Kitchen garden: Happy harvest

The vegetable garden is at the back of a sloping block of land and it gets full sunlight. Each year potatoes, pumpkins and tomato seedlings emerge from where the kitchen scraps have been dug into the ground and covered with soil. This has built up the worm-filled soil at least 40cms over 20 years. These seedlings are often strong and vigorous. Each year there are 14 to 20 pumpkins to harvest for soup. Potatoes, which cover a quarter of the garden, last from January to April.

Crop rotation is practised. Leaf plants like broccoli and snow peas are followed by root vegetables, then tomatoes and finally left fallow so all areas of the garden get rested. No fertiliser is used and companion planting, particularly with marigolds, deters bugs. There are separate beds for raspberries and thornless blackberries. There is rhubarb and lots of basil and parsley, rocket and shallots are tucked into spare corners. Planks of wood are placed beside rows of vegies to stop footprints compressing the soil.

The Edsteins' were in Brazil recently (to make acquaintance with a new grandson) and they tasted superb juices. One was made from cashew nuts and another, which tasted like grape juice, was made from Jaboticaba (Plinia cauliflora). The plum sized fruit grows directly on the stem of the trees which often line streets. The fruit is purple-black and looks like white pupils on black eyes. The peel is used for jellies.

Jaboticaba is stocked by Daleys Fruit Tree Nursery in Queensland (online purchases). However Dr Mark O'Connor, Canberra's rare fruit expert, says he had tried to grow it in his greenhouse but it has faded away.

A Brazilian dessert highlight for the Edsteins was made from Goiaba, a guava. The fruit is made into a marmalade/paste which is served layered with slices of white cheese and called Romeo and Juliet. That is also stocked by Daley's but the tree is front tender. Mark O'Connor does grow strawberry guava against a north-facing wall in O'Connor.

There is a pleasing sight in Manuka, most mornings, where a woman sits at a window table at Timmy's Kitchen and she tips and tails snow peas and strings sugar snap peas which the restaurant receives fresh every day.

To Kitchen Gardeners in early winter I offered packets of Yakumo Giant show pea seeds from Johnsons' World Kitchen range. My five seeds were planted in two pots. With one, I followed horticultural practice and nipped back the leading shoots but in the other pot I let them reach for the sky. In a few weeks they were three metres tall and higher than my roof but in our frost and snow they bent over.

These were agile snow peas. They have produced two-tone purple flowers and now I am harvesting pods every day. The other growers waited until July to sow the seeds and taste delights await. Johnsons' suggests marinating six chicken thinly sliced thigh fillets in sesame oil and five-spice powder, stir fry in peanut oil with a chopped carrot, add the snow peas, then two tablespoons of oyster sauce and kecap manis.

At a local Kingston Foreshore cafe recently a barista was taking a break from the coffee machine and he poured the contents of a thermos into a bowl for his lunch. It was kelp and beetroot soup made to a Korean recipe. At the Food Coop in Civic a large lidded box is filled with Arame sea vegetable, a thinly sliced seaweed that grows abundantly in the Sea of Japan ($153 per kg). Rich in minerals, Eisenia bicyclis should be soaked in water for five minutes before boiling for ten minutes. Serve in salads. Use the soaking water as it has good flavours and nutrients.

On a beach near Batemans Bay in April I collected a legal amount of kelp. The manager of Mariners Cove resort offered to store it in his freezer for me overnight. That meant my boot didn't smell on the drive back to Canberra and the kelp broke down rapidly in the compost heap.

In a Giveaway in June we asked readers to name their favourite trees with edible bits. That prompted forester and tree man Tony Fearnside to look through plots at Westbourne Woods in Yarralumla. He says, "pine seed is generally edible but the smaller ones (like Scots pine) are too resinous in taste for most. I was reminded of the experience in Nepal when we had specifically ordered good quality seed of the Chir pine (P. roxburghii) from Pakistan to plant. There was some seed left over but when the project staff went to collect it for planting in the following year, there was none to be found. The local nursery people had eaten it. Canary Island pine is closely related to Chir Pine, so its seeds would be edible too."

For pesto, decades ago, seed of Italian stone pine (Pinus pinea) was always used. Now Cedars of Lebanon in Mawson has four varieties of edible pine seed and the most popular is the longer of two types from China.