Every poor mans lover

I see now, that it was an illusion -
a dream fed to me by the light,
all the world in collusion
to reserve the power for the might.

All the peoples of the world deluded;
raped, destroyed, starved and scared.
Earth’s fertility slowly neutered -
her bleeding heart laid bare.

The mighty people of the world,
financially and morally bankrupt,
lead the people in a careless whirl -
proud to be corrupt.

They say this is reality;
sad truth in a cruel world -
pretending freedom is equality
mistaking just reward.

The kind world she doth giveth
to man intelligence and design,
with which to use her riches -
to provide for yours and mine.

All that stands in smart man’s way
is the Devil’s currency;
seducing people with their pay -
a new kind of slavery.

Worshipped the world over
yet degrading at its core,
every poor mans lover -
begging him for more.

- Claire Wilson, 2006

Enjoying the Fruits of your Harvest – Sweet Sweet Corn

Today was the day, I have been waiting so long but it has finally come. Today was the day that I got to try my very first cob of corn fresh off the plant. The husk at the top of my first cob has been peeled back for a few weeks now, allowing me to test whether or not it is ready to eat. You simply pierce a kernel with your fingernail and if the juice that squirts out is clear it isn’t ready, but once that juice turns cloudy your corn is ready to eat.

My corn - finally ready to eat!

Today was the first time that I tested my cob and was rewarded with a squirt of creamy yellowy liquid – my corn was good to go! The water was on the boil in five minutes flat, and the perfect rows of kernels on my cob were revealed as I peeled the husk off in quiet anticipation. My method of using a pencil to transfer pollen from tassel to silk and ensure fertilisation had clearly worked – every single one of those kernels was fat and juicy.

Undressing the corn one leaf at a time..

With the water boiling and my cob finally free of husk and silk I plopped it in the pot and watched as it changed quickly from the light yellow of dawn to the fierce yellow of the sun at midday.

Less than a minute in the pot is all your super fresh corn will need

Less than a minute later and I pulled my gleaming cob out of the pot, set it on a plate to cool. Then in less than a minute all the golden kernels were gone. It didn’t even need butter or salt – so deliciously sweet it was!

Gleaming golden and not long for this world

Corn is super easy to grow, and one vegetable that is well worth growing at home. As soon as corn is picked the sugars start maturing into starch, so the sweetest corn you will ever eat is sure to come straight from your own backyard.

Happy eating!

Mutant Corn and Saving Seeds

My corn boy parts have started to look like girl parts! This is the tassel of my corn, and it is all meant to look like the left side, which are the male flowers. The right side of the tassel is rather interesting because some of the flowers have turned into females, which you can recognise because they look exactly the same as the kernel on your cob! It is called tassel-ear and is not really a problem, just an interesting genetic anomaly.

Have any of you got any weird mutant plant photos or stories? I would love to see/hear them!

I have also harvested some seeds from my chives and coriander. You need to let these seeds mature on the plant until the seed head dries out, some people tie a bag around the flower/seed head to catch them as they dry out and fall off the plant. Dry them for a further week or two before popping them in an airtight container for storage. I will try germinating the chive seeds and the coriander seeds can be ground and used as a delicious spice in all kinds of cooking, and I will also use them to plant my next years crop of coriander.

Saving seeds is an excellent way to reduce your costs for next season, and if organic seeds are hard for you to find, saving your organically grown seeds will reduce the nasty chemicals floating around in your yard.

Happy seed saving!

Make it a tasty winter: Dry your herbs

Towards the end of summer, when your garden is getting crazily overgrown, it becomes time to start thinking about drying your excess herbs. Not only does this mean you will have a supply throughout the winter but it will also boost productivity until the weather cools down, in much the same way as pinching out does.

Cut 10-15cm long stems off herbs such as basil, oregano, thyme and mint (any herb you have ever purchased dried can be dried in this way).

Here I have cut some basil and thyme

Arrange the herbs into small bunches and tie together with string and hang somewhere dark and dry, such as the pantry. It will take them a few weeks to dry, you will know when the leaves are brittle, and at that stage you should place them into an airtight container.

Greek basil hanging to dry

Your other options for storing herbs are to freeze them in a plastic bag or in ice cubes. Herb ice cubes can be placed directly into sauces or stews or they can be placed in a sieve to melt.

Happy drying!

Good news for Australian Organics

Further to my post yesterday it seems that in Australia at least the public knows the true reasons for buying organic, with The Australian reporting that the Organic food industry is likely to experience a 14% increase in revenue. It is nice to see that this industry growth will most likely lead to a drop in price. My only concern is that the organic food on offer at the major retail outlets tends to be packaged. I would love to see a greater offering of fresh fruit and veg – and if it has to be packaged then please not in plastic!

Researchers getting it wrong: it’s not about what organic has extra, but about what it lacks

There has been a spate of newspaper stories recently reporting on studies that scientists have been doing, analysing the nutritional content of organic vegetables compared to conventional vegetables. Organic vegetables don’t have extra nutrients, researchers say, Organic food no more nutritious than conventionally grown, review finds, and so the stories go. While it may be the case that there are many other studies that have found nutrient differences in things like milk, kiwi fruits and tomatoes (in favour of organics), such studies really miss the mark when it comes to assessing the real value (or perhaps the lack thereof) of Organic farming methods.

Organic gardening is not about growing food with more nutrients, but about growing food with less harmful additives, like pesticides and herbicides. It is about removing artificial petrochemical fertilisers from our farming ecosystems, and about looking after the long-term health of the soil and land that bears our produce. I have a sneaking suspicion that the LA Times might have some money invested in some conventional farms, or may be receiving financial support from a large conventional farming company. Please note that this is just a suspicion and I cannot prove this possible link in any way (I would hate to be liable for slander or somesuch), but to write such articles about organic food without even quoting an organic advocate who could raise this most important point seems to me to be a case of grossly unethical journalism.

So, don’t let the fact that organic vegetables may not have any extra nutrients stop you from buying them. You are paying more to ensure they are not lathered in bug or plant poison. Let’s face it, all veggies are full of good nutrients, and we should be eating as many of them as possible. As an argument for growing your vegetables at home, vegetables are pretty much proven to be highest in nutrients straight after having been picked. Combine this real health benefit with the environmental and health positives of organics and you have the ideal food production system, one which delivers the goods for both the earth and you, home grown Organics!

Old fashioned gardening getting new age results

Farmers in Borneo are taking advantage of the Organic train to treat their land kindly and take advantage of premium prices to boost their income.

Breakthrough, a Bornean NGO, is the organisation which has developed a program for farmer’s to follow, which allows them to achieve organic certification from their second year. Not only are they helping poor farmers avoid exposing their land and lives to the toxic chemicals in pesticides and herbicides, they are helping them to make more money, and live more secure lives.

They have finally realised what I already knew – organic farming is naturally a cheaper and more effective way to farm. There are no costly fertilisers, herbicides or pesticides to purchase, simply recycle the waste from your property back into your soils to make them even richer and more productive. There are no health risks from spraying nasty chemicals around yourself or your family, and those people who can afford to be environmentally conscious – the first-world rich – will pay a premium price to eat your tasty and nasty-free goods!

A New Year, A New Season, A New Backyard!

Summer is well and truly here, 2011 has begun, and I have been absent from my blog for the past two months now because…. I have moved home! I have been a very busy little bee, moving all my pot plants into garden beds, scouring the garden shops and local markets for all the little seedlings I didn’t manage to grow myself, and waiting for Internode to finally connect my internet (and waiting, and waiting, and waiting!). All of this fuss and bother has meant a very quiet front for Amateur Organics, so I am going to make it up to you today by posting some pictures of my growing summer’s feast!

My Kitchen Garden bed being prepared

I prepared the garden bed outside the back door by lying newspaper down to kill the plants already growing there, then moved a whole lot of soil from the back of the garden to the top of the newspaper to plant my veggies in. It was a great success and now my veggie patch looks a whole lot like this…

My Kitchen Garden!

It is a rather large garden bed so you can see in the photo above that I have laid planks down at two points along the bed, to allow me to tend to the plants in the middle of the garden without compacting the soil. So far from this garden bed I have harvested copious amounts of silverbeet, lettuce and radish, and am just starting on the beetroots, which are the cylindra variety from Eden Seeds Select Organic.

Marigolds

I have planted marigolds around the border of my garden, as the natural pyrethrins contained within help to deter any bugs or pests looking to eat your plants. If you want to copy me and do this (something I highly recommend) you should make sure you buy the “African” variety of marigold. A little confusion on my part has led to me buying a ridiculous large amount of different plants in both ignorance and the search for the right ones. In the end I have figured it out, but as a pleasant side effect of the confusion I now have marigolds of all different heights and flower colours growing in my hodgy podgy border.

My new chickens (!) love eating the leaves of the marigolds, so I have also lost a few of the plants which they nipped off at the bottom of the stem.

Scrambles (the red one) and Tiny (the black one)

I got the chickens to eventually provide us with some ethical eggs, and also to help as another method of recycling wastes in the garden. They are both still a bit too young to lay, but they have already gotten to work digging around my garden eating bugs and worms (as well as most of my pea seedlings), and sifting through my compost heap. Currently I am feeding them with pellets bought from the store but am hoping to eventually be able to feed them from my garden alone, with no extra inputs. I have planted some alfalfa (also known as lucerne) and some fenugreek, both of which they apparently love. You can rest assured there will be some permaculture chicken posts coming soon as I figure out the best way to incorporate my girls into the workings of my garden.

They are both so curious, and just never stop eating

I’ve also made myself a home-built worm farm out of polystyrene boxes, which I have filled with a 1000 tiger worms from bunnings. The excess water the filters through their box has already started to fertilise my plants, and soon the castings they leaves behind when I lure them into their upstairs box (when the bottom one is full) will make a rich compost I can dig into my garden beds or use in pot plants.

Apples on the tree

I am lucky enough at my new place to have two apple trees down the back near my compost heap, the apples still are not mature, but another few weeks and I am hoping they will be ready to go. Apples vary greatly in their flavour and texture, so if these ones turn out to be bitter, sour or very floury, they will make their way into cider or jam. I will let you know when they ripen. I also have an orange tree and two lemon trees, the oranges are also yet to mature, and the lemon trees seem like they are one their last legs, so I will have to research the proper care of these trees to see if I can bring them back to life.

So there you have it, a tour of my new and improved organic backyard! This one is on a much grander scale than my last and I am already having trouble working out how to keep the plants growing at a rate I can eat them, and not too much or too little at any one time. I think some research on this will also be making its way into my future posts. So stay tuned, there is so much for me to share with you about my new backyard in this new year!

Happy planting (and eating now, if all has been going well)!

High-yielding herbs: pinch for success

When I was younger I liked to pick leaves off my grandmothers mint plant to chew on – I liked the strong minty flavour and the crisp crunchy leaves. I would wander up to a plant and pick a single dark green leaf, pop it into my mouth and wander off chewing contentedly, thinking of the toothpaste I was never allowed to swallow, but secretly swallowed anyway. If only Grandma had taught me how to properly pick the leaves I wanted to munch on then I could have been a great assistance, helping her mint plants become more productive, while at the same time enjoying my delicious snack. Now I am grown-up and have mint plants of my own, I have learnt that the best way to harvest most herbs is to utilise a technique called pinching out.

By pinching out your herbs you encourage your plant to grow bushy and strong, full of the tastiest new growth, and much less likely to grow woody and unpalatable. While my former technique of picking the leaves off one by one may seem instinctively to be the best (why would you want to remove stem, surely that would hurt the plant?), it turns out that the exact opposite is true. Here is a visual guide as to how to harvest your herbs by pinching out the new growth.

Find the new lateral shoots growing from in between the mature leaves and the stem

Examine your herb closely and you will notice that new shoots tend to grow from in between the mature leaves and the stem of the plant. The aim of the pinching out exercise is to remove the stem and leaves from above these baby shoots, which will encourage two new shoots to grow from either side of the stem. This results in two stems where previously there was only one. If left unpinched it is unlikely that this new growth will fully develop into adult leaves and stems. You can think of it a little like the plant is a hydra, cut off one of it’s heads and it simply grows two more.

Use your thumb and your forefinger to pinch off the stem just above the lateral growth

The actual act of pinching out is easy, just use your thumb and your forefinger to sever the stem above the lateral growth. You will notice in the photo above that there are multiple places you could choose to do this, I personally tend to like to leave a few large leaves before the point at which I am pinching, to enable photosynthesis to continue while the lateral shoots are developing. However, how much you choose to pinch will depend on how much of the herb you require for whatever it is that you are using it for.

A stem I pinched out a few weeks ago - you can see how the lateral growth has developed

And finally, a picture of a shoot I pinched out a few weeks ago. You can see the two new stems have grown quite large, and it is easy to imagine how the plant will grow bushier and bushier as I continually pinch out these stems, and then the stems which grow after that, and so on.

So – there you have it. Pinching out your herbs is an easy way to boost productivity, while also meaning you get to eat the most tender new growth in whatever it is you are cooking. And there is another little side lesson to be learnt – if you have children who like to munch on mint leaves and dream of toothpaste, then teaching them how to pinch out new growth properly means much of your gardening work can be done for you!

EDIT: Most herbs like to be pinched out, but not all. Pinching out is beneficial for plants like mint, basil, rosemary, oregano, sage, lemon balm and parsley. It is not necessary for chives or lemon grass. If you are unsure whether or not to pinch a certain herb a quick web search should be able to provide you with an answer.

Happy pinching!

Soaking Seeds: the result

About two weeks ago I posted about my troubles germinating seeds, and wrote about how I was going to try soaking the seeds, rather than planting them out directly. The results are in, and it really is a bit of a mixed bag.

I will begin with my successes. The rocket, coriander and leek seeds all did rather well when soaked, I will let some photos describe to you how they went.

Rocket Sprouting

Sprouting coriander - the coriander took significantly longer to sprout than the rocket or leek

Sprouting leek

I had moderate success with the lemon balm, lettuce and parsley, getting one or two seeds out of each lot to germinate. The basil, oregano, chilli, spring onion and capsicum seeds all failed to germinate. I even managed to grow some impressive fungi on the spring onion seeds.

Mouldy spring onion seeds

So, would I recommend soaking your seeds? Yes, I would, but generally only for those seeds which you fail to get growing in seed punnets. Not only did I get some seeds to sprout which I had been having quite a bit of trouble with I also found that the seeds I soaked germinated and grew their first leaves much faster than the seeds I planted in soil and kept in the yard. I also had a significantly higher success rate with the soaked seeds, especially with the leek. I think the mould grew as a result of too much water and I am going to give those seeds which grew mould another go with less water.

Happy germinating!