Adventures in Urban Sustainability

Bunya Nuts – Enjoying this wonderful bushtucker

2012-02-13T04:41:12Z

Bunya nut trees are majestic, towering pines that produce huge cones filled with tasty nuts that are sweet and starchy when cooked, rather like a deliciously nutty flavoured potato, or chestnuts. Growing naturally in pockets of rainforest in Queensland, they have special significance to Aboriginal people, who would have special gathering at the times when Bunya nuts were in abundance.

These slow growing trees were sometimes planted by early settlers, and old trees can be found at various places in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The other week we were lucky to have a friend show us a magical stand of old Bunya trees that had been growing on a property on the far south coast of NSW for many, many decades.

Every few years mature Bunya Nut pines fruit prolifically between December and March, and luckily for us it was fruiting time! Bunya nut cones are huge, covered in spikes, can weigh up to 10kg, and fall from dizzying heights – meaning they could be quite lethal and not the kind of tree you’d want to plant in a suburban garden! You really don’t want to hang around under Bunya Nuts trees when they’re fruiting. It’s safest to collect cones that have fallen to the ground and rolled out from under the trees. Otherwise make your harvesting run under the trees very swift, not when the wind is blowing, and preferably with a hard hat! Slow Food Australia suggests that cones should be harvested and processed within a week of the cones falling.

The easiest way to break open the cones is with an axe.

Each nut is encased in an individual fibrous packaging that then needs to be peeled off.

Then you’re down to the nut in the shell. We found about 50 nuts in our cone, but there can be up to 100 depending on the size of the cone. There’s different ways to process the nuts, and we went with the method of boiling for about half an hour, and then splitting them open with pillars to reveal the yummy nut inside.

It is quite difficult to pry out the nut this way though, and if we have the chance to enjoy Bunya nuts again we’d try Patricia Gardener’s technique of splitting the tips open with a hammer first, then roasting them for half an hour and cracking them with a hammer.

We enjoyed snacking on our boiled Bunya nuts on their own – they really do have a delicious flavour and texture, like nutty potato. They were also a treat ontop of a veggie pasta dish.

Bunya nuts can also be turned into pesto or blended with honey to make a nice spread for toast. Have you ever seen a Bunya nut tree, or had the chance to enjoy the nuts?

The fruit fly menace

2012-02-04T20:39:52Z

There’s little more disappointing than opening a gorgeous fruit to find it infested with fruit fly maggots! Fruit fly is a serious agricultural pest in our part of the world, and summer is when they’re in full swing. There’s over 250 species of fruit fly in Australia, but thankfully only a handful damage food crops. The worst offender in our region is the Queensland fruit fly.

For the most part, our strategy for dealing with fruit fly is to grow trees that have a high resistance to fruit fly in our climate. Bananas, paw paw, cherimoyas, babaco, Atherton raspberry and many more fruit trees generally don’t get fruit fly in our area (for a full list see details in our Illawarra Edible Garden Guide!). We find in our coastal climate the trees fruit fly love the most are the stonefruits – plums, peaches, nectarines and apricots. Guavas and fejoas are also quite susceptible. Our neighbours have a peach tree which is badly infested each year, with all the fruit ruined by fruit fly.

Stonefruit are just delicious, and grow so well in our climate. So the way we manage to grow them organically is by keeping dwarf varieties in a pot. This way it’s easy to bag individual fruit with fruit fly exclusion bags when they are very young. As our trees grow, next summer we plan on netting the whole tree in the pot, to prevent fruit fly getting in. Netting trees that are growing in the garden, rather than being kept to dwarf size in a pot, is much more challenging and high maintenance – hence off the cards for us in our low maintenance garden! In the same way, rather than grow large tomatoes which can be highly susceptible to fruit fly, we grow small cherry tomatoes in the veggie patch as they’re much more resistant and generally don’t require bagging for protection.

The Victorian Department of Primary Industries recommends to minimise fruit fly infestations that backyard gardeners:

Prune trees to a height which makes fruit picking easy
Remove fruit as it ripens
Don’t place infected fruit directly in your compost bin, worm farm or garbage bin
Collect and dispose of infected fallen fruit by sealing fruit in a bag and leaving it in the sun for 5-7 days or placing it in the freezer.
Remove unwanted trees from your garden (and we would add, replace them with fruit trees that are not so susceptible to fruit fly!)

There’s also another good website at http://preventfruitfly.com.au/ which has info for backyard gardeners about fruit fly and control strategies.

We usually dispose of any infested fruits by freezing them. After freezing we add them to our compost bin.

Do you get fruit fly where you are? How do you manage gardening organically with this cheeky pest?

Magical handmade eco baby quilt!

2012-01-29T08:04:46Z

What could be more magical than a biodiversity-themed baby quilt that’s been handmade ethically and sustainably with love? We just had to share with you our excitement about receiving this most beautiful gift from our super talented crafty friend Annie from Pearl and Elspeth!

Featuring flowers, birds, and even cucumbers and oranges, it’s the funkiest baby quilt around. We can’t wait for shortly-to-arrive bub to enjoy it!

Annie is a such star at making gorgeous clothes and other amazing creations from recycled fabrics, including tea-towels, sheets and tablecloths. You can find her unique creations at Georgie Love - blatant plug for a friends ethical and sustainable business here! Be inspired by her latest eco makings and her beautiful families exciting adventure as they embark on creating a strawbale, passive solar house and food garden at http://pearlandelspeth.blogspot.com!

Our new Facebook page!

2012-01-15T06:55:54Z

We’ve just started a new Happy Earth Facebook page – so if you’re on Facebook, like us at http://www.facebook.com/ourHappyEarth! As well as notifying you about new posts we put up on this website, our Facebook page will be updated with additional snippets of inspiring info about sustainable living and growing good food.

We love being inspired by the Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/MilkwoodFarm. Do you have a favourite Facebook page that inspires you on your adventure in sustainable living?

Zucchini Slice/Muffins

2012-01-08T05:25:08Z

Zucchini and squash are the gifts of summer – and indeed they are now in abundance! Zucchini and squash are one of the fastest growing and most productive summer veggies, making them great for beginner and experienced gardeners alike. If you haven’t planted any yet, it’s not too late, pop some in the garden now!

A friend of ours passed on a recipe for zucchini slice – and it was so delicious we just had to share it with you!

Ingredients (serves 4-6 people):

2 large zucchini, grated
4 carrots, grated
2 onions, finely diced
1 and a 1/2 cups of grated cheese (if you have a dairy allergy, you can just leave the cheese out - they still taste great and hold together well)
7 eggs, lightly beaten (if you're short on eggs, we have had success using just 5 rather than 7)
1 cup self raising flour
salt and pepper to season

Steps:

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl
Place in large baking tray or slice/cake tin (we used a 23cm square silicon baking tray that’s 4cm deep). Alternatively, you can use a muffin tin to create zucchini muffins
Bake at 180 degrees for 35-45 minutes or until golden brown on top (if you cook them in a muffin tin, they will cook quicker - in around 25-35 mins)

What’s your favourite way to use zucchini and summer squash?

2011 highlights, 2012 dreams

2011-12-31T02:24:14Z

The thing we love most about sustainable living and permaculture gardening is there’s always something new to learn. Always some fascinating new area to dabble in, to research, to discover, to have a go at, and open up new and exciting possibilities for connecting to the simple joys of life. Learning about top bar bee keeping and getting our first swarm of bees was a real highlight for us this year. Watching them come in and out of their hive, legs loaded with bundles of bright yellow or orange pollen is a true delight.

Dabbling in publishing and having the opportunity to produce our Grow Local Illawarra Edible Garden Guide in partnership with the local Councils was such a wonderful highlight of 2011 for us. Who knows, maybe one day a book will follow...

As for 2012, well a precious new little one will be joining us on our adventure in urban sustainability, as we journey together from a couple to a family. We now produce enough food now in our little suburban food forest for a third mouth to enjoy! We also dream of doing a little eco renovation of the back part of our house, transforming a poorly designed unusable space with solar passive design and innovative building techniques...

With a lovely visit today from the wonderfully amazing permaculture visionaries, educators and farmers Nick and Kirsten from Milkwood (pictured below in our garden), we’re also now inspired to get into growing edible mushrooms down the back of our garden. Their upcoming Milkwood Permaculture mushroom workshops sound just brilliant!

What are your dreams for 2012?

Summer rainbows and Christmas wishes

2011-12-24T03:03:52Z

It’s been a summer of rain in our part of the world, scattered with those magic moments where rainbows shine spectacularly behind the Illawarra escarpment...

Wishing you a wonderful Christmas and festive season scattered with your own moments of magic!

Blue tongue lizards – our backyard buddies

2011-12-09T09:18:35Z

Four years ago blue tongue lizards were a sight unseen in our suburban garden of lawn, the odd palm and in-ground swimming pool surrounded by concrete. It took two years for our garden to become attractive to these gorgeous reptiles, and as our food forest has come to life they’ve come to make our garden their home. This time of year they’re often out and about sunning themselves – and we’re so pleased they’re here!

Removing all the lawn and replacing it with ground covers and shrubs is one of the most important ways we’ve helped create a habitat for local bluey’s to enjoy. Gardening organically, without pesticides and herbicides is a great way to encourage our reptilian friends. We also have a few rocks in various places around our garden - they especially love our handbuilt rock retaining wall. Our blue tongues also love sunning themselves on the mosaic path we made from the driveway we ripped up. Here on the path they are within easy reach of vegetation to hide in, compared to when it was a large barren driveway surrounded by lawn!

We also leave a few small pieces of broken terracotta pipes tucked into corners of the garden for them to shelter in.

Blue tongues are great at eating snails in an organic garden – that is when they’re not too blissed out sunning themselves!

Do you have blue tongues in your garden?

Free Illawarra Edible Garden Guide

2011-11-24T06:20:25Z

Following a fantastic ‘launch’ yesterday attended by over 250 people in Wollongong, the Illawarra Edible Garden Guide is now here for all to see!

You can now download a free PDF version by clicking on the cover icon on the right hand side of our homepage. If you live in the Illawarra, you can also pick up a free hardcopy from the admin buildings of Wollongong, Shellharbour or Kiama Councils. We’ve created the guide in partnership with the three local Councils, through the Illawarra Biodiversity and Local Food Strategy for Climate Change project, which has funding support from the NSW Environmental Trust. There’s also a brilliant new Grow Local: Illawarra Native Garden Guide, which is a wonderful ‘sister’ booklet to the food guide.

We think the 47 page booklet looks pretty fantastic – many thanks to the talented Bettina for her amazing graphic design work! It’s packed with photos not only from our garden, but other gardens in the Illawarra including some of our fantastic local community gardens. Though the focus is Illawarra specific, no matter where you live, we hope you find it an inspiring taste of growing food in the suburbs!

Chocolate pudding fruit

2011-11-20T08:36:26Z

With a name like this, how could one resist growing this delightful subtropical fruit tree? Native to Mexico and the forested lowlands of Central America, the Chocolate pudding fruit is a lush evergreen tree (Diospyros digna) that’s also known as Black Sapote. It’s closely related to the persimmon and it’s green fruits look similar to a persimmon being rounded and about the size of an apple. We have one Chocolate Pudding fruit tree growing in our backyard, and another in a large pot.

The flesh of the Chocolate Pudding fruit is rich and dark, like a chocolate mousse. The texture is also like a chocolate mousse, and the flavour is sweet, but quite mild. As they’re flavour is mild, we most enjoy eating them mixed with yogurt and honey, or blended into fruit smoothies. In Mexico apparently they enjoy mixing them with orange juice, or fresh passionfruits to enhance the flavour.

Chocolate Pudding fruits are grown commercially in northern Queensland but like with many subtropical fruits you rarely find them in the supermarket as they don’t transport or store so well. The green fruits are picked from August – December, when the calyx (the cap on the top – like with a tomato) has started to turn upward at the edges, and the fruit is still hard but of mature size. Off the tree the fruits will then darken slightly in colour and progressively soften over a few days to a week or two. At the ripe stage fruits should be very soft and squishy, and you should be able to press the skin easily with your fingers and leave an indent.

For more info about this interesting fruit tree that grow really well in the Illawarra, check out our Chocolate Pudding fruit tree profile.