Visit Cygnet Kate April 2021

 Visit Cygnet Kate April 2021

For the last Food Garden Visit before the winter break the group visited Kate's garden in Cygnet. Kate is a founding member of the Cygnet Seed Library and her garden holds a veritable treasure trove of plants grown from seed collected locally. 

Here is Max introducing Kate to the group. Kate runs the  Crop Swap Cygnet and Surrounds group. Both this group and the Cygnet Seed Library have a Facebook page for anyone interested to learn more about them.

We last visited Kate's garden in 2013, a mere three years after she bought the property. And my, has she been busy in the intervening years. Her garden has grown, but her gardening style remains the same: she likes to let things grow where they come up naturally instead of making neat rows and straight beds. This results in a lovely food forest garden, where edibles and ornamentals happily mix and thrive. Everywhere you go there is something to see or eat.

Look at this small section where silverbeet, dahlia's, artichokes, perpetual spinach and a few more things happily grow together.

A happy kale surrounded by chicory, parsnip, some spinach and maybe even a carrot or two?

The garlic chives are thriving next to nasturtium and artichokes.

Pollination is assured and beneficial insects are attracted by flowers intermingling with edibles in many spots in the garden.

There are too many edible things ripening in Kate's garden to show them all, but here is a selection:

the last of this year's tomatoes ripening

Pumpkin

Quince

Lady in the Snow apple

Jaune Flamme tomato

The Chilean Guava shrubs are doing really well, and many of us snuck past there a few times for a taste!

Kate has learnt a few tricks by watching Millie from the ABC show Gardening Australia, and here she is showing us how to make plant supports by bending 6 mm metal rods from Nubco.

Kate loves her wood mulcher and uses it a lot. 

Her large pond was once so clear, Kate used to swim in it. But visiting ducks caused it to be quickly overgrown with water weeds. With some help, she removed the large mass of plant material and is using it as mulch on her garden, to great effect.

weed from the pond as mulch

the cleaned out pond

Seed saving is always happening in the garden. Here is an orach (Mountain spinach or Atriplex hortensis) ready for seed harvesting.

The Tromboncino zucchini gets to more than a meter long if you want the seeds! 

beans

Unfortunately, the wallabies have recently discovered Kate's garden. She now has to protect her produce more than before, like these cabbage seedlings.

In a sheltered and shaded part of the garden Kate grows, among many other things, the real Wasabi. It is not easy to find these days. Most 'wasabi' you buy in a jar is in fact horseradish with food colouring!

The "step-over apple" is a new addition to the garden. Kate has a row of 6 different ones, varying from very early to middle to late season apples. Although they are small trees, she does not need large amounts of apples and they will provide her with apples for about 6 months of the year.

The produce table and seed box were well visited as always. And the morning tea was delicious. Here is a photo taken just before it was completely ravaged by happy gardeners.

The delicious fig tarts on the centre right in the photo were made by Wendy. She adapted a recipe from Patricia Wells http://www.patriciawells.com/recipes/2018/3/6/fig-almond-tart Wendy did her own take on this recipe by preparing the figs by cutting them in half and sprinkling them with a little sugar (about 1 teaspoon for 10 figs) orange zest and a little fresh orange juice and baking them at 180°C until slightly caramelised. They are delicious dehydrated once baked. She also made individual tarts instead of one large one.

Bill's lush apple cake in the back left corner was also much sought after. You can find the recipe on the Food Garden Extra blog here: Apple cake recipe

Thanks Kate, for having us all over and inspiring us to get out there and garden!