I hope 2012 brings you everything you wish for, and in particular I hope it brings plenty of good things to eat. Happy New Year to all.
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How to Plait Garlic
I plaited my garlic yesterday, a little longer after harvest than ideal but it still worked fine. I’m not the neatest plaiter (my daughter often ends up looking a bit disheveled after I have a go at her hair) but I’m generally happy with how my garlic turns out and it does store well which is the aim of the exercise after all.
This is how I do it:
I generally leave the garlic to dry for about a week after harvesting before I plait it. Most of this had about 3 weeks drying time before I got round to plaiting it. In all honesty it didn’t seem to make a great deal of difference. It is important that the garlic does have some drying time though; if you plait it while there is too much moisture in the stalks they could rot.
To commence plaiting select the heads that will make up the plait. I usually plait 9 heads together. In an ideal world you want to select bulbs that will fit together nicely but really any will be fine.
Take 3 bulbs and a short piece of string and tie them together as shown below. You don’t really have to tie them but I find the plait easier to control if the bulbs are tied at this point.
The next step is to place a bulb so that it nestles in the middle of the three bulbs with its stalk facing up. Bring the stalk on the far right (it is the stalk of the left hand bulb) over the top of the newly placed stalk so that it becomes a middle stalk.
Then place a bulb to the left of the newly placed one. Bring the stalk on the far left, from the bottom right bulb, over so that it now sits in the middle. Place a bulb on the right. Bring the stalk from what was the first middle bulb over the newly placed one.
Repeat this process for another three bulbs. Then separate the stalks into groups of three.
Plait the stalks together until you get near to the top of the shortest ones. Tie off with string leaving a loop in the string for them to be hung. I usually try do loops of differing lengths so that different plaits sit at different heights on the same hook.
When I want to use a head of garlic I simply cut it off the plait. Clear as mud? The real secret of plaiting garlic is giving it a go, if you play around for long enough it will probably turn out fine.
Iceberg Lettuce
I can’t seem to grow Iceberg lettuce. I have tried and tried and tried but every time I seem to fail. My failures have been varied; from the plants simply dying, to going slimey, bolting too early and failing to heart. The below is typical of my failure to heart results.
The leaves seem to be the right sort of shape – they just aren’t growing into hearts; they are spiralling outwards instead. I guess they might be bolting but they don’t seem to have a main flower bit as yet.
What is the secret to growing this vegetable? I’m very keen to wrap some spring rolls and make San Choi Bao so any help would be gratefully appreciated.
Maybe I’m not giving them enough sun?
On the road with Suburban Tomato
As you may be aware I’ve recently been away camping. We went to Sydney and then down the NSW coast to Pambula. While I don’t want to bore anyone with my holiday snaps I did find some vegetables during our travels.
I was going to regale you with tales of an entirely container grown kitchen garden at a motel in Mittagong but they were full and the owner so annoying I don’t want to inadvertently promote their business in any way. (Does anyone really need a lecture on why you should book ahead or carry an accomodation guide when they are tired and hungry and have two fracitious pre-schoolers in the car?). I was also going to show you the lovely garden of a high school friend of mine who lives in Tathra but we spent so much time chatting about how annoying it was to have bandicoots eat your pumpkins that I failed to photograph the garden at all.
I do, however, have a shot from Taronga Zoo in Sydney. Taronga Zoo has an area which is dedicated to backyard wildlife and as part of that exhibit they have a kitchen garden with some nice looking zukes:
I also found the occasional edible in unusual places – parsley amidst the marigolds as a backdrop for this Christmas Tree:
But most of the best edibles I found in Sydney’s botanical gardens.
They had some nice looking eggplants:
And it was good to see their plants fall prey to predators as often as mine.
I did think it was a bit cruel to net the strawberries thus placing them out of reach of small hands….
The bamboo supporting the nets looked good though and I liked the galvanised iron of raised beds:
But most of all I enjoyed the uniformity of the rows of greens – the sort of symetry I though only Mark achieved in his Veg Plot.
Monday Harvest – 26th Dec 2011
This year I celebrated Christmas, with my family, at my parents place and I’m writing this from there so I haven’t harvested at home for a few days. In fact Melbourne has had storms so I am hoping that my garden has survived the hail OK and that there will be things to harvest upon our return tomorrow. I did harvest a few things before I left though. Most exciting was my first ever onion (I’ve never been convinced that growing onions is a good use of limited space but I did put in a few this year). It was small and its harvest was accidental – a very little boy was helping mummy – but I was hugely pleased with it and as a result it was probably the best thing I’ve eaten all week (a big call considering it was Christmas and I’ve eaten a LOT).
The Kipfler potatoes I wrote about a few days ago made a delicious salad which was served with Christmas lunch. Interestingly this batch (unlike the ones harvested at my parent place a few days ago) were creamy and delicious. I’m wondering if being stored a couple of days before cooking allowed their skins to harden a bit and to protect the potatoes during cooking? For the record my total potato harvest from the two tubs was 1.25kg which was a little disappointing but still enough to feed 10 on Christmas day.
In other harvest news: Some butter beans and broccoli were eaten alongside some fishcakes (made with BBQ’d snapper left over from a family Christmas party).
And some more Majestic butter beans. I do like this butter bean – nice flavour, early cropping and good germination rate.
Chard for Chicken Saag and salad ingredients for a green salad to go alongside.
Some iceberg lettuce
and another cucumber, although worryingly there don’t seem to be large numbers developing at the moment. 
And finally three tomatoes; a Broad Ripple Currant and two Sweet 100 hybrids. There were more but they didn’t quite make it in front of the lens…. 
For other enticing harvests from around the globe mosey on over to Daphne’s Dandelions.
