Have a read of this blog to find out my top tips and tricks for growing, cooking and using Okinawa Spinach in various ways.

How to eat Okinawa Spinach

Okinawa spinach is an extremely versatile leafy green. Actually, all parts of the spinach are edible – the leaves, the stems and the roots.

Every day, I harvest some of the Okinawa Spinach in my garden and use it for all sorts of cooking.

Okinawa Spinach is great in:

• salads,
• steamed,
• soups,
• stir-fries,
• tempura,
• miso soup,
• curries,
• and just about anything that you would normally put spinach in.

It is also delicious in beverages – hot or cold

Okinawa spinach is great when added with other greens into a green juice, or even mixed into a smoothie. The stems and roots can be used to make a tea – just use a strainer as you would with any leaf tea. Enjoy!

My top tip: It is a good idea to add these greens at the end of your cooking – they are best with just a few minutes of cooking. If you overcook it, it tends to become a slimy texture so keep an eye on it.

Makes a great edible ground cover

Okinawa spinach can be used as an edible ground cover or an edible border plant. I recommend using it to make the most of your garden space. This can be done by growing it under taller vegetables like kale, and eggplant and around the edges of fruit trees.

Fun Fact: The Okinawa Spinach is actually considered both a vegetable and a medicinal herb.

Attractive two-tone leaf

It is a very attractive plant to have in a vegetable garden. The shiny leaves have different colours on either side, making them very appealing. The upper side is a deep green and underneath they are purple.

The leaves look great in salad and keep their two-toned look. Unfortunately, they do lose the purple colour when cooked but they still taste great.

Caring for Okinawa Sinach

Once Okinawa Spinach is established, it requires almost no care or attention. I recommend continuing to tip prune the plant, so it creates a lovely large mound of tender edible leaves up to around 70 cms high. Keeping it dense also helps to stop the weeds coming through. Watch the video above to get an idea of what this mound looks like.

Okinawa spinach grows well in full sun and partial shade and is quite heat tolerant, although not very drought tolerant. It does need moisture to thrive and loves a mulched garden. In dry times, it won’t die just stop producing new growth.

Don’t have a garden? Grow it in a Container!

Okinawa spinach grows well in a pot or hanging basket. It can also grow indoors, but be sure it’s put somewhere it has good light – on a windowsill for example.

Thanks for reading! I hope you have found the blog useful. If you have any questions or would like to suggest a topic for me to cover next, please leave a comment below.

The post How to grow & eat Okinawa Spinach appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

‘Eggy bake’ is a common meal in our house and one of our all-time favorites – named by the kids.

Eggy bake – this version with grated cheese on top from local cheesery. Typically we eat it plain. Rarely we have leftovers.

 

Another household favourite is pumpkin soup (veggie soup really) using all freshly harvested vegetables – pumpkin, Choko, potato, herbs, turmeric, ginger, garlic chives, mustard spinach, and many other veggies and greens we find.

 

I think our 4yo will discover one day that usually pumpkin soup is orange, not green, but both these meals are great ways to get him to enjoy lots of freshly-plucked organic greens.

 

Weeping rosemary hanging over the terrace wall gets plucked for most meals.

Anyway, I started typing up a recipe for the book I am working on, The Good Life Guide and realized that this meal was far more than the recipe could communicate. A simplicity of just listing the recipe ingredients and steps seemed somehow to diminish the inherent qualities of the food.

 

Tulsi leaves and seeds also end up in most salads, soups, curries, and bakes.

 

 For me it is the rich tapestry of connections that are cultivated through this food that brings it’s true quality to light – the connections with the seasons, with our local environment, with the soil, with neighbors, with friends, with each other in our family, with our play, with our home education, and our workplace.

 

Garlic chives and their flowers have an amazingly powerful garlic flavour.

Here is my first attempt to describe the eggy-bake process…

 

1. Send the kids up to collect the eggs from the chook house we built using timber our neighbour harvested in his woodlot and a gift of reclaimed iron sheeting. We have an eclectic mix of rare breed chickens that the children look after. The eggs are all different shapes and sizes – but all have superbly orange yolks because they free-range often.

 

2. Wander around the garden with a handmade basket collecting a wonderful array of herbs, flowers, and leafy greens (and purples). I take a leaf from this and a leaf from that so I don’t harm the plant and can come back again day after day for more. It’s a peaceful way to garden and harvest.
   
   I collect things like soft pumpkin leaves and shoots, sweet potato leaves and shoots, mustard spinach, any brassica flowers, and soft flower stalks, many varieties of kale, welsh onion leaves, the bolting shoots from coriander/cilantro, tulsi leaves, garlic chives and garlic chive flowers, Brazilian spinach … there are so many things to collect, even pea leaves, bean leaves, beetroot leaves, young chia leaves, young amaranth leaves, weeds – chickweed, dandelion leaves. The more diverse the selection, the more diverse the nutrients in the food.

   The magnificent red mustard spinach is making its way into every meal in these cooler months.

   I love this time in the garden, watching the birds, noticing things – new shoots on trees, self-seeding veggies, subtle changes, and simple beauty. I think about what I can add to the garden to increase diversity or adapt to the changing season.

   Brassica flowers are a wonderful treat. I often snack on them in the garden.

   
   I notice where I need to add some more compost or mulch. The compost is made from the chicken bedding, and the Azolla we harvested by hand from the lake. The mulch is often chopped and drop materials, but we do also go and pick up some local bales of grass straw that another neighbour orders in bulk for us all to use. The kids love to ride in the trailer with the bales slowly back along the little internal road within the ecovillage with the wind in their hair, singing in the breeze,  watching for hawks and kangaroos.
   
   I could ask the kids to harvest the greens too because they know where all the great greens are at any moment – the garden is their playground – and sometimes I do, but I just love this time in the garden pottering for a few minutes.

 

There’s always a surprise somewhere in the garden.

 

3. Ask my children to whiz it all together in the food processor with a bit of fresh milk from the neighbour and handmade ricotta from another neighbour.

 

4. Cook it in a solar cooker (for a lunchtime meal) or a solar-powered electric oven (for dinner).

 

5. Duck out to the garden again just before the eggy bake is ready and collect some salad greens. I like to wrap little bits of eggy bake in a leaf.

   Fresh mixed salad with self-seeding tomatoes and lots of perennial greens, edible weeds and edible flowers.

    
6. Sometimes I go the extra bit and drizzle a salad with homemade dressing – shaking together a little organic olive oil made just down the valley (sourced from the local organic food store), with some homemade kombucha vinegar (using a SKOBY dropped off by a neighbour, a chopped up garlic clove hand-delivered from a friend in Tasmania (traded for limes), and some herbs and spices from the garden like rosemary, oregano, thyme, or chilli, ginger and lemongrass. Even simpler, I grab a lime, lemon, or grapefruit and squeeze it over the salad. Delicious just like that!

    

   Fresh greens, snowpeas. tomatoes, citrus and garlic

    

7. Ask the children to set the table. Often they gather a little posy of edible flowers and lemon myrtle leaves and make a beautiful arrangement.
8. Sit down together and enjoy, discussing the particular flavours and textures that we like in today’s version. You see, they are always different – and that’s the beauty of it too. 

 

It sounds quite complicated, but really it’s ultimately simple. All the ingredients are all just here around us, it’s seasonal, it connects us with our neighbours and friends, and our local environment,  we all help to make it happen, we all enjoy it immensely because of the heart and soul that we know has gone into every part.  And, from start to finish, cooking from scratch, it usually takes us around 30 minutes to prepare and cook as long as we keep it thin in the glass cooking trays.

 

Brazilian Spinach has leaves all year round for harvest.

This is slow food, but it’s not slow, quite rapid actually. With three children – two of them boys with huge appetites – preparing good food quickly seems to be the best approach, as well as getting them involved in the process.

 

Keep in mind too that I typically garden for about 10 minutes a day to maintain this garden – not a huge commitment, but an enormous benefit to our health and to the education of my children.

 

Some other reasons I love this way of cooking:

• this is community food
• it’s package free – the natural packaging of the eggs goes back to the soil. The milk comes in re-used bottles.
• it’s part of nutrient cycles in the garden and is waste-free
• it is so satisfying and just makes me smile so deeply when I sit down to share this meal

What’s a simple meal you cook from scratch?  What does it mean to you?

The post Good Food: Good Life: My recipe for simple eggy bake straight from the garden. appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Pesto – more than basil
Pesto is usually associated with basil, and yes I agree, it’s a wonderful flavour, but you can also make pesto from all kinds of garden greens or better still, a wondrous blend.

Today in my foraging, I harvested three types of basil, parsley, rocket, welsh onions, society garlic, cranberry hibiscus and sorrel. I blended these together with some toasted ground sunflower seeds, the juice of a lime and some olive oil and created an amazingly simple, but superbly flavoured pesto that can be used for all kinds of things, such as:

• pasta (veggie spirals are great with this)
• bruschetta (it’s great on the organic wood-fired local sourdough bread)
• soup
• salad
• dip

Extend the harvest
Often when the basil is on, it’s on! Making pesto is a great way to appreciate this abundance. I typically make up a big batch, then freeze in an ice cube tray. It’s a great way to extend the basil harvest.

Super greens for the kids
Also, because you can include any number of leafy greens, it is actually a great way to get your kids to eat an enormous dose of very nourishing greens.

MY GARDEN PESTO RECIPE

Here’s what I use for a really lovely texture of smooth pesto. As you can see, it’s more of a ratio I am suggesting here rather than exact ingredients. There is huge flexibility in the types of greens. It varies soo widely between seasons and regions!

Ingredients

• 2 cups leaves from your garden (basil or mixed greens – garlic chives, welsh onion, rocket, parlsey, mizuna, kale, spinach, silverbeet, pumpkin, sorrel, cranberry hibiscus, Brazilian spinach, nasturtium, and ‘weeds’ too like chickweed … )

• 1 lime/lemon, juiced

• 1/4 cup raw or toasted ground seeds/nuts (I use a coffee grinder)

• 1/2 cup olive oil

• 1/3 cup parmesan

NB: The leaves and flowers of the garlic chives replace the garlic in typical pesto recipes. It tastes great!

Method

Basically I just toss all the ingredients into a food processor and buzz until smooth, then spatula it all into a mason jar. It’s important to tap it down to ensure there are no air bubbles in the mix (will oxidise/go brown where there are bubbles) and I top it off with a little oil to keep it fresh. I store this in the fridge for about a week or two, but it doesn’t usually last that long though.  If you want to store it longer, it’s a good idea to freeze it.

The post Morag Gamble’s super pesto recipe using simple garden greens (8 mins) appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Thank you and Merry Christmas to everyone who’s responded so positively to the writings and films I’ve been posting on Our Permaculture Life – on this Blog, on Youtube and Facebook,

After decades of ‘just doing it’, I was encouraged a year ago to start writing about our permaculture way of life and have received such amazing feedback both in person and online. It is so uplifting to know so many people are interested in living a simple &natural way of life.

I so enjoy receiving the comments you write, and participating in discussions about the various topics. I’d love your suggestions too (please fill in the v.quick survey below).

The ripple effect of our actions, our words, our thoughts – our work and the way we choose to live – is profound. It’s so important to be thinking about change – exploring the possibilities and taking positive, practical steps.

16 POPULAR POSTS FROM ‘OUR PERMACULTURE LIFE’

1. My Permaculture Garden – a 30 minute tour of my award-winning garden, plus list of species.
2. Morag’s Simple and Successful No Dig Garden Method – a step by step guide (film coming soon)
3. How to Make Comfrey Tea – a super easy natural homemade fertiliser
4. Worm Towers – a quick and easy way to turn food waste into garden fertiliser – without digging or turning. and Worm Tower Film Clip – a superbly simple way to put your foodsraps back in the soil
5. 7 Ways to Use All of Your Pumpkin Plant – simple abundance
6. City as Farm: City Dwellers Love to Grow Food – weaving food growing into the cities
7. Ingeniously Simple Idea to Harvest Compost Worms By 8 Year Old Boy – innovative thinking from my young home educated son.
8. Temporary permaculture for renters – 11 ideas for growing abundant food without owning land
9. Live simply: 14 Ways to Save Money and Avoid Debt – practical and common-sense advice
10. Save over $23,000 a Year and De-stress with a Few Simple Living Strategies
11. Five Easy Steps to Make Cheap Beeswax Wraps & Reduce Cling Wrap Use – make your own beeswax cloths in minutes for less than a dollar.
12. Five Simple Ways to Improve Your Soil – having great soil is the basis of healthy plants and food.
13. Did you know our clothes are poisoning us? More Reasons to Choose Simple Natural Fashion for Earth Care and People Care – it’s good to know the backstory to where many of our ‘things’ come from
14. 27,000 Trees A Day to Wipe Bottoms – What’s Your Wipe of Choice? – taking a closer look at a  very common household consumable
15. Why I Let My Young Children Leave School To Learn At Home… an introduction to the way I home educate my children
16. 9 Ways to Simply Use Chia: an easy ‘superfood’ to grow at home – great ways to grow and use chia, and some yummy recipes too.

PLEASE SEND YOUR SUGGESTIONS AND FEEDBACK

I’d love to get your feedback and suggestions about the topics you enjoy most and those you’d like me to write and film more about. Either leave a comment at the bottom of this post or click on this survey monkey link – it should take less than a minute to complete.

The post 16 Best Posts on Our Permaculture Life : Practical Simplicity for Everyday Life appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Eat your colours and your greens!

In my latest film: Edible Flowers (11 mins) I take you for a wander through my award-winning permaculture garden to show you what edible flowers are growing this winter including vegetable flowers, herbs flowers, legume flowers, fruit flowers and native flowers.

Flowers add taste, colour and nutrition and many have medicinal qualities too.

Gourmet restaurants offer edible flowers (at quite a price – I heard 30 cents/rocket flower). At home it is easy to grow a garden full of these gourmet ingredients and eat well every day.

Allowing many of your vegetables to go to seed gives you a chance to make the most of each plant – from root to tip, and also to integrate these abundantly flowering plants as a key part of the diversity and pest management strategies of your sustainable garden.

Some of the flowers included in this film are:

• Pick your flowers in the morning when their water content is at its highest.
• Remove the stamens and styles from the flowers before eating. The pollen can detract from the flavor of the flower. In addition, the pollen may cause an allergic reaction in some individuals. 
• Remove the sepals of all flowers like violas and pansies.

• Only the petals of some flowers such as rose, calendula, tulip, chrysanthemum, yucca, and lavender are edible. 
• Flowers such as violet, runner bean and clover can be eaten in their entirety.
• Roses, dianthus, daisies, marigolds and chrysanthemums have a bitter white part at the base of the petal where it was connected to the flower. Cut off the bitter part before using.

Allowing many of your vegetables to go to seed gives you a chance to make the most of each plant – from root to tip, and also to integrate these abundantly flowering plants as a key part of the diversity and pest management strategies of a sustainable garden.

The post Edible Flowers – Eat Your Greens As Well As Your Colours! appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Here are a few images from the action today with a year 11 geography group on a 3 day camp (43 students). Wonderful to have our homeschooled kids participating too…

The post Permaculture for teenagers appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I filmed my talk about Incredible Edibles at the Kitchen Garden Stage of the incredibly popular Queensland Garden Expo on July 10. In this talk, I share my passion for and knowledge about some of my favourite plants and strategies. The plants I talk about here are also very helpful for verge gardeners, small-space gardeners, and community gardeners.

Congratulations and thank you to all the volunteers who set up the WONDERFUL edible demonstration gardens at the Expo with the verge garden theme – a huge effort!! It was great to ramble through it with Costa Georgiadis, Jerry Coleby-Williams and chat with old and new friends.

This recording is 42 mins.

FILMING NOTE: This is the first time I have tried to film my own talk (I usually have a helper) and of course, I forgot about the camera. At one stage I moved too close – oops – half a head.  A few minutes later I realise and move back again – please excuse this!

Take a look at my other short films:

In my award-winning garden, Crystal Waters Permaculture Village.

Film #2: Our Permaculture Life: Community Permaculture Garden (9 mins 30 secs)


At the Yandina Community Gardens – I’ll be teaching a Permaculture course there each Friday from 23 September.

In my award-winning garden, Crystal Waters Permaculture Village

The post Film #4: Incredible Edibles Talk with Morag Gamble at the QLD Garden Expo appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I have comfrey growing in various places throughout the garden – under fruit trees, near the compost, on the edge of the kitchen garden – an a couple in the midst of things like this one.

How to Make Comfrey Tea in under 5 minutes

Step 1: Collect comfrey leaves
Step 2: Tear up leaves into lidded bin
Step 3: Cover with water
Step 4: Wait for 6 weeks
Step 5: Dilute 1:10 with water.

I regularly harvest leaves and turn them into comfrey tea – a simple method using just comfrey and water in a lidded bin.

Comfrey leaves ripped up with water are covered with water then let steep for about 6 weeks – giving them a stir every now and then.

For more information:

If you enjoyed that, take a look at my other short films:

Film #1: Our Permaculture Life: My Permaculture Garden (33 mins)

The post Film #3: How to Make Comfrey Tea with Morag Gamble (4:52mins) appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

The wonderful Costa Georgiadis of ABC’s Gardening Australia led a huge group of people through the verge garden with his fabulous commentary of why verge gardens are the bees knees – it’s got me thinking about what more I can do along the street at my place. Always wonderful to see him and get a big beardy cuddle.

Costa espousing the benefits of having a salad garden on the verge.

Gardening extraordinaire, Barbara Wickes, president of the cottage garden group The Perennial Poppies, coordinates the extraordinary effort it takes to get the Giant Kitchen Garden displays ready for the expo each year.

After Costa’s ramble through this amazing demonstration garden, he sent the crowd across to the Kitchen Garden Stage where I talked about my favourite incredible edibles. I had a table full of cuttings from my garden that provide an abundance and resilience in subtropical gardens – a diversity of perennial and self-seeding plants and a selection of common but overlooked edible leaves.  (The video of this will be ready soon.)

Me launching into the Incredible Edibles talk.

The Giant Kitchen Garden is like a meeting of old friends – I caught up with Roman Spur of Spurtopia, the Yandina Community Gardens, Northey Street City Farm, Robin Clayfield, Brisbane Organic Growers and many more… Jerry Coleby Williams also led a great wander through the verge garden.

ABC Gardening Australia’s Jerry Coleby-Williams talking about verge gardens.

Here are some of the people I met along the way and some garden features on display…

I was delighted to hear the latest news from Roman Spur of Spurtopia – new baby girl and new house (bought from savings – no debt).

I caught up with Cath Manuel of Soil to Supper, then saw part of her no-dig garden presentation.

Beautiful kales.

The display garden demonstrated how you could set up a street side stall to share verge garden produce in the community.

These are great to help increase homes from microbats in urban gardens.

Showing the potential for a verge garden – from children’s play spaces, herb, vegetables, flowers, fruits, upcycled pots, interpretive signage, habitat logs …

An interesting pot of strawberries….

Looking down the main street of the verge garden displays.

The bug hotel in the centre of the verge garden roundabout.

The boot flower garden.

The stiletto palette garden!

The post Verge Gardens and Incredible Edibles: catching up with ABC’s Costa and friends. appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

During the celebration of community at the Yandina Community Gardens today I made this little film to share with you.

There’s lots of fun for kids here too. Check out their website for some great plant info and recipes too – www.yandinacommunitygardens.com.au

The post Film #2: Permaculture Community Garden with Morag Gamble (9 minutes) appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.