Purple asparagus

I bought and planted some seeds of purple asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) before we moved here.  I think I got about 10 seeds in all, which is not many but at that time purple asparagus could only be bought from one place so I didnt have a great deal of choice if I wanted to grow it.

The seeds were small, black and unremarkable.  I soaked them in water overnight and planted them, then waited for something to happen.  From those seeds only 3 germinated, it was very exciting.  At that time I knew of no one who had ever grown asparagus from seed so was pretty much on my own to figure how to grow them.  I have grown many things over the years which people have told me are impossible to grow, so this didnt daunt me.

Out of those 3 tiny seedlings grew, then slugs or snails killed 2 of them one night.  After noticing the loss I quickly put crushed eggshell all around the last survivor to help protect it.  That one seedling was not killed but did sustain some snail damage from time to time and needed the crushed egg shell placed around it pretty often.

This one tiny seedling grew slowly, it died down each winter as asparagus must, and grew back larger each Spring.  Each Spring the snails would hammer it and I would protect it with egg shells.

Then it was dug up and moved here with us.  Considering that we moved in the height of summer the plant did not enjoy this move and its growth was slowed but it did not die.  I planted it into the soil at the edge of the vegetable garden near the fence.  Asparagus dies each winter and sprouts again each spring.  I am told it takes 3 years from seed to get a crop, but this plant had such a difficult start that it took a bit longer.

Purple asparagus spear emerging in early spring

Asparagus plants are either male or female.  Female asparagus tends to be a bit thinner than the male plants as they put energy into seeds and fruit, male plants grow thick and fat spears.  Most people kill off the female plants and only grow the male ones.  I had no idea if this plant was a male or a female, I didnt particularly care as I planned on keeping it regardless.

Purple asparagus spear

Last year (or the year before, I cant remember) this plant flowered for the first time, it is a female plant.  It grew a handful of red berries, most of which were eaten by birds and the seeds deposited who knows where.  I kept some berries and extracted the seeds.  I am yet to grow them, if I do they will most likely not grow true to type as many wild asparagus plants grow here and would have donated pollen to my plant.


What purple asparagus looks like

One question that I had when buying purple asparagus seed is what the plants would look like.  After searching the internet I found many pictures of purple asparagus spears, which looked amazing, but no pictures of the plant once the spears matured.  I wondered if they stayed purple or if they grew green like normal asparagus.

As it turns out, the spears are nice deep purple, then they turn green as the fronds emerge more.  The fronds of purple asparagus look much like regular asparagus, green and fluffy and beautiful.

While I am disappointed that it is not purple for its entire life it is still a beautiful plant.  Tiny birds like to hide in the fronds, some of them make nests in some of the other green asparagus plants that grow here and I hope that they decide to nest in the purple one some day too.

Purple asparagus starting to frond up, note the immature female flowers

What purple asparagus tastes like

Home grown asparagus, like many home grown vegetables, tastes far superior to store bought asparagus.  This is probably due to the freshness, it can be picked minutes before being eaten instead of being picked weeks earlier and stored/transported/stored again before being eaten.  We have a lot of green asparagus growing here, most of it is from seed that birds have kindly deposited under apple trees, along fence lines, and under electrical wires.  While it often grows in unsuitable places this does not stop it from being delicious.

Strangely I have only eaten purple asparagus a few times over these years.  I like this plant so find it difficult to eat it, I would hate to eat too many spears and leave the plant depleted of energy.  I find that it tastes much like the green asparagus that is growing on this property, only sweeter.  If you like fresh asparagus you will love purple asparagus.

I find it disappointing that I can not buy this in the shops as it is nicer than the green type.  Hopefully one day someone will remedy this and grow purple asparagus commercially.  Unfortunately that someone wont be me.  Due to health issues any form of large scale farming is not in my future.

One can cover the spears as they grow to produce white asparagus, these white spear are more tender and sweeter again. 

Purple asparagus, each frond gets green as it grows

Why grow asparagus from seed

Most people think asparagus can not be grown from seed.  I have even had people try to argue with me over this point.  The fact that asparagus are flowering plants that produces seed, and that I have planted seeds and grown asparagus from those seeds, seems almost to be moot points as they have their minds already made up and no amount of logic and evidence will convince them otherwise.

Very few people grow asparagus from seed due to the time it takes to obtain a crop.  I can understand that, it takes a few years to get a large enough plant and by then you may be too attached to it to be able to eat much of it.  Asparagus is a long lived perennial so the effort will be payed off by years of asparagus crops.  You need to be aware that growing from seed has disadvantages, but there are a few reasons that may make you consider growing asparagus from seed.

Asparagus can accumulate virus load and not grow as well.  There are currently no certified virus free sellers in Australia so growing from seed to remove the virus load is currently the only way around this.  Virus load is probably not a huge problem for asparagus around here though. 

Growing from seed would also ensure an amount of genetic diversity which, assuming that you grew several seeds, would make your crop a bit better able to cope with problems that arise. Some seed grown plants will out perform others in your garden even if they came from the same parent.

Some varieties are not for sale as plants anywhere and only available as seed.  You will not be able to grow these unless you grow from seed.  Some of these are excellent varieties and I dont know why they are rare, others are rare because they are not all that great.

I grew purple asparagus from seed as I could not find crowns or plants.  Some places sell purple asparagus plants now.  To be honest I would not bother to grow asparagus from seed if plants or crowns are available.  That being said I would NOT buy tiny seedlings in a punnet though, growing from seed would result in healthier plants than buying these stunted plants that have grown in less than ideal conditions and not being repotted for who knows how long.


Where to get purple asparagus

If you want to eat purple asparagus you will have to grow it yourself.  A few places sell seeds and plants these days.  I may grow some of the seeds from my plant, if any of them are purple I may offer crowns or plants on my for sale page.  If you are keen to grow out some of my seed I may be able to send you some but be aware that it may not grow true to type.

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Yacon Water Kefir

I have had milk kefir grains for some time now, the kids love it, I like it but find it a bit too sour to drink by itself, and Tracey dislikes the taste of it.  Kefir is good for you so I wanted to try water kefir.  Perhaps that would be a way for the kids to get more of the kefir goodness into their diet.

Recently we obtained some water kefir grains.  Water kefir is different from milk kefir, it is still very good for you though.  The younger kids do not like water kefir all that much (mostly because it is a bit bubbly), Igloo loves it, I love it and Tracey thinks it is ok. 

Kefir
Both types of kefir contain live and beneficial probiotics.  Basically they consist of "good" bacteria, yeasts and other microbes. These good microbes are eaten by you and some will colonise in your digestive tract and continue to provide you with benefits long after you have finished consuming the kefir.  There are many recipes for water kefir on the internet but we have been mostly following the one that came with the grains.

Yacon
Yacon contains inulin and other sugars which are not digestible by humans.  Yacon is considered a prebiotic, this means that it contains things that feed the good bacteria etc in your digestive system which help to keep you healthy.  Yacon tubers also taste great, it is a vegetable that is eaten like a fruit and is loved by kids.  Yacon is my favourite vegetable.

Kefir & Yacon?
If water kefir contains probiotics, and yacon contains prebiotics which feed the probiotics, then it made me wonder if I could culture water kefir on yacon and leave out all of the other things.  After internet searching I found many people who claimed water kefir flourished when using yacon syrup instead of sugar.  Some people culture water kefir only on water and sugar, many of these people were the ones saying that the yacon syrup was great.

The only problem is that I do not have access to yacon syrup, I grow yacon plants and have access to the delicious yacon roots.  I do not know how to make the syrup and I do not intend to find out, I certainly have no intention of ever buying yacon syrup!  Nowhere on the internet seems to mention anything about yacon root (which I grow) being used in water kefir.  There is no one saying that they have tried this and failed or succeeded, someone needs to try this and let people know if it works or not.  That is why I am writing this post.

Yacon kefir - all the bubbles are gone because I carried the jar outside to take a picture

This is almost certainly not the best way to do this, but it is my first attempt so I will write what I did, and what I think should be done differently to make it better.  At some point in the future I may write another post and say what I changed and how it worked (or did not work).


Yacon Water Kefir

Ingredients:
1 small peeled yacon root (about the size of my thumb, perhaps a bit larger)
1 small peeled and grated yacon root (similar size to above)
1/2 cup water kefir grains
4 cups water

Method
1) add water kefir grains and water to a jar
2) squeeze the liquid out of the grated yacon root.  I put a strainer above the jar and squeezed above this so that the liquid would go in but not the solids.  Discard the squeezed and grated yacon
3) add the peeled yacon to the jar of liquid
4) wait 2 days for the kefir to do its thing.  I do not put a lid on the jar but you need some way to prevent insects and dust from entering
5) remove the yacon root, remove the kefir grains, drink the liquid.  Pretty simple


Even before the 2 days were up I noticed a few things.  Firstly, grated yacon is delicious!  I think it would go well in a salad being grated like this.  Secondly the kefir was bubbling a bit, this tends to indicate that the grains are working well.  If the jar had a lid we may have had issues with the pressure.


What does it taste like, Would I do this again

It tastes alright, but nothing to write home about.  It is similar to how water kefir tastes when it is made on sugar rather than adding any kind of fruit.  The water tastes like it is bubbling, even when it is not, other than that it does not have a strong taste.  I could barely taste the yacon, if I did not know that yacon was in there I would not have guessed it.  Kind of like soda water.

I dont think I will do this again, or if I do I will change things around and perhaps add some limes.  I love how water kefir normally turns out and found this yacon kefir to be less than exciting.  I also prefer to eat yacon normally rather than to eat it after it has been kefired.  The water kefir grains did not multiply as much as I had hoped.  They did multiply a bit, and the grains had been in the refrigerator for a week which generally means that they wont multiply a lot, but I had high hopes.  The water kefir grains have been multiplying slowly lately and I had hoped that the natural sugars in yacon would fix this, apparently we just have to wait for the weather to change.

Interestingly enough, the peeled yacon root also tasted like it was bubbling after it is removed from the completed kefir.  The kids thought that eating the yacon was fun as it did not taste much like yacon, it tasted like it was bubbling.

I also found it interesting that yacon normally discolours reasonably quickly after it has been peeled, but even after two days in the kefir the peeled yacon root looked much the same as when I put it in the jar.


What I would do differently

Yacon kefir tastes ok, but not great.  Adding some kind of fruit or berries or something may have made it much nicer.  Adding some sort of juice or something to the finished yacon kefir certainly makes it taste great.  I dont know, I may try a few different things and then write a post about them.


Where to get yacon and kefir grains

I sell yacon crowns on my for sale page over winter.  I may offer water kefir grains and milk kefir grains for sale, if I do they will be listed on the for sale page too.  Kefir grains sometimes reproduce slowly, other times quite fast, so you may need to contact me to see if they are available.  I also sell a few other organic perennial vegetables and some organic heirloom vegetable seeds.

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Water Cress

People always tell me how much they love watercress (Nasturtium officinale) yet I dont know anyone who grows it, they are all too scared that it would be too difficult.  Everywhere I read says that water cress is difficult to grow.  Many places claim that water cress requires crystal clear water and that without flowing water it will not grow.  This is simply not the case, water cress is easy to grow if you have water, sunlight and soil.

I have wanted to grow water cress for years but was scared that it would not go well.  Having no one to ask adds to the fear that it would be difficult to grow.  Having never grown watercress meant that I had also never eaten it.  I was very curios about eating watercress so decided to bite the bullet and grow some.  One day I ordered some water cress seeds from ebay (something I never like to do as there is no guarantee with seeds, but it was so cheap it was worth the risk) and decided to give it a go.  I tried to grow it in a few ways and surprisingly all of them grew well.  It grew so well and was so simple that I thought I should write a post about it and explain what I did so that hopefully some other people will also give it a go.

Watercress starting to flower

Watercress is meant to be a perennial semi-aquatic vegetable.  Mine appears to be perennial, but then it self seeds so well that I am not certain that this is the case or if it forms a self sustaining population of annuals.  Regardless I always have some growing with minimal effort on my behalf, which is what I want.  Watercress is one of the oldest known vegetables, many of the older vegetables are semi-domesticated and can be a hassle to grow or harvest or eat or even have issues with edibility due to toxins.  While watercress could benefit from some serious breeding work to increase the size of the leaves, other than that it seem pretty good.  It is probably not great to eat in huge amounts, but I dare say one would eat a ridiculous amount before any problems would be noticed.  I dont think any brassica is fantastic to eat in huge amounts so it is certainly no worse than any of the others that people eat every day.  It handles cold weather, hot weather and does not appear to have any noticeable daylength sensitivity issues.

One place I grew watercress was in a fish tank as part of a mini aquaponics tank at work.  Water cress is clearly well suited to such life and performed well.  It appears that the only limiting factor here was sunlight, unfortunately my tank does not get quite enough light for it to perform as well as it should.  That being said it did well and cleaned the water well due to its rapid growth rate.  It did not take over the way mint does which is another bonus.  Unfortunately I did not take any pictures of this, it really does get very lush very fast with aquaponics.

Watercress getting leggy producing seed pods

Another way I grew it was in punnets.  I planted some seeds into a punnet of soil and kept this punnet in an icecream container with shallow water.  This was the simplest way to grow it that I could think of but I had doubts that it would grow using this method as the water is far from running.  I also grew some duck weed on top of the water (I like duckweed), this would lower the dissolved oxygen in the water so added to my doubts.  This grew incredibly well, these plants have since flowered and produced seed which I now need to collect and clean.  If I had limited space I would grow watercress in this way as it is so simple and productive.  The pot could be sized up or down to meet your needs and the ice cream container could be replaced with any container that holds water that is an appropriate size.

Watercress growing in a punnet, the duckweed is also growing well

I have taken cuttings from the plants I was growing and put them in a glass of water.  In a few days they all grew roots at each node.  I tried to float a plant in some water in a fish tank and see if it would grow without soil.  Short term this went very well but eventually it all died off.  The lack of adequate sunlight was certainly a factor here but I think that water cress probably needs soil.

I am currently trying to grow some watercress in a bucket of soil that has a few cm of water on top of it in a similar way to water chestnuts and duck potatoes.  I took a cutting from the existing plants and have planted it in the bucket.  It is still early days but so far it appears to be growing well.  It has survived some frost as well as a few days with temperatures in the low 40s so is proving to be far more hardy that I would have expected.  I will try to remember to update this after they have been growing for a few months, if they do grow in this way it is even easier than the ice cream method above.

At this stage I do not sell watercress seeds but I may do so in the future if I ever get around to collecting enough seed.  If I do they will be listed on my for sale page with all the other perennial vegetables, heirloom vegetable seed and herbs that I sell.  Once you have some growing it is simple to keep it growing and propagate by taking cuttings.


UPDATE: the original plants were eaten out by slugs/snails/something in one night.  It seems odd they have grown for so long with no problems at all but then are completely gone in one night, but there is not much that can be done now.  I think it may have been water snails, but do not know for sure.  The cuttings growing in the bucket are so far untouched and are continuing to grow well.  This bucket has no water snails.

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Growing Water Chestnuts in Buckets

The water chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis) is a type of sedge that is found growing in tropical wetlands of the world.  They are simple to grow, highly productive, and nutritious.  As well as providing food for you, they yield a decent amount of straw as well as providing habitat for frogs and water insects, all in all they are an excellent permaculture vegetable.

I always wanted to grow water chestnuts, but was never able to find any to plant.  People often comment that they are cheap to buy from supermarkets so they are not worth growing, but I have never seen them for sale except in cans.  I have no idea what chemicals are used on the water chestnuts that I do buy in a can.  I do not know where they grow, how far they have traveled to reach me, how they are grown, or anything like that so growing my own water chestnuts organically seems like a sensible approach.

I have heard of a lot of different ways to grow water chestnuts, and I have heard a lot of people complain that they tried to grow them and failed miserably.  So I thought I would write a post about how I grow them, this is not necessarily the best way, but it works for me and requires very little time and effort.

Water chestnuts growing in buckets

How I grow water chestnuts

The first mistake people make is rotting the dormant water chestnut corms.  I plant the corms in a small pot or punnet and keep it reasonably damp until they sprout.  I used 10cm square pots that we had in the shed, I put the cheapest potting mix in and planted the corms so that they were not quite touching each other.  I do not make it any more damp than I would if I were germinating tomato seeds.  If you put the corms under water prior to them sprouting I believe that they will mostly rot and die.  I planted them in late winter/early spring and kept them away from frost.

I then watered like I would any seedling until they were about 5cm tall.  At this stage I put the pot in an ice cream container and filled water half way up the pot, a few days later I put water up to the top of the pot so that the soil level was at the water level.  I then left the water level there for a few weeks.  This gives the water chestnut a chance to grow roots and the leaves start to collect energy for the plant ready for the next step.

People make a few mistakes in the nest step, they make the water too deep and they do not use enough soil.  Water chestnuts grow in soil, that is where they produce their crop, so if there is not enough soil then they will produce a small crop or a crop of very small corms.  They are an emergent plant, which means that while the roots are below water, the top of the plant must be in the air otherwise they will die.  I then separate the corms and plant them in soil which had about 10cm of water on top of it.  In this way the little plants were just under the surface of the water and would grow out of the water in a few days.  You can make the water deeper, but not too deep, up to about 30cm should not harm the plants but any deeper than this and they may struggle.

In a perfect world they never experience any frost, unfortunately mine seem to see a few light frosts when they are young.  I try to make sure the frost they see is not too hard and they seem to do fine with it.  Interestingly they handled a light frost better than duck potatoes.  They even had some ice on top of the water a few times, while it is less than ideal they are hardy enough to cope with that.

The water chestnuts then grow during the warm weather and die down in autumn.  When they die down the water level is dropped and the corms are left to dry a bit in the soil.  When they have dried down a bit they are dug up and eaten or stored.  If they are ever completely dry they will die.

Water chestnuts growing in the shade of a plum tree

Where I grow water chestnuts

Ideally you would grow water chestnuts on the edge of a pond or slow flowing stream.  In a perfect world they would colonise this water edge and all you would do is go and collect them.  Many people, including myself, do not have access to a pond or stream so this method is unachievable.  

Many people who do not have access to a pond grow them in a bathtub, while this method sounds great it takes up space and you have to be able to find a free bathtub.  Finding free things where I live is almost impossible so I had to think of another way.  I have heard of people growing them in an icecream container filled with soil and submerged in a fish pond, they say they yield about 30 corms per container.  Again this sounds great but requires a fish pond which I do not have.

People often tell of growing them in styrofoam broccoli boxes that they get for free from the fruit and veg shop, out here we can not buy styrofoam boxes let alone convince a shop owner to give them away so I had to keep thinking.  

There are a lot of plastic tubs and boxes that I have seen used, but they all cost too much, I want to produce high quality food for cheap.

I found some cheap buckets for sale, buckets hold water, they look ok, they are easy to find in pretty much every town, they are large enough for one corm each, and they do not take up too much space.  If you only had a balcony this method would still work.  So I decided that buckets would be the containers I would use in which to grow water chestnuts.

I then dug up some subsoil clay, mixed it with animal manure, put it in the buckets to about 5cm from the top, and filled with water.  The soil settles a bit over the next little while so you end up with more water above the soil level.  

It is important to leave it for a few weeks because if you planted directly into this the water chestnuts would rot.  Any weed seeds germinate in the wet soil, the weeds can not survive being constantly under water so they die off reasonably quickly and pose no problems.  Over the next few weeks the water goes green, then crystal clear, then green a few times as algal blooms deal with excess nutrients.  This is good, do not worry when this happens as this is what you want.  The water seems to do this on and off throughout the entire growing season, again do not worry as this is normal.

People are often afraid of clay or subsoil, but they hold a lot of minerals.  Being underwater it makes the soil soft enough for plant roots to penetrate and renders these minerals available to the growing plants.  The only thing to watch for is that no rocks are in the mix.

Water chestnuts growing in a bucket with duckweed

Once the water has had a few weeks to work itself out I then plant the water chestnuts in the fertile mud.  They were not tall enough to reach the air yet, but that is ok.  By now they should be strong enough to grow a bit to reach out of the water.  I also put a bit of duckweed floating on the water surface.  The duckweed grows to cover the water surface and blocks light from the algae.  It also slows evaporation, cools the soil by providing shade and helps out in a bunch of other ways.  If you have access to azolla I would include that too as it fixes nitrogen from the soil and fertilises your water chestnuts.

As the water chestnuts grow to fill the bucket they send out rhizomes, I had a spare bucket of mud so broke off one of these rhizomes and planted it.  It did not take long before it grew so much that I could not tell which bucket had a corm planted and which one was from the rhizome.  From here I simply kept the water at the top of the bucket by filling it up each afternoon when watering other vegetables.

Everywhere you read and everyone you talk to will say that you must grow water chestnuts in direct sun and avoid shade at all costs.  At first this is what I did and it went well for me, but then summer came along and it got too hot.  Even though there was still water in the buckets the plants were suffering from the relentless heat.  Being in buckets made it simple to move the water chestnuts under the shade of a tree.  I moved 2 buckets at first to see if that helped, those plants started growing again while the ones in direct sun were still going poorly.  Now I grow all the water chestnuts under part shade, they seem to be growing fine there.


How I harvest water chestnuts

When the time is right the foliage of the water chestnuts starts to yellow off.  This is a signal to stop watering the buckets.  When they have dried off for a while you then dig through and collect the water chestnuts.  It is important not to let the corms freeze if you are planning on replanting them the next year as freezing will kill them.  If you plan on eating them freezing is fine.

After harvest I do sell water chestnuts for planting and growing on my For Sale page.  I do not accept pre-orders as I can not guarantee that I will have any to spare.  They are mostly available during Winter and early Spring.

I wrote another post here about the yield I got from a bucket of water chestnuts.

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Everlasting Onions

Everlasting onions (Allium cepa perutile) are a rare perennial onion which is extremely productive and undemanding.  They do not appear to suffer pests or diseases, frost does not bother them, and if it gets too hot and dry they die down to bulbs.  I do not know why but I do not know of anyone else who has everlasting onions for sale in Australia.  They are one of the easiest and most productive vegetables to grow, just like all perennial vegetables you plant once and harvest forever.

I first heard about everlasting onions from someone who lives overseas.  They told me how great they were and said that they were extremely rare for some reason.  Importing onion plants/bulbs is more trouble/expense than I can deal with.  Importing onion seed is less difficult but everlasting onions never really set seed so this was also out of the question.  I then started to search for them in Australia.  No one seemed to sell them, it took me years to track them down in Australia.  Eventually I found someone who sold me some small plants.  She had these plants for well over 30 years and said that they flowered each year but had never set seed.  This sounded right so was worth a try.

Everlasting onion bulbs sprouting - normally they are far larger than these

At first I was skeptical that I had in fact got the right thing.  They looked like any spring onion or young onion plant before it bulbs up, but the plants were extremely uniform in size.  I planted them somewhere safe and waited.  In a few weeks most had split in half so I dug them up and divided them.  A few weeks later the rest had split in half so I divided again.  In another month or so they all divided again at least once, some of them divided a few times.  By this stage they were no longer uniform in size and I grew tired of digging them up and dividing them.  I now had a few dozen plants and was convinced that they were better than regular spring onions. 

Once winter hit these plants were not at all bothered by frost.  The growth slowed somewhat but other than that they looked happy and continued to divide.  Spring was great, they grew faster, divided faster and began to flower.  The flowers did not look complete and they did not even try to set seed.  They looked like Allium cepa flowers rather than Allium fistulosum, so I was then convinced that they were not ordinary spring onions and were most likely true everlasting onions. 

When summer rolled around some kept growing but most I let dry down to see if they produced bulbs.  They ended up growing small purple bulbs, a bit larger than a french shallot.  Being new to everlasting onions I decided not to eat the bulbs, instead I replanted them.  Each bulb divided into a dozen or more plants when it resprouted!  Over the past few years I have let some die to bulbs each year, if they are crowded they produce small bulbs, if they are given space the bulbs are much larger.

How everlasting onions are used

Once you grow everlasting onions you will never need to buy spring onions or shallot bulbs ever again.

We eat the green tops year round in place of spring onions.  Unlike spring onions they never get too thick and fibrous.  I have some spring onions that I planted as seed when we moved here, they are large and thick and a bit too fibrous to eat.  I do not have the heart to kill them, but do not know how to make them small and delicate again.  Cutting them to the ground helps but it does not take them long to turn into monsters again.

If we keep watering the everlasting onions over summer they keep growing, if we dont water they die down to nice little bulbs.  The bulbs can be used as salad onions, they are good for this purpose.  The bulbs seem to store forever, I dont know how long but it is at least several months.  We have fried the onion bulbs, they are nice but become very crunchy.  I think they must be reasonably high in sugars as they caramelise rather quickly.  Everlasting onion bulbs can be used in any recipe that calls for onion bulbs or french shallots.

Everlasting onion bulbs - they can be larger or smaller than this

How to increase your stock

Everlasting onions know what they are doing as far as reproduction goes.  They split in half numerous times throughout the year.  If they are divided each division will also multiply.  Neither heat nor frost bothers them.  It does not take long for a few to become a decent patch.  Like any other onion, if you plan to eat the bulb you do not have to kill the plant.  If you cut off the roots with a few mm of the base of the bulb this can be sprouted and replanted.  I have only done this once as I now have enough plants that they quickly replace any that we eat.

Everlasting onions are hardy, I planted one under a tree when I got them.  I do not water or weed this one after it was established, I had actually forgotten all about it.  This summer it was so hot and dry that we had no grass and I saw that it has divided into a substantial clump and is still hanging in there.  They are not as large or numerous as the ones that are well watered and weeded, but they are surviving and reproducing.  Planting an extra plant in an out of the way like this is a great way to increase your stock as you tend to forget about them for a while and when you find them again they tend to be rather numerous and in need of digging up and dividing.

The lady who I got the everlasting onions from had them flower each year for 30 odd years and had never seen any seed produced ever, the first few years I had similar results.  This year after they flowered I had a small number of seeds produced.  From several hundred flower heads I ended up with about 30 seeds.  I planted some of them and have a few seedlings appear.  I have no idea what they will turn into, perhaps exactly like their parent or perhaps something entirely different.

I have heard of someone who grew potato onion seeds and ending up with something very similar to my everlasting onions.  That makes me wonder if everlasting onions are another type of potato onion that was seed grown many years ago.  If so the results from the seed grown plants should be extremely interesting.

Where to find everlasting onions in Australia

To the best of my knowledge no one else is selling these other than me.  I am happy to be wrong on this as they are a great vegetable and more people should grow them.  I have everlasting onions for sale all year, they are listed on my for sale page along with some other perennial vegetables and heirloom vegetable seeds.

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Chinese water chestnut yield

It is about time to harvest the water chestnuts.  This year I grew them in small 10 litre buckets, it was very cheap, simple and took up very little space.  This method could even be used on a balcony as it is not only productive but if you used nice looking buckets it looks good too.  I have put details of how I grew them here.

The buckets were cheap and easy to find, I filled them with clay and manure from the property, so it was also very cost effective.  They required no weeding, no pruning, no maintenance at all other than the initial planting and then filling up the buckets with water when I was out watering the rest of the vegetables.

Water Chestnuts growing in a bucket

Water Chestnut yield

One bucket was ready so I pulled the plant out and broke open the root ball in search of water chestnut corms.  There were a lot of corms in that bucket ranging from tiny to medium in size, unfortunately none of them were very large.  Most were too small to bother peeling and eating but about a dozen were edible size.  A dozen edible corms return per corm planted is not too bad considering how simple this was.

I ended up with around 127 corms from that first bucket (plus a heap that were too small to bother counting but are probably just as viable), all together they weighed around 365 grams.  That bucket also produced a decent amount of straw which I can use as mulch somewhere in the vegetable garden.

The bucket had a lot of corms squashed against the side as the plant tried to reach new ground, these corms will all grow and are genetically identical to the rest of the corms in the bucket so they can be used to grow next seasons crop.  They are not easy to peel as larger and rounder corms so will not be eaten by us.

I am guessing that the other buckets will yield roughly the same in terms of weight.  I have high hopes that one bucket in particular will have less corms, but they will mostly be larger corms.  That bucket was not started off with planting a corm like the others, instead I had a spare bucket of soil so I broke off a runner from one of the other plants and put it in there.  I think that it will have produced less corms and they will all be a bit larger.  When I harvest that bucket if it is any different and I remember I will try to write a comment or another post.

All of those small corms are great as it means I have plenty of stock to plant next year and to feed to animals, but I would prefer to have a lot less corms all of which are much larger. 

Water Chestnut corm

How much did it cost me

Normally I dont do this but I thought I would write the cost of this little water chestnut growing experiment.  One water chestnut corm $2, one bucket $0.85, soil & fertiliser etc $0, water $probably a few cents.  

For a total expenditure of less than $3 I got about a dozen edible sized water chestnuts.  That means each of the larger edible sized water chestnut effectively cost me about $0.24 plus produced some straw and whatever added benefit of having insects and wrens hanging around due to the water.  

Next year I already have corms to plant and the buckets so each water chestnut will essentially cost a fraction of a cent.  I doubt the buckets will last more than a few years due to the sun, but we will see what happens.

Things I plan to do differently

One factor which may have made the corms so small is that we went away towards the end of the growing season and some of the buckets dried out which meant the plants died down early.  Some buckets are still actively growing as they did not dry out as much, so time will tell on this theory.  Perhaps if they had constant water in the late season, like they did throughout the rest of the season, they would have kept growing and the corms would have increased in size.

I think that I can make the plants produce larger corms in a few ways.  Firstly I think adding more manure and having less soil will help.  More manure will mean more fertility, hopefully this fertility will help the plants to produce larger corms. 

I will probably have the soil level slightly lower and the water level slightly higher, this will help prevent drying out on hot days as happened a few times here over summer.  During summer where the daytime temperatures were in the mid 40s for weeks on end meant I would fill the water container in the morning and by the afternoon they had dried out, having lower level of soil will mean that I can have slightly more water in the bucket.  Having a deeper and wider container would help, but that is not really an option right now so I am sticking to growing in buckets.  

Growing by splitting off shoots and planting them part way through the growing season should help to reduce the number of corms in each bucket and hopefully ensure that these corms are larger.  If this does not work I know that there are some improved varieties out there which grow larger corms, but getting my hands on them seems almost impossible.

I plan to grow them again

Overall I am happy with how this turned out, I got a good yield of edible corms from a tiny space with next to no work from me, a massive yield of propagation material (and/or animal feed), and a good amount of straw.  Considering that all this resulted from planting a single corm that was only the size of my thumb nail I count it as a win.  I have a few things to change for next year to hopefully ensure some larger corms.  

They taste nothing like the water chestnuts from a can, they taste a lot nicer.  They kind of taste like something familiar that I can not quite put my finger on, perhaps coconut.  I wish they tasted more like yacon or jicama as some people have suggested that they might, but they dont.

Being a perennial vegetable it means that if I decide that I want to I can continue to grow these for ever.  Considering that the largest cost in growing these is purchasing the corms, and given how simple they were to grow, having my own supply kicking over each year seems to be a sensible option.

Where to buy water chestnut corms in Australia

Like many of the other perennial vegetables I grow I do sell water chestnuts.  The corms that I sell are larger than the ones I initially bought, but they are not as large as they will get if you give them room.  If you are interested the details can be found on my for sale page.

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On Water Harvesting and Carbon Farming

One of the challenges with the landscape here is the fact that we are farming on a hillside which, over the years, has laid victim to over grazing and erosion. It only takes a moment to stand back and look at the current state and where things are headed to know something needs to be done.  Retaining walls will not maintain the natural contour of the land. Terracing sounds nice but not quite in the budget.

So taking our first steps toward improving the soil integrity and preventing erosion on our property, we have begun the process of digging swales or long trenches that follow the keylines on the contours of the land.  (To get a better understanding of how this works, you can watch the youtube below from Harvesting Rainwater the Permaculture Way by Geoff Lawton.)  Swales catch the rain water and allow it to soak into the soil instead of running off down the hillside (causing more dreaded erosion).  Being beginning permaculture students, this may all be a big experiment, but after much thought and planning about how to irrigate our garden crops and keep our hillside intact, this seems like the best idea.  So on we go digging...next will be a few ponds to feed the swales...it seems there may be a grand scheme in the works.   

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Crimson Flowered Broad Beans

I wrote a post on Broad Beans (Vicia faba) last year.  This year I grew a different variety of broad bean which I have wanted to grow for some time.  At first things seemed promising, they grew well, produced heaps of flowers and started to form many pods.

Then the ducks flew over the fence and ate most of the pods, broke most of the plants, ate most of the leaves, trampled everything that their little ducky feet could trample and generally destroyed things.  I was not overly impressed but some of the damaged plants went on to produce a small number of pods and seeds.  I still ended up with a lot more seeds than I planted so I count that as a win.

Crimson flowered broadbean starting to flower

I grew this particular type because someone sent me some seeds of a broad bean called crimson flowered broadbean.  I had wanted to grow this type of broadbean for a while and was trying to decide between growing it and another one so it worked out well.  They did not send many seeds and I was not sure if we would move before the seeds were ripe so I only planted three.  These three seeds germinated and the plants grew strong.


History of Crimson Flowered Broadbeans

Crimson flowered broad beans are a very old variety of broadbean.  They were widely grown in the 1700s (it is mentioned in books from 1778 but probably grown prior that that) then almost went extinct as some of the newer varieties with longer pods became available.  Apparently they were thought to be extinct until 1978 when a lady called Rhoda Cutbush donated three or four of her precious seeds to the Heritage Seed Library.

Apparently Rhodas father had received the original heirloom seeds from a cottage garden in 1912.  Rhoda grew up growing and eating these broadbeans, probably not realising that she was one of the last people to grow them.  Then in 1978 a crop failure wiped out all of Rhodas plants.  She could not find anywhere to get new seeds from so she searched through her shed until she found an old tin which contained 3 or 4 seeds (there are discrepancies over the number).  Instead of planting the seeds Rhoda realised how important they were and decided to donate them.

What an amazing story of survival!  From there this crimson flowered broad bean has been saved from extinction and has been sent to seed savers and breeders across the world.

Crimson Flowered Broad Beans

What are crimson flowered broad beans like

They are a short and compact plant which rarely reaches over a meter tall, as they age they send up multiple stalks all with many flowers.  They grow and look much like any other broad bead plant, until the flowers begin to open.  The flowers are what sets this variety apart from many others.  They range from deep red to red/purple and look great, but it is their scent that is amazing.  I dont know if their flowers have a stronger scent than regular broad beans or if it is because they grow so many flowers, but I could smell them from outside the vegetable garden.  Considering that I only had three plants that is pretty impressive.

The pods, of which I did not get many as the ducks sabotaged them, were slightly smaller than the Aquadulce ones we grow.  I assume had the plants been allowed to produce a crop unharmed would have produced many small pods.  The pods have less seeds in them than the Aquadulce variety, only about 3 seeds per pod.  The seeds are slightly smaller and more green than Aquadulce.

I am told that they taste better than regular broad beans but certainly didnt get a chance to try these, as I dont really eat broadbeans this is purely academic and I have to use other peoples advice.  People who grow them as a food crop tell me that their taste and productivity more than makes up for the smaller size of the pods.

As a green manure all broad beans are great, these are no exception.  Even though they do not grow too large they do sequester nitrogen from the atmosphere and make it available in the soil.  As they get older they grow more stems and become bushier, this ads to their use as green manure, compost activator or mulch.

Due to the flowers on this plant they can fit into an ornamental garden rather well.  The flowers not only look great and smell amazing but they are flowering intensely at a time when little else is colourful in the garden.  The flowers attract bees and feed them when little else is flowering.  I consider broad beans to be a great all round permaculture crop because they have so many uses.  Even though we dont eat them I grow them for their other uses.

Young Broad Bean starting to flower

Saving Seeds

If you plan to grow this type of broadbean please keep in mind that broad beans readily cross pollinate with other varieties of broad bean.  Clearly they will not cross pollinate with any other variety of bean, pea or anything else.  If you plan to grow and preserve this variety care must be taken to prevent crossing as they can and will cross at a large distance.  If your neighbour or even someone in the next block grows broad beans then it may well cross pollinate your plants so bagging or caging plants is the only real way to keep seed pure.  You must save a few more more pods from this plant as they produce so few seeds, this is simple enough to do.  I plan to do a larger growout next year and only save seeds from the largest pods to try and select for more seeds per pod.

If you plan to create your own new variety of broadbean this plant carries a few genes which no other varieties carry.  If I liked broad beans more and had time/space I would cross them with a long pod broad bean  and/or a purple seeded type and create a longer podded red flowered purple seeded broadbean.

A few places in Australia sell crimson flowered broad bean seed.  When I have enough seeds they are offered on my for sale page with a few other heirloom vegetable seeds or perennial vegetables.

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Babingtons Leek another rare perennial allium in Australia

Babingtons Leek (Allium ampeloprasum var. babingtonii) is an extremely rare perennial leek that is unlike any other leek I have ever seen or heard of.  When this leek flowers it generally does not produce seed, instead it grows tiny leek bulbs on the flower head, kind of like the leek version of tree onions.  This topsetting habit makes it unique among leeks and makes it interesting to grow and draws attention to itself from everyone who sees it.

Babingtons leek is rare in the world, so rare that it is almost extinct.  It is one of the rarest edible leeks that are in Australia.  Very few people grow them and almost no one has heard of them.  

There is little information on the internet about Babingtons leek and much of what I did read seems to contradict each other.  Most of what I have read was either written in the old days, or (like most gardening books) was written by someone who has never grown or even seen a Babingtons leek.  I find that kind of frustrating and would prefer to get information that has been obtained by personal experience or just go and work it out myself.  The person who I got these leeks from had not grown them for long so did not know much about them either.

Babingtons leek flowering - note the bulbils starting to enlarge

It grows wild in Ireland, England and a few other little countries over there and is only semi-domestcated.  Like so many other alliums the origins of this plant have been lost in history.  Perhaps it was deliberately bred by some dedicated people, perhaps it happened on a roadside from spilled seed with just the right combination of genetics, perhaps it happened in the wild away from people completely and was discovered by chance.  Many people theorise that the Babingtons leek is a relic from some ancient monastery, unfortunately we will never know for sure.  What we do know is that it has been around for a long time and there is not much of it anymore.

Babingtons leek, much like any other allium, benefits from moisture and nutrients early in the season, the more the better.  That being said it can perform remarkably well in rocky or sandy soil and with minimal soil moisture, this productivity under harsh conditions is one of the benefits of being a semi-domesticated perennial vegetable.  From what I am told it does not cope with poorly drained soils, my garden does not suffer from this so I do not know about this from observation. 

Just like any other perennial leek, the Babingtons leek tends to be dormant over summer and will die down to odd little bulbs.  I assume that in more mild climates and with more soil moisture that the Babingtons leek could be convinced to grow through summer, but I am yet to try this myself.  I know that the perennial leeks I grow can be kept growing all year if provided with adequate soil moisture.

Babingtons leek, another exceptional perennial vegetable

People in countries where Babingtons leek are more common often eat the bulbils, they say that the bulbils taste like garlic.  They also eat the young flower scape in a similar way to garlic scapes and say that they taste similar.  I have never tried either of them and doubt I will get a chance any time soon as I am trying to increase the numbers of this rare plant.


What does Babingtons leek taste like
I love the taste of leek, it is a very underrated vegetable in my opinion.  Babingtons leek tastes much like every other leek.  I have eaten a few varieties of leek over the past few years and to be honest can not tell the difference between them.  I have read that Babingtons leek may be more fibrous but from my limited experience this is not the case.  Over summer it will die down to bulbs, I am told that these bulbs taste much like garlic.  I have not tried them yet as I am trying to increase my stock but it does stand to reason as Giant Russian Garlic is another variety of perennial leek.

Babingtons leek is extremely rare, in Australia it is almost unheard of.  For this reason, if you grow them, please do not kill the plants when you harvest the leeks.  Like every other variety of leek, you can harvest by cutting them off and leaving the roots in the soil to regrow.  Another method is to pull up the plant, cut off the roots with a few mm of shank attacked and put this in a jar with a tiny amount of water to sprout.  They only need a tiny amount of water, just touching the roots is enough, too much water will cause the whole thing to rot.  After this has sprouted it can be replanted into the garden to grow.  In this way you can have your leek and eat it too.

Babingtons leek starting to flower, the bulbils will grow and the flowers will fall off as it grows

 How to reproduce Babingtons leek

Your stock of Babingtons leek can be increased in a few ways.  By not killing the plants when you harvest them stops you from losing plants but does not stop you from eating them.  This does not increase the number of plants you have and usually prevents the plant from flowering that year, but it does stop you from having any less which is a good first step with something as rare as these.

The plant will die down to a bulb each summer, many times this bulb will divide in a similar way to garlic (but into less cloves) and can be dug up, split apart and replanted.  This is a slow and steady way to increase your stock.  Quite often this will result in a few extra large plants, most of which will flower the following season.

The larger plants will send up a flower stalk each year.  This flower stalk will produce some flowers as well as some bulbils.  Please do not remove the flower stalk, it is kind of the whole point behind growing Babingtons leek.  While removing the flower head may result in larger underground bulb or a larger leek plant you could simply grow regular perennial leeks if this is what you are after.  When it is ready the bulbils may fall off the plant and start to grow all by themselves, but a better way is to remove them and plant them somewhere safe.  Every bulbil should sprout and grow for you, if left to their own devices anything could happen and the bulbils may be lost. 

It may take 2 or 3 years for these bulbils to send up flower stalks of their own, or if you treat them well they may flower in their first year, but once you have a flowering sized Babingtons leek plant it will provide you with many bulbils each year.  I am lead to believe that each year the number of bulbils increases significantly.  It would not be difficult to have a small patch of Babingtons leek where one plant is left to produce bulbils each year and the rest are harvested and eaten.

It may be possible to obtain some seed from Babingtons leek, in order to do this you would probably have to remove most/all of the bulbils so that the plant can put energy into the seeds rather than the bulbils.  I have not yet done this as I wanted the bulbils, but when I do I will grow the seeds and if anything remarkable comes of them I will try to distribute them.  I assume that seed grown plants will display a lot of variation, some will invariably be less exciting than the parent stock, but there is a chance that something remarkable may come out as well.  We need people to breed these things and enrich our country with them.


Where to buy Babingtons leek in Australia

I sell Babingtons leek bulbils and small plants on my for sale page as soon as they are ready.  Before you buy them please read about how to grow Babingtons leek.  I have a range of other perennial vegetables, some herbs, some heirloom vegetable seeds, and a few other things listed on that page too.  Unfortunately I can not rush the Babingtons leek, when they are ready they are ready and when I sell out then I have to wait until the following summer for more to grow.  Bulbils should be ready in Summer but they will not start to grow until Autumn/Winter.

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Survivor Tatsoi

When we moved in here there were no vegetables, only empty vegetable beds, which was great.  Before we moved in there was a decent flood.  After we moved in we had another rather large flood.  A year or two passed, then a vegetable seedling grew in amongst the grass and weeds in the vegetable garden path.  It was from a vegetable that I have never planted, a seed that was here before we were.  I noticed it one day as I was mowing the weeds/grass in the vegetable garden.  I decided to mow around it as I liked its style.

This is one of the descendants of the mystery vegetable

That one determined little seed sat dormant through at least two floods, waiting patiently through several extreme summers, sat quietly through some cold winters, germinated in amongst tall grass and established weeds in a path that was trodden on several times a day by myself as well as my kids.  It then evaded being eaten by snails/slugs/poultry/birds/rodents and grew into an amazing little plant without a great deal of help from anyone.  This plant had earned my respect.

I wasnt terribly certain what it was to begin with, I knew it was some type of brassica.  I thought it was some form of Asian green, but having very little experience with them I did not know which one.  I gave it some water to keep it alive but generally forgot to water it.  I tried to gently pull some weeds near it but was scared of pulling it out too so left it to struggle against them.  The kids stepped on it a few times because it was growing in a rather inconvenient place.

More of my survivor tatsoi plants

I eventually figured it was most likely tatsoi.  I like the determination of this plant, it is a true survivor that beat the odds.  We ate some leaves but I let that single plant mature and flower, then I carefully collected the seed.

Brassicas tend to need other plants for cross pollination but I got a small amount of seed.  Many of the seed pods had no seeds, many of the seeds were too small to germinate, being so hot and dry the aphids covered the flowers at times, even with all this stacked against it the survivor tatsoi set a decent number of viable seed.  Quite often brassicas will have low or no germination if the population is too small, I had one individual and no other brassicas.  Things did not look good.  I planted a lot of the seed in the hope of enough germinating to get this strain going again and almost all of them germinated!

Tatsoi in a vegetable bed, they no longer grow amongst grass

Brassicas also tend to suffer from inbreeding depression with small populations, so I did a large grow out from the seed collected from that single parent in the hopes of overcoming this.  So far the results appear to be pretty strong and healthy, I have not been able to see any lack of fitness and have a decent number of plants from here on.  I will be allowing all of these plants to flower and cross pollinate one another then I plan to collect seed from them all to maintain some small amount of genetic diversity.

What I have now is a strain of tatsoi that has overcome extreme hardship on pretty much every level.  I call it "survivor tatsoi" as I do not have any way to tell what cultivar it would have originally come from.  I hope to keep this strain going indefinitely from here on if I can.

I will probably be able to sell seeds of this tatsoi after the current batch flower/set seed and I test the seeds for germination rates.  I do not sell seeds if the germination rates fall to 85%.  When I do collect seed and test them they will be listed on my for sale page.

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