednesday. Full of people who wanted to learn and go home with a freebie for their garden. The room had a beautiful energy about it. There were people – like the gentleman sitting beside me – who kept an immaculate lawn but knew nothing about composting or worm farming. Others had tried to compost in the past but ended up with a sludgy mess and gave up as a result. Surprisingly, I was one of only three people who use a compost bin and keep a worm farm.

I feel quite confident about composting now, having done Nicola Chatham's online gardening course earlier this year. Our worms do their jobs well, and even though any niggles I have about harvesting the castings will get covered in Nicola's next course*, I went along because I knew I'd learn something. I'm in my element when I can delve deeper into something that inspires me. It's why I ask lots of questions. It's the one thing people always say about me...

Anyway, aside from feeling very sad at one point when it was pointed out that over a third of everyone's bins is made up of fruit and vegetable scraps filling up our landfills, and how all this needless waste gets converted to ozone-depleting methane, it was a worthwhile morning.

Here are some notes I made for you.

• Composting is really quite easy. The reason why people give up is they add too much nitrogen-rich matter (kitchen scraps, fresh lawn clippings, manure, mushroom compost) and not enough carbon, or poor layers (newspaper, brown leaves, dried grass, hay). I follow the 2:1 ratio for layering – 2 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen or thereabouts. I keep it in mind, but I certainly don't lose any sleep over it. As long as there's enough carbon in there, your compost won't turn smelly or wet.
• If you fill your compost bin right up (the way I do it, layering with as much variety as I can get my hands on), and you turn it, say, once every 10 days, you will get beautiful rich compost within 10 weeks. How exciting is that?
• If you just want to add your fruit and veg as you go from the kitchen, you'll still get to make 'food' for your soil; it'll just take longer. Always finish with a carbon/poor layer which will keep any flies at bay.
• As for worm farming, you don't need to go and buy one of the expensive kits. All you need is a polystyrene box or two. I might be making one of these myself to extend our little worm family. (I promise I'll try and get out more.)
• You generally start off with around 1000 worms. You can buy worms in garden centres or get some from someone with an established worm farm. Or get your little tikes to harvest worms from the garden – they don't need to be special composting worms. Ordinary earthworms will do the job just as well (according to the workshop).  
• Worm juice, which is actually their pee, is liquid gold fertiliser. Just dilute with water to a ratio of 1:10 and it'll make your garden (and your indoor plants) very happy.

Luca and I spent the next day starting to fill our third (freebie) compost bin. We cut down the last of our winter broccoli and cauliflower and tore them all up ready to go back into the next cycle.

I came home that day and looked at my worms in a slightly different light, now that I know a little more about these spectacular creatures' anatomy and how they breed.

I discovered melon is one of their favourite foods, so that day they dined on melon skins and their usual banana skins. I made up two watering cans of diluted worm juice and drizzled one lot over the tomatoes and basil, and the other can went over my leeks to perk them up after the aphids almost got them.

I love working with nature. I really do.

Do you like composting? Do you skip in the garden knowing you're turning waste into magic? Do you squeal with delight when you turn that tap on the worm farm and it all comes gushing out?

Perhaps you think I ought to get out more too?





*I'm joining Nicola Chatham for her next course on organic gardening in pots. Nicola's also covering worm farming – yippee! I'll post more details soon, but you can get her free Organic Veggie Patch Kit here in the meantime. 

Making our own compost

I want to spend every spare minute I have in the garden right now. The light is beautiful and it's not too hot. Yet.

I always get distracted from what I'm supposed to be doing. This morning was no different. I took my camera down and took a few pictures.

1. Our first snow peas are ready.

2. My little experiment with nasturtiums. We used to grow nasturtiums in England to eat, but right now I want them as a companion plant. Aphids love nasturtiums, so the plan is they'll love my cabbages and broccoli a little less. The thing is I can't get hold of nasturtium seeds through my plant man, so I went for a little walk and took some cuttings. They sat in water in the kitchen for a couple of weeks until I noticed some roots. Luca and I are after plenty of brilliant orange flowers so I stuck them in the poorest soil I could find near the brassica beds (nasturtiums don't like rich soil; you get more flowers if you hold back on the fertiliser and compost). Fingers crossed.

3. I'd actually forgotten I planted cauliflower. I got quite a surprise when I poked through some leaves and found this creamy white head.

4. A bed all ready for this season's crop of tomatoes and basil. It had sunk down a fair bit through the winter, so I followed the same no-dig garden method and topped with alternating layers of carbon (hay, cardboard) and nitrogen (mushroom compost, veggie scraps, lawn clippings).

5. Our first homegrown broccoli. Lovely but not quite the tight heads I was hoping for. Or does that not matter? And does anyone know why it's all going to flower so quickly?

6. Tomato seedlings in.

Then I got stuck into the one thing I've been looking forward to for weeks. Filling a compost bin to make soil. Number one compost bin is already full and takes the odd bucket of scraps from the kitchen but it's time to start another one.

Making compost is more than throwing in kitchen scraps at the bottom of an empty bin with the occasional bit of cardboard and grass (just because they can go in) and hoping for magic one day. We composted this way for years and abracadabra all we got was slime. With broken egg shell.

I've learnt there's a little bit of science. Much like no-dig gardening.  

I'm not exactly sure why I love filling a compost bin. Is it because I like adding a bit of this and a bit of that, put a lid on and leave the rest to nature? Is it because I find it incredibly satisfying to put household waste (newspapers, office paper, vegetable peelings, ahem urine*) to really good use? Is it the thrill of making something else other than food from scratch and saving a bit more money?

Probably all of the above.

The boys shredded paper. I filled buckets with water and a dash of molasses (blackstrap molasses does wonders for the micro-organisms, which help break everything down, and gets all the worms rushing in).

We filled the bin with different layers of carbon and nitrogen including some roadside alpaca poo and store-bought chicken manure, and finished it with a layer of molasses-soaked hay.

It'll sink down in a few days leaving us room to add our scraps.

Then abracadabra we'll have homemade compost. Very soon.

Congratulations to Libby who wins Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion.





* Graeme often 'waters' the garden when he gets in from work. You know, when it's dark and no one can see. He walks through the door and announces he's given the beds a good dose of nitrogen. He'll be doing the same to the compost bins as long as I remind him. Seriously, if you garden, urine is a valuable resource.

To school or not to school

Proud as punch of his colourful crab – a WilderQuest Discovery activity in
Wyrrabalong National Park

We made the decision a while back that Luca wouldn't be going to school next year. It didn't take us long to decide. In fact, my heart knew in an instant.

I'm really grateful that it was an easy decision.

We want him to have a long childhood. We want him to have more time to play and have fun. There's a lifetime ahead of systems and institutions and rules. I'd rather all that wait for a little while longer. Truth is, I'd rather put it off for as long as possible.

It really was very easy to decide. Especially when I started reading about the Finns and how they've reformed education in their country. Hearing that children don't go to school until they are 7 was music to my ears. Particularly when theirs is such a success story – the country has one of the highest performing school systems in the world.

The Finns are, apparently, fans of the 'less is more' approach. They do extended childhoods. They like simple and they like common sense.

I'm quite a fan of the Finns. Heck, I'd even move to Finland if I didn't think another move round the world would kill me.

Seriously, though, I think it's all very good. Luca turns five next year and he'll be doing pretty much what he's doing now. Two or three days at a preschool that genuinely embraces unstructured, play-based learning and the rest at home.

Trouble is, we're looking ahead to 2014 when he turns 6. We don't know where he'll be going to school. Have I looked into schools properly? Not really.

You see, one of the main reasons for keeping him back is because Luca is a highly sensitive child. (I might do another post on this trait, because I think it could help a lot of parents who might not know they're raising a highly sensitive child.) He wouldn't cope. The world can be a bit too much for Luca most days – and too much for us, as a result! There's the fact he needs a lot of downtime (he still naps). I just know, as his mother, he'd go to pieces in a school playground.

Maybe the reason I haven't started looking at schools is because I don't think the school system, as it stands, is where Luca will thrive. Not in his early years, anyway.

We've been talking about homeschooling. A bit strange, given that I've always ruled us out as a homeschooling family.

Keeping him back was the easy decision. It's knowing what to do after that.

Do I want to homeschool? I don't think I do. But then I'm speaking as someone whose days are filled with endless bickering. Toddlerhood will be past us by then. But I still need quiet on my own every week.

How will I homeschool and work at the same time? I've heard that you only have to do three hours a day when you're teaching children at home. But does that work in practice?

There is a huge homeschooling community here on the Central Coast, which is comforting to know. I know the resources are there, and I know it can be a much richer way of learning.

In fact, from the little information and insights we've gleaned so far, we both agree it would be perfect for Luca.

This is how he'd thrive. This is how he thrives now. He's infinitely curious, questions everything. I fantasise about all the different projects we could do, walks we could take, trips we could go on.

I think about all the gardening he wants to do, and how he could carry on really indulging his creativity and his love of drawing.

But I don't know if I could do it. We know what's best for him, but are we committed enough?

Maybe we'll homeschool till he's seven, and make a decision then.

Or maybe I'll find this elusive small school that I've set up in my head – the one that couldn't care less about results or about homework. The one that doesn't tell parents what they want to hear. The one with a proper fruit and vegetable garden that isn't just there to give parents a warm, fuzzy feeling about where they're sending their kids every day. The one that lets children learn at their own pace. The one that does school three days a week, so I can homeschool and watch him learn the other two.

Have you seen it?

I have no idea what to do. But we have time still.

If you're a parent facing a similar predicament, what are you doing? Have you found a school that fits the one in your head? Or do you homeschool? How do you homeschool and keep sane keep everyone happy? I would love to hear from you.




P.S. Drum roll please... Giveaway winners about to be announced. Congratulations Carly and Joanna!

Grateful for contrasts

This word is on my mind. The more I've thought, the more I realise I'm a bundle of contrasts. My life is a life of contrasts.

It started when I thought it funny how Luca was a textbook routine baby and Kian was carried in a sling and we co-slept.

Then I thought about my views on medicine and natural living. I've always sought alternative therapies and treatments to anything. And yet I had an epidural with both the boys.

There are little things like how I hate noise. (OK, who likes noise?) I mean, I'm so sensitive that I'd prefer a tea towel dangling permanently over each and every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen to avoid that sound of wood on wood. I like quiet. Silence. But I'll have you know the drums are my instrument of choice. A drumming friend at school taught me the basics and I've been hooked ever since. (A pie-in-the-sky dream of mine has been to do what I do by day, and be a drummer in a cool little band by night.)

I crave solitude. I love parties.

When we first moved to Australia, we lived amongst barefoot hippies. I ran a cake stall at the organic markets and Graeme sweated it out in people's gardens. Then we moved to a place where Graeme worked in the city and we made friends with big-time corporate families.

We didn't really fit in either camp to tell you the truth.

Too mainstream to be radical and too radical to be mainstream.

I've lived a life where talking to boys was forbidden. A life in a strict private girls' school in Cairo where you are pulled up and punished if your hair tie isn't brown or black. I've lived another in a mixed public school in Kent amongst girls who did a lot more than kissing.

Straight-A student and maths graduate becomes a food writer working from home.

Used to loathe getting dirty in the garden and doing any kind of work out there. Now I've designed and built my beds, planted pots and am growing lots of green goodness. And I quite like getting my hands dirty.

None of this is surprising. I am, after all, a product of another contrast: a harsh Egyptian father and a soft, warm English mother.

I love contrasts. I love all the irony. Life is very real with contrasts. Don't you think?

And I get to see a much much bigger world (literally and figuratively).

Hence why I'm grateful.

Linking with Bron at Maxabella Loves who makes me laugh.


Have you noticed the button? Yes the big button up there on the right. The one with the cool changing text. I'm so excited about it. Go on, see where it takes you... 

P.S. Don't forget to enter my giveaway.




Chasing the sun with old wheelbarrows

I've never forgotten the sight of the garden at JoJo's, a little (well, it was back then) mezze restaurant in Whitstable, England. Nikki and Paul inspired me on so many levels when I met them back in 2004. I'm not sure they realise how much of an impact they had on me. And still do. Every time we move house, I go in search of a JoJo's. I'm half referring to JoJo's as a restaurant and half referring to the actual people. Friends who share my values to do with food, our environment, and a tremendously inspiring sense of style and resourcefulness...

Seriously, I really do go looking for a JoJo's everywhere I go. I haven't found one yet. I realise now as I type these words that this is another factor in why I gave my blog the name I did.

Anyway, I'm not getting to the point as usual... I remember one night Graeme and I took the train from London to Whitstable to catch up with Nikki and Paul. We sat at the bar and ate beer-battered calamari*, haddock goujons and patatas bravas, then when everyone else had gone home, they shut shop and we drank wine together.

I was pickled that night. So pickled I fell off my seat on the train back to Victoria.

This is that moment.

Thems were the days before kids...

Will I ever get to the point???**

Here it is, here it is: Somewhere between the lamb cannon and the cave-aged gorgonzola that night, we wandered out to their garden. An olive tree stood right at the back. I remember talking about their plans for a wild meadow. Nikki talked about how you can buy packets of wild meadow seed that you just scatter and voila, you have a patch thick with cornflowers and poppies.

What really stuck with me, though, were the butler sinks that she had planted with herbs, charming old troughs picked up in a nearby scrap yard, and was there a bath?? Can't remember now. You're picturing a higgledepiggledy mess of other people's rubbish. And yet, it was a higgledepiggledy thing of beauty.

I don't yet have any chipped troughs or butler sinks, but a plastic baby bath is doing the job nicely.

What I have been looking for, though, is a wheelbarrow. An old wheelbarrow that has served someone well for years, but can't go on anymore. I've looked on the roadsides for months.

Then two come along in the space of two weeks. Two garage sales. Both were going to the tip the minute their owners had sold all the bric-a-brac in them. Neither could believe I would want an old wheelbarrow.

But rescue them I did.

Graeme drilled holes and Luca took a hammer to old terracotta tiles and lined the bottoms.

We're not really sure what we're doing, but we mixed manure with organic compost and some mushroom compost. Then a wet blanket of sugarcane mulch and a drenching with worm juice.

I've replanted the leeks in one (replanted because the poor buggers were fighting for space in a tiny pot).

Now they can soak up all that sun in the front garden. Sunshine that has gone to waste till now.

Which has just given me another thought. All that lawn... A wild meadow. Just think, no more mowing. Cornflowers, poppies. Do they grow over here? Anyone?

I'll be picking two winners for the Amazement giveaway this coming Friday. If you'd like to visit, make sure you enter here.





* We've eaten a lot of calamari. Around the UK, in Spain, in France, in Greece, around Australia... OK, I'm just showing off now. Point is, Nikki's is the best. I haven't had any since my visit in July 2010.

** Believe it or not, I had to change the title of this post. I'd planned on talking to you about wintry pears, Hugh FW's savoury muffins and a rhubarb crumble. I was just going to mention the wheelbarrows. But all this just poured out. I needed to say it. 

Weekend eating

I've been forgetting to post about the fish Graeme's been catching recently. I wonder if it's because I'm trying to block out his encounter with a shark?... Hmmmmm

Anyway, the red morwong and black drummer fillets were cooked with capers, lemon, butter and fresh tarragon. Simple but very very good. Especially with creamy parmesan polenta. 

Those pools are lemon juice, not butter...
OK, maybe a bit of butter...

The garden needs a bit of TLC at the moment. The layers have all sunk down, so a lot of the plants have suffered from not being exposed to full sun. Add to that all the rain we've been having and the tomato plants were a mess. Most of the fruit had split skins, and had started rotting.

I'm experimenting as I go along, taking herbs out of the garden and putting them into pots to make room for more salads. But I start one thing and often don't get to see it through, and before I know it another week has gone past, and it's a mess again.

While Kian will sit on the grass for a few minutes, he now thinks it's fun to walk around the beds ripping all the leaves out. He started with the marigolds, which I let him de-head, but then when I wasn't looking he'd pulled out beetroot, an entire coriander plant and one strawberry plant. So having Kian out there just makes more work.

But Graeme and I did need 20 minutes or so to clear the other bed, and build the layers back up, so we thought a bucket of water would keep him amused for that long.

Except he tried to climb into it head first and almost got stuck (with his head in the water).

We can't take our eyes off him for a second. So it just meant he stayed on my hip, while Graeme shovelled.

Most of the tomatoes this week were no good, but I still managed to pick a couple of baskets' worth.

Tomatoes and purple carrots ready to go into the oven...

And earlier that day some pitta breads for lunch...

I've picked up all the green tomatoes off the ground that must have fallen off in the rain. What would you do with a great big bowl of green tomatoes? Chutney?

Actually, Graeme's just picked four green chillies from his chilli plant, so a green tomato chutney might be just the thing. 

(In my head, yes. It makes perfect sense. A green tomato chutney with a nice kick from Graeme's chillies. Hey, I could even make enough to give away a few jars as gifts. Trouble is, I keep looking at these tomatoes in the fridge and saying 'I must do something with them'. I'm feeling lazy this week, and, well chutney doesn't offer quite the same reward as chocolate cake, does it? I mean, I'll leave Pinterest to make custard, even bread. But chutney?)

P.S. I've been beavering away over the last few weeks trying to finish my story. My blog is a big work in progress, but at least I've finished one page!

Creating our garden

Last weekend was busy, busy, busy. Graeme finished building the second frame for our vegetable garden.

We had the bales of hay, cow manure, organic chicken pellets and compost delivered the day before, so I was itching to get our gardens built, especially as I was planning on buying the plants at the markets the following day.

I have to add here that, in Graeme's words, we are winging it. Oddly enough for us, we haven't read and researched it to death like we do everything else. The boys have done this to us, which could be a good thing; we're just getting on with it with the little information we've gleaned and hoping it's not all a big flop.

If you grow your own and haven't heard about Esther Dean, it's definitely worth looking into. Here's a factsheet on ABC Gardening Australia that will help shed some light.

I still don't really understand the ins and outs, but we've basically layered the lucerne hay, the two types of fertiliser (cow and chicken poo) and compost. Luca was such a great help. He was back and forth filling his bucket with Graeme, and then helped me loosen the pads of hay. He was in his element.

Kian, on the other hand, wasn't as easy to keep happy. Anything cooler than bathwater isn't his idea of fun, apparently.

But we did it, and on Sunday I bought luscious pots of basil, mint, parsley, coriander, dill and tarragon, plus strawberries, black kale (or cavolo nero), tomatoes, cucumber, spinach and a few different lettuces.


Luca and I have nearly finished planting them and once we have, I'll post some more pictures (including the scorched lettuces from Monday).

I'll see how much room I have left in the beds and if I can fit in some beetroot. The boys love roasted beetroot so I serve it often, wincing though I do at the thought of the pink-hued clothes, walls and floors that always follow.

Next on the list are marigolds, mainly for their pest-repelling properties, but also for a splash of colour. I happened to mention to Luca that we can eat certain flowers, so he's itching to know which ones he can pick and eat. So might have to put nasturtiums in too, despite them taking over our garden in Beckenham a few years back.

I'm going to be very hot on the trail of any pests in my garden. I've already given the plants a strong caffeine hit with an early evening cold coffee spray and my mum has suggested broken-up egg shells. Luca, meanwhile, knows it's his job to 'relocate' any snails he sees around the garden, but if he doesn't get them all, I may have to give them a beer bath.

Vanessa

Our 'green' day out

I'd been looking forward to it for weeks... and weeks.

Graeme's mum and dad drove down from Hervey Bay (15 hours north) to spend a few days with their three grandchildren – the boys' baby cousin was coming to visit from WA.

Luca and Kian were going to spend a lovely Saturday with Nan and Opa, while we were going to spend an even lovelier time... on our own.

I booked us on an organic gardening and cooking course, so it was half date, half a day of learning.

Gardening???? Me?

Well, I can't go on spending good money on rubbish fruit and veg from the shops – watery bland potatoes, plastic tomatoes, boring salad greens, giant root vegetables bred for size not flavour, not to mention the invisible layers of chemical sprays that they come with – nor can we afford to buy everything from our box scheme, so the answer is to grow our own.

We've had a lot of success in the past in our different houses in the UK, or shall I say Graeme has. Truth is, I've never been mad on getting my hands dirty. I hate bending down, I get a sore back. I don't like the fiddly jobs of pricking and thinning out seedlings (I once scattered an entire packet of sweet pea seeds in the ground because I didn't have the patience to do it properly). And don't get me started on weeding.

I'm an instant gratification kind of girl. Until now, I would have been blissfully happy for someone else to sow, dig and get dirty. And for that someone to come rushing in from my garden laden with beautiful bunches of herbs, juicy warm tomatoes, delicate courgette flowers and sweet carrots for me to use in the kitchen... All right, all right, they wouldn't have to pick it too.

When I say 'until now', I don't mean I've suddenly gone all green-fingered. It's just that with Luca madly keen on spending time with his snail and worm friends, I know this is something he'll love to take part in.

For me, cooking with kids and teaching them about good food and ingredients somehow falls short when you're piling cheap, mass-produced food into the supermarket trolley. Growing your own is just an extension of what happens in the kitchen. And when you have some space (we have very little), it's silly not to.

Anyhoo, the course was incredibly useful and very inspiring on the gardening front.

Adam McCall of Adam's Garden showed us how to create a garden bed using the 'no-dig' method that Sydney gardener Esther Dean came up with in the 1970s.

No digging. Now we're talking. This is my kind of gardening.

I'll do a separate post on no-dig gardening a bit later. The other really important thing Adam talked about, and rather obvious actually, is the soil. It's all in the soil.

We spent time pottering in Adam's garden picking whatever took our fancy and tasting as we went. Graeme and I probably asked far too many questions, but Adam's enthusiasm was infectious. His garden was an abundant mix of salads, brassicas, rhubarb, onions, herbs, potatoes, asparagus and even a banana tree. All growing in amongst each other as is the case with companion planting (something else we were taught).

The weeds were put to good use and piled here and there with hay to compost down and serve as another bed – the courgettes seemed very happy on this medium.

By the end of the day, Graeme and I were fired up. We learnt how to build a bed, how to layer the different materials, how to make weeds work for us, and why a worm farm is a marvellous thing.

Gardening aside,  it was a fab day with grown-ups in a lovely setting (let me just add that mums the world over will love and tolerate their children all the more if they are able to spend a little time away from them every now and again!). Beautiful food, all freshly picked of course, and an interesting mix of people.












Best of all, we discovered white mulberries. These creepy crawly-looking fruit give a wonderful burst of juice in the mouth. We had them in a pretty dessert at the end of our lovely meal.

White mulberries

For the first time ever, I feel I understand the basics. And I'm really excited.

I'm excited to be able to show Luca, and eventually Kian, how things grow, and I'm excited about growing food in plenty of sunshine.

We've already bought a worm farm. Luca now has over 1000 worms he 'feeds' every day. And he loves it. I'll post some pictures later of our worm café, as it's also known.

After a quick visit to a recycling yard, we had our hard wood and corrugated iron. Graeme and Luca got straight to work and by the next day, we they had built the first bed.

Next, we need to put all the layers in and then the exciting bit: off to Avoca market on Sunday to buy some seedlings from Michelle's stall (Green Thumb Organics).

Suddenly I'm very thankful for a house full of boys who like to get their hands dirty.

Here is one final picture from our day out. An old wheelbarrow looks the part as an edible garden. Adam's idea of slow food.

Vanessa
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