Big Bloody Basil Bush

Before I start this chat can I just say how fantastic this rain is! My water tanks (Kaelan's clam shells) were starting to get a little low and quite a few of the plants were showing some signs of water deprivation. But two days of constant drizzle has fixed that problem right up.

Anyhow onto the story.......

It would appear that whatever combination of soil and sunlight and rain, plus the occasional watering, has led to an explosion of my basil bushes. I stand just under 180cm tall and you can see from the picture below that they are almost as tall as me and I would be unable to put my arms around them. At the moment the weight of the leaves are so heavy they are actually being held upright by strips of old sheet .

Never one to shy away from having a bit of a whinge when the occasion lends itself to do so, the extraordinary growth of this basil  has had a negative impact in the rest of the garden throughout the summer. When I planned out the summer crop I based it on what I thought would be the average height of the seeds that I was putting in. I am facing North so off to my right is east and the sun tends to follow an east to west trajectory throughout the summer. So everything that I planted 'behind' the basil which included corn, 3 types of chilli plants, capsicums and eggplants has had little to no sun. I now hear you thinking 'why didn't you just cut back the basil . You can't possibly eat it all before winter comes and kills it off'. Well....I did think about it but it was just too magnificent. Have you ever seen a basil plant that tall?  It's like, 2m and I wanted to see just how tall it would go.


Now that the weather has started to cool down I have noticed that some of the stalks are already starting to die off. We don't get frosts here but basil does not last in my backyard during winter.

Before consulting the ever knowing Yahoo7, garden forums or the opinions of others I considered some options:

Option 1. Build a greenhouse over the top of the raised garden bed- As well as protecting the bushes from the cold weather this would also have the advantage of keeping birds and other animals that love to munch on my plants away. But I really like the look of the open garden and watching Rosella's and other native birds sharing my tomatoes is pretty cool. I may change this view in the future but for now the bed remains open to the elements.

Option 2. Turn it into pesto- Fabulous idea but I would have to give most of it away as it would go off before I could eat it all. Not that I have any issues with giving away food that I have made. Its just I wanted to have some basil during the winter months.

Option 3. Freeze it- Now I didn't really know what would happen if I did freeze it. Would it turn to mush like chillies, would it turn black or would it dry out? 'Well why don't just try it and see what happens' was the sage advice of my wonderful wife Nicole. So I did. And a week later I took it out of the freezer and it had gone a little dark but upon thawing held it shape and would have quite usable for bruschetta.

The next piece of advice came from Patrizia at work who let me know that her and generations of her family and others from a similar cultural background had been freezing basil ever since Australian James Harrison developed the world first practical ice making machine and refrigeration system in 1857. Turn it into pesto, put in whole leaves whatever. It all works.

A little research on the Internet resulted in a wealth of information some of which was usable. One guys swears by using his food processor, with blade attachment, on a bunch of leaves and a little olive oil then putting them into ice trays.

All in all morale has started to climb. I no longer have to stand by and watch my 3m tall basil plants die of exposure.

The one thing everyone agrees on is that the freezing process does not work with wet leaves. 

Now if only this damn rain would stop.




If you enjoyed this story then you will enjoy Jade's quest for the perfect meal at thatperfectmeal.blogspot.com

The life and times of a raised vegetable patch

This blog is an ongoing record of the produce that has made it into and out of the yet unamed rasied garden bed. If you want the full history of how it came into being I have another blog which you can read at your leisure. For now sit back and relax and enjoy the.........actually don't sit back & relax. Throw me a few comments, opinions & advice and let me know what you are doing. It runs in reverse chronologial order from the top down so if you want the early stuff scroll to the bottom and head on up.

Cheers

Mankimbo

  

Jan 2011

Quite a large gap in time and also produce. I continued to grow letuce but added in tomatoes, basil, purple beans, eggplant, lebanese cucumber, lebanese zucchini, a few beetroot, eschallots, leeks, 3 varities of chilli plants and a capsicum.

Nov 2010

Honey, honey, the rains are here! The good thing about the 20 year flood was that it showed me where the water would pool and I could take steps to alleviate that for the future.

September 2010

One day you have 6 broccoli in the ground ready to turn into gourmet superfood and the next they go to seed. All of them!!! And the lettuce and the bok choi. The garlic soldiered on as did the sunflowers.

August 2010

Hmmm, Sorting to get a little crowded in there. The carrots on the far left (south) got almost no sun and the broccoli blocked out a lot of the sun to the right (north).

June 2010

Look how nice and orderd I have planted everything. In retrospect I did not need that many raddishes. In fact I needed none. Also in the patch are carrots, broccoli, lettuce, sunflowers, english spinach, eschallots, bok choi, onions, garlic & beetroot. Check out those support posts!

February 2010

You are vieiwing North. To the South I have enormous coniferous trees which some previous owner planted and now block out my wonderful east to west sun during the winter months. However, this is the sunniest section of the property during all seasons. Those support post holes were actually dug on the wrong side of the bed. Matt, my sons guardian, dug them on the hottest day in 100 years. I waited until it had rained for a week and redug them on the other side.

November 2009

There were 2 sheds but I got rid of one

So what I would really love to have is a quarter acre block with 6-8 identically sized vege patches and a chook run with a cricket pitch running down the middle of the backyard but for now I will face reality. I have 507sqm and the house & granny flat take up 2/3 of that. The backyard is terraced and backs onto a 7metre easement (Dents Creek). Mobs of cockatoos and other native wildlife lurk in the reserve across the road which in reality is the green belt that is set aside for the F6. We work with what we have and this is what I have.

From the garden to a stirfry

Step 1- Harvest some freshly grown vegetables from your raised garden bed.

Step 2- Admire your freshly grown produde

• Butternut pumpkin (still a little green)
• Shallot ready for eating
• Snow peas- they taste so good off the vine
• Fairy tale eggoplants- at 4-5 inches long and one inch wide they are not too bad
• Cucumber- Unlikely to make it into the stir fry but a good 8 inches long and two inches wide with nodules running along the sides.
• Purple climbing beans- these are great. You go from having none to 100 in a day
• Roma tomatoes
• Golden Jamaican chillies. Delicious and good looking

Step 3- The ones with yellow stripes eat mold. These red ones are returned to the circle of life.

Step 4- In a very hot wok

• Roughly chop and fry onion in olive oil until translucent (remove from wok)
• Cut up 500g of chicken and fry in two batches until the pink is gone
• Return chicken & onion & chicken to the wok and add in veges
• Carrots
• Snow Peas
• Fairy tale egg plant
• Purple climbing beans
• soy sauce
• oyster sauce
• garlic
• ginger

Step 5- Garnissh with peanuts & basil leaves and a good dollop of home made chilli sauce. Add beer to taste.