A free monthly resource from the wonderful world of gardening; giving you tips, recipes and reminders to make your garden grow!

August 2007 Issue #23

Hello

What fun that you and I both love the topic of gardening. Thanks for joining me on this adventure! Feedback is welcome, just click on reply.

In this issue:

1) What is it about gardening?
2) Eco gardening tips.
3) Veggie fritters.

What is it about gardening?

Why do you sometimes wake up with a smile; have a hasty breakfast; then trip over your own feet in your eagerness to just get out there and garden!

That feeling as you pause momentarily, looking around, savouring the sensations... then faster than you can say earthworms, compost heap and cabbages, you plunge in.

You're now at peace—albeit often a back-tiring, dirt-in-fingernails-never-to-completely-budge kind of peace of being amongst your ever changing little patch of nature.

It's a free soap opera. You're part of the cast of gardening's Days of our Lives... a never ending saga of love and revenge, twitterings and flutterings, beauty and the beasties.

Eco Gardening Tips

• You know how it is—we're told to munch five servings of fruit and veggies a day because these foods contain phyto-nutrients. All that means is plant derived nutrients, because the Latin word "phyto" means plant. So now you know what phyto-chemicals and phyto-estrogens simply mean when you hear health talk.
  
  

  A serving is approximately half a cup or a medium handful semi-pressed down, but I bet when you pick a fresh lettuce from your garden, you are hard pressed to stop eating half a cup.

• More classroom studies... Asian now. Most of the great Asian vegetables are easy to grow almost throughout the year, apart from some in climate extremes. In some cooler areas you can plant seeds now if the soil is warm enough—or start them indoors. More on Asian vegetables in the website soon, but here I go again... buk or bok means white and choy means vegetable.
• Controlling aphids can be helped with Alyssum, that cute 'n' colourful bedding plant that councils love. Alyssum (Lobularia maritima) flowers feed the parasitic wasps that lay their eggs in aphids.

  Sow seeds now in most cooler climates, and for those who already have aphids, whether on your roses or rutabagas, you may like to beg, borrow or buy some flowering Alyssum. Once established, Alyssum seeds well each year, and makes a nice living mulch.

Veggie Fritters.

I asked my son to write down his recipe for the rather nice, in fact very nice veggie fritters he made us for lunch recently. They are crispish on the outside and gooeyish in the middle.

Ingredients
- ½ eggplant
- ½ carrot
- 1 cup leafy cooking greens
- 1 tomato
- 2 teaspoons veggie soup stock or soy sauce or other flavoring
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- ½ to ¾ cup brown rice flour (could use wholemeal flour)
- Approximately ½ cup liquid, (water or milk or mixed)

Method
1. In blender, blend all veggies until nearly smooth, but still with some small chunks left.
2. Turn into a bowl and stir in veggie stock, olive oil, rice flour and enough liquid to make a thick batter. It shouldn't be too runny.
3. Make into fritters and fry in frying pan, or spread out as fritters, or one large fritter on a baking tray and bake for about 45 minutes.

Serves two.

Happy gardening!

Megan
Megan Carter