Understanding horseradish

Here's our first piece of harvested horseradish! Our friends John and Jess gave us this horseradish to look after and it's doubled in size in about twelve months. The smell is amazing! It's quite herbacious compared to the processed kind. I read that the longer you let a cut piece oxidize, the more fiery the taste.

I also found a cranberry relish recipe which uses a bit of horseradish, so will give that a go. Ah, that nose-clearing sensation!

Technology comes to Hackett

Warning: this is not gardening related!

I bought an iPhone just the other day, which means I have big plans for recording what we are doing in the garden! I've downloaded a blogger app and a photo blog app to be able to capture our hardening activities and post them quickly without too much double handling. As you can imagine with a one year old, that's pretty ideal!

So this is my first iPhone post with many more to come!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Spring vegies: carrots, snowpeas and beetroot

Remember the seeds we propagated this time last month? Well, the snowpeas are now planted out. Around the same time last month, I put in some carrot seeds and they've sprung up well too.






Today we planted some beetroot seeds; organic 'Detroit' variety. Last season we put in some baby beetroot which went off - so let's see how these ones go. We planted these in our middle bed, where we had the green manure crop. We dug this in about two weeks ago, so hoping the beetroot doesn't fork out underground!









Did a round of native fertilizer on our shrubs and grasses - hoping for some ran later in the week (fingers crossed but looking warmer than first forecast). The prunus is in full flower as are our plums.

Spring has most definitely sprung!

3 minutes of hail

3 minutes of hail
Originally uploaded by margoc

Surreal!

Seed Propagation

seed propagation
Originally uploaded by margoc

Planted 9/8/09 - planted out some early seedlings and made use of our recently acquired 'greenhouse' frame! An old cane shelving unit thrown out from the flats across the road. Eat your heart out Bunnings! :oP

Bit of clear plastic for colder nights, shade cloth for sun protection and water tank next door! Receives warmth from the garage wall onto which it backs.

Rollover the pots in the picture (if you click the image and return to Flickr) to see what we've planted. Snowpeas, rocket, raddichio, basil (annual), chicory, and spring onions. Just used a seed raising mix and watered in a very diluted compost tea. Experts say seaweed emulsion is a good starter tonic.

Some of these failed miserably last season (too hot I think). Better luck this year we hope!

Hope to try tomatoes and corn this way too. Perhaps eggplant too.