Having met Nick Rayns for Kitchen Garden last week, it was a treat to visit Nick and Fiona Rayns' home garden in Yarralumla where the magic happens. The garden is a series of courtyards with a rather Japanese aesthetic. The area leading from the dining room includes rhododendrons, camellias, pots planted with strawberries, geraniums and a water feature seen through a picture window of a large pot with water spilling onto black pebbles.
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The second and third courtyards are divided by a greenhouse where Fiona is raising cherry cocktail and rouge de marmande tomatoes and basil. Growing from seed is one of her propagating skills, sometimes using a Burgon and Ball Eco Pot Maker on a heat tray. She is also raises plants from cuttings.
Among Fiona's favourite seed suppliers is The Seed Collection and she keeps the small packets in the fridge. A birthday present for Nick was a seed packet of mangel wurzel (beta vulqaris), an heirloom root vegetable from the 1700s. She raised 11 large pale yellow plants from which Nick makes a curry to a 2009 recipe from Jerry Coleby-Williams of Gardening Australia (recipe follows).
Four raised wicking beds filled with greens including Italian and curly leafed parsley, corn salad, English spinach, Miner's lettuce, a succulent which grows through winter, dwarf kale, sorrel, mibuna, a mustardy Japanese salad green which tolerates the cold, rocket and Vietnamese mint for curries.
Nick purchased the wicking beds from Canberra City Farm but he surrounded the grey plastic with fence palings topped with merbau timber, which is visually attractive and smooth to the touch with no splinters.
Sensor lights are attached to a pergola and each bed in a quadrant has a metal latticed cover to deter possums that eat everything except coriander and hops, which is used by Nick who is a brewer. There is a male kiwi fruit vine in this courtyard and two female kiwi fruit vines on the other side of the house that produce 200 kiwis in winter. So this year Nick has made kiwi fruit wine for the first time, now stored in his cellar for a Christmas opening. He says wine making is a bit of an art and requires quite a bit of equipment. His recipe is from the online moonshiners club (if you would like it, email me: bodenparsons@bigpond.com)
A grape vine that produces white table grapes on a wooden frame and produces shade in summer. Beside blackcurrant shrubs are cuttings from a fig tree, Nick's annual challenge to see if they will shoot.
The couple has trouble growing strawberries, citrus and finger limes but they eat from the garden every night, particularly the microgreens grown from a winter mix from Diggers. In raised beds three and four there are endives and rocket and tiny saucers filled with blue stones and water which attract bees for a drink.
A pomegranate tree produces so much fruit that Fiona spends a day outdoors bashing each fruit with a wooden spoon to dislodge the seeds which she freezes to serve on muesli all year.
At the top of the garden is the chicken run, with three Australorps and one silver pencilled Wyandotte. They produce eggs for the kitchen and also the best ingredients for six compost containers.
Mangelwurzel curry
Ingredients
1 mangelwurzel (or use two beetroot)
1 270ml tin coconut milk
200g pre-cooked chickpeas (or tinned, cooked)
1 onion
4 cloves garlic (or 50g garlic chives)
1 vegetable stock cube
2 tbsp tomato paste
curry powder, to taste
fresh coriander, finely chopped (optional)
a few society garlic flowers (optional)
1.5 cups brown rice, cooked separately
Method
1. Soak chickpeas overnight in water, then cook in simmering salted water until tender. Start cooking these first as they take the longest to prepare.
2. Next cook the brown rice in simmering salted water until tender.
3. Meanwhile, peel and dice the mangelwurzel root and chop up the leaves and the stalks. Keep the diced root separate from the leaves and stalks. Cook the diced mangelwurzel in simmering water for 15-25 minutes until tender, then strain.
4. Prepare the garlic and onion - fry them in a large saucepan using olive oil with a little added sesame oil for extra flavour. Add the coconut milk to the garlic and onions, diced mangelwurzel, chickpeas, tomato paste, stock cube and curry powder. Gradually bring to the boil while stirring. When boiling, add the chopped mangelwurzel and stir in, then simmer gently and stir occasionally for about four minutes.
5. Serve sprinkled with coriander and society garlic flowers, brown rice and mango chutney.
Serves 4.
