tomato trellising

After a few years of growing tomatoes in Oyster Cove's mild, maritime summers, we've found that pruning and trellising the tomatoes, as opposed to letting them grow multiple shoots makes for bigger, tastier and earlier fruit. We get less numbers of fruit per plant but they're bigger and we just plant a few more. In previous years we've used wooden stakes and trained the plants to two shoots - one on either side of the stake. This year we increased our numbers of plants to 40+ and so thought that staking and tying would become too laborious. Hence this method which is an older market garden one.

We set steel posts into concrete at the end of each row. These were not set directly but into sleeves so that the posts could be removed at the end of the season for easy tractoring. 3.5mm wire was tensioned between the posts using a gripple.

Plants were spaced at 60cm directly under the wire.

Baling twine was wrapped around the base of each plant and then tied to the top wire to form a "V" with the plant at its vertex.

These plants are then trained to only two shoots. Here's how:

Find the first flower cluster and then locate the secondary shoot growing out in the "armpit" between the stem and the leaf just below the flower. This one plus the main shoot (that is growing on above the flower) are saved. 

The extra shoot at the bottom is pinched off as are ALL other shoots. As the stems grow they are wound around the strings. This is much quicker and easier than using ties.

If the shoots make it to the top of the string, we'll just cut them off. This won't kill the plants and will allow all energy to be directed to fruit production.

laap pet

You might be forgiven for thinking that we only eat pasta. You might also think that Tasmania is cold and it would be too hard to grow the right things for, say, a Thai laap salad. Not so.
When we were in Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) some years ago we ate a delicious laap made with duck. Apparently duck is the more traditional meat for this salad. I have been meaning to make a duck (pet means duck in Thai - they're not really our pets) laap for ages but only got around to it now.


The duck breasts, partially thawed, are much easier to mince. I use a sharp chinese cleaver and chop seeking a coarse mince.


The most critical ingredient in laap, I think, is roasted rice powder. Toast some rice in a dry pan and then pulverise it.


In a pan on medium heat, cook (don't fry it should start stewing in its own juices) the duck with sliced lemongrass, chopped garlic and a pinch of sugar. Just as it's cooked, add quite a bit of roasted rice powder stir through and remove from the heat and allow to cool to lukewarm. Transfer to bowl and dress to taste with fish sauce, lemon juice ( should be limes but our tree is a few years off production yet), black pepper. Toss through some sliced onion, chopped mint and coriander and then spoon it over torn lettuce leaves (we used green mignonette and red oak). I sprinkled over the duck skin which I sliced and turned into duck crackling. This is not traditional but I wanted to use the skin and, I think, it's a great addition. It's best served over steamed sticky (glutinous) rice with lots of chopped chillis and consumed with cold, home-brewed beer.

orechietti primavera

It's really starting to feel as though the garden is getting back into productivity after the late winter/early spring minimum. The greens taste so full of life and vitamins. To go with this bounty


we made some hand-shaped orechietti. Our neighbours, who visited for dinner helped out (otherwise they weren't going to get fed). The "sauce" was made by sweating some leeks and carrot in a lot of extra virgin olive oil. Each ingredient was added succesively depending on how long it would take to cook. The green garlic, baby broad beans (in shell cut into 1 inch pieces), fennel bulb, shallot flower stems, articoke hearts, shelled broad beans. This was then tossed with the cooked orechietti, chopped flat-leaf parsley, more olive oil and lots of black pepper and cheese. It tasted pretty good.

Fried oysters

Oyster Cove, where we live, is a really beautiful place. It's quiet and beautiful down on the water and there are thousands of feral Pacific oysters sitting on the rocks just waiting to be harvested. Surprisingly, hardly anyone eats them. I think if we lived in Asia or in southern Europe, all of the oysters would have been picked off by now.
We like eating them raw with a bottle of hot sauce in one hand and a beer or margharita in the other right there on the shore. Some people who don't like them raw might like to try this method of cooking.

Take shucked and rinsed oysters and drain them well. Soak them in a mix of beaten egg thinned with a dash of milk. "Crumb" them in medium or coarse polenta (corn meal) and fry them in hot oil (we use olive) for about 1 minute.


They are really good served with homemade mayo (egg, olive oil, dijon mustard, salt and homegrown Meyer lemon) and a green salad (Cos, green oak and mignonette) dressed with olive oil and sherry vinegar.

Of course, a nice, cold, home-brewed Pilsener washes it all down just fine.