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The heavy downpour of rain last week presented the perfect opportunity to harvest some worm wee (or worm juice to be polite) from our worm farm. Our worm farm is in fact a worm mansion towering four stories high!
We feed the worms all fruit and vegetable kitchen scraps except garlic, onion, and citrus. We also have a compost for leaves and other green matter. Worm wee is a great fertiliser.
Essentially, the rainwater filters through each layer and catches in the bottom container. Sometimes we leave the tap open with a bucket underneath when there is lots of rain so liquid can come straight out and the worms don’t drown.
To use worm wee all you have to do is dilute 1 part worm wee to 10 parts water. I usually use a 10L watering can which makes it easy to measure out. I’ve filled up some recycled 2L milk bottles to share with the group.
Today I have been bottling what I hope will be some delicious tangy Goan Eggplant Pickle. It’s a recipe I have made before and really enjoyed eating.
From a fragrant base of coconut & olive oil, ghee, mustard and fenugreek seeds, I added chilli, a few other spices and lots of organic eggplants. This gets fried off for a while, then some salt, sugar and malt vinegar get added to give that potent pickled goodness!
Something to note fellow jarries, is that you should leave these to age for around 3 weeks before you dig in. But keep the jar in the fridge for the whole time, whether its opened or not….
I like eating this with some homemade dahl, yoghurt, rice, and loads of coriander.
Here it is in the middle jar,alongside all the other things the group have made so far!
This is an old favourite I like to do once a year. I do it in bulk and keep a couple of jars in the fridge for antipasto or salads and give the rest away over xmas…
You’ll need: at least a kilo of medium sized button mushrooms + white wine vinegar + white wine + olive oil + garlic + bay leaves + cloves + a few sterilised jars (about 2 medium jars per kilo of mushrooms)
It starts with a visit to George my local grocer at Kozma’s in Redfern. He goes to the markets several mornings a week and is always happy to get extras, even with the proviso from me that it needs to be grown close by…
He got me a 4 kilo box of button mushrooms ‘grown on the Tolson family farm in the Hawkesbury’ for $24. I buy some white wine vinegar and head home picking some bay leaves from my front garden on the way in.
Then it goes like this:
1. Wash and trim the mushies and lay them on a tea towel to dry.
2. Bring to the boil 3 parts white wine vinegar + 1 part water + 1 part white wine and throw in a few bay leaves and 10 cloves.
3. Cook the mushies for 6 to 8 minutes making sure you stir a few times as they float and need to be turned over to cook evenly. They’ll shrink a lot in this process.
4. Take them out of the saucepan (without touching them) and leave to cool… stem down so they drain at the same time.
5. Add a bit of olive oil to the bottom of a jar and using tongs arrange the mushrooms in the jar as tightly as you can. Put in a few slices of garlic and a couple of bay leaves as you pack in the mushies and cover with oil as you go. Make sure there are no air bubbles (by pressing down a few times) and that the mushies are covered with oil so they last.
Hey presto…. my 4 kilos did 10 jars… time to meet the 6 jars mob for swapping….
Enjoying some late arvo gardening after returning from a weekend trip to C’berra. Some spoils for 6 jars: natural bokashi liquid fertiliser & nasturtium seedlings for a bit of natural pest control as well as flowers for salad.
I also found out over the weekend that French Marigold is very good at getting rid of pests. Will let you know how that goes.
Additionally, good airflow can really reduce the flying pests. Pity my arms are so short that I have to stand on a chair to open & shut the windows.
After re-potting &/or pruning I also sprayed the leaves with Organix EcoGuard for some extra oomph. That’s where you really want the windows open (& where the afore-made smudge-sticks come into their own): peeee-ew!
If i need some excitement I might spray the foliage with my home-made natural insect repellent later. So look-out Darlo! I think that recipe will make it into a 6Jars soon as well.
