(no subject)

[freyakitten]

This afternoon, I managed to spend some time in my garden. The large raised bed is now slightly more full due to the fine compost, cow manure, and gypsum I dug in, and the dirt has had seedlings and bulbs planted.

If I somehow manage to remember to water them regularly, there shall at some point, be:

• beetroot
• leeks
• garlic
• pretty-coloured kale

They're in the large bed that last held broad beans, which is good for they all like nitrogen, as well as each other. I must remember to put in a winter crop of peas somewhere on ANZAC Day. And I need to find something that'll cope with the semi-shade of the bed nearest the fence bed.

For persons who don't read vegetable gardening books as obsessively as I do, kale is to cabbage something like what radicchio is to lettuce. Same family, acquired taste. Even if I decide to not acquire the taste, the seedlings I got are supposed to turn out with pink or red new growth, instead of being purely greyish-bluey-dark-green. At least, I think that's what the tag was describing. The lady who served me seemed to think the pink bits were flowers, but kale only has flowers when, like lettuce, it has bolted and is no longer potentially tasty. The pink bits looked to me king of like the red bits of poinsettia. Mind you, she also thought that they weren't edible in any colour. Strange for a seedling found in the midst of other vegetable seedlings. Maybe she doesn't read the same books as I do.

One of these days I have to find me some Fat Hen or King Henry (both pre-spinach European greens). I've only seen them sold as produce in the Ventral Markets once (yay for Queen of Green), and have never seen seedlings or seeds. Tasty things, apparently easy to grow, and higher in nutritional value than spinach.

Comments

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

It turns up occasionally at Wilsons' Organics, across the road from the Ventral Markets. There are a lot of semi-obscure things that turn up there, that you cannot find in the markets. For example, capsicums in varieties other than bell pepper and banana.

And I've found a source for Fat Hen, but I'll have to order it: http://www.edenseeds.com.au/content/seeditem.asp?id=890
These guys have a small display in Wilsons', but it doesn't include everything, as it is a very small store. I must think of several more things I want to order at the same time.