baguettes

I made my first baguettes this weekend, using the bread machine to knead and shaping by hand.  It was a "rustic" recipe of white bread flour with a bit of rye.  I wanted to document how it went so I can look back on this and laugh.

As you can see I did something a bit wrong - both loaves split all the way down one side!  I think the main problem was that the loaves stuck to the pan when they were left to rise, so when they did their final "puff up" in the oven, the bottoms couldn't stretch and it tore.  Next time I won't just rely on cornmeal on the pan, they're getting a layer of nonstick spray!

Overall though, not a bad effort!  The crust was very thick with a good hearty tear to it and the flavour was lovely.  But next time I'm hoping the inside will be a bit lighter and fluffier.  And to be honest, I reckon this style of rustic thick crust is better for a batard (oval shape) than a baguette.  But this is part of the joy I get from making bread - I learn so much from every loaf!

worm poo power

I decided to harvest out my first lot of worm castings from the worm farm.  They've been fattening up on newspaper shreddings and lots of fruit - my worms are picky, they don't seem to care for veggies and prefer fruit.  Here's my first pile of castings.  It's hard to avoid picking out some worms when you dig the castings out of the worm farm so I borrowed this technique.  You make a pile of the castings and the worms instinctively go to the center where it's darkest.  Then you pull away the outer layers of castings a few times, giving them time to run away in between, until you're left with a little pile of mostly worms, which you put back in the farm to keep fattening up. 

The castings are wonderfully rich, like very soft clay, and no they don't smell like poo they just smell like dirt.  It's a pure, super-injection of moisture-retaining organic life.  You can put it as-is into the ground when you plant things, or it dissolves really easily in water into a kind of slurry, which is good for rejuvenating tired potting mix.  Some of my beds are a thin layer of good soil over a dense layer of inorganic builder's rubble, which makes it hard to enrich the deeper layers without disturbing plant roots.  But this liquid slurry should be able to seep down into the poor soil and help bring it to life.  I'm looking forward to seeing how worm poo power improves my garden!

murraya goes in

I decided to order my murraya online.  The alternatives were to buy 6 decent-sized shrubs for about $20 each, or a set of 8 seedlings for $30 total.  I bought the seedlings from a mail-order nursery on eBay and they arrived promptly, well-wrapped and looking happy.

Actually I reckon they're not seedlings but rooted cuttings, by the looks of it.  Which makes me wonder if I shouldn't have tried to take cuttings myself!  But oh well, no real harm done.  I just hope they adjust to Melbourne's winter, they were grown up in Queensland and it's been a bit nippy lately.  Not freezing but lows around 8 or 9 some nights.

In fact I was concerned enough I kept them inside their first night.  But this weekend they went in to their new homes in the back garden bed.   They're so small there's no point taking a photo down the whole line, you wouldn't be able to see them!  The soil I've infilled with is incredibly moisture-retaining which is great because the old soil below it is very sandy and poor.  I just hope it's not too boggy to be honest.  But so far they're doing fine, they haven't dropped dead yet!

It'll be a few years until they're a decent size, that's what you get when you save money and buy seedlings.  But in time they should be filling the back porch with the scent of orange blossom!

brassica progress

What do you reckon, is my broccoletti a bit oversized?  My broccoli last year never got leaves this big!  And they're a bit brittle, two leaves have already snapped off.  It also got attacked by aphids a few weeks back and even though I killed them off quickly, it sure warped that set of leaves badly (not pictured, they're only half the size of this monster and misshapen).  In any case, I wonder if I went a bit too heavy on the fertilizer pellets, though the kale is normal sized.

The gai lan is already at harvest size, at least I think so, because it's forming little heads.  I'm not sure what to expect really.  But I thought there would be many more leaves per stem, there are only about 6 big leaves per stem.  And unfortunately they're not really edible.  The caterpillars I can deal with - little holes don't bother me.  But the citrus leave miners I cannot tolerate.  They're all over the cumquats which doesn't really matter.  But they also attacked my lettuce last year and they're all over the kale and gai lan.  They're awful because they burrow into the leaf and the only way to get rid of them is to rip off the part of the leaf they're in.

So the gai lan is a bit of a failure, but at least it was a quick failure!  I have some seeds for "red arrow broccoli" I might try instead, it's meant to be purple/red but turn green when you cook it.  Sounds like fun!

big little twig

My designer twig continues to power on with another set of new growth coming in now.  It's come so far since it was delivered in December 2008!  But as you can see, it's starting to look a bit too large for its pot.  The problem is I don't have a lot of room for another big pot!  It's pretty much at the point where it would want a half-wine-barrel sized pot but I don't think one would even fit on the porch.

Luckily at about the same time I was looking to dig out an old stump.  Along the front path (at the end of the row of birches and plums) there used to be a big hebe bush.  We cut it down last year because it was growing out into the path.  And I finally got tired of looking at the stump and wasting the space.  So I started to dig around it and hacking through a mat of roots ... before I got this surprise!

Whoever planted the hebe didn't even bother to take it out of the pot.  Now you might do that for something like a fig tree if you wanted to keep the size under control.  But for something like a hebe I can't imagine it was anything but laziness.

Add to that the horrible quality of the soil.  Starting from the surface, there's a layer of organic matter from decomposed leaves, then a thick mat of roots (since the hebe roots had nowhere to go but up and out!).  Under that mat the soil was bone-dry (despite decent rains in the last month) and builder's-dust-dead.  There were chunks of brick, concrete, glass, rusted metal, bits of tile and the occasional nail.

The plastic pot was a blessing in disguise because once I cut the roots I was able to leverage the pot out of the ground.  Notice how the roots weren't able to grow out from the bottom, perhaps because the soil down that far was so rubbish.  You can just see how at the top of the photo the soil's fairly dark and "living" but at the bottom it's pale and dry.

In any case, I still think this is the best new home for my designer twig.  I've piled on rich black compost and some of the soil I bought a few weeks ago and dug it in.  In a week or two I'll put the twig in its new home and hope it thrives!

brassicas and the final melons

First, and update on my brassicas.  The broccoletti and kale and the big tub have gone absolutely bonkers!  I think a few pellets of concentrated fertilizer probably helped on that front.  I have, however, been battling and absolute plague of cabbage white butterflies.  Just when we thought winter had begun, we got another seemingly endless streak of warmish weather.  As long as the weather is warm, the butterflies will be breeding like crazy.  I started by carefully scraping butterfly eggs off every day, but after a while each day there were dozens and dozens of eggs and the plants got bigger and bigger.  Eventually I lost ground and a few caterpillars managed to hatch so I resorted to Dipel.

I love brassicas, after the long slow growth of fruiting plants like tomatoes, pumpkins and melons, it's so rewarding to grow a green veggie like broccoli and see them go absolutely nuts.  I should be able to start picking kale leaves for soup in a few weeks, I don't know how long the broccoli will take.  But the butterflies are horrible, next year I'll prop up some kind of gauze or mesh to keep them off the plants.

The Chinese broccoli is also getting nibbled as you can see.  I'm seeing if I can squeeze 2 into a pot but only 1 in the other pot to hedge my bets. 

I left the melons going as long as I could because the green nutmeg melon set three fruit late in the season.  But unlike pumpkins, melons only ripen when there's some good heat on them.  On top of that, as you can see the vine's not doing too well.  It's been hit hard by powdery mildew and an absolute plague of aphids.  This weekend is probably our last warm weekend (25 to 27 for the last four days!  It's meant to be winter!) so I bit the bullet and picked the melons this weekend.

They were a decent size for mini melons, the one on the right in particular.  As you can see, though, they're still quite dark green between the webbing and they're not meant to ripen after picking.  I left then on the bench for a few days but we're away for a week starting tomorrow so I cut the two small ones open today.

As you can see the flesh is much thinner around the outside compared to the Minnesota midget melons.  They're meant to be green like honeydew melon but not so dark green around the outside rind.  The flesh of the first one was hard and unripe.  Surprisingly, the second one was almost ripe and dripping wet - once again too much water!  So I put the largest one into the fridge to see if I can eat it when we return.

It may just be the premature harvest but the flavour wasn't that great. I think next year I'll stick with the Minnesota Midget.

focaccia and possum

Two very random things.  The first is that I made my second focaccia.  I promise not to take pictures of every single bread product I make but I was very happy with the improvement on this focaccia over the last one - more light and fluffy this time because its second rise went better.  Thick enough to slice and use for sandwiches if we wanted.  It didn't last enough for sandwiches this time!

The second is a random photo of our local possum.  I was taking out the compost last night and heard a rustle.  A quick peek revealed that the little poss-poss was caught out behind a shrub at the back fence.  She looked a lot smaller than the big fatty I snapped in the fig tree, so my guess is this is a female and the other was a male.  They are pretty freaking adorable even if they can be annoying.  I'd much rather share my garden with them than with rats (which I have also spotted on the fence before).

winter plans

I've been thinking hard about two places in the garden that need work.  The first is the big square bed that used to be the fish pond, pictured here.  After filling it in last year I've spent the year growing vegetables in it whilst I decide what to do in the long-term.  Vegetables aren't a good long-term solution because only the bottom left corner gets enough sun, which is an awful waste of the other 3/4 of the bed.

So I've spent over a year considering what to plant instead.  I really wanted to plant a fruit tree of some kind but I just don't think it'll work.  Most are too big - citrus would want more sun - most smaller fruit trees need pollinators.  So then I moved to considering small ornamental trees like a crepe myrtle.  I want something that will grow a few metres and spread out in a pleasant umbrella shape.  I think this part of the garden would appreciate some proper "dappled shade".  It's a funny mix of boiling-hot sun and deep shade with not a lot in between, and the left-hand bed gets a lot more sun than the right-hand bed.  A spreading tree of summer shade will even this out, letting me plant shadier plants on both sides.  I have dreams of Japanese windflowers to replace the Statice some day (as it's a sun-lover), and probably some more hellebore since it seems to be doing pretty well in the other bed.  A small spreading tree would also be a nice compliment to the oakleaf hydrangea, which will read a decent size in time.  Wouldn't want anything too small or it would be dwarfed by the hydrangeas.

But to be honest I'm not crazy about crepe myrtles and again there's a slight concern it wouldn't get enough sun.  Then finally, a wonderful suggestion from the OzGrow forum, a small tree I've never heard of before called Vitex agnus-castus.  Like the crepe myrtle it's a small deciduous shrub or tree, but instead of white or pink flowers it makes long crazy spikes of purple.  Purple suits me much better, and all the other flowers in that corner are either purple or orange/yellow.  Vitex also tolerates shade better than crepe myrtle.  Hopefully it'll look like this.

The other tough spot is behind the house where the camellias used to be.  I've considered a number of option but I think I'll go with Murraya paniculata, also known as mock orange or orange jasmine.  It's a member of the citrus family, tough and not fussy, but I was sold on it when I walked past a hedge in flower.  It has the most heavenly scent of orange blossom you can imagine, it actually stopped me in my tracks.

After a bit of deliberation I decided to save the last two pine bushes even though I really don't particularly like them.  Hedges aren't cheap and leaving them means I can buy two less Murraya than otherwise.

But before I undergo either project I need to top up those beds.  I've learned that soil tends to sink quite a bit after a while so it's important I fill up the beds as much as I can.  Which meant a call to Fulton's garden supplies for a big pile of dirt and another of barkdust.

I only ordered a cubit metre of soil and a half-metre of barkdust but I reckon I got a lot more than I paid for!  Just like last year I now have a big pile of dirt in the driveway.  It's a lovely soil called a "three-way" mix of two soils and horse manure.  It's quite light and friable and full of organic matter which is just the thing for my beds.  I have so much extra I'll probably spread the love into some of the beds with really inorganic "builder's rubble".

I've filled up a fair bit now as you can see, hopefully some of the dirt will settle and I can pile on some more.  I've certainly got plenty of time, winter's the best time to plant deciduous trees. 

Exciting times ahead for this winter!

even more fun with the bread machine - updated!

I've been enjoying making bread in the bread machine about once a week - we eat toast on the weekends so Friday night I'm usually throwing a loaf into the machine. I decided I wanted to branch out and not just learn to make better bread, but to see what kind of breads I can make. I've made pizza crusts, bagels, and the richest most amazing brioche imaginable (which made the most amazing French toast I've ever had). Whilst trying to find resources on bread making the name of one book kept coming up - an out-of-print book called "Rustic European Breads from your Bread Machine". The Easter long weekend has given me time to have a real play.
My first try was focaccia with garlic and sage. It didn't rise properly (I messed up and put olive oil on it before it rose instead of after) but the taste was absolutely amazing - rich, salty and olive-oily. The sage is from the garden which is my excuse for this rather non-gardeny entry.

If by any chance you own and love your breadmaker, take the extra effort to find this book online and order it. I can't wait to bake from it again soon!

EDIT: Two more creations over the long weekend. First I made bagels again using the recipe from the book and quite a few learnings from the first batch. They definitely turned out better this time! Look how plump and golden they are.

And finally, I made a fougasse which is a French flatbread like focaccia with green olives in it. I've got to say, leave the focaccia to the Italians - the French fougasse was downright bland in comparison. It didn't have the rich flavour of the focaccia at all, even though the olives were nice. I'll stick with focaccia.

long weekend

Easter is a long weekend in Australia so it's a good opportunity to get a lot of projects out of the way.  I've got a bit of pruning to do but the big project is to clear out the bed along the south side of the house.  As I mentioned in this post, the camellias in this bed have always struggled and a few die each year.  I haven't quite decided what to replace them with but I'm thinking of a simple hedge of Choisya ternata (Mexican orange blossom).  It seems to be a nice hardy hedge that will tolerate both the sun and shade of that bed, and twice a year they're coated with white blossoms that smell like orange blossoms. I once walked by a Choisya hedge in blossom and stopped dead in my tracks, the smell was so incredible. 

I already transplanted one of the camellias last week, I'm going to try transplanting two more to the bed out near the street with the birch trees.  They're currently soaking in a Seasol solution to help them with the shock.  The small one is one of the new ones I bought last winter and the big one is one of the originals.  They both got a trim too to make up for losing roots in the transfer.  I think I'll chop out the pine trees too, they suck so much water and nutrients from the soil.  After that the beds need a top-up of soil before replanting them.

In the meantime, here's the final harvest I got from the soybeans.  I probably could have gotten more if I'd been happy to leave the ones that weren't quite ripe yet, but that was a bit tedious.  So I just picked off everything plump and put the rest in the compost.

It may not look like many soybeans but I eat them as a snack, fresh from the pods, and don't eat too many in one go.  So it's actually quite a lot for this purpose!  They're absolutely lovely though - not quite as big as ones you can buy imported from Japan but a lovely flavour, rich and sweet like a pea.

Update:  Here's a photo of the camellias in their new home, I hope they like it!