Children in the garden

Today I had a lovely hour and a half in the garden while on parent helper roster at my daughter's Playschool, which is like preschool for 3 year olds - sessions are for a couple of hours twice a week, run by a not for profit organisation.

Earlier this year my husband and I helped plan and put together 6 garden beds, each 1 meter by 3 meters. With the teacher, we planned the beds to be 4 rotational beds, with a herb bed and a strawberry patch. So a few times a term I have been going in and helping the teacher and students planting out plants, seedlings or seeds (either direct sowing or into paper pots and then raised in my green house). Although we only had a few things in mind to do today, we just got caught up in it all, which I love!

Last term we sowed seeds for broad beans and sugar snap peas into paper pots with children from both groups. These have grown into healthy and strong seedlings which are due for planting out. We chose to plant out the broad beans today and the peas will go in later in the week by the other group of children.

We explored how the thick white roots were poking though the faded rolls of newsprint and dug holes to carefully plant the beginnings of our productive beans.

With dirty hands and thoughts of food, we poked around at what we had growing and were delighted to see that there were some things ready to eat. The sweet taste of fresh broccoli was tempting and eagerly eaten fresh and raw. We were on a roll... plump cherry sized radish were poking out of the soil. A somewhat less eaten vegetable by 3 year olds, would these school grown radish tempt the taste buds of the budding green thumbs?

Once the dirt was washed off and the bold red radish looking delicious to my adult eyes, I sliced wafer thin slices of radish. The pattern within the white of the radish is gorgeous, but not as beautiful to me as the pattern within zucchini, though much more appealing raw! Thankfully the radish were not spicy, rather a pleasantly mild flavour. The children gobbled them up! Fantastic!

I see three successes right there, with planting broad beans, eating broccoli and radish, but our gardening experience was not yet over. We also pulled up a bed of green manure, to be dug through to continue enriching the soil before we plant it out when the weather warms. Finally, the children sowed a tray of everlasting daisies, which will be planted out into the native garden when they are bigger.

Seeing these young children enjoying themselves and learning about gardening, food production and trying new things was really so good to see. I see it every day in my own young children and every week with the primary school aged children in my gardening club, too. It renews my faith in believing that through exposure and experience children will choose to make decisions that benefit themselves and their environment.

PJG

Stephanie Challenge update

Yesterday I sowed some seeds for chinese cabbage, or Pak Choi, so I have made a start on growing my Asian Greens. I will have to check out some favourites of gardening friends and see what else I should put is as it is just at the beginning of the planting season now.

Asparagus. Yay! I actually already have 5 asparagus plants that I put in last year. Although they shouldn't be harvested in their first year, I did cut a few delicious stalks, so I am really looking forward to this year when I can cut more for harvest. Yum.

Next in Stephanie's book is Bananas. I would love to grow a good cavendish, although I believe that firstly they do not tolerate frost, and secondly there are strict rules about non-farmers growing cavendish. Apparently growing lady finger bananas do not have the same strict rules, although we still have the frost issue. I'm not sure if this is one that we can find a solution for as my green house is not big enough to fit a whole banana tree!

Basil. I have grown basil with great success in the past and look forward to growing it again this year, and for the first time from my own collected seeds. I love the smell of basil and the taste in both fresh and cooked foods. I can hardly wait for my home made pasta sauces and pesto again...

Bay. I actually have a Bay tree. A very small one, perhaps only 30cm high. I had wanted a bay tree, but when my husband inquired as to how big they grow - if I recall correctly it is around 5 meters - he wasn't big on the idea. I did discover that if pruned regularly they make a good hedge and stay small and are quite slow growing. So I have had my little potted bay for 6 months or so now. Being so small, only really special dishes get a fresh bay leaf in them and there is still a pack of dried bay leaves in the spice cupboard.

And last one for today is beans. I currently have broad beans in the garden which are still rather small but they should produce a bumper crop again this year. I didn't save seeds from last year's crop so I will have to remember to this year. Last season I also grew blue lake, purple king and bortolli beans, all of which I have saved seeds for planting when the weather warms up. I think I'll grow the blue lake and purple king again, although the variety of bortolli were drawf and I thought were a waste of space when I have so much vertical room! Do bortolli beans come in a climbing variety? More research to be done.

Signing off from the pyjama gardener and her pyjama clad gardening children...

Food on TV

I wouldn't say I watch a lot of tv, although I do have my favourites. Just like half of Australia I watched 'Masterchef' and have been watching 'Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution'. On Masterchef I found the little talks that chefs would do about their 'food philosophy' quite interesting. Most would talk about fresh foods cooked 'simply' to let the flavours of the foods shine. Sure thing. There was one celebrity chef that really sung to my tune, though.

Good on you Jamie Oliver. Seasonal produce. Locally grown produce that is currently in season. LOVE IT! Gordon Ramsay would bang that drum as well on his "Kitchen Nightmares" series. Following the seasons in terms of food and produce makes so much sense to me. The food is fresher, specially when it doesn't have to travel half way around the world before it gets to my plate. The food is 'greener' as less carbon is used in the transportation of foods.

I wish I could say that I am growing all my own vegetables in our gorgeous garden, but in reality I don't have the time and productive garden space to do it all. My family and I are also guilty of liking to eat out of season foods - we all have our favourite fruit and veg. I actually struggle with that on occasion in the produce section of the supermarket.

I bought a 'Marie Clare Seasonal Kitchen' cook book thinking that it would be a great seasonal companion to my vegie garden. Unfortunately a quick flick through it before buying it (no doubt with two small children both trying to pull me in different directions at the same time) was not enough to get a good idea of that rational behind it.

Critically looking at it I realised that the recipes looked delicious. I also realised that they often had a mix of in season and out of season produce for where we live. The Seasonal Kitchen, was more about the kinds of foods that you like to eat in certain seasons.

So many of our favourite recipes have this same mix of in and out of season produce. So there the dilemma lies. I have now been buying only Australian grown produce with preference to locally in season produce. My little girl is getting 'no' probably as much as she always has, but I am making sure to give her a more meaningful response than "it's too expensive". Sometimes I hear myself saying "darling, strawberries aren't in season in our area at the moment, so although those very expensive strawberries might look good, they have been in cold storage while traveling a long way before getting to these shops. They won't be as juicy and sweet as the strawberries that we grow at home and will probably go mouldy very quickly." Perhaps I go overboard a bit...

But then I saw Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolution in Huntington, West Virginia, USA. I actually felt sick in my stomach when a class of lower primary school students couldn't name whole raw vegetables. I have all sorts of comments on that but won't go into it. It did reaffirm to me that everything that I am doing with my own children and with children that I teach, in relation to sustainable productive gardening, really is so important.

PJG