Salad season

Tonight's mixed home-grown garden salad, but before we
get to that bit ...

I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoy Saturday mornings, especially ones as lovely as today's, where Sydney is working its way into a perfect, sunny spring day.

The shopping is great, for one thing. It's a 15-minute walk along bustling Illawarra Road to Banana Joes, the fruit, vegie and grocery hub to thousands of locals. Today I lashed out and paid 10 bucks for a kilo of fresh broad beans.

I love cooking something special for Saturday nights, for me it's the perfect way to finish off a day pottering in the garden. Pam sometimes laughs and says I'm a glutton for punishment, with the trouble I go to for some meals just for two, but it's my favourite dish – dinner for two, with Pammy.

And those broad beans will take some preparation, too. One friendly young Vietnamese girl manning the checkouts in Banana Joes sometimes asks me how do I cook certain vegies which aren't part of her mum's repertoire at home. In the past we've had some lovely chats about quinces and celeriac, for example, and this morning she wanted to know about broad beans.

So I explained how I open the big, long pods to extract the beans (gave her a demo on one pod!). Then how I blanch the beans in boiling water and peel them again, to expose the gleaming, shiny inner broad beans (didn't do a demo on that ...). It seemed to her like so much work that she couldn't help laughing a bit, but the old Greek mumma behind me in the queue, who was patiently enjoying the conversation, backed me up and said that's the way she prepares them, too.

That's one of the things I like about Banana Joes and Saturday mornings ... the conversations with the people you meet.

My bought broad beans (didn't grow any this year) will be going into the pot at the last moment, where lamb pieces will have been cooking for a few hours in a Moroccan spice mix, along with some zucchinis, tomatoes, eggplant and potatoes.

On the side I thought I'd offer up a light little salad of home-grown fresh mixed salad greens. With the tomatoey, spicy sauce surrounding the main dish, the salad doesn't need much dressing at all. 

And so that's my home-grown content in tonight's dinner: the salad. What follows is just a few photos of how I am going about making my salads a bit more interesting. 

The pot of 'mesclun' mixed salad leaves is coming along nicely. I just bought a packet of Yates Mesclun French Salad Mix seeds, sowed some, covered them lightly with seed-raising mix and watered the pot with a fine spray (for non-Australian readers, seed-raising mix is a light, fine potting mix that's very like a propagating mix). 

The trick is to keep it steadily moist for the first few weeks. The seeds take about 7-10 days to sprout, then a few more weeks to get to this size. If you're slack about watering pots, your potted salad will probably cark it, but if you can remember to water it most days, it's easy to grow. A liquid feed or two helps a lot. There's all sorts of different leaves in the mesclun seed mix (Yates says it has endive, corn salad, rocket, chicory and lettuce) so if you only have one salad pot growing, make it mesclun and you're in business. 

But we're watching a glutton for punishment in action here folks. Here's a pot of cultivated rocket. This stuff is fabulous as a salad on its own, provided you harvest it very young, like it is now. Later on the leaves will be too peppery when they get bigger. 

Our wild rocket, which is a perennial plant, has awoken from its midwinter slumber. I ended up cutting it almost to the ground in mid July, but with feeding and watering once the weather warmed, it's becoming prolific again. Just a few leaves of this peppery zinger in a salad adds real flavour and character to your bowl of rabbit food.

Adding colour to a salad always helps, and so this red-stemmed baby spinach does the trick. This is a type of spinach called 'perpetual spinach' and it truly lasts for months. In its early days the baby leaves are fine in salads, but once they get bigger treat them like normal spinach and cook with them. 

The old standby of mixed lettuce leaves helps when you're making bigger salads for bigger groups, and I've been a loyal buyer of the 'Combo' lettuce punnets from garden centres for many years. Every now and then I grow more interesting lettuce from seed, but when feeling a bit slack and lazy I just grab another Combo punnet and whack them in the ground. Never fails. 

A few herby leaves never go astray in a mixed salad, adding a lot of flavour – but of course the trick with herbs is not to be heavy-handed. Just a little. My potted chives usually look disgustingly sad in midwinter, so in late July I routinely take them out of their pots, divide the crowded clump into individual chive plants, then I repot them into new, fresh potting mix. Six weeks later, with plenty of water and some liquid organic food applied, they're back in business. We roadtested our chives in last Sunday morning's scrambled eggs for breakfast, and Pammy gave them the tick of approval. 

A little bit of chervil adds an aniseedy tang. Our little chervil border, grown from chervil sprouts bought from the supermarket, is looking truly luscious at the moment.

Slower to get going but now making steady, promising progress, our flat-leaf parsley border (also grown from supermarket sprouts) will also eventually make a contribution to some of our salads.

And it being early spring, there's no better time to grow some salad greens. Summer is a tougher task as it gets too hot, but right now we're truly enjoying our salad days.

Rocket/arugula growing & harvesting tips

So you don't like rocket (or arugula)? Too peppery, eh? You're not alone if you just can't see what others see in rocket, but please believe me when I say countless restaurants keep on dishing up the wrong stuff. And many backyard gardeners leave it too late and eat old, peppery rocket rather than the lovely, young, nutty-flavoured salad green that we love to eat.

There are in fact many different types of rocket, but here in Australia you come across two basic types. Both can be hot and peppery if the leaves grow too big, and both can be utterly wonderful in salads when the leaves are harvested young. These two types are commonly known as "wild rocket" (the one with serrated leaves) and "cultivated rocket" (the one with more rounded paddle-shaped leaves). Here's some pix to make it clearer.

Wild rocket, otherwise known as Diplotaxis muralis or Diplotaxis
erucoides. The one with the serrated leaves is what you most
commonly find in Australian greengrocer shops. To cut a longish
story short, this is now my favourite rocket to grow at home. As
for the reasons why, read on...

Cultivated rocket (Eruca vesicaria ssp sativa). This stuff looks
and tastes lovely when very young, like this pot-full, but neglect it
and in a matter of weeks it's too big, too peppery and you have to
start all over again. Thank goodness it grows so fast but it is a
fair bit of work keeping a good steady supply of baby rocket
like this growing along. I could never manage it properly.

I am sure the suspense is bearable, but if you're still with me, there's a number of reasons why I recommend growing wild rocket at home, rather than cultivated rocket.

1. Wild rocket is a perennial plant. It lives for a number of years, while the cultivated type of rocket is a completely different thing. It's an annual, and its useful lifespan in the garden is just a couple of months at the very most.

2. You can grow wild rocket very well from seed or seedlings. I find that the cultivated type of rocket grows much better from seed. Sure, seedlings are sold in nurseries, but that means a cultivated rocket seedling might only be usefully nutty and pleasant in flavour for about a month, before it becomes too peppery.

3. Wild rocket just keeps on coming back if you harvest some regularly. In fact, that's the trick to growing and using it – harvest it often. That way the plant is covered in new, tender, nutty, baby leaves pretty well all the time. When harvesting yet another handful for a mixed salad, if I see a big leaf has somehow miraculously made it to that big size, I cut it off and leave it there on the ground as mulch.

So, is there any reason why cultivated rocket is worth growing in the garden? Of course! It has a superb light texture and nutty flavour when served as a salad of baby leaves. What I mean by 'baby' leaves is small, paddle-shaped guys less than 10cm (4 inches) long, such as in my potted photo above (and below). This is the kind of nutty, tender rocket which you can have a whole salad of on its own. (The wild rocket isn't such a dazzlingly lovely thing in a whole salad on its own. It's at its best in a mixed leaf salad, in my humble opinion).
Another great reason to grow cultivated rocket is the sheer sporting good fun of having something grow at lightning speed. It's a terrific plant to include in a kids' patch of plants grown from seed. Sow whatever you like, but the rocket will almost certainly come up first, usually in four or so days (depending on the weather).

Growing cultivated rocket from seed: as for how to sow the seeds, try this simple method…

The seeds are tiny. So set up a pot of potting mix. You don't need
a deep pot, either – a wide shallow one is best. Scatter the seeds
over the mix evenly (one teaspoon of seeds should cover a pot
about 30cm across at the top). Once you've scattered the
seeds over the surface, cover with (ideally) a fine layer of
seed-raising mix (popular here in Australia) no deeper than
2-3mm deep (that's thin). Some overseas readers have in the
past asked "what is seed-raising mix?". It's a fine, light, sandy
propagating mix. You should be able to find something similar. Water
the soil surface with a fine, misty spray and leave it be.

Your seeds should come up that week, if you sowed them on the weekend. If the weather is warm, lightly respray the pot every morning. Once the seeds come up, keep on watering the pot every day, or every second day at least. After two weeks give the pot a light liquid feed, and keep on lightly feeding every fortnight.

Harvesting cultivated rocket: now, here's how to make short-lived cultivated rocket last a bit longer. When the cultivated rocket is about the size (leaves 7-10cm tall) in the photo below ...

… get out a pair of scissors and cut about half a pot-full down near to the stumps of the plants. You'll get a nice bowl-full from that, which you can enjoy soon after as a baby rocket salad, maybe drizzled with the finest olive oil you can afford, some balsamic vinegar or some vino cotto.

Then feed the pot again soon after. Yes, it's a risky manoeuvre cutting the plants down to their stumps (ie, it doesn't always work!) but I find eight times out of ten I'll get a second crop if I fertilise the pot soon after this radical harvest. So, for this one 30cm pot, you should get at least four nice baby rocket salads before the plants start to become a bit too tired for too many more deep cutbacks down to the stumps.

Growing wild rocket: as for growing the wild rocket that I prefer, I think it'd be best to grow it from seedlings. You'll only need a couple of plants, and they should live on for a few years, and so a packet of 500 seeds seems just a bit wasteful (and silly) to me. 

It's not a bad time to plant rocket now, as spring is just around the corner, and this is one plant that loves spring and autumn a whole lot more than it likes Aussie summers (which is not a lot, in fact).

Finally, for more on other rocket varieties, there's no better blog than Michelle's "From Seed to Table" and her experience with growing rocket is well worth reading.

The changeover season

Every move you make here in Sydney at the moment, you sweat. It's sticky. On these uncomfortably humid, end-of-summer days, the weather forecasters endlessly repeat their "chance of a shower" chant each morning, and that means it's very warm and humid, mostly sunny all day, then in the late afternoon there's rain or, if we're lucky, a storm as well.

While it's not my favourite time I year (the humidity knocks me around more and more as I get older), I do enjoy this season because it's time for the changeover from the spring/summer crops, to the autumn/winter plantings in the vegie patch. Rip out the old crops, plant new ones. That's what I call fun.

So the garden looks like a mulch farm at the moment, with not much to show for all the effort, but I do like digging soil. That's one of the best bits about gardening. Digging over soil. I also enjoy adding a bit of dolomite lime to sweeten the soil's pH, then working in some cow manure and compost to give the worms and all the other soil-borne critters a treat. At the end of it all, smooth over and level the rich dark soil, stand back and admire your work... 

The digging takes some time, the planting seems to be over in minutes. I've been a bit lazy this time round. Instead of conscientiously raising everything from seed I went down to the garden centre and bought some punnets of seedlings. I've sown seeds, too, but only here and there. Here's how things are going, in the Changeover Season of autumn 2014.

Wild rocket in front, lettuce (raised from seed)
behind. The wild rocket is the serrated-leaf kind
seen most commonly in shops. It's a perennial
plant that should last some time here. It's a much
better bet as a garden plant than the ultra-fast
growing annual type of rocket. Mind you, baby
annual rocket (with the rounded leaves) is still
my favourite rocket to eat, but it's so much work
to sow, re-sow, re-sow, re-sow. Eventually I
tire of the effort, and give it a rest. At least
with this wild rocket you get an easier supply.

Here's the mulch farm. There are spinach seedlings in the
centre, spring onions as well, perpetual spinach on the left.
The perpetual spinach will crop well until spring and is one
of my favourite leafy greens. The English spinach is much
shorter-lived, but it is so nice in Japanese cuisine. The big
leafy greens on the left are more chicory plants, and they are
another excellent leafy green that we turn into Greek-style
horta, boiled greens dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

There is such a thing as too many Thai limes. They're falling
off the tree now. It's a wonderful choice if you're wondering
which citrus to grow in a pot. It reaches a bit over 1m tall
and wide and seems quite hardy, too. Just brushing past the
leaves or the fruit is such a fragrant thing to do.

Huge, green and unproductive. I've tried watering in some
sulphate of potash to stimulate flower production on our
18-month-old passionfruit vine. No luck. Plan B is do nothing
at all. Pretend it's not there. It's a bit hard to do when it
is so huge, so it's now my 'elephant in the room' plant.  

At least the lemon tree is flowering its head
off. It smells lovely in the still morning air,
and hopefully the recent rains and the big
dose of chicken poo I gave it will restore it to
health and happiness.

Have you ever anxiously watched a plant, hoping
it would flower in time for the big Sunday lunch
that you've invited some friends to? Well, our
Tibouchina 'Jules' is letting us down. It has
18 hours left to burst into purple glory by midday
tomorrow. Otherwise it's just another green blob
in our very green blob of a garden. Healthy, yes.
In flower, not yet. 

As for the things I can't show you, I have sown more seeds of collard greens, as these big cabbage-family leafy greens were such a success over spring and early summer. They're meant to be even better in the cooler months, so here's hoping that's true. And I have also sown a few rows of seeds of the love-in-a-mist (Nigella) seeds I collected in midsummer, following the end of its spring flowering. 

The first of the collard green seeds are already up, after only five days in the soil. The Nigella seeds are on a more leisurely schedule. They'll appear in a couple of weeks, and the flowers won't do their thing for at least another six or seven months. I can wait. It's one of the very nice things about growing plants from seed. They offer the chance to share in a full life-cycle, especially if you harvest the seeds at the end of it all. I like that idea.

  

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!

Seed racing

Let's call it a dead heat. Rocket and lettuce. Seeds sown Sunday, both were up by the time I got home from work late Wednesday afternoon. Unfortunately I wasn't there to see the winner emerge, but it must have been a photo finish!

Rocket is more consistently quick to sprout throughout the year. Four days is the average.

Lettuce is quick when the weather suits it, but at other times of year it slows down, taking up to a week to sprout.

Interestingly, only half the lettuce seeds are up. I bought a packet of mixed 'mesclun' lettuce seed, and in the right-side punnets I planted all light-coloured lettuce seeds, and in the left punnets I planted all dark-coloured lettuce seeds. The lights won the lettuce race but I'll never know who won the vegie race. That was a very quick dead heat.

Seed day

I'm being a bit careful about which jobs my dodgy back is capable of tackling right now, but sowing seeds is a pleasant little task which is fairly safe, provided I don't do something silly with a full bag of potting mix. And so I'm taking a little gamble on the weather cooling down a bit over the next few weeks and I'm sowing up some pots of seeds, hoping that by the time they germinate in a week or two, things might be a little less humid summery and a bit more warm autumnal. Fingers crossed.

First up, three pots of herbs. From left to right, chervil, rocket and coriander.

I'm going to add in several links with this post, just because I think it's appropriate this time round. On the left, the chervil seeds came from the Italian Gardener an Australian-based seed supplier selling seeds sourced from Italy. So far, none of his seeds have let me down, they've all been great, and for the roughly $4.50 price of each packet you seem to get a zillion seeds, many many more seeds than from other seed companies. In the background, the rocket seeds come from Yates, Australia's biggest seed supplier, and they're absolutely fine, never let me down either. In the foreground the coriander seeds are the ones I saved from last year's harvest.

Now, this looks like far too many coriander seeds in that pot, and you're right, that's far too many. Deliberately so, because I don't know whether they're duds or not. If only 50% of them come up, it's probably still too many. But if only 25% come up, it's probably right. So, I'll just wait and see. And if I have 100% germination and too many plants, it'll be out with the tweezers and I'll ruthlessly cull the weaklings so that Charles Darwin would be proud of me.

This is just a photo of last year's coriander, the parent which produced the seeds above. Early March in Sydney is probably a month too early to sow coriander seed, especially if the weather stays warm, but as I still have hundreds of seeds left over, I'll just sow another batch in April, which is probably a more sensible time to do it, as coriander grows best during the coolest months of the year here – May through to September. The later batch will be sown in the ground. If it's hot this month, I'll move this potted coriander to a more gentle spot in the garden that only gets morning sun.

There's a simple explanation for the large number of fine, thin chervil seedlings here. I spilled them accidentally from the packet, and then got sick of picking up the fine seed to retrieve my boo boo. And so I'll wait for them to sprout and I'll thin them out then.

The great thing about chervil is that this herb loves the semi-shaded spots in gardens. In fact, don't give it full sun. So, if you're a balcony gardener with limited sunshine, or in the inner city where the neighbouring buildings and trees cast long and lengthy shadows, try some chervil. Chervil is one of the four classic French 'fines herbes' – parsley, chives, chervil and tarragon. It has a delicate flavour that has hints of aniseed. This photo is one of last year's pots. Chervil is a short-lived herb that I find grows easily from seed. A pot like this might last you about two or so months; towards the end just sow another pot of seed.

The third crop sown today is rocket. I stopped sowing rocket last November, as it's just too hot to grow rocket here in summer. It should do fine from now on. In fact, it should rocket away! It's well-named. Sown today on Sunday, the seeds will probably be up by Thursday or Friday. Rocket lives hard and dies young, and so I try to sow a pot like this roughly every four to six weeks, from now until late October.

This is a typical pot-full of rocket from last year. It's ready to harvest at this baby stage. I harvest it with scissors, cutting the plants off almost at the base. When it's baby-sized like this it's still nutty and lovely to eat in salads. Let it grow another 10 days more, when the leaves are double in size, and it will have become peppery and not really all that pleasant to eat in salads, especially if there's a lot of it in the salad. Unfortunately, this larger, peppery rocket is what most shops sell and so I find it's no wonder that rocket isn't all that popular with your average punter.

To finish off the pots of seed, I cover them with seed-raising mix. The chervil and the rocket are barely covered with seed-raising mix. The packet says to sow seed 3mm deep, and so I aim for about that thickness of coverage. Coriander seed needs to be sown 6mm deep, and so I cover it with a thicker layer of seed-raising mix.

Water well with a very fine spray so as not to wash the seeds away, and leave the pots in a warm but not sunny spot. In this warm weather, which is essentially still very summery, everything should sprout soon enough. When they do sprout I'll lightly liquid feed them then thin them out a week or so later on if they're too crowded. The chervil will remain in a semi-shaded spot, but the rocket and coriander will be moved to sunnier spots once they're underway.

Finally, another bit of seed-sowing today. On the left, some red-stemmed spring onions and some mixed mesclun lettuce, and in the round pots on the right, the Gymea lily seeds which I blogged about here.

Phew! All good fun, though and my back is just fine! I love watching seeds come up – I don't think I'll ever get sick of it – and to toss in a final link for this link-filled blog I'd have to say I am always inspired by Michelle and her great blog at From Seed to Table.

Right now I'm most fascinated to know whether the Gymea lily seeds will sprout, but my iffy home-saved coriander seeds have a very nice touch of suspense about them, too. As for the others, it's routine, but a very pleasant routine indeed.

This n that

Well, blogger me, I've been busy lately! Unfortunately it's been the kind of busy-ness that earns money but doesn't look after gardens or provide much fun. However, with four luxurious days of Easter stretching out into the near distance, things are looking much more entertaining once more. As for what's been happening here in Amateur Land, with no time for much work lately all I have to note is a bit of this n that here and there, hence the blog title.

While I've mentioned my other zinnia patch I haven't devoted any space to this charming pocket of Zinnia angustifolia plants, which is near my lemon tree towards the back of the garden. There are just four plants pictured here. It's a low, spreading thing that will reach 70cm across, so the books say.

I'm quite taken with its pretty little orangey-yellow cluster of inner blooms, which look like so many mini frangipanis. There's no scent to speak of but the sight is cheery – it's a plant which makes you smile.

Here's the latest addition to the garden, an impulse buy (of sorts) this morning. I was at a gardening centre this morning buying mulch for a job I'll be doing at my mother-in-law's tomorrow, and while wheeling around in my usual retail centre daze I spotted this Acacia cognata 'Limelight'. Pam has been wanting me to grow one for about a year, ever since she saw an Acacia cognata at the Sydney Botanical Gardens. The one at the Botanical Gardens is fab, a small, dome-shaped foliage plant with a weepy habit – and the foliage is, as the name implies, lime-green.

Anyway, I've been a bit hesitant to get one, as my expert horticulturist friend said, when I mentioned Pam wanted me to get one, those fateful words: "Good luck – can be a bit tricky, you know". Now, with Australian natives that comment translates into "Will grow well for a while, then suddenly look sick then die within three days". Fortunately, it's all started out well. Though priced at $15.95 it had the wrong plant-label and barcode on, and I got it for $6.95. Great start – I'm feeling optimistic already! It's headed for a much larger pot and a sunny spot.

Speaking of lovely green foliage, I've tossed in this shot of the mint pot today as I plan to blog away soon about an interesting little project I have underway. Some good friends have just bought a house nearby and have blown all their dough on a kitchen renovation, so they have no money for a garden. So, I've decided to create a little garden for them, all from cuttings and seeds (hence the mint shot – I'm striking mint cuttings, which is about as tricky as breathing). My friends are both very good cooks, so a herb and salad garden is where we're headed. They haven't got a clue about gardening, which is why I think we'll start out small and see if they can master the first basic – keeping plants alive by remembering to water them – before we move onto the Bablyonian hanging gardens, etc.

This is the mint after 12 days in a jar of water. Isn't vigorous or anything, is it? I've also dug up clumps of oregano and thyme, and taken cuttings of rosemary and sage, and the seed trays of lettuce, green onions, spinach, silver beet, coriander and parsley are all making good progress, too. Once it all gets going, it should be fun to blog about later on.

My succulents are loving autumn, and several of them, such as this echeveria, are flowering their funny looking little heads off. Though succulents come from climate zones with hot, dry summers, those same climate zones also often have wet, cool winters, and so these plants have adapted to do all their growing and flowering in autumn, winter and spring. Then they shut down for the summer, living off their stored reserves of moisture (hence their 'waterwise' reputation, which is a bit misleading when it comes to their care). And though Sydney is a much more consistently moist place than their homelands, they still respond to the cooler weather and shorter daylight hours of autumn, even here, and they're all thriving now. This is when I feed them and water them if it's been dry for several days in a row.

If you think the succulents are a bit strange looking, this alarming pink fungus, which sprang up from the mulch near my lemon tree, is in a class of its own. By dawn the next day it was gone (or, more accurately, detumescent), but it hosted a hell of a party for all the local flies attracted to its alluring (but very, very slight) 'dead flesh' smell.

Autumn has also seen an explosion in the local spider population, and this year there are big numbers of what I call the 'homemaker' spiders – those which include a wrapped-up leaf within their web as a protective shell.

As I was taking my photo of Homey he/she very obligingly popped out and attended to yet another foolish insect which wandered into his/her web. He/she was out doing that amazing, spidery silk-weaving thing for a mere 20 seconds, scurrying back to its leafy address once dinner had been organised.

Speaking of organising dinner, that's what I should be doing now, instead of blogging. Here's a small part of it, some young olive-leaf rocket, a new variety which I'm growing from seed. As it's so small I won't take too much, but I need a bed of rocket for what I have in mind.

The rest of tonight's bed of rocket will come from this pot of the common type of rocket which everyone grows here, which is ready for harvesting. I'm a great believer in harvesting and eating rocket when it is very small and nicely nutty. Leave this pot for another week and the rocket will start to take on that strong, peppery flavour that very few people like.

And tonight's meal is simple. Grilled lamb cutlets served on a bed of rocket, with a combo of baked vegetables on the side.

I'm off to my mother-in-law's garden to hack back some choko vines and teach some other garden bullies a lesson tomorrow. Pam's mum is a super-keen 80-year-old gardener who's not up to the heavy work any more, but she's great fun to be with at all times. I've got all the essential supplies organised that we'll need to make it a great day with her: secateurs, gloves, loppers, trugs, fertiliser and mulch for me – and for Pam and her mum, their favourite – champagne!