Australian native birds beneficial in the garden

I love to encourage the native birds to come into the garden. Not only are they a joy to watch but they also control many predatory bugs in the garden.
From the tiny blue wrens



To the very busy Honeyeaters


To the lovely noisy parrots.



They all play their part in keeping the bugs under control and are welcome. But I do draw the line at their idea of sharing the fruit that I grow. So I net my trees and berry bushes


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Pests attacking basil seedlings

I think that the sap sucking,leaf eating bugs had sentries in the garden to alert them when I planted lush little basil seedlings. I would come out in the morning and find all that was left of my beautiful seedling was a mutilated stalk. I gave up trying to plant them in the open garden because they were obviously so irresistible to slugs, snails and others.
So I tried to get sneaky and put a barrier between them and my plants.
I planted them in pots, but as a further barrier I put them up on a wire netting frame about two feet off the ground.
And so far, so good, the plants are surviving nicely.
Soon I will be making basil pesto using the same recipe as I make for rocket pesto.



In the background is my asparagus bed but more about that later!

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Blackbirds making a mess of garden beds and paths. A solution!

I love birds in the garden but the blackbirds make a huge mess of my paths and garden borders. As fast as I mulch my garden beds and my pot plants they spread the mulch everywhere over paths and verandas in their search for worms. This really defeats the whole purpose of mulching as well as making a huge mess.
I have finally defeated them!
As I have said before I keep things in case they will be useful in the future. I had kept some cheap plastic gutter guard that had never really worked. So what I did was stretch this along the garden edge and peg it down with some small tent pegs ( but wire looped over would also work).




I lightly covered the mesh with some mulch so that you could not see it but not enough to make the blackbird interested.




Days later the path is still clear!





And for pot plants I found that I had kept some small offcuts of the fine wire used for repairing screen doors. So I just cut that to the size of the pot and put it over the mulching in the pot and I am a winner here too!




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Growing Rocket

Rocket has to be the easiest thing to grow. Snails and slugs are not really keen on it unlike soft lettuce varieties.
The rocket plants in the picture below have gone to seed and I will let them dry off.




Once these are dry I either do one of two things. I throw them on the garden where I would be happy for them to grow.



Or alternatively I hang the plants, seed heads down, in an old pillowcase to collect the seeds. Then I keep them in a clean airtight jar for planting.
Like Chard I have pockets of rocket all over the garden. And I start new plantings every few weeks to ensure a continuous supply.

Not sure if it is called rocket because it grows at rocket speed!



The flowers are pretty and edible and look great in a salad!


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Rocket Pesto

Freshly picked rocket

I just picked a huge bunch of rocket from my garden so I'm going to make up a batch of my rocket pesto.

Food processor

I put the roughly chopped rocket into my food processor. Now I love garlic so I add two crushed big cloves. It is worth mentioning here I don't have a partner so I'm fine but you might want to tone the garlic down! It's up to you. Then I add a small handful of lovely South Australian almonds, a good slug of a local cold pressed olive oil and some good salt.

Yum!

Turn on the processor and let it do it's thing! I often add a bit more olive oil depending on how it looks.

Now the taste test. Whilst I would love crusty fresh bead, I am trying to diet so I have become addicted to organic thin corn cakes!

Pass the wine!

In my crazy logic, the calories I have saved on not having bread can now be used on a good dollop of Adelaide Hills Udder Delights famous goat curd. Pass the wine please!

Bottled pesto

Transfer what you have made into a clean sterilized jar with a tight fitting lid. This will keep for about a week in the fridge. For a really quick meal cook some pasta, drain it and then stir a tablespoon of the pesto through the warm pasta. Put your favorite cheese on top and stand back for the compliments!

Rainbow Chard Pasta Sauce

I have so much rainbow chard in my garden so I'm thinking up lots of ways to use it. Today I'm making a rainbow chard pasta sauce fresh from the garden!

Fresh from the garden

Freshly picked chard! I will rinse this off now in a bucket so that I can save the water for my pot plants as it is rainwater and precious now that summer has begun!

Chopping

Chop the stem parts finely if you want to use them so they will cook properly.

Chopped leaves

You don't have to be as fussy when chopping the leaves but be sure to discard any really tough stems if you find any. This pan is very full but it will cook down. I will only add about1 cups of water. I don't add salt but if you usually add salt to your veg then do so or wait to add salt when you make this up in a recipe.

Cooked and drained

This is the cooked and drained product. It really cooks down a lot! You can freeze it into small plastic bags for later use in sauces and soups. When you defrost it drains off any more liquid that comes out as it thaws.

Cooking onion for the sauce

Chop two onions and fry them in a little vegetable oil with two cloves of crushed garlic and some good salt. I like Australian lake salt, which is harvested from a 4 million year old natural salt lake situated in the remote regions of western Australia. 
Add about half the cooked spinach and continue to fry for about five minutes whilst stirring to make sure it does not catch.

Add tomato sauce

I am quite a fan at present of Woolworths Macro Brand Organic Diced Italian tomatoes so add a tin (I freeze my own tomatoes to use in recipes like this but have almost run out!). In summer I will show you my easy ways to make tasty tomato bases to freeze to add to things.
Add one sachet of tomato paste. I use the Leggos no added salt ones. I use the sachets because I found I wasted too much if I bought the jars!

Cooking

Continue to cook over a low heat, stirring often as it might catch. Taste it now to see if it needs more salt to your taste but here is the secret ingredient... Add two level teaspoons of sugar! Yes I was skeptical at first too! Stir it through and now taste it again. It just takes away the super sharpness of the tomatoes.

Pecorino Cheese

This is a very nice chilli pecorino that I am going to use but any parmesan or pecorino grated or shaved is your choice.
Now cook some of your favourite pasta, top it with a generous spoon of the sauce and top with cheese!

Dinner is served!

 Very easy to make and very tasty! It's also ideal for vegetarians and even vegans if you don't use cheese.

Enjoy!

Strawberry Disaster

I watch lots of garden shows and read lots of gardening magazines for tips and ideas. This one sounded good in principle but has not worked at all. This has been one of my failures. The idea was to line a pallet with hessian or something similar and fill it with compost. Next step is to make pockets and plant the strawberries in the pockets.

I thought it sounded great in theory and would solve the millipede problem and be easy to net. Wrong! Well it would be easy to net and I don't have millipedes because I don't have much fruit either. When we first put it up we had it too upright. So whilst the top plants got water the rest missed out. Then I put it on more of an angle then the top doesn't hold much water and the rest still didn't get much water. It hasn't worked. 

If I had used my brains I would have realised that unless you put drip lines inside the pallet water was never going to get there. And it would waste water so I will be dismantling this and planting the strawberries in containers. 

Ah well, we live and learn!

I do however have lots of strawberries growing in other parts of my garden but they are not netted and I think they are the birds share of my garden bounty! However the biggest problem is Spanish millipedes.

These loathsome creatures were accidentally introduced to Australia about 20 or 30 years ago and have devastated many crops. As soon as the strawberries show any colour they invade. They hollow the strawberry out so there is just a paper thin shell left. 

They have no natural predators here, the birds won't touch them and they live in soil and mulch as they love damp places. So I have planted my strawberries in containers so that they are off the ground (easier for picking too) and I can net them. These are in the upside down lid of an old barbecue. And it is working well!

Sometimes things work and sometimes they don't but gardening is always a learning process!