Food and Health

My good friend Annemarie sent me a picture this morning. It's too good to keep for myself:

I checked out their website, but could not easily spot this picture on it, check it out yourself if you like. This statement is probably not true at face value, as the importance of food gets more and more recognised. So I would replace the word 'no' with  'not very much'. But pointing out the lack of interaction between food and health industry is a very valid point which needs to be raised.

Finally the rainy season has started in Perth. We got a wooping 54mm on 28 April!  It poured down, a welcome breathing space for plants and soil biodiversity. I noticed that due to the humidity in the garden the sound levels especially at night time have risen significantly, lots of crickets and frogs. A real pleasure to watch and listen.

Despite a broken foot I have prepared pots for planting and sowed lettuces and herbs.  I pulled out huge stalks of sun flowers and will get the garden bed ready for beans. I also pruned some bougainvilleas and will have another go at propagating them, as the last attempt was unsuccessful. I noticed small roots starting already to grow out of some stems close to a leave. This season might be better.

Getting my hands dirty, turning the compost, emptying the worm farm and preparing the garden beds feels go good and right. I can't wait to go out in my garden again.

Diversity in potatoes

I was intrigued by this photo showing potatoe varieties from Peru on a facebook group. I traced back the origin of the photo. It goes back to the CIP, the International Potatoe Centre  http://www.isgtw.org/feature/conserving-bio-diversity-perus-cip in Peru which seeks to ensure the genetic diversity of this staple food crop.

The picture comes with the following subtitle:

A few of the many varieties of potatoes. CIP maintains the world’s largest genetic bank of potatoes, including 1500 samples of 100 wild species collected in eight Latin American countries, as well as samples of 3800 traditional Andean cultivated potatoes. The collection is maintained under the auspices of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization, and is available to plant breeders worldwide free upon request.

Here are more pretty pictures about potatoes. Unfortunately in Western Australia the marketing of potatoes is limited through the Marketing Potatoes Act 1946. But the limitations in what kind of potatoes you can grow and sell in WA only apply to commercial producers. These are people who grow more than 100 square meters of potatoes. Luckily this is a lot bigger than my garden. Sadly the problem remains how to get the potatoes through quarantine. Also the Perth weather would probably not be suitable to grow any of these successfully anyway.

But they are so pretty!

From http://www.livescience.com/16539-plant-genomes-buell-sl-nsf.html

From http://www.oired.vt.edu/sanremcrsp/public/news/2008/fighting-poverty-with-potatoes-and-paintings.php

Preparing for autumn planting

New moon is tomorrow and the weather is already cooling down a bit especially at night time. Yesterday the daytime temperature was still 35 degrees, but I feel that autumn is around the corner. It's officially to start on 1 March here in Australia.

I have prepared three big pots for autumn planting and will check my local list of vegetable to grow. Am thinking about spring onions and leek, also am longing for a zucchini.

Currently there are only a few sunflowers that attract many bees. The beds are deserted apart from a few capsicums and tomatoes.

From a facebook list I got a good link to many recipes for canning fruit and vegetables. Looks very promising and makes the mouth water in the hope for a good winter harvest. the website contains recipes for jams, jellies and spreads, including some fruit butters and sauces referenced in the main alphabetical list below:

• 100 Jams, Jellies & Marmalades
• 20 Freezer Jams
• 10 Pie Fillings
• Making Relish

I will check it out, especially the relish.

I will have a vegetarian friend come over for lunch today. Just turned the breadmaker on to make me some nice pizza dough. On the menue is Pizza Bianca and some simple salads, including my Croatian inspired coleslaw.

My dough recipe is simple:

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 cup wholemeal flour
• 1 teaspoon yeast and some salt

The breadmaker does the work and I sit back and I have time to do other things, eg writing this blog. Once the dough is ready I roll it out into three pizzas and let them rise for another hour of so.
My Pizza Bianca only has olive oil, mixed herbs, garlic, salt, mozarella and parmesan on it. One pizza is for lunch and the other two will be tonight's dinner. I will prebake their bases when I bake the lunch pizza and finish the pizzas up tonight. 

If you want to make it from scratch, this video helps. However, I rather use some wholemeal flour. Give it a go, it is as easy as it looks here:

Growing potatoes on top of lawn

Perth's climate is dry and hot in summer, but we have been getting good winter rains. The average rainfall in 2011 even topped the average rainfall mark by a few mm.

I am intrigued by this simple method of growing potatoes above ground, just on top of the lawn. I put it into my bucket list of methods to try.

Gardening changes the world

Good food resolution for 2012 and beyond

Summer has arrived and the year 2011 is coming to a close. It has been wetter than in the past years, but the Perth rainfall results have just topped the average rainfall by 11mm. Both water tanks are full and the garden beds are empty, just a few tomatoes and some squash. Pumpkins and zucchinis that have been showing signs of mildew and need treatment. Sunflowers grow buoyantly.

Preparations are in full swing for Christmas and the to-do-list is long during this week, as we are expecting visitors from overseas. Still there is time for reflection, resolutions and plans. The year of the dragon will start on the 23 January and it's looking promising for the rat.

One of my resolutions is to eat better and simpler food, more vegetables and less carbohydrates. From a friend who normally only sends me jokes I received a very useful link this morning that inspired me to write another blog before this year comes to a close. The link with the title "Six ordinary foods that are really extra-ordinary"  took my attention right away. It is a commercial venture and the guy who wrote the site wants to sell his books, but the content is great.

Have a guess what is in this list of foods! I could have named them all and it was the simplicity of the list that took my breath away. In other words, the penny dropped at the very moment I saw this list:

• Coleslaw
• Spices
• Lentils
• Raisins
• Nuts
• Lemons

In my family coleslaw has never been a great feature, but an auntie used to make it often at her birthday parties. Also as a student I worked in a then Yugoslav restaurant and had to cut cabbage with a big shredder. This is where I came across my favourite coleslaw recipe:

• Shredder a small cabbage finely
• Add 1/3 cup white vinegar and 1/3 cup of light olive oil
• Add salt and pepper to taste plus a clove of garlic or two
• Massage this mixture with your hands, knead it over and over again until is becomes softer and smooth. Give it at least 3-5 minutes and work the elbow grease.

You will be rewarded with a fine salad, a nutritious and cheap side dish that lasts well for about 3-5 days in the fridge.

The list of special dishes traditionally eaten over Christmas and New Year is long and includes food from Silesia and Germany. We will prepare herring and potato salads, a pudding made of poppy seeds, milk and white bread. We have already baked a lot of Christmas cookies and a big gingerbread church has won acclaim, the best one ever.

Join me in making better food choices in 2012 - and for the rest of 2011. Have a very happy festive season and best wishes for 2012.

Transplanted fruit trees

During winter 2011 we transplanted all in all four mature trees. The last one not even four weeks ago. We transplanted an orange tree first, then two plum trees and last but not least a blood organise tree whoch found a new spot in front of the house. 

The last one gave me the biggest worry, as it was already mid-october before the tree found its new place. Unclear about what the weather would be like it was a bit of a bargain to transplant it that late in the cool season. But there was no choice and the tree had to go at its other place. I was lucky enough to get it donated.
The tree is much smaller than the other two, only about 1.30m high. I had doug the hole and watered it well plus filled it with compost the day before we got it. the previous owner pruned it back hard and used seasol on its roots for four days prior to digging it out. He also sprayed the tree with stress relief spray of some kind. The foilage got reduced by about two third.

The efforts appeared to have paid off. Although the tree had lost most of its little fruits that already had set from the last orange blossoms, it has not lost any leaves yet and seems to like its new spot in full sun. I water it regularly after reading that a transplanted tree needs at least about 5l of water daily on a hot day. Also the weather is kind to us as Perth is going through an unprecedented rainy period. October got the most rain in 13 years.

Two plum trees were transplanted at the same time around mid August. Again the soil was prepaired well with compost, bentonite clay and chicken manure. the trees were quite high, about 2.50m.

The trees were pruned before the transplanting and, similar to the orange tree, their root system is quite shallow. When we put them into the ground the roots were nearly bare.

I was surprised to see how differently both trees took to the new location. The left one flowered in September and developed leaves right away.

The second plum tree took a lot longer to show any sign of growth and is still flowering low at the start of November. I am worried how they will ever get pollinated, flowering to far apart from each other. Am thinking about grafting another branch ontothem if next year they flower that much apart. Now the late plum is growing leaves as well and all seems to be ok. Will wait with the grafting decision until next year anyway.

The first tree we transplanted into the garden was a mature orange tree, about 15 years old and 2.5m high. Although heavily pruned we lost more branches during the transport on the ute.

This tree later lost some leaves but not that many. It also kept only a few of the flower buds. However, the treatemtn must have been right. During the past months hundreds of new buds have emerged. The tree is flowering everywhere at the moment.

There is a gorgeous smell and it appears like a wonder that the tree, after being moved to a new location, could find the strengths of sending out this many flower buds. Compost and worm juice certainly helped. But the pictures are stunning. What a view!

Successful transplanting of fruit trees, even if they are mature trees, is possible with the right preparation, in the the right time, with love for the tree and an eye onto the moon  planting calendar.  Give it a shot before you throw the tree out.

If you have a fruit tree to give away, put it into the quokka or give your local community garden a call if you need a new home for your fruit tree.