a first time for everyone

welcome to all our new old TKG readers migrating across from the original kitchens garden blog. WELCOME. WELCOME.

Today we are welcoming dozens of new readers here for the first time. But they are not new to me. We are welcoming The Fellowship. Readers who have followed my farming and gardening and journey to self sufficiency for years.

For those of you who have not known me for long; for the last fourteen odd years I have been writing an (almost) daily farm and garden and food and sustainable living blog on Wordpress. While writing here I was also writing there. Yesterday I announced that we were going to navigate across to substack for good. Leaving Wordpress behind. That site is now our archives. We will be back often. It will not be neglected as it is full to the brim with content, but I cannot fit one more photo without another upgrade so going forward I am writing solely here on substack at The Kitchens Garden Travels.

I explain that HERE.

Combining the two means this publication (the one you are reading now) will be bigger and fuller and I will be able to post more often with a higher value content. No more split focus and split writing personality! Ha! Ha!

Here on Substack we can spread our wings. There is tons of room and tons of great writers here (I will be introducing you to a few as we go along) and now us!

My hope is that this feels just as homely and comfortable and welcoming as the blog I have been writing all these years and that you have been reading since 2011.

This is a good change. At this juncture in world affairs it is good to amalgamate, join forces and find your people.

Gardening and growing food and cooking food and loving our people and living our sustainable lifestyles and our BedTime stories and all our eclectic side-tracks and our travel and our farm stories and city stories and old time stories will continue. All my writing in one place!

Gardening.

Louise from Japan wrote to me that her lettuce is bolting.

I write to her to embrace the bolt and prepare to gather the seeds. Louise is lovely - after you have finished having a cup of tea with me - you could pop over.

Lettuce bolts when the temperatures rise. When it gets too hot and the plant senses a dry period coming on, the plant gets a fright and BOLTS towards fruition. Literally going into overdrive. The goal of every plant is to flower and cast seeds. To preserve the species. So when your lettuce or kale (I am a kale lover) goes to seed it is natural, take this as a gift of seeds. And even though pruning will slow the bolt for a moment the leafy green plant is already tasting different - no longer sweet.

You can tell a plant is going to seed from its taste. It will get a little bitter. Continue to lightly water your bolting plant (we need to keep it alive until the seeds are set) then watch as the pods dry out and go brittle then harvest the seeds into a labeled envelope. The remaining plants go into the compost as part of the cycle.

When the lettuce plant senses hot weather or drought, the plant produces more gibberellins (a type of plant hormone) changing its metabolism. The plant literally switches to the last phase of its life. The starch and sugar processing goes down a gear, triggering the shift from leaf growth to flowering and seed production. This is a survival response to the heat stress. This process also increases bitter compounds like lactucin to protect the plant from being eaten during seed formation.

Don’t fight it, embrace it. Sow your next crop and let the old plant go to seed. It will flower first, which attracts pollinators to my garden. You get to harvest the seeds. Sow greens seeds in a rolling rotation throughout the season.

Sow leafy greens early in the spring or late in the summer. Sow new greens often. Pick the green leaves small and often. Encourage your grumpy pregnant daughter to eat them every day! 😂

Do you sow your leafy greens in pots on your deck or balcony or in your garden?

I hope we get the forecasted rain tomorrow. It is dry here.

Back on the Farmy

Though we are in Autumn here in hot Melbourne, Spring is springing in Illinois back on the farm.

The baby ducks have happy in the pond! All is well.

Here is Tima.

Her job is to greet all the visitors and inspect all the deliveries for treats.

Today

It is Saturday here in Melbourne, Australia, and we are off to the tip shop again this morning. I am still looking for a desk for my tiny sound studio out in the shed.

BedTime Stories

Go here to catch the latest reading of The Blue Castle. For all my new readers this page holds all the chapters I have narrated so far. So you lucky ones can start at the beginning.

Take good care. Talk very soon. Leave a comment. I encourage all my readers to talk amongst yourselves in my Lounge Of Comments. The comments section is critical to building community. We need to forge friendships now. To support each other. You are not alone out there.

See you the day after tomorrow for our weekly newsletter. It will be a goodie!

Celi

PS Ever thought of sneaking trees into parks?