Edible Gardens by Craig Castree

As I walked the garden yesterday morning, a few plants kept stopping me in my tracks.

Not the vegetables. The perennials. The old ones. Rue, lion’s ear, ashwagandha, valerian, and a handful of others tucked here and there throughout the beds.

Most people walk past these plants without a second thought. But I grow them deliberately, and I think more of us should.

Here is why they matter.

Perennial plants put down deep roots and stay in the ground year after year. That means they are pulling energy from the sun, combining it with CO2, and producing complex sugars for far longer than any annual plant can. A significant portion of those sugars get shared directly into the soil, feeding the biology around them and benefiting the plants growing nearby.

Annual vegetables, by comparison, invest most of that energy upward into leaves, fruit, and seed. They are not particularly generous sharers. Perennials are.

So when your garden is made up entirely of annuals, as most vegetable gardens are, you are missing something. The sharing stops. The soil gets less of what it needs. The whole system works a little harder than it has to.

A regen edible garden is a different thing altogether. It has diversity. Perennials and annuals growing alongside each other. The old medicinal plants doing quiet, important work. The annuals producing food. Both benefiting from the relationship.

I use some of these medicinal plants regularly in teas and balms. But even setting that aside, they earn their place in the garden just by being there.

If you have a spare patch of soil, even a small one, consider adding a perennial with a purpose. A plant that gives back to the garden and perhaps to you as well.

The more you grow, the more control you have. Over what goes in, how it is grown, when it is picked, and what nutrition it carries.

That is worth thinking about.

P.S. There is a lot more on this inside my books you can get copies form https://edible-gardens-by-craig-castree.square.site

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I have just done a quick walk around the garden after getting home from Western Australia.

My voice is still a little croaky from all the talking. But the garden did not care. It just kept doing what gardens do when you let them.

Winter is well and truly here. The apple trees are dropping their leaves. The garden is slowing down. And yet, if you look closely, there is more life out there than most people realise.

The flowering perennials are putting on a show.

Hyssop is one of my favourites at this time of year. A beautiful little medicinal plant, quite woodland in character, and a perfect understory companion for fruit trees. It attracts beneficial insects, it is good for the soil biology, and it just quietly does its job without any fuss.

Calendula is still throwing flowers. Sweet Alyssum is alive with activity. And scattered through it all, little Johnny jump ups have appeared, as they do every year, completely uninvited and entirely welcome.

I did not plant them. They planted themselves.

That is what happens when you allow a garden to have some memory, some history, some diversity. The plants keep returning, the bees keep feeding, and the soil keeps building quietly beneath it all.

The flowers you see are not just pretty. They are feeding the insects that pollinate your food. They are drawing the predatory insects that keep pests in check. They are part of the system.

And the Johnny jump ups? The flowers are edible. Throw a few in a salad. That is something worth knowing.

You do not need to plant everything from scratch each season. Sometimes the best thing you can do is allow what is already there to keep going.

Let things sleep, let things seed, let the garden remember.

That is regenerative gardening in action.

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I have a new website to place your orders from; https://edible-gardens-by-craig-castree.square.site/

I sincerely apologise for the frustration this has caused over the last 7 days, to say that this has been a stressful and frustrating time would be an understatement. GoDaddy (the company that hosts my domain name and website) have made changes that simply haven't worked and this has been and continues to be a nightmare. I am currently considering options and may well go elsewhere if this in not fixed PRONTO! Once again, I apologise for the inconvenience caused, if there are items you wanted to buy that are not there? please contact me and I will put them up there. I am continuing to build the site as we speak.

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Kale: Kale is one of the vegetables that you either love or hate, me I don’t mind them but it does depend on how they are cooked. Kale naturally has oxalic acid in it to protect it from animals, insects, and fungi. There are over 50 types of kale, both ornamental and edible and one of the Brassicas. However, three varieties are readily available to grow in Australia.

Varieties available here:

Dwarf Curly, a compact, leafy green with mildly sweet, crinkled leaves
Red Russian, a blue-green variety with purplish-red veins
Black Toscana (Cavalo Nero – pictured above), a long dark-green/blue leaf variety.

When to plant:
Warm areas: March to April (in seed trays*), May to June (transplant seedlings)
Temperate areas: March to April (in seed trays*), May to June (transplant seedlings)

Cool areas: January to February (in seed trays*) April to May (transplant seedlings)

In temperate areas, all three varieties of kale like full sun, but will grow in partial shade. But in hotter regions, part shade will assist its growth. Also, being a winter vegetable, kale can tolerate mild frost.

Pests: Kale is subject to being attacked by many of the brassica pests and diseases, such as cabbage moth, aphids, snails, slugs so make sure you don’t grow it all together attracting them in, and ensure you companion plant them, over the cooler wetter months keep an eye out for fungal disease, and if you are cropping them all together you need to rotate them next year and choose a different site or else you are likely to build some soil-borne diseases that will effect them badly if planted back there next year.

Companions: artichoke, rhubarb, onions, cucumber, beets, celery, marigold, nasturtium, potato,herbs (sage, dill, camomile) marigold, white viola or pansies.

For more information about how to become more self sufficient as well as Edible Gardening, you can get a copy of my books at https://craigcastree.com.au/shop (Currently down) call to place an order 0411720283

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Lettuce is one of my all-time favourite plants to grow.

And yet I hear regularly from people who say they can’t get it right.

Here’s what I’ve found after growing it for decades: lettuce is actually one of the easiest plants in the garden. It belongs to the same plant family as thistles. So the fact that it grows like a w**d should come as no surprise.

A few things worth knowing.

Lettuce can be grown all year round if you think about where you place it. Morning sun in summer, more sun in winter. In hot weather, give it a shady spot or the leaves will turn bitter. Mulch the soil well so it never dries out. Water with seaw**d solution or worm juice every couple of weeks.

You can grow it in pots, hanging baskets, as a gap filler between slower crops, or as a border in an ornamental bed. With the variety available, there’s no reason to ever be without it.

Seedlings give you a harvest in a couple of weeks. Just make sure they’re young and fresh when you buy them. An overgrown punnet will go straight to seed after planting.

One of my favourite tricks is to let one plant from each variety bolt and go to seed. When the thistle-like seed heads are ready to disperse, I bend the flower stems down near the soil and brush them vigorously to scatter the seeds. A week or so later, new seedlings come up on their own. I harvest what I need and transplant the rest.

For a border, I alternate a red variety, a green variety, and a blue-flowering lobelia between them. Practical and beautiful at the same time.

If you’ve struggled with lettuce before, give it another go. Nature has already done most of the hard work for you.

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