In The Garden: Strawberries, Mint & Lime...Oh My!

We adopted our lime tree from my mum. It is a Dwarf Citrus "Tahitian Lime". After having the tree for 2 years and yielding about 5 limes my mum insisted that the tree was "dead". We discovered that it wasn't exactly dead but just desperately needed some love and attention.

We removed a lot of branches, gave it some quick release fertiliser, removed the collection of weeds that had taken up residence in the base of the pot and started watering it frequently! Low and behold - LIMES!!! They started out as tiny white flowers in December then, a few weeks, later transformed into little green buds that turned into limes!

 In late February my husband purchased some strawberry plants. We were a little nervous about these but ever since watching Jamie Olivers "At Home with Jamie" we had wanted to give strawberries a go. They quickly put out runners and by mid April we had our first little bunch of strawberries appear. Of course, this wasn't without incident. Only one of our plants grew any fruit, our other three were infected  and their leaves became covered with little black spots. In the end I just cut them all back and we're hoping for the best.

Finally, the mint. A large mint plant was given to us by a very keen gardening friend. She insisted that we keep it well hydrated. On the drive home we talked and talked about our expanding little garden. By the time we got home we had totally forgotten about the mint and it sat on the floor of our car for about a week. By the time we *smelt* it we were sure its time was up. However, with some water and some care (see the lime tree!) we were able to bring the mint back to life. It regularly adds some sweet zest to our dinners.

In The Garden: The Beginning & The Basil

While we lived in Far North Queensland we spent a lot of time watching our friends cultivate and grow their own sustainable fruit and vegetable gardens. While we both agreed that we wanted our own garden, at the time, we were happy reaping the benefits of our friend's fertile ground in the form of jams, salads and rich egg based sauces. When we moved back to the city and found ourselves within 15 minutes of Bunnings Warehouse and it seemed almost silly not to at least experiment with what we could grow.

We had very meagre beginnings. We armed ourselves with 3 pots, 4 sweet basil plants, 4 Italian parsley plants, 4 Tommy Toe tomatoes plants and a little pine tree we hoped to grow all year and use as our very own Christmas tree!

Our parsley died almost instantly (my husband was able to salvage one plant). Over the next few weeks our tomatoes magically sprouted delightful little yellow flowers. Our basil took on a life of its own and the Christmas tree even started to take shape. Then. Without any real warning. Our city was struck by torrential rain, flooding and a cheery cyclone roared through our backyard. In the ruins of our little garden we found our tomato plants had been destroyed, including 5 little baby tomatoes. Our Christmas tree was beyond repair and whatever was left of the parsley to begin with looked doomed.

The basil, on the other hand, seemed to have laughed in the face of danger and was growing like a weed. For a few weeks there we had about 7 pots worth of basil. We didn't know what to do with it. We tried drying it and freezing it but in the end we thought the most *clever* thing to do, was eat our beautiful produce!

Since the beginning of March our basil has provided us with 3 (large) pesto based pasta meals. It is delicious (and deliciously cheap!). So at the moment we are pretty proud of our little garden and we have slowly extended it since the damage of the storm. I would really like to share our progress (or not so progress) stories over the year to see how we do.

Pesto
2 cups of fresh basil
1/4 cup pine nuts
3/4 cup parmesan cheese
2 cloves of garlic, halved
3 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Toast the pine nuts in the oven for about 10 minutes (they burn quickly once their oils release so watch them!). Add the basil, pine nuts, cheese and garlic into a food processor. Process until combined. Gradually add the oil while mixing until pesto is at desired consistency. Stir through the lemon juice.

(Stir through pasta, adding cream for richness if you like it!)