The garden ruin looks biblical to a Catholic so I’m doing reruns of past sins to discover which one is responsible for the crop failure. I’m tossing up between assisting in the theft of a king-sized bar of Caramello chocolate from the Big S supermarket (even though I did follow Father Duggan’s advice and purchase a bar and replace it on the supermarket shelf a week later); and putting on my big sister’s glamorous shoes and dancing up and down the driveway Shirley Temple-style (they had heel and toe plates so the sound they made was hypnotic) despite being told to STAY AWAY FROM HER THINGS AND OUT OF HER ROOM! And if either of these sins was punishable by crop failure then I’ve finally discovered the real reason for the Irish Potato Famine because God only knows how many disobedient children there were in Ireland in 1845.

Saturday night Mr Scott and I returned from a tasty meal out and I don’t know if it was too much wasabi or possibly some MSG sneaked into one of the dishes but I had an unexpected rush of enthusiasm and decided that around midnight is the ideal moment to make tomato relish. As you can see by the recipe at the end of the page one starts by chopping the tomatoes and onions and sprinkling them with salt to draw out the moisture.

I think the operative word here is sprinkle rather than dredge and I’m just warning you in advance that my relish will not get a tick from the Heart Foundation. It’s not the recipe which is to blame as much as my interpretation of it along with a hand rendered less responsive by a couple of wines.

Chopping the tomatoes went well though there were moments when I felt like chucking it all in and heading off to bed not so much through fatigue as boredom. But gosh, don’t things come to life when you start on the onions? December and January the onions were rubbish. They were soft and green inside and smelt like swamp water. Personally, I feel they were picked too early and not left out to harden-the-whatever up but don’t take this as gospel for I’m not one who knows my onions. But I do know that they have improved at last and so it was with a bit of trepidation that I moved to stage two of the recipe … chopping the onions.

I’m no ninja-knife person when it comes to chopping and slicing so my lack of speed meant I was positioned over the onions for longer than was comfortable for my eyes. And I know there are 20 different ways supposed to prevent crying over the onions but I have not found a method which actually works.

Until now.

Blame it on the alcohol if you wish but part way through Onion Number One, with a face covered in tears, I had an epiphany. I went to the bathroom, washed my face and rinsed and dried my eyes then I PUT ON MY SWIMMING GOGGLES! Internet … it works! Absolutely no more eye irritation. And then because I wasn’t having quite enough fun, I put my swimming cap on, too. Finally I finished the onions while softly humming lullabies and thinking about little lambs skipping through sun-filled meadows and all was right with the world.

Next day I drained off the water and continued to make relish.

This tomato relish recipe comes out of the universe and into your kitchens via my very wonderful friend Morag, who made a triumphant batch of relish last summer. I’m sorry my first effort hasn’t quite made the grade but it was all worth it to discover the solution to onion-eye-cry.

So grab your tomatoes, onions, swimming goggles and (optional) cap and get chopping.

TOMATO RELISH

6lb/3kg tomatoes

2lb/1kg onions

2lb/1kg sugar

8 small chillies

2 cups malt vinegar

3-4 tablespoons of cornflour

3 tablespoons of curry powder

2 tablespoons of salt

2 teaspoons mustard powder

METHOD

• Cut up tomatoes and onions, sprinkle with salt and leave overnight.
• Pour off liquid and add the toms/onions to a large pot. Barely cover with vinegar (about 2 cups). Put on heat, add sugar and chillies and boil for half an hour.
• Mix cornflour, curry powder and mustard powder in a little vinegar (or water if your pot mix has become a bit spicy) to a smooth paste.
• After tomatoes have boiled half an hour, add the paste, boil to thicken then bottle in sterilised jars.

WARNINGS

Don’t be too heavy-handed with the salt at number one. Taste the relish before adding any more salt. Actually, I’ve just gone back over my recipe notes and realised there is no place for adding more salt. I think the 2 tablespoons in the ingredients list is for sprinkling over the toms/onions right at the beginning. I got that completely wrong but it was difficult to read through the swimming goggles.

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Dad's beans should look like this.

The weather stayed cold for a long while after I planted. And there was a lack of rain. This is the beach garden so it is fairly untended and just has to get on once the planting is done. The beans were slow to start and then remained quite yellow in the leaf department. There didn’t appear to be a lot of nitrogen-fixing going on. Even Mr Scott noticed there was something amiss when one morning he announced: “There’s something amiss with those beans.” But I’m an optimist and felt things would right themselves. By the time I realised the beans weren’t righting themselves, it was a bit late. The yield was down about 80% and I’ve left the remainder to seed.

For I also have scarlet runners.

And they are a triumph!

They, too, were slow to start but suddenly they kicked into overdrive and reached for the sky. Like Jack’s beanstalk they grew and they grew and, goddammit, they were going to find that giant. Along the way they flowered and entertained fat bumble bees and hungry honey bees and were soon producing an overwhelming number of beans. Much of the crop is out of the reach of even the tall Mr Scott so we’re going to hire a helicopter and winch someone down to do the rest of the picking. Gathering a trug-full daily has enabled me to share bean love about the bay (and I won’t even talk about the zucchinis!).

Image of my scarlet runner beans captured
by the Hubble telescope which orbits
366 miles/589 kilometres above Earth. 

Yesterday I spent the morning blanching and freezing beans and to make it sexy, I frenched them first. I performed the usual internet search to make sure I was using the correct process (because it’s just possible blanching involves more than a simmer then an icy plunge) and it was during this search that I discovered you can eat the scarlet runner flowers! Who knew?

Yes, I can hear some of you saying “Daft bint … no flowers, no beans!” but, reader, I have been blessed. I have so many beans I can sacrifice a few flowers to make the world’s most twee salad.

So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to The World’s Most Twee Salad. Sadly it was not a photogenic dish so you’ll just have to believe me that I made it, ate it and it was good.

I cooked up some amaranth, quinoa and lentils (no, I was not jet-propelled on this morning’s run, but thanks for your concern). To this I added cherry tomatoes, Kalamata olives, feta, red onion, scarlet runner beans (frenched), a few spinach and miscellaneous salad leaves (and probably some weeds because I’m not entirely sure what is what in that part of the garden) and parsley, mint and basil. Drizzle with olive oil and a squirt of lemon juice then GARNISH WITH SCARLET RUNNER FLOWERS!

It would have been as twee as four Beswick ducks flying up the wall if it weren’t for the ancient grains and lentils which had made the entire creation a bit brown. It’s just my opinion but I think brown food only starts to look good in a photo if it involves chocolate. Anyway, next time you make a salad, go for glory and throw a few scarlet runner flowers over the top and have a very hippy day.

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Last year at harvest time I staggered about trying not to stomp on my vegetable plants which had been planted with scant regard to just what size they would finish up. Balancing on one leg I would perform yoga-like moves as I picked beans and tomatoes, filling supermarket plastic bags as I went.

I wasn’t very happy with the plastic bags. The handles cut into my hands as they filled and it just wasn’t very Darling Buds of May to brandish my crop in nasty cast-offs from the supermarket. I knew there had to be a better, more romantic sort of collection vessel for my produce. Without actually knowing its name, I went in search of a trug.

And wouldn’t you know it … we’re lucky enough to have a splendid trug maker in Golden Bay, Nelson. Brett Hutchinson is his name. I’ve never met the man so I can’t honestly vouch for his character but I have to say that a bad person couldn’t possibly make a thing of such beauty.

Brett’s website is here and you’ll struggle hard to come across a more accommodating person to do business with. Don’t expect next-day delivery because his trugs, Devon maunds and flower baskets are all hand-made and good things take time. Plan ahead and order one for yourself, then one for your best friend and then order yourself a second one because they’re pretty useful as a fruit basket for your kitchen bench. And don’t worry about where you are on this planet because this trug maker does mail order worldwide.

I love my trug. I love that it holds the vegies without squashing them and that it sits sturdily on the ground while you’re busy picking. I love its aesthetics and the fact that it will probably outlast me so that when I’m gone the mock-grandchildren can discover it, maybe with a radish or two nestled in the bottom, and say: “Here’s the old bird’s basket. What did she call it? Truggy, truggle, trugger, trug …”

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

 Brett’s beautiful trugs and maunds.

 Just showing off now. Proud of the veges.

Yep, that’s parsley, courgette, lettuce, tomatoes (3 varieties), beans (2 varieties) and something else!

But wait, there’s more.

[Have you noticed how difficult it is to place a courgette without making it appear phallic?]

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I finished up with a Dr Seuss-like three-step process where I started with a scrap bowl on the kitchen bench which, when full, was emptied into the lidded scrap bucket at the back door which, when full, was emptied into the compost bin proper. Stupid really. Within a couple of days I proved that time flies when you’re having fun and fruit flies love scrap buckets.

This weekend I went shopping with Mr Scott and fell instantly in love with this fabulous bench-top ceramic compost container from, of all places, Briscoes. And being in Briscoes meant we were in the midst of the Briscoes Perpetual Weekend Sale and were happy to accept the offer of a further 30% off the sticker price. NICE!

Part of the compost canister’s beauty is its engaging design, but not even its smooth lines can compare with its gorgeous carbon filters. Filters that have banished the fruit flies forever. Filters that trap odours so my waste doesn’t stink (which is something I’ve been telling Mr Scott for years).

The brand is Ecology Rona and it’s so jolly green I think you can even eat packaging.

In New Zealand you can find them at Briscoes and if you’re from another part of the world you’ll find that Amazon has a dizzying selection. Buy one for your best friend for Christmas.

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Last year my home vege garden came under attack from every parasitic insect known. An entire TV series could have been based on the whitefly colony alone. The battles were legendary and we lost every time – except, that is, for the lettuces. They were fine. Nothing touched them. So this year I’m doing my lettuces in the same manner  – in huge pots. This prevents “wilt” caused by dog-who-must-pee-on-everything.

I was making a salad the other night and gave the lettuce leaves a good old whizz-around in some cold water, shook off the excess, wrapped them in a towel and took them outside for a final helicopter-spin to get rid of the last bit of moisture (I could buy a salad spinner but they’re such enormous and ugly-looking things). Midway through making the salad I did notice a lot of “matter” in the sink water but chose to ignore it. I simply stared more intently at the leaves, hoping anything still kicking would wither beneath my steely gaze.

The unvarnished truth is that one of my lettuce plants has aphids. I like to think that washing the leaves got rid of them but I guess we ate eggs and the odd aphid that was really good at holding its breath underwater. We haven’t been harmed (apart from the antennae Mr Scott now has growing from his head and a propensity for clinging to the underside of leaves) so I expect we just had some additional protein. But now I wonder what does a vegetarian do in this situation?

Later that same evening we watched on television a chap all alone (except for the television crew filming him) in the jungle (Amazon basin, probably, I wasn’t paying enough attention), just surviving. That’s all he was doing. I think they were attempting to show you what to do in case your plane ever goes down in dense jungle and you want a food source beyond eating your fellow travellers à la the 1973 rugby-playing Andes plane crash survivors. (As the single engine of the plane I’m in sputters and dies over Peru I’ll rue the day I paid more attention to the Sudoku [difficulty - medium] than I did to the television.) There is a point here, though. What I do remember is the chap eating termites, really little ones, and they had more protein than a bodybuilder’s breakfast shake or something like that. These things were little protein bombs and he said they were rather tasty, too. Unfortunately, later that night he got a terrible stomach upset which made for truly fascinating viewing. He blamed it on the water but I’m not so sure.

Questions:

1.       Should we be concerned about eating aphids?

2.       If not, should we warn any vegetarian dinner guests that their salad could contain insect proteins?

3.      If we should stop eating aphids immediately, how should we treat the lettuce given that we strip leaves from it on a daily basis so really don’t want to spray it with insecticide or detergent or dog pee?

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We have a back fence which is nothing more than a back fence and needs jazzing up. A fresh coat of paint, or even a mural, I thought, before remembering I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. I could plant a climber of some sort but then an even better idea stopped by … what about an Espalier apple tree! My father had played around with one a long time ago and it was often admired so I borrowed his Espalier bible – Espalier Fruit Trees, Their History And Culture, by Alan Edmunds.

You have to love the chap who, in his foreword, writes this about his dedication to the art of Espalier: “The BACK garden is the Lovesome Thing, God wot!” (apologies to Thomas Edward Brown).
I worked my way through the book so I could decide if this was really the thing for my own back garden and I came across this little bonsai pic with a most astounding caption: 

I read that caption and I thought, “What would Lockwood Smith say?”

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I want to give some love to the people who make the Propagro seed propagator.

This simple, cheap, plastic box will start your seedlings off at a pace that will be envied by your fellow gardeners. It will keep your wee plants warm, moist and sheltered. It will keep them from the mouths of the snails and slugs without the need for nasty baits. It will do this without fuss, bother or demands on your time. Please believe me, it will keep the novice gardener sane.

I was a slave to the vege seedlings last year. I carted them, tray by tray, indoors each night, returning them to sun, shelter and warmth each early spring day. When I went away for the weekend I had to get a “seedling sitter” to gently mist them, blow softly on their leaves and read them sonnets.

Then there was the evening when, after more than several wines, I stumbled to bed and snarled: “Bugger the seedlings, they can tough it out for the night.” The next morning, in sober horror, I tore outside (wondering if there was a CYFS for Seedlings) to discover a scene reminiscent of the Battle of Culloden. Limp little plants were strewn like the Bonnie Prince’s defeated Jacobites all across the battlefield. The Hanoverian snails had claimed their territory. We had to regroup, repot and start all over.

And I swore NO! NEVER AGAIN! (in UC bold, complete with exclamation marks) would I be held hostage by a bunch of tiny plants. Next spring I would be sensible and buy my seedlings, ready to plant, from the garden centre.

But as July drew to a close I found myself filled with a maternal yearning for raising yet another crop of vegetable children and I was soon trawling the web for plans for little hot-boxes to do everything I did by hand last year.

I was on my way to the demolition yard to track down some window frames to convert into seed boxes when a chance stop at a large store which sells absolutely everything, presented me with the Propagro Seed Propagator. It looked perfect and you can imagine my double-delight when I discovered it is MADE IN NEW ZEALAND. Otaki to be precise.

Now I’m madly raising plants, giving them away, then raising more. I’m six weeks ahead of where I was last year. Propagro is the bomb. I love them. My friends love them. And, it appears from the only internet references I can find for this kit, the people who raise awareness for marijuana law reform love them, too!

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