Kohlrabi is a colourful newcomer to our garden and dinner plates. It certainly is an unusual looking vegetable, and we had to laugh when reading this humorous quote in Farmer Johns Cookbook from a person who received kohlrabi in a box of mixed veggies:

I totally freaked out last year when I pulled a ‘space ship’ (kohlrabi) out of the box. But it became the basis of some good eatin’.

Kohlrabi looks striking in the garden, as the colourful bulb grows above the ground.  

Kohlrabi is a member of the brassica family, like cabbages and broccoli. Both the bulb and leaves of the plant can be eaten. We enjoyed chopping up the bulb and steaming it along with potato to make a mashed potato-kohlrabi side dish – it brought a really nice flavour to the usual potato mash! We’ve also had it grated raw on a salad wrap, but it has a bit of a bite to it so you don’t need much fresh.

Kohlrabi looks so striking in the garden, and we quite enjoyed the taste of it when cooked, so this week at our local fresh food market we stocked up on a few more kohlrabi seedlings.

Anyone else tried growing and eating kohlrabi? We’d love to hear any ideas for recipes you have! A few suggestions can be found at http://vegbox-recipes.co.uk/ingredients/kohl-rabi, while more info about how to grow this colourful veggie can be found at http://www.annettemcfarlane.com/Stories/kohlrabi.

Full of fantastic inspiration for incorporating permaculture design principles into the year ahead, the 2011 Permaculture calendar and diary were released just this week. They feature inspiring stories of people from all around Oz who are working to create more sustainable, enjoyable and just futures. We were lucky enough to have Michelle Margolis, the enthusiastic force behind the permaculture diary, come for a tour of Wollongong earlier in the year. She even popped into visit us here at Happy Earth, and we’re honoured to be featured in both the diary and calendar!

Yesterday we had a train trip up to the Organic Expo and Green Show in Sydney, and were re-invigorated to see just how much the organic movement is growing. It was fabulous to see so many organic farmers talking about their wonderful, clean organic produce.  

Costa from Costa's Gardening Odyssey appeared as a special guest and presented the ‘dig for your dinner’ award to the school judged as growing an abundance of fresh produce. We were thrilled to see one of our local schools, Cringila Primary take out the winning ‘dig your dinner’ award! Big congratulations to all students and teachers involved!  You truly are leading the way with inspiring the next generation to ‘get growing!’

We’ve been just amazed at how our small backyard pond has become such a haven for local wildlife since we installed it in our suburban garden last winter.  

Within months brown marsh frogs stumbled across it, and decided it would be a good place to start a family (if you look closely in the photo below, you can see a second frog on the back of the other, shrouded in their spawn). Peron’s tree frogs have moved in too, they’re a bit more elusive to photograph...

Dragonflies have also decided our pond is a good nursery for their young. One morning we were lucky enough to watch an incredible transformation, as about ten water-dwelling dragonfly nymphs crawled up the stems of the water chestnuts and slowly pulled themselves out of their shells to emerge as stunning dragonflies that flitted off in the wind...

Waterskinks love to warm themselves on the rocks around the pond...

And this morning an Eastern Spinebill dived into the pond for a refreshing Sunday morning dip...

All this wildlife in our garden brings us so much joy and entertainment. Attracting a diversity of wildlife is also important for us in implementing a holistic, integrated, approach to managing pests in an organic garden. If you’re thinking about installing a pond in your garden, now is the perfect time to get this garden task done before the hot summer months! For more info about ponds, check out our pond webpage.

Growing good food is all about growing good soil. Worm castings and mulch are gold in the world of soil building, and this week while we had some time off we got busy spreading a tonne of worm castings around the base of our fruit trees...

We dug up our mulch paths....

And spread this mulch, which had been decomposing for a year, on top of the worm castings around the fruit trees.  Then we ordered a big load of mulch (which in the winter here you can often get for free from local tree lopping companies – that’s what we did!)

And had a working bee with friends to spread the fresh mulch onto the paths – thanks again to our working bee buddies!

If you need some extra inspiration for getting out there and building your soils, check out the movie Dirt! like we did earlier this week! Happy soil building! 

Our fabulous local food co-op, the Flame Tree Community Food Co-op, is having a winter soup and film night on Sunday 15th August from 6-9pm at the Thirroul Community Centre and everyone is invited!

We really enjoy watching films that tell stories about where our food comes from, and the Food Inc documentary is an eye-opening look into the America's industrialized food system and its effect on our environment, health, economy and workers' rights. At the Flame Tree Soup and Film Night you can watch the film and be warmed by homemade soup for $15, or for $20 you can have a yummy dessert as well. Soup and music will be from 6-7pm, with the film running from 7-9pm. Bring your own bowl and cup to this lovely community event!

We buy all our organic staples in bulk from the Flame Tree Community Food co-op, like rice, lentils and dried fruit. It’s great to save on packaging by taking our own containers and bags, and the community vibe at the co-op makes it such an enjoyable shopping experience!  We’re pretty much self sufficient on fruit and veg, but for those people wanting organic fruit and veg, the food co-op also sources fruit and veg boxes.

Check out the co-ops website for more info – and if you’re in the Illawarra, we hope to see you at the film screening!

This week marks three years since we first started our adventure in urban sustainability here at Happy Earth, turning a typical house and lawn into a healthy, efficient home and abundant food garden. It’s been an epic and rewarding adventure, made so much more rewarding by being able to share it with you! Being part of an on-line community of people passionate about growing good food, eating good food and enjoying all things good and simple in life has been so amazing for us – thank you to you all for being a part of this inspiring and uplifting community!

Recently the lovely Emily Duncan, a journalist student from the local univeristy, popped around to create a short audio visual film about our adventure in sustainability. She did such a fabulous job! See below for the finished product:

Waking to a glittering coat of frost over the veggie patch is a very rare thing indeed in our subtropical climate. But some exceptionally chilly overnight temperatures brought a touch of frost to our garden this week...

Luckily there was no damage to our trees, and only a few of our veggies took a turn for the worse. The new cheery tomato seedlings aren’t looking to happy, but hopefully they might hang in there...

And the leaves of our sweet potatoes which we use as a ground cover in the food forest look a bit worse for wear...

On the up side, a bit of a chill is good for stone fruit like apricots and plums, so maybe they will reward us extra well this coming summer!

Anyone else been touched by frost lately? If so, we hope it hasn’t done too much damage at your place!

If you could only grow five veggies at home, what would they be? Goodness that is a tough question for us! We grow 35 different veggies - artichoke, broad beans, bokchoy, green beans, Brussels sprouts, beetroot, broccoli, carrot, cabbage, capsicum, cauliflower, celery, corn, cucumber, eggplant, fennel, garlic, kale, kohlrabi, leek, lettuce, parsley, parsnip, potato, pumpkin, snow peas, spinach, silverbeet, spring onion, rocket, squash, spaghetti squash, sweet potato, tomatoes and zucchini.  Phew! So who would be in our top five and why? Drum roll please...

1) Cherry Tomatoes - They grow like weeds and fruit for us pretty much all year round. We’re still picking them fresh from the vine, and have young seedlings in now for early spring harvest! Unlike other tomatoes, they’re so hardy and very resistant to pests. We use them so much in the kitchen - in salads, soups and pastas, on wraps and pizzas. We’d be lost without them!

2) Zucchini – Again they grow like nothing else, and as such as have become used to having them in almost every dish over the summer! Zucchini are a new gardener’s best friend, giving instant reward for little effort. We like zucchini best in stir-fries, and grated raw onto salad wraps.

3) Potatoes – Home grown potatoes are just delicious and taste so much better than store brought varieties. Slow cooked home grown potato wedges covered in spices and olive oil are just to die for. With bumper crops, there’s not much more satisfying than digging up a potato patch...

4) Corn – Juicy, sweet and oh so tender, fresh corn straight from the cob doesn’t even need to be cooked! But lightly steamed and with some melted butter – divine! A patch of corn in the garden is such an impressive site to behold. If you have any member of the grass family on your block, let it be this!

5) Onions – We probably eat more onions than any other vegetable – they’re the base of almost every meal! Onions are impossible for us to buy organically around here, so growing our own is the perfect solution. Easy to grow and good at being stored for long periods, onions for us are a must, and we’ve just planted a whole bunch for harvesting in the summer.

What would be your top five veggies to grow and why?

May and June have been full of gorgeous citrus, hearty pumpkins, and sweet passionfruit...

Glorious weekend breakfasts down by the frog pond...

Harvests of fresh ginger....

Handfuls of chillis...

And for our chooks - much fun having dirt baths!

Though making paper is a bit of an art and takes a full day of being crafty, seeing all your beautiful sheets of paper lined up to dry makes it well worth the effort! Handmade paper is just so special – and if you read our last post you’ll know why we’re making this batch! This weekend has been gorgeously sunny and calm - a perfect weekend for paper making, as it helps the sheets dry quickly.

The process started by ripping 60 sheets of green used A4 office paper into little pieces, soaking the pieces in hot water for an hour and then adding them slowly to an old blender...

Blending the paper into a pulp, adding scoops of the pulp to a large container of water, giving the mix a swish and then creating a sheet by dipping in a frame and screen...

Gently transferring the paper to a drying card...

Peeling the paper off the cards once dry and admiring the final product of 58 sheets of beautiful 100% recycled A3 paper!

I was lucky enough to be able to borrow two simple paper making kits from friends (thanks Kel and Alex!), which have the frame you need to make paper. You sometimes see these kits at op shops, garage sales or e-bay. You can also make your own frames. If you’re keen to make paper at home, libraries often have helpful ‘how to’ books, or a quick Google search will give you lots of ideas!

This coming spring we’re getting married in our veggie patch, and would love to hear of any ideas you have for a nature-inspired, green wedding! In planning for our wedding to be a special, creative and eco-friendly celebration, so far our ideas are: 

• To have a lunchtime wedding with the ceremony in the veggie patch and reception in our home and garden. Afterwards we’ll go camping with family and friends on the Shoalhaven River to extend the celebrations in typical Ally and Rich style (we love camping!)
• Provide scrumptious in-season, organic vegetarian food from a fabulous local green caterer the Red Kitchen.  
• Create invitations out of hand made recycled paper (we’ve made handmade paper before and it’s really fun and easy – watch out for a blog about this!)
• Wear funky vintage clothing. Our wonderful crafty friend Annie is making a dress for Ally out of recycled vintage fabrics – see Annie’s blog for more details!
• Encouraging guests to car pool
• Find some simple wedding rings made out of recycled silver (preferably by a local artist – if you know of anyone who makes recycled silver rings, please forward us the details!)

We’d really love to hear of any other ideas you may have...

Our silkie chooks are on a roll with the egg laying at the moment. People often ask us how many eggs our two silkies lay, and we usually respond with “not a great deal, but they’re fabulous pets for the garden!” If you’re keeping chooks primarily for eggs, silkies probably won’t be your first pick of chicken breeds. But we love them because they’re irresistibly cute and fluffy, have great personalities (they’re really quite ditzy and very entertaining!), are easy to handle, good for kids to pick up and pat, and in a young garden they don’t cause too much damage. But having said that, they certainly do get stuck into scratching around the back garden – which is strategically sectioned off from the veggie patch of course! Along the edges of the mulch path is their favourite place to get digging – which means walking our mulch paths, you have to be careful not to twist an ankle in the pot holes dug by our two girls!

To be a bit more precise in answering the ‘how many eggs’ question, this year we’re keeping a tally of all the eggs our gorgeous silkies Gruma and Charma lay. So far they’ve laid 14 in January, 7 in February, 19 in March, 8 in April, and 20 already in May. Our girls are in their prime egg laying years, with Charma being two years old, and Gruma just a few months younger - if you read our post ‘Cock-a-doddle-oops-a-daisy’ you’ll know why the age difference! We’re not big egg eaters, so there is plenty of eggs for us to enjoy making veggie patties, pancakes and scrambled eggs every now and again. The yolk inside the eggs is such a gorgeous sunny yellow, full of much goodness – thanks girls! 

Lately we’ve raised many an eyebrow with our impressive bunches of homegrown bananas. Most people are really surprised to discover that bananas grow in Wollongong. In our subtropical frost free climate they can really thrive with a bit of care and strategic placement.

We grow mainly Cavendish bananas, which are the same kind you’ll find in the fruit market. Wollongong is not commercial banana growing country so there are no restrictions on growing bananas in your backyard like there are in areas of Queensland (see http://www2.dpi.qld.gov.au/horticulture/5201.html for details).

We planted our first bananas in December 2007...

And in just over two years, in March this year, we enjoyed our first crop of organic bananas. Compared to store bought bananas, our bananas were much sweeter and more yellow on the inside. The photo below shows a store bought banana on the left, and ours on the right - of course we have no bias here!

Off our first bunch of bananas we got about 150 bananas!  As well as sharing the banana love with family and friends, and making lots of banana cake, our freezer is full of trays of bananas, which are just divine when blended up in fruit smoothies.

Once established bananas will keep producing fruit forever (well for a really long time!), so we reckon they’re a must for every subtropical backyard.   Its no surprise that our best banana bunches at our place come from the ones that are getting fed our greywater and greenwaste from the vegie beds so keep this in mind if you are growing your own.

With 95% off our fresh produce coming from our suburban food forest garden and veggie patch, where always on the lookout for creative ideas on how to use and store whatever we have an abundance of. It’s quite a challenging art to create meals around whatever is in abundance, and prevent fresh produce from going to waste – if you’ve ever had 3 zucchini plants fruiting at once in the garden you’ll know what we mean!

Last week the new ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ website was launched in NSW, and it has some handy hints and tips about storing food and ideas for recipes. It also has some rather sobering stats about the amount of food that goes to waste in NSW from households alone – 800,000 tonnes of food a year, most of which could have been eaten. And this is to say nothing about the amount of food that supermarkets throw away...

The NSW website was inspired by a big Love Food Hate Waste campaign in the UK – and we must say we do find the UK website more useful and fun. It’s got a handy page where you can click on specific foods like bananas, eggs, or oranges, and access a range of recipes specific to that food. It’s also worth just checking out for the amusing way that the women on the page about using apples has a face that’s all shiny and round like a fresh apple, the guy on the potato page has a serious resemblance to this earthy vegetable, and the man on the lamb page is rather woolly looking!

 In a month full of sunshine and blissfully calm blue skies...

We’ve enjoyed a bounty of plump, sweet bananas...

Savoured the last of the corn and cherry tomatoes, and the first of the pumpkins ...

Warmed ourselves from the inside with the first of many soups to come over the cooler season...

Watched little seeds of coriander burst to life...

What was April about for you in your garden?

A few weeks back we were lucky enough to harvest an abundance of persimmons from some graceful old persimmon trees nearby – and we’re surprised we haven’t turned orange with the number of these soft, sweet fruits we have consumed recently!

Though at this time of year persimmons available in the shops, many people aren’t familiar with these fruits. The first thing you need to find out when offered a persimmon fruit is if it's astringent or non-astringent. Astringent persimmons can only be eaten when they are really ripe and have turned deep orange/red on the outside and soft and jelly-like on the inside. Eating an astringent persimmon when it's not ripe instantly fills your mouth with a horrible dryness due to high levels of tannin – trust us from experience, it’s not something you want to try! On the other hand, non-astringent persimmon can be eaten when they are still firm and crisp like an apple.

The persimmons we harvested were of the astringent kind. Many of the persimmons we picked were firm and pale orange and they ripened quickly in the fruit bowl – within a couple of days to a week. The persimmons we picked that had only just started to change from green to orange are only just now starting to ripen. 

The catch with astringent persimmons is that they’re a bit like an avocado – once they’re ripe you really need to use them within a few days. Once ripe and soft and squishy, they’re susceptible to damage and splitting. Though you can eat ripe astringent persimmon on their own, we prefer using them in more creative ways. 

So we've been enjoying lots of persimmon and banana smoothies for breakfast...

Snacking on frozen persimmon pops (especially yummy when mixed with yogurt and cinnamon)...

and baking persimmon scones (thanks to a recipe from Manisha). 

We’ve also squeezed the pulp out of lots of persimmons and frozen it in tubs, to later defrost and add to fruit smoothies. Last year we also dried quite a few persimmons which also worked well.

We’d love to hear any other suggestions you may have about how to use permissions in a creative way – please do share your ideas!

With demonstrations on topics such as backyard chook keeping, veggie gardening and vegetarian cooking, and a range of local and organic produce stalls the upcoming Sustainable Illawarra Harvest Festival is shaping up to be an incredible afternoon celebrating local, home-grown and sustainable food! A bunch of community ‘foodie’ groups such The Flame Tree Community Food Co-op and the North Wollongong PCYC Community Garden will also be there, so if you’re a local in the Illawarra, it’s a great oppurtunity to connect with others in the community passionate about growing and eating real food. There’ll also be roving performers, short film screenings and a farm yard animals nursery for the kids, so bring along your picnic blanket and soak up the atmosphere from 1-4pm in Osborne Park, Cliff Road, Wollongong (opposite Belmore Basin).

I (that’s Ally) have been helping organise this event as part of my role on the Sustainable Illawarra project, and will be there on the Sustainable Illawarra info stall on the day – so if you head along to the festival, pop over and say hi! The Sustainable Illawarra stand will also be where you can enter your produce in the weirdest and wackiest homegrown produce competition – so bring along those alien looking carrots that inevitably come out of a backyard veggie patch, or strange any rare veggies! For a full program of events check out the Sustainable Illawarra website. Hope to see you there!

Bananas, basil, pumpkins, limes, eggs, eggplants, heirloom seeds, even dragon fruit – what a bounty of local backyard produce was on the table at this morning’s 'Waste Not! Fruit and Veg Swap' at the North Wollongong PCYC Community Garden!  

We arrived with baskets full of corn, Italian basil, Thai basil, cherry tomatoes, zucchini and spaghetti squash...

And left very pleased with some pumpkin, lime, carrots, dragon fruit, and packets of heirloom cabbage, chicory, lettuce and sunflower seeds...

But most of all we enjoyed meeting and catching up with fellow passionate backyard food growers, sharing stories about what’s been growing well, what’s been a challenge to grow, and local community sustainability events coming up.

This fabulous fruit and veg swap has been happening on the 4^th Saturday morning of the month for some time now – thanks to the co-ordinator John and support from the PCYC community garden crew! For more details about the swap visit http://thegardennorthgong.blogspot.com/ and for an inspiring read about fruit and veg swaps in Oz, check out http://newmatilda.com/2010/03/24/ill-raise-you-six-granny-smiths

Like with miracle fruit, we couldn’t help but have a bit of scepticism when we first heard about the spaghetti squash.   A vegetable that once cooked, falls into strand-like pasta? But always game to try something different and unusual, we planted one at the back of the veggie patch.  With all the rain we’ve been having it grew like crazy over the trelise, and in no time produced these large veggies that looked like inflated zucchinis...

So we harvested our first one, cut it in half, rubbed a bit of olive oil over the halves and baked it in the oven for about 40 minutes until it was nice and soft...

Then we tipped each half on its side, grabbed a fork and scrapped away at the flesh – and it came away in strands like fine angel hair pasta!

The flesh was quite juicy, so we removed some of the juice, trying not to break the pasta strands (we used a salad spinner – didn’t work the best, but helped a bit!). Most people discard the seeds – but the seeds were nice and soft after being baked and as seeds are so nutritious, we left the seeds in with our ‘pasta.’ A good dollop of pesto and some fried haloumi cheese added to the mix, and we had a delicious veggie pasta dish!

The texture really was like pasta – just a bit softer and moister. It’s definitely worth giving spaghetti squash a go if you have the room in your veggie patch!

The acerola cherries claim to fame is that its cherry-sized fruits have one of the highest known natural concentrations of vitamin C. With 1,600mg of vitamin C per 100g, it puts citrus fruits like oranges to shame – they only have about 50mg of vitamin C per 100g! While many people spend money on synthetic vitamin C tablets, all we need to do around here for an extra Vitamin C boost is munch on a few acerola cherries!

Acerola Cherries originated from South America, and are sometimes also called Barbados Cherries. They’re fast growing small trees - we planted out our small acerola cherry tree about 2 years ago, and it’s already about 2 metres high and loaded with little green fruits, which turn red when ripe. The fruits are juicy and slightly sweet with a hint of apple flavour and are best eaten fresh. Inside them is a few small seeds which are inedible. They don’t have an amazing flavour, or a lot of flesh, but we enjoy eating them because we know how good they are for you! There’s also a stunning tree to have in the garden, with their small green evergreen leaves, and pretty pink flowers.  Acerola cherry trees have a straggly habit and can grow up to 5 metres in height, but can be kept smaller by pruning.

Thriving in frost-free tropical and subtropical areas, the acerola does well in the Illawarra. For more details about growing acerolas successfully, check out our Acerola Cherry fruit tree profile.