6. Good Organic Gardening - November-December 2016 AvxHome.in

Frank & Anita Vella | GARDENING FOLK
Carrots
Frank & Anita’s
top tips
Use mealworms in your sandy soils.
Keep growing vegetables; they’re
great for you.
Grow companion plants such as
roses to attract bees to your vegies.
Don’t ever use weed mat.
Keep your garden tidy.
How to make
gbejniet
Ingredients
• 5L fresh, unhomogenised milk
• 50mL water
• 3 tsp rennet powder
• Salt
Banana tree
Zucchini
Staked
tomatoes
What you need
• Thermometer
• Large pot
• 15 cheese baskets
• Dripping tray for cheese baskets
• Cloth
• Strainer
• Small cup
• Wooden spoon
Frank tending to a beehive
Method
In a large pot, place milk on the stove on
warm heat. Once it reaches 38°C, turn off
heat. Place water and rennet powder in
a small cup, stir quickly and gently stir
into warm milk. Allow to rest for about 3
hours. At around 1½ hours, use a wooden
spoon to lacerate the coagulating milk
and leave for a further 1½ hours. Curds
and whey will separate. After 3 hours,
scoop up curds and fill one basket. Place
it on a dripping stray. Fill the remaining
cheese baskets until all trays are full
to the top with curd. Pour excess whey
that drips on the tray into the baskets.
Sprinkle salt on baskets of curd before
placing them in the fridge overnight.
They give away some of everything they
produce, especially lemons, honey and eggs,
and preserve what’s left. They freeze dozens
of lemons, dry figs on a rack and soak olives
in salt for weeks.
Frank and Anita are particularly zealous
about avoiding waste. “Don’t throw away
onion leaves,” says Anita. “They give colour
and flavour in cooking. And never pull onions
out by the root. Cut the bulb close to the
root and leave the remaining cut bulb in the
ground. The onion will grow again. The same
with spring onions: never uproot!
“And when you buy spring onions and cut
roots off to cook, don’t throw the roots in
the kitchen bin. No! This is a waste. Plant it;
it will grow. See, Frank has many good ideas,
don’t you think?”
Anita also cuts off small tomato shoots and
puts them in water, where they grow roots
and can then be planted.
“Frank went to Bunnings one day and
bought a tomato plant for $20. How can
people afford $20? That’s a lot of money for a
tomato plant. What I do is throw tomato seeds
in the compost and — boom! — you get a lot
of plants. It’s cheap and it’s easy to grow.”
As someone once said, plants will tell
you where to grow. Aunties Flo and Mo
would be proud.
One more thing, Anita says: “Buy lots of
garden magazines. You get a lot of ideas.” We
can’t argue with that.
Good Organic Gardening | 39