Tag Archives: Gardening

  If you’d like a steady supply of homegrown food fast, whatever you do, grow radishes! Now is a great time to plant them because in summer they tend to bolt. You can use radishes to define rows between slower growing vegetables like beetroot and broccoli to remind you where you planted them, and, because they’re the fastest growing vegetable, …

  There’s an excitement and a lovely crunch as you run your finger down the side of a dried bean pod and split it open to collect the seed. If you haven’t done so already, now’s the time to collect your bean seeds to ensure a crop for next summer and potentially also meals over this winter. Some dried beans, …

  Winter is a wonderful time for growing greens and brassicas in Blackheath. On Sunday at Blackheath Community Farm we harvested cauliflower, kale, land cress, rocket, radish greens, a variety of lettuces and silverbeet. As well as being delicious raw, they can all be cooked as well.   Check out our recipe for Orechiette with cauliflower and walnut brown-butter pesto …

While we have onion seedlings on the way in the Blackheath Community Farm Greenhouse, ever since our first day at the Farm we’ve had green onions or scallions growing in our allium bed. We always cut them off and leave the root in the soil and, without fail, they  just keep coming back and growing more. If you’d like to …

Food, mothers and kindness bring people together – even during a pandemic. Tonight I felt nurtured by my mother’s dearest friend in Blackheath, who sent me home with a brown paper bag filled with small jars of medlar and quince jellies to taste test. She was eager for me to compare the two.   Carole Lee My mother used to …

The Allium Family LOVES winter in Blackheath. While Allium is Latin for garlic, this plant family also contains all the leeks, onions, garlics, chives, scallions and shallots. If you haven’t already done so, now’s the time to plant your seeds or bulbs. Here are some of my onion seedlings emerging now.     It’s also the time to go looking …

It’s almost five months since the ‘megafire’ burnt through the native section of Blackheath’s Campbell Rhododendron Gardens on the 21st December 2019, leaving Blackheathens with a charred landscape and a charred psyche.     The Fires were followed by flooding rains in early February which removed much of the top soil. Stones were left suspended on tiny sandstone towers … …

  Left alone to do its thing, nature creates the most extraordinarily biodiverse ecosystems. One of the world’s most respected biologists, E O Wilson, said that we needed to set aside half the world for nature so that it could support and regenerate enough biodiversity to support all life on earth.     Check out just what nature is capable …

  Last night we had the most delicious buckwheat pasta with parsley pesto and caramelized pumpkin. While we usually associate pesto with basil and summer, pesto’s lusciousness can be created with many different greens and nuts. You can make pesto with parsley, oregano, mint or many other edible greens … why not experiment with combining a few. I don’t, however, …

  It’s late Autumn in Blackheath and this morning I enjoyed figs and raspberries from the garden for breakfast. I’m currently picking both red and apricot raspberries. What’s great about the apricot ones is that so far I still haven’t had to net them … unlike the red ones!     I’m growing two varieties of figs – Brown Turkey …