Catching dewdrops

Whoever thinks we only grow vegetables in order to harvest and eat them is missing out on a lot of fun and pleasure. Sure, I eat the crops I grow, but in many cases I spend weeks just admiring them as plants well before their delicious grand finale in the kitchen. And this morning the Florence fennel was doing what it does best: catching dewdrops.

It didn't rain last night, but the sky was clear and our little
digital thermometer said it was 5.9°C around sunrise, which
is very cool for Sydney. After breakfast I headed outside for
my regular 'lap' of the 7m x 9m Ponderosa I call Amateur Land,
and the fennel was caught in two halves. On the shady side,
pictured above, all the dewdrops turned the plant into a green
sparkly candelabra filled with crystals. On the sunny side,
pictured below, it too was green, but misty, fuzzy and sun-loving.

Here's a flavour combo to try both in the kitchen
and outdoors. One green strappy leaf in front is
garlic, the pot in the middle is of freshly trimmed
thyme, and behind them is the florence fennel.

The fennel bulbs are finally getting to a useful
size. When small their flavour is softer, much
more pleasing than the pungent over-muscled
whoppers so often sold in the shops.

I like the way fennel cooks and changes in a similar way that onions do: if cooked long enough both onions and fennel sweeten and caramelise, changing flavour entirely from their startling raw bite. Pammy likes to slice fennel finely and mix it with fine potato slices, olive oil, salt and pepper, then bake it slowly until it's like a gratin that can be scooped out with a big spoon. It's sweet and delicious, just right for these cooler months. I also like to see fennel as a bit like radish, as a salad vegie, using just a little bit very finely chopped or sliced and tossed into green salads, to add a bit of bite. Not too much, but just enough.

Here in the garden, the main growing tip with fennel is to start it off from seed, in autumn preferably (here in temperate Sydney), but depending on how warm or cold your climate, that sowing time might vary. But the one thing that won't vary is the need to sow it from seed. Fennel belongs to a big bunch of fuss-pot vegies and herbs (carrots, parsnips, parsley and chervil most notably) which do best from seed, hate being transplanted, and which perform erratically at best if planted as seedlings bought from a nursery. 

Aside from the flavour of fennel in the kitchen, the other great reason to grow it is to admire its beauty, and on mornings like this there are few prettier dewdrop catchers in the business.

Green finery

At last, a few days of rain, and again I'm reminded that there's a magic ingredient inside raindrops that good old tap water simply doesn't have. Stepping outside this sunny morning and all the greens were greener, the plants definitely happier, plump with growth. Though late May here is hardly a time for flower shows, it's a wonderful time to appreciate the beauty, complexity and sheer diversity of foliage. And that's what this little Sunday post is all about. Fab foliage.  

Pretty little chervil, a whole pot full of it
looking like a forest for tiny elves to hide inside.

Porky plump English spinach loved all that rain.

Rough as a cat's tongue, silvery sage.

Sandwich-bound this lunchtime, the mixed
salad bowl is a harmony of colours and textures.

The foliage of Florence fennel is wonderfully light and fine,
the garden's best dewdrop catcher every cool autumn morning. 

Back to the chervil, though, it's all coming up
from seed and in the full freshness of youth its
green is so light, the foliage soft yet dense.

Getting my act together

Sowing seeds is so much more fun than just banging in a seedling (but I do admit to being a seedling planter fairly regularly, when I commit one of the three "F"s: forget, fail or fudge). However, this autumn I haven't forgotten or fudged, and only time will tell whether I have failed or not. It pays to be an optimist with seed-sowing, so I'm hoping most of them will do their duty and turn into delicious little herbs and vegies.

The other bonus with sowing seeds is that warm sensation of feeling that you're getting your act together. Oooh gosh, I'm all organised for once!

I do actually know which pot is which, despite the lack of tags.
In with the fresh potting mix, scatter on a layer of seed-raising
mix, then the seeds, then a bit more seed-raising mix to get the
correct sowing depth. Pat down, gentle spray of water. Wait.

One pot is filled with coriander, another with flat-leaf parsley,
another with chervil and the last with a 'micro salad mix' that
worked so nicely last spring that's it's worth another go this
autumn. Both chervil and coriander don't like summer here,
going from leafy to flowery then seedy in no time. Winter's slower
pace suits them both fine, and they'll last for months once they
get going. The old parsley plants had gone to seed, and so
I'm sowing seed again (this time soaking the seed in hot water
for a few hours, to speed up its super-slow germination).

Out in the vegie beds it's the same story. The mulch is mostly
there to slow down the onrush of weeds, which are relentless,
but the dark brown bits are where the seeds went in.

In this vegie bed and the one next door I've sown seed of English
spinach, radish, spring onions, lettuce and Florence fennel. The
Florence fennel in particular detests being transplanted so must
be grown from seed, but the same is basically true of the spinach
and radishes, too. Seeds are best. Both the lettuce and spring onions
aren't fussy about being transplanted, but as everything else is
starting from seed, they have to do it that way, too.

The interesting thing now will be 'seed racing': seeing which seeds will come up first. I can tell you who'll run last – it'll probably be the parsley. 

In this cooling weather the lettuce can come up within a week, often less, so too some of the salad greens in the potted micro-salad mix (which includes corn salad, beet, spinach and amaranthus), the spinach and of course the irrepressible radishes. 

The rest present a packed field that are all likely to come up anywhere between 7 and 20 days. The excitement is bearable, but I'm still interested in keeping track of how they all go, and of course once they do start to come up and thrive in the autumn sunshine, it will all be worth it, because if they all come up, then I've well and truly got my act together this time round!

Seedy habits

The therapists say that the first thing to do with any addiction is to admit you have one. Good advice, but I'm not sure if they know what they're doing after that point is reached. Anyway, here goes: I am tragically addicted to growing plants from seed, and my success rate is OK, not brilliant, but getting better. There, I've said it. I'm feeling better already.

And so at the latter end of this hot, windy and rather unpleasant Sydney Saturday afternoon in January, I've brought out my seed tins, taking stock of the lovely little packets of tragic temptation lurking demurely inside, and I'm planning my autumn seed-raising campaign now. Oh what fun, must put on the kettle to make a calming slug of green tea while I plan out my gardening future.

Here's the hot candidates, all vying for attention. With some,
I'm just waiting for this rolling series of heatwaves to be over
before I get any plants growing again (rocket, lettuce and chervil
all hate the heat and wouldn't be worth bothering with right now).

But there's another category of seeds which is demanding
my attention now: those plants which really only are happy
when sown as seed in the spot where they are going to spend
the rest of their little lives. These are the fuss-pots which don't
like being transplanted as seedlings. Here, there's Florence
fennel, Shirley poppies, carrots, parsley, rocket, beetroot, chervil
and parsnips. I'm already starting to play favourites, though.

While I do of course like to eat parsnips, there
is something extra about them that I like. Being
slow and a bit haphazard in the way they come
up from seed has its 'challenge and reward' buzz
when you see them finally come up, but I just like
watching them grow, and of course harvest
time is lucky dip at the carnival time: you never
know what shapes you'll get (but my second
crop was much better than the first, and my
secret of success is deep, maniacal soil prep).

Call me sick, but I just like parsnip foliage.

If you think having a crush on parsnips is worthy
of referral to a therapist, wait till you hear my
Shirley poppy problem! Total failure last time,
complete duds. I rescued the situation by buying
and planting some Iceland poppies in their place
(and Icelands are easy-peasy, lovely from seedlings).
But here I am planning to have another go. Of
course I don't have a clue where I went wrong.
Tragic fools rarely do. But I'm going to try again.

Florence fennel also needs to be sown direct
into the soil. No transplanting seedlings, please.
As I mentioned a couple of postings ago, I
currently have a little 'test batch' sown and
growing well. Pam and I love to blend sliced 
fennel and potatoes together (more spud than
fennel of course), sprinkle with olive oil, grinds
of salt and pepper then toss, into a covered dish
then bake slowly for as long as you like. The
fennel caramelises and becomes a bit sweet
and the result is utterly delicious.

Oops! A seed spill in the bottom of the tin.
Whose are they? Not the fennel! Yep, the
fennel, recognise those seeds anywhere.
Thank goodness for stocktakes and stickytape
fennel seed packet back in good order now.

Two last little asides. Seed packets give old tins a meaning and
purpose in life. Most of my seeds are in the cricket-crazy-kids'
Weet-Bix tin, but the retro-themed Yates commemorative
125th anniversary tin is doing fine service, too.

Last but never least, I amazed myself by actually checking the
'sow by' dates on the back of all the seed packets before I did
anything else. It is a bit depressing to carefully till the soil,
prepare the seed beds, sow the seeds and water them for days,
then weeks, on end, only to have nothing happen. At that point
 you wonder where could you have possibly gone wrong.
Then you finally, belatedly glance at the seed packet only to
discover it says: "You should have sown them three years ago,
you fool". So take it from a tragic fool, read the packet first!

Good cheer

Of all the silly things a usually sensible person could do, I updated our accounts on Saturday, and delving into inconvenient financial facts always has a slightly depressing effect, doesn't it? And so yesterday, Sunday, was a low point for me, a cheerless day in the garden where all I did was pull out weeds and cut back a rampant ground cover in the front garden that likes to accost pedestrians in the street.

Not the greatest weekend, but it did end well with the first good downpour of rain in ages, and then this morning, Monday, wandering out into the garden had an amazingly uplifting effect on me. Everywhere I looked I saw positive signs, pretty colours, sweet scents – it was full of good cheer. 

And so, dear readers, I present a simple posting designed partly to cheer myself up but also to celebrate the benefits of slowing down and taking stock not only of the pennies in the jar but also the beautiful, natural riches around you.

This is what started it all off this morning. While gathering yet
another colander full of cherry tomatoes, the air was wafting along
on sweet tropical frangipani scents. I stood up, looked at their
lovely simplicity, inhaled another breath and my mood changed.

 

For the record, this is my favourite typo, cheery tomatoes.

Just as I stepped away from cheery frangipani
land I smiled at a conversation I had with an
expert gardener about how impossible it is to
grow Acacia cognata in Sydney. 

The rain brings out the scents and the colours;
this pot of mint was spicy with its tangy scent.

The mint is in flower now, a happy plant in semi-shade provided
it's given outrageous amounts of water and fertiliser.

Next door to the mint, the French tarragon is a contented low
forest of foliage. Medium water, slow-release fertiliser is all
it needs, plus one hell of a cutback in early spring.

My first go at growing Florence fennel is doing
OK. I have a whole packet of seeds here, but
only planted a few in late spring, as I had
missed the boat for the earlier spring sowing
it prefers. This autumn, I'm sowing lots more.

The strawberries just keep on coming. We started
harvesting breakfast bowls full of these back in
early October and they aren't close to finishing
yet. And to think I didn't even plant anything
there! They came up out of the compost, just
like monsters come up out of black lagoons.

And while I'm counting my blessings and
spreading the good cheer, let me recommend
radishes to you. These are French Breakfast
long cylindrical radishes, and I sowed the
seeds for these on Thursday. I'll probably
be eating some of these by early February.
And I've learned to like their flavour, too.
Super-finely sliced, not too much either, added
to a green garden salad, they are pure zing.

The Thai makrut lime fruit is ready for grating
into dressings, salads and sauces, but the only
hard thing is removing them from the tree,
simply because they look so good there, all
knobbly, deep green and just a bit weird.

There's a party going on in the succulent patch.

The Tiger Grass which is meant to become a
tropical look screen to hide the boring metal
fence is finally growing fast, now that the
heat of summer is here. That's what it loves,
apparently, heat and water, just as if it was
growing in the jungles of Thailand. One of
these days a tiger will jump out of that foliage!

If you're still with me after this marathon 'cheer up' to myself, thanks. There really is nothing quite like a spin around the garden on a cool morning after overnight rain. Quite magical, its effect.

Weedling or seedling?

All I have to show for a few hours of effort in the garden today is a thoroughly soiled pair of gardening jeans, especially around the knees. Weeding, the never-ending story.

In the middle of one patch of ground, I spotted this little fella coming up. "Are you a weedling or a seedling?" I wondered.

This being the spot where I sowed Florence Fennel seeds for
this first time about 10 days ago, there was every likelihood
this was a Florence Fennel seedling. But how very helpful of
the little tacker to come up with his distinctive Florence Fennel
seed attached. Coming out with its hands up..."Don't shoot!"

At this so intensely weedy time of year there are weedlings and seedlings coming up everywhere, and with crops that I've never grown before I always have that moment of hesitation when I think "Is that you?" upon spotting growth where I have planted seeds.