Moon Planting

When I first heard about Moon Planting or 'harnessing the power of the moon when gardening', my immediate reaction was something like 'wow, what a bunch of hippy crap'. Yep, really.

How times have changed! I have realised how completely ignorant I was. Upon further inspection it is not in any way hippy crap, rather, it is a scientific method of using the naturally existing energy of the moon and working with it for healthier plants.

We all accept the the gravitational pull of the moon affects the tides, well the same pull also has an effect on the run of sap within plants and, (to my very basic understanding, I'm still learning about this), there are different times of the month when the energy is either pushing down or pulling up. There is also a positive effect of extra light when the moon is full. There is a much better explanation at the fantastic Organic Gardening website:
https://www.organicgardener.com.au/articles/full-moon-rising

So, needing all the help I can get, including lunar help, I went out and purchased a moon calendar. This shows the moon's activity for each day of the year. I also found a handy monthly 'what to do in the garden' perpetual moon calendar chart at the Digger's shop in Heronswood.



This wonderfully simple tool tells me exactly what to do in the garden and when. All I have to do is line up the new moon on this chart with the date of the new moon at the start of each new month.

This month, the best time for sowing seeds for above-ground plants is from the 17th until the 27th, so yesterday was a big planting day for us.

We sowed seeds for Tatsoi (Chinese flat leaf cabbage), Sugarloaf Cabbage, Broadbeans, Dwarf Snow Peas, Broccoli (Romanesco), Mixed Carrots and Parsnips and filled up the side garden bed in the Kitchen Garden quite nicely.

Unfortunately I only realised later than I should have waited until the best days to plant root crops for the carrot and parsnip seeds, so these might not do so well. But as you can see, our lettuce, strawberries and garlic are all doing very well.

I popped about 8 avocado seeds into the ground, just hoping that something might happen there, a 'Curry Plant' which was a gift from a friend in the herb garden, (the leaves smell like curry) and and last of all I planted a lovely little Macadamia tree. I had to make sure that it was a cool climate variety so that it has half a chance of surviving in our area. I love the idea of having my own Macadamias!

The little silver one is the Curry Plant.

I also planted 40 Asiatic Lily bulbs in white, pink, yellow and orange around the sunny side of the big concrete water tank, which will look gorgeous in Summer if they grow nicely.

Choc-coated Liqueur Cumquats :)

We have a wonderful cumquat tree at the side of our house, about 3 metres tall, which has been absolutely brimming with gorgeous, juicy cumquats for the past few months.

Now, even though they are a lovely fruit, I know of very few things to actually do with them.

I have sold a few kilos to both of the shops we have regular orders with and I certainly have made A LOT of delicious marmalade, but I wanted to find another use as I have been foisting jars of marmalade upon everyone I know since we moved here!

Making the Liqueur

So...after a bit of internet trawling, I came across this great recipe for Cumquat Brandy Liqueur:
http://www.food.com/recipe/maggies-lethal-kumquat-liqueur-271072

Pretty simple really, wash about 25 cumquats and prick them with a fork, put them in a large jar, add 700mls of brandy and 2&1/4 cups of sugar. Rotate the jar daily to move the sugar around and when it has completely dissolved (about 3 weeks) remove the cumquats, bottle the liqueur into smaller, nice bottles. Put them in the pantry for 6 months to allow the flavours to develop and then drink as desired.

If you leave the cumquats in the brandy for too long, they will soak up all the alcohol and your liqueur will be lacking a little punch. So that's the liqueur itself, but then...what to do with these lovely little brandied cumquats?

Slightly dried segments

The recipe's author suggests dipping them in chocolate for a lovely after dinner treat, I thought that they may be slightly too large and juicy for that, so I sliced them into 6 or 8 segments each, depending on the size of the cumquat, put them on a baking paper lined tray and into the oven for about half an hour on 120 degrees.

After that they had dried slightly and started to caramelize just a little, so I dipped them in dark (62%) chocolate and let them dry on baking paper at room temperature in the pantry overnight.

They are brilliant!! My husband and I both love these tasty little morsels so much that when I told him I had sent some to his lovely sister he looked at me incredulously and said "Why??!".

Melt the chocolate in a glass bowl over a saucepan of simmering water- dip in the cumquat segments and...

...voila! Delicious delicacies!

Needless to say, I am making another batch. There will be lots of Cumquat Brandy Liqueur at our Christmas this year and lots of delicious choc-dipped liqueur cumquats in the meantime! Mmmmmm....