A few years back, if you had of told us we would gather the greens for our salad by not only walking to the veggie bed and picking lettuce and parsley, but by scouring the garden looking for dandelion, chickweed, herb robert, plantain, nasturtium and other plants often considered ‘weeds,’ we would have given you a rather strange look! Well, they say 'never say never', and weeds have taken a central place in our salad bowl, as we’ve begun to appreciate:

• How nice they can taste in a salad
• That many ‘wild’ plants contain valuable nutrients in higher concentrations that cultivated varieties
• How helpful it is to have weeds fill up a salad bowl when there is little lettuce, parsley and other salad greens in the veggie beds
• That eating a large diversity of plants (especially leafy greens) makes for super healthy humans!

Michael Pollen’s book 'In Defence of Food', which we’re currently reading has reinvigorated our love of weedy salads, which was first sparked by Isabell Shippards brilliant guide 'How can I use herbs in my daily life'. Isabells book, written in Australia, is by far the best herb book we’ve come across and has lots of helpful, practical ideas about how you can eat and use these valuable plants. It’s also really good at explaining how to ID the plants, with detailed descriptions and photographs (you really don’t want to be eating petty spurge rather than chickweed!).

On the weekends, we indulge in a big salad for lunch – an eclectic collection of whatever greens we can find in the garden, plus some extra yummies thrown in. Today our salad was something like:

Garden Greens

- A small handful of parsley

- A small handful of lettuce

- A handful of chickweed

- 4 big dandelion leaves

- 5 nasturtium flowers and a couple of young leaves

- 8 Herb Robert leaves

- A few sprigs of yarrow

- stick of celery

Extras

- 4 cherry tomatoes (our cherry tomato bushes are still hanging in there!)

- Small handful of fried halumi

- Small handful of raw cashews

- Small handful of olives

Dressing

- 5 big sprigs of thyme

- Juice of 2 small lemons

- Drizzling of olive oil

 Has anyone else ventured beyond the vegie bed to fill their salad bowls?

Forget swine flu, it’s swapping fever that’s on the move across the country. First fruit and veg swaps, now clothes swaps, what next? Bring it on that’s all we can say! What more blissfully eco-way to find new-to-you clothes, and pass on clothes you no longer want, than an afternoon of clothes swapping?

Our friends have held a couple of clothes swap afternoons before, that we’ve unfortunately not been able to make, but now Sustainable Illawarra is hosting a community clothes swap event. It’s on Saturday 1st August at the beautiful new Community Centre in Thirroul (working on the Sustainable Illawarra team, it’s very exciting to see this event come to life!). If you live locally, hopefully we’ll see you there! (More details at http://www.sustainableillawarra.com.au/Whats-On.html).

We’re also inspired to also look at holding our own clothes swap session some time. There’s some great tips on hosting your own clothes swap with friends at http://www.lifeorganizers.com/cm_articles/16_organize_a_clothes_swap_189.html. And you could really open to it up to whatever you wanted. Have you ever been to a swap session, or are planning one? We’d love to hear about it!

They say home-grown organic produce is worlds apart from what you find in the supermarket. Our recent potato harvest certainly proves that – we’re just not sure which world these potatoes came from! It’s not very often you find yourself in hysterical laughter while harvesting home-grown spuds – but digging up these two huge, knobbly, potatoes the other day, had us face down in the dirt with belly laughter.

We often find funny shaped sweet potatoes in the garden, but our potato harvests have always resulted in an abundance of rather standard shaped round or oval potatoes. Nothing unusual, until these guys. Perhaps they’re just expressing their individuality. Or maybe, they really are potatoes from space, who were hiding behind the satellites taking the photos of everyones backyard for Google Earth, and decided they better come check out what on earth is going on in that suburban block...

On a more serious note, the embracing of uniquely shaped fruits and veg, which may be a little too curvy or pointy in the wrong places, or have some markings or colouring a little out of the ordinary, is a serious sustainability issue. Having standardised Barbie-doll like produce lining the supermarket shelves, means a lot of quality food that doesn’t fit the mould is going to waste.

In the EU, they only recently relaxed tight regulation about the appearance of a range of different fruit and vegetables allowed on the market – for example, cucumbers could not be bent by a curve of more than 10mm per 10cm. They estimated by allowing more ‘imperfect’ produce on the market, they could reduce the amount of wasted farm produce by a whopping 20% (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24640823-26040,00.html). Though there doesn’t seem to be any strict regulation on the shape and size of produce able to be sold in Australia, when was the last time you saw a forked carrot on the supermarket shelves?

It’s time to celebrate the cultural diversity and individuality of our fruit and veg – space potatoes and all. What’s the most unique produce you've come across?

With the chilly breath of winter now in the air, there’s even more reason to enjoy herbal teas from the garden. Our favourite is aniseed myrtle – we just pinch off about 5 leaves from the bush, scrunch them up and pop them in a tea strainer with boiling water for 5 minutes. Native to northern NSW, aniseed myrtle is a gorgeous rainforest tree, and growing in popularity as a bush food, being used for flavouring sauces and preserves, as well as being dried for tea.

Pineapple sage is another fragrant plant we like to make teas from sometimes. It’s also one of our favourite flowering plants in the garden, and we have bushes of it scattered all along our paths. It looks stunning when covered with little bright pinkish red flowers, and adds bursts of colour to the sea of green in our yard. It’s also fabulous for attracting insects and birds – we have Eastern Spinebill honeyeaters come into our garden just to enjoy the nectar from the flowers.

Lemon grass, lemon balm, and lemon myrtle are other herbs we’ve made teas with. As well as warming us up from the inside, these yummy herbal teas can have a range of health benefits, depending on the kind of herbs you use. By far the most helpful herb book we’ve come across is Isabell Shippards ‘How to use Herbs in your everyday life.’ Snippets from this fabulous book can be found on Isabells website at www.herbsarespecial.com.au.

We’d love to hear about any herbal teas you’d made at home, or have heard are worth trying...

Someone asked us recently “what three books have been most inspirational or helpful for you embarking on your adventure in urban sustainability?” It’s a tough choice! But we’d have to say...

Ally’s top three:

- Living The Good Life, how one family changed their world from their backyard by Linda Cockburn. I came across this book, at the time when we were dreaming about our future home, and found Linda’s 6 month adventure in ‘domestic sustainability’ on their suburban block hugely inspiring and empowering. I loved reading through and constantly thinking ‘what a great idea! I could do that too!’ Thanks for all the tips Linda! (Linda’s blog is http://www.lintrezza.blogspot.com/)

- Silent Springs by Rachael Carson. This classic by Rachael Carson, about our need to rethink the indiscriminate use of pesticides, and understand that everything in the world is connected, is just as important today as when it was first published in 1962. I love this book because it also reminds me of the importance of having the courage to stand up for what you believe in.

- Harvest for Hope, a guide to mindful eating by Jane Goodall. Being a total foodie, passionate about sustainable food production, I love Jane’s insight into the global food system and ideas on how we can best create a healthier food system with the well-being of people, animals and the land at heart.

Rich’s top three:

- Permaculture Home Garden by Linda Woodrow. I was amazed at how this book presented such a clever system of growing veggies, that minimised the amount of work involved! It’s also a great reference book I am constantly checking back too.

- Your Home Technical Manual. This book has been invaluable in retrofitting our home for sustainable living. And it’s free, on-line and constantly updated (http://www.yourhome.gov.au/technical/index.html)

- Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison and Reny M Slay. This book was way ahead of it’s time. While most books were just starting to describe the sustainability challenges we face, this book came out offering practical solutions and advice on what individuals and communities can do in response.

What’s your top three?

There’s something magical about drying fruit – watching your plump produce transform into balls of intensely sweet, small, chewy treats!

We were lucky enough to pick a whole bag of persimmons on our ‘fruit rescue’ adventure back in March. There’s two types of persimmon fruit, astringent and non-astringent. The fruit on the astringent varieties can only be eaten when it’s really soft and gooey (tasting like sweet cinnamon jelly), while the non astringent persimmon can be eaten when they are firm (like a crunchy apple with a hint of cinnamon) as well as soft. Eating an under-ripe astringent persimmon leaves a horrible floury taste in your mouth – so be sure to know which kind of persimmon you have! Persimmons are a fabulous fruit - the tree is stunning and perfect for backyards.

Our abundance of astringent persimmon, which had turned orange, but not yet softened, was perfect for experimenting in the Japanese art of persimmon drying, to create what the Japanese call ‘Hoshi Gaki.’ Following some advice from articles like this, the process we followed was: 

1. Peel the skin from the persimmon, leaving the calyx on top (the bit where it attaches to the branch)
2. Tie a small piece of string around the calyx on each of the fruits  
3. Set up a rope to hang the strands of persimmon fruit from.
4. Space the strands of persimmon along the rope, spacing them evenly to allow for good air circulation
5. Watch and wait for 6 weeks
6. Enjoy the first of our natural, sweet treats, and store the remainder in an air tight container 

Alternatively, you could dry the persimmon in a solar drier, which probably would have been quicker, or an electric dehydrator which would have been much quicker. But it was nice to watch our balls of fruit develop over time! We’re planning to build a solar drier rack one day. Have you had any experiences drying fruit? We’ve love to hear about them..

Organic Food Co-ops are a fantastic way to build community and support organic farmers and local food producers. They’re run collectively, with an emphasis on making sustainably, ethically grown, minimally packaged whole foods available at affordable prices.

Exciting news for the Illawarra is that a small group of wonderful, committed, co-op lovers have been busy trialling orders of bulk organic staple foods, and have organised approval from Fair Trading for an official co-op to be created. Tomorrow, Monday 11th May, is the formation meeting for the ‘Flame Tree Community Food Co-op’, held at Thirroul Neighbourhood Centre, starting at 6pm. All are welcome, and attendees will be given the opportunity to vote on the rules that will govern the co-op, and elect the board of directors, secretary and treasurer who will make ongoing decisions about the running of the co-op. 

On the night, you can join up to the co-op -  it’s $45 to join, which covers the initial join-up cost of $25, plus the $20 annual fee to be a member, and entitles you to a year of discounted shopping from the date the co-op is open and trading.

If you can’t make it along to the foundation meeting, but would love to get involved with the co-op down the track, or have any questions about the development of the co-op, just e-mail Amanda at flametreecoop@gmail.com

Mandarins picked fresh off the tree, and peeled to reveal their juicy, sweet, segments, are such a treat. At the moment our mandarin tree is dripping with bright orange balls, we’ve been harvesting and enjoying every day.

Mandarin trees are perfect for even the smallest of backyards – at most they only grow to about 3 metres wide and 3 metres high, and can be pruned even smaller. Mandarins are also pretty hardy trees, making them a great fruit tree to start out with.  

For more info on mandarins, check out our mandarin fruit tree profile page.

Take a bunch of keen backyard gardeners, sprinkle with a bright idea aimed at reducing wastage of excess harvests, and stir in an enthusiastic driver to ferment the idea into action, and the result – Wollongong’s first ‘Waste Not! Fruit and Veg Swap.’  

The process was simple and fun – bring your surplus herbs, fruit and veg from your garden, and place them on a table next to a card with your name on it, so people knew who had brought that produce to swap. You’d then eye off some produce you’d like to take home with you, read the name on the card, and approach that person to organise a swap. In this way, it was also a great oppurtunity to meet new people. And as always when you get a bunch of gardeners together, there was also a lot of swapping of recipes and ideas about preserving abundant harvests.

The swapping table grew to showcase a surprising diversity of produce – everything from lemon grass to pumpkins to figs and wax jambu (tastes like lilly pilly only sweeter). There was also strawberry and macadamia seedlings added in the swap mix, and lots of herbs. We arrived with homegrown eggplants, garlic, rosemary and parsley, and left very happy with our swap for with capsicum, passionfruit, limes and chokos!

The event was organised by the North Wollongong PCYC garden, mainly by John (thanks John!). As part of participating, people donated some of their produce to the garden group for them to sell at the Coledale markets tomorrow, to raise funds to support the continuation of the swap and projects at the garden. For those who live locally, the Waste Not! Fruit and Veg swap will be happening on the fourth Saturday of each month from 9am – 12pm at the PCYC Garden. The PCYC garden also has a working bee on the first Sunday of the month – for more details and to be inspired by their amazing garden, check out http://thegardennorthgong.blogspot.com

Have you ever been to a similar fruit and veg swap? We’d love to hear about any experiences you’ve had with fruit and veg swapping. 

In celebration of recycling and reusing all things vintage, the Canterbury racecourse in Sydney has been buzzing all weekend with crowds searching for treasures of vintage clothes and household items. It was such a breath of fresh air yesterday to be in a place where everyone was so thrilled to be buying stuff that was old and secondhand! There was a range of prices, with a lot of things being really reasonable, and others quite expensive. With the weather now getting cooler, I picked up two gorgeous warm woollen skirts for $30 each, a cute apron made from vintage fabric for $10 and a hand knitted beanie for $8.

As well as often being a win-win for the pocket compared to buying quality new clothes that will last, second hand shopping is as eco friendly as you can get – reducing waste by using already existing items and preventing new resources being used to manufacture the goods. It also reduces ‘clothes miles’ – the long distances travelled by goods to create the shirts on our back.

The Vintage Clothing, Jewellery and Textiles Show is on again on the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th of October, and I’d definitely recommend it. There’s been so much interest, their website is currently out of action, but if you’d like to check out the show later try www.lovevintage.com.au.

The Illawarra is also blessed with so many fantastic op shops, most of which are run by various charities, with the profits supporting the valuable work they do. I couldn’t possibly list them all here, but addresses of some can be found at:

• http://salvosstores.salvos.org.au/
• http://www.missionaustralia.com.au/big-heart
• http://www.thesmithfamily.com.au

Some of our favourite things we’ve found in local op shops include our blue tiled coffee table, copies of ABC Organic Gardening magazines, children’s books...what’s been your favourite op shop or vintage buy?

There’s no one who can say ‘dig up your lawn’ and create an edible paradise with as much enthusiasm as Peter Cundall! Surely this long weekend, people are out in droves transforming their lawn into lunch after a fabulous feature on 60 minutes last week showcasing how we are entering the ‘era of the urban farm.’  It even showed people ripping out their tennis court and turning it into a flourishing veggie patch – perhaps making us seem a little less crazy for doing the same thing with our inground swimming pool!

“I would say it isn’t what I call food,” Professor Kerin O’Dea remarks honestly about the products that line the supermarket shelves. Kerin made another comment that really resonated with us – that when people are given the opportunity to manage and produce some of their own food, they gain a sense of “mastery and control over their lives, and we know that when people have a sense of mastery and control, they’re healthier” – and happier!

We’re thrilled to see this feature glimpse into everything from community gardens, to backyard food forests, to school gardens, to Indigenous people cooking up a feast and showing how “when you know where to look there's food everywhere.” To check out the 60 minutes segment, and other great links see the Future of Food. Enjoy and be inspired!

Healthy plants need soil buzzing with life and fertility! We find a great way to improve the soil in our veggie beds after a big harvest, is to use a technique similar to no dig gardening – building up layers of different materials that break down together to form rich, luscious soil. Improved yields, less problems with pests and diseases, and watching the worm population explode are amongst the rewards!

Last weekend we set about ‘revamping’ two of our five circular veggie beds. We used whatever materials we had on hand, and picked up some free horse manure from the local horse stables at Kembla Grange. Here’s what we did:

1. Cleared most of the vegetation in the beds (we left just a few tomatoes as they were still going strong, and we could easily work around them) and gave the bed a good watering
2. Scattered half a bucket of trace minerals plus the contents from our compost bin and worm farm.  This was then watered with diluted liquid seaweed
3. Spread the horse poo  and again watered with diluted liquid seaweed
4. Spread some mulch on top (chopped down comfrey, lucerne and lemon grass etc)from around the vegie beds) 

    

Just a few days later, when we poked a trowel into the revamped beds, there were worms and lots of other little soil building critters going mad – just what we want to see! We’ll leave all of this new goodness to break down for a few weeks, before planting them out – and then enjoy watch our little autumn seedlings jump to life!

A few people have asked us recently how much time and money it’s taken us to have made the changes we have to our home and garden, and what the ongoing time and maintenance costs are. We’re really struggling to answer these questions, because they honestly just don’t make much sense to us!

We find a really empowering part of sustainable living is how much money we SAVE and as for our time, we find our lifestyle fulfilling and deeply satisfying – far from a time burden! Growing some of our own food, enjoying making things by hand, having only one small car, buying things second hand, and having low energy and water usage means our living costs are really quite low.

This economic empowerment stems from our day to day lifestyle choices, and the initial investments we made in our house and garden. So what was that total initial investment cost? Honestly, we haven’t keep track of it enough to give a total figure, and we don’t feel it would be that helpful anyway because everyone has a different home and lifestyle and we wouldn’t want people to feel it cost $X to create a ‘sustainable’ home. But certainly there are specific features we can share the costs of, like our solar hot water cost us $2,000 (and with the new rebates you can now pick them up for closer to $200!), and it was about $4,000 for landscaping materials (plants, seeds, soil, irrigation etc).

As for initial time investments, we spent 3 months undertaking ‘green renovations’ to our home before we moved in (while one of us worked five days, and the other four days). And it took us about a year to turn the garden from a lawn and lots of concrete to the food garden it is today. Though we’re always out in the garden because we enjoy being there, if we had to estimate the amount of ongoing maintenance time for the garden, it’d be about 12 hours a week in total. Baring in mind though we have a quite large garden – with all 750 metres densely planted!

On the flip side of this ‘time’ investment, with our ongoing expenditures being so low, in the not too distant future, we’ll also both be able to shift to working only two or three days a week each, meaning more time to spend with family, or working on community projects like community gardens. We also believe we’re adding years to our life span by eating all the yummy fresh food from our garden and having an organic home, and we feel a deep sense of satisfaction that we are living a lifestyle that contributes to not only to our own health and wellbeing, but that of our community and the environment.

So for us, the question that makes more sense is what’s the cost and time burden of not living a sustainable lifestyle?

Falling fruit is fruit in need of rescue! Last weekend we were lucky enough to be part of a special ‘fruit rescue’ team, granted access for the morning to old orchards in a restricted conservation area in the hills of Wollongong. Hundreds of kilos of apples, pears and persimmons were saved from waste, with more than half being donated to local community kitchens and schools. It was just magical collecting fruit from grand old trees...

On a smaller scale, in backyards scattered through the suburbs, we often spot neglected fruit trees that produce abundant, unwanted harvests for their owners. Sometimes new people move into a place and aren’t bothered picking the fruit that was prized by the previous owners (crazy if you ask us!). We can’t bear to see food go to waste, so a couple times we’ve asked neighbours if we could pick from their trees... and they have always been very happy for us to do so. It saves them having to clean up the fallen fruit! We’ve picked gorgeous plums, apricots, citrus, even bunya nuts - a fantastic bush tucker that tastes like potato when cooked up...

Have you been on any ‘fruit rescue’ adventures? We know Darren from Green-Change recently posted about his yummy ‘feral fruit filo pastry’ made with peaches rescued from the roadside! We’d love to hear about your adventures!

Well it's been just over 18 months since we sowed the first seed and planted the first fruit tree on our little block in the 'burbs. Looking back at the photos, it's amazing how far the garden has come along.  Here a few comparison photos of then and now:

BACKYARD FOOD FOREST

FRONT YARD FOOD FOREST

VEGETABLE GARDEN

DRIVEWAY

BACKYARD SWALE

For a few more comparison photos and hear a little about our story check out the latest Notebook magazine or download the pdf file.

We’ve recently come back from a short trip up the north coast of NSW, where we’ve been feasting on ideas and inspiration for food gardening.

At the Permaculture Research Institute, near The Channon, we had a 2 hour guided tour around Geoff Lawtons extensive property. Geoff is a leading board acre permaculturalist, and is turning his place into a large scale food forest system. The video clip showing Geoffs work in 'greening the desert' is a must see.

We visited friends at Coffs Harbour who have been working to convert 2 acres into a small scale food forest system, and helped design a backyard food forest in Lismore. There’s also lots of community gardens you can pop into. By far the best we’ve seen up that way is Northy Street City Farm in Brisbane.

We also met a fantastic retired couple who had converted the side of the road at the back of their house into an extensive veggie patch and small orchard area. It was wonderful to see this use of public space – but they had to pay the RTA $1,000 a year to cover public liability insurance, ouch!

Some important gardening lessons that were reinforced for us from our trip were:

• Start small and don’t take on more than you can manage. Even a couple of acres is a huge commitment and a huge amount of work to manage successfully for food growing. Suburban backyards are so much easier!
• Water management is the number one issue in sustainable gardening. It really pays off to design for water harvesting, storage, reuse and dispersal.
• If you want to enjoy lots of your fruit, keep fruit trees pruned to a size you can easily access. Around 3 metres is a good height. We met one guy who had many hundreds of different kinds of fruit trees and they were all so huge he harvested very little of the produce and still bought fruit from the supermarket!
• Investing the time to find out what variety of fruit is best suited to your climate is so valuable. Lots of people are disappointed with their mango and avocado trees because the variety they planted is not suited for their area. For subtropical regions like Wollongong the best avocados are Wurtz and Pinkerton, and good mangoes are Glenn, Valencia Pride, and Nam Doc Mai.

We’d love to hear about any gardens you’ve visited, and ideas or lessons you’ve gleaned!

Sounding rather like strange natural phenonemum, ‘working-bees’, ‘permablitzes’ and ‘WWOOFing’, are all ways to learn about organic food growing, help create and support edible paradises, and have fun!

A few times a year we have garden working bees at our place. It’s as easy as inviting a handful of friends around and showing them how to help out with some simple gardening tasks (like spreading mulch on all the paths, or putting compost around the fruit trees). Add some music, lots of yummy home cooked food, and a few drinks to tuck into after the works all done, and it’s a recipe for an enjoyable and productive day in the garden!

Permablitzes are like a larger scale working bee – having a bunch of people around for a serious permaculture-inspired garden makeover. ‘Permaculture’ is a design system for sustainable living and land use, and it’s had a lot of influence on the way we’ve created our garden. For some permablitz inspiration, check out the fabulous Aussie site http://www.permablitz.net/.

WWOOF stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms. WWOOFers undertake a variety of work for four to six hours a day in exchange for food and accommodation with their WWOOF hosts. All hosts are involved in organic growing in some way – they might run a commercial biodynamic farm, or organic market stall, or simply be living a sustainable lifestyle with a backyard veggie patch. In 2006, we WWOOFed at quite a few places around Australia. It was great way to learn hands on about organic gardening and sustainable living. We met some really inspiring people too – but bear in mind WWOOF hosts are a real mixed bag, and some are quite eccentric! If you’re considering WWOOFing, it’s good to get recommendations from fellow WWOOFers, or WWOOF hosts you really enjoy staying with. For more info see http://wwoof.com.au/.

Lots of people who visit our garden are really interested in the tall, lush, screen of plants on the eastern side of our veggie bed. Is it sugar cane? Bamboo? Though it looks similar to these plants, it’s actually a fast growing, clumping grass called banna grass. 

We love banna grass because it:

We’re currently establishing another row of banna grass on the western side of our food forest, as we get strong westerly winds in the winter. For diversity, other plants we’re using that have similar characteristics to banna grass, include galangal, sugar cane, tiger grass and clumping bamboos.

Our red fingers are the give-away – we just can’t resist sneaking into our mouths some of the yummy beetroot we’ve just cooked up for preserving! It’s the first batch of home-grown preserved beetroot we’ve made – and it’s so yummy, flavoursome and soft I don’t think it’ll be hanging around in the fridge for too long!

A quick search on the internet before we began showed a few different techniques out there for preserving beetroot. The recipe we went with involved:

Ingredients

- The equivalent of about 6 large beetroot (We used about 4 large beets and a handful of small ones.)
- 200ml vinegar (preferably brown, but you could use white.)
- 200ml red wine
- 1 teaspoon salt
- few cloves and peppercorns (optional)
- water for boiling the beets (enough to cover them in a pan)
- 2 medium sized glass jars for storage (sterilise the jars in boiling water or in the oven)

Process

1. Harvest the equivalent of about 6 large beetroot
2. Remove the leaves (you can save the healthy leaves and use them just as you would use silverbeet)
3. Cut off the stalks and the tails and scrub the beets clean
4. Boil the beets in a pan with enough water to cover them, until they soften (about 25 mins. We cut the large ones in half so they would cook quicker.)
5. Remove beets from the water once soft, and put the water (now bright red) aside. You can remove the skin at this stage (gloves would be recommended) but you can leave it on if it’s not too thick. We just cut a few thick bits of skin off the tops and left the rest on (more nutrients!).
6. Put 400ml of the red water that the beets were boiled in, 200ml of red wine, 200ml of vinegar, and the cloves and peppercorns in a pan and bring to the boil for 5 minutes
7. Cut the beetroot into slices about ½ cm to 1cm thick. Cut the slices in half if needed, so they can fit in the jar. Add the sliced beetroot to the mix boiling away. Bring back to the boil
8. Turn off the heat, and add the beets to the glass jars, making sure to add enough of the liquid to cover the beets (you could strain out the peppercorns and cloves if you wanted)
9.  Store in the fridge once cooled

We’re only new to preserving harvests like this, so if anyone has any advice or tips they would like to share that would be great!

To ensure bountiful harvests, it’s really worth taking the time to plant fruit trees in a way that gives them the best start to life.

Though summer’s not the best time to plant fruit trees, we couldn’t resist popping in a couple special trees we managed to get a hold of – a cherimoya and a custard apples.

To give you an idea of how we plant out our fruit trees, we’ve sketched out a few pointers to give your fruit tree the best start possible.  You can also check out our first video below! We hope you enjoy it!