Category: growing
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Day 7 Life Cykel Home Grown Mushroom Box Side 2
This product truly is rewarding. This is what greeted me this morning. You might recall that last week I harvested my first mushrooms from the starting side of my Life Cykel Home Grown Mushroom Box (Day 12 Life Cykel Home Grown Mushroom Box Side 1. Since then I have: taken the bag out and cut it…
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PK Reviews: Mr Fothergill’s Cucumber Windowsill Greenhouse Kit – Daily Updates
So on the 16th of July 2016 I ‘unboxed’ one of the Mr Fothergill’s Windowsill Greenhouse Kits. Check out that post here. I will be updating this post with the latest snaps and observations. Finally it is planting time (25/08/2016:) Today (20/08/2016) the seedlings have gotten large enough for me to start making them sun tolerant.…
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Galangal (Alpinia galanga)
I was first introduced this root (from the ginger family) when I fell in love with and started cooking Tom yum goong. Tom yum is a Thai soup with a, hard to perfect, balance of hot and sour flavours and is exceptionally high in aromatic and visual appeal. I grow a lot of the ingredients…
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Bish Is Rocketing Along
Bish writes: I am a persistent casual gardener, in that I keep trying but due to work and life I don’t spend as much time as I should on maintenance and the like. My garden’s nothing like Ben’s! Anyway, now that the team are testing out some of the Mr Fothergill’s planters, I thought I’d…
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Reuse, Recover: PK’s Bone Meal
I want to reuse and recover as much as I can in my kitchen and gardening activities. So it is only natural that I wondered what I could do with the bones left over after cooking. Some of them go into my worm farms but as my young family is eating more and more meat…
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Reuse, Recover: Egg Shells
As you know or are beginning to suspect, I am nuts about minimising my kitchen waste. I am always looking to reuse or recover anything I can. Google is a great help in this but once you get in the mindset of doing it and thinking outside the box, you will start coming up with…
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Lemongrass
I first learnt about this flavoursome member of the grass family when I started cooking the Thai classic soup, Tom Yum Goong. I have been growing it ever since for use in sauces, soups, salads and fish cakes. The plant itself looks and smells amazing and is a natural mosquito repellent to boot :). Taste/Aroma:…
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Chili Pepper: Jalapeño
This is the chili I automatically think of whenever some says, well, ‘chili’. It is middle of the road when it comes to heat and is very flavoursome. You can do so much with it from using it raw, pickled, cooked and dried. If you prefer flavour over the heat factor, take the seeds out…
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Onion Brown
Sorry I haven’t written anything here yet. Please bear with me or even send me a few words on the subject. I especially would love any tips and tricks you want to share 🙂 Enjoy, PK Links: see more brown onion posts here see more onion posts here go to all ingredients
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Chili Pepper: Habanero Orange
A beautiful looking and complex tasting chili pepper that is easy to grow. In Perth, Western Australia they are ripening in Summer and Autumn. The plant is a spreader rather than a vertical powerhouse. Warning, they are hot :). I have also read that they impart a kind of apricot flavour. Flower: Fruit: Plant: Perth…
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Limes
I love cooking with Persian limes (these are a common cultivar in Australia) just as much as I do sharing limes from the tree in my kitchen garden. No one in Perth will turn down the offer of a bag of limes. Fresh lime juice, zest and leaves are essential to southeast asian cooking so I…
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Curry Leaf Trees
I love curry leaf trees. The sight and the aroma they release when you brush past them make me smile. They can be hard to find in a nursery and they are not cheap. I got mine from Bunnings as a small seedling. I am keeping it to less than two meters tall through regular…
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Broad Bean (Fava Bean): Grow and Eat
This tall sturdy flowering annual in the bean family produces a multitude of long pods with 8 large beans (the thick walled pods are unpalatable raw) and edible leaves perfect for salads. The plant has sturdy stems and will grow to almost 6 foot but it is not a climber. Taste/Aroma: I love the buttery…
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Mung Bean Sprouts
Wikipedia writes ‘also known as the moong bean, green gram, or mung, is a plant species in the legume family. The mung bean is mainly cultivated in India, China, and Southeast Asia. It is used as an ingredient in both savoury and sweet dishes’. Here are the seeds and as you can see I am…
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Broad Bean (Fava Bean)
This tall sturdy flowering annual in the bean family produces a multitude of long pods with 8 large beans (the thick walled pods are unpalatable raw) and edible leaves perfect for salads. The plant has sturdy stems and will grow to almost 6 foot but it is not a climber. Taste/Aroma: I love the buttery…
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Alfalfa Sprouts
I love growing these little sprouts and use them in salads whenever I can. They are popular everywhere but especially favoured in certain regions of India. The adult plants have very attractive foliage and the flowers attract those most welcome of visitors, bees. When planted for animal feed it tends to be known as as…
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Strawberry (Fragaria ananassa)
I thought this plant was hard to grow. I could not be more wrong :). Well sort of…… easy to grow but very tempting to humans, birds and insects alike. Wikipeida writes: ‘The first garden strawberry was grown in Brittany, France during the late 18th century.[3] Prior to this, wild strawberries and cultivated selections from…
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Chili Pepper: Bhut Jolokia
Not for the faint hearted :O. I spent half an hour feeling quite ill after try some ghost pepper sauce once. So be careful! I am only growing them to give to Ben who guests posts on this blog and facebook for me :). I am going to get him to describe the taste if…
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Chili Pepper: Trinidad Scorpion Butch T
At 1.46 million Scoville heat units this wee red beastie packs a punch :). It was derived from the Trinidad Scorpion (so called because the end of the chili looks like a scorpion stinger) and was originally propagated by a Mr Butch Taylor. It held the hottest chili record for a few years. Most of…
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Chili Pepper: Trinidad Scorpion Cardi
Now we are getting into crazy hot territory :). I have read that this variety was developed by the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute hence the CARDI part of the pepper’s name :). The scorpion part is because the end of the chili looks like a scorpion stinger. Most of my internet friends have…
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