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June 29, 2005

Letting go of tension

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Pain and tension are enemies of good movement patterning and smooth coordination and you have to become aware of their effect on the body before you can fully overcome poor movement habits. Poor alignment causes tension and tightness. Muscle imbalances can cause aching in the lower back or tightness in the shoulders and neck. Unfortunately, holding tension in certain parts of your body can become habitual and unconscious. Often we tense up because of stress but if we don’t learn to let go then our bodies never fully relax and return to a state of ease.

As you journey through the bones, observe where you tend to hold tension. Perhaps you grip your buttocks or pull your knees up tight or clench your jaw. Quietly let go and feel the muscles soften. When you perform the exercises be aware of tension creeping in. As you work on one part of the body, make sure that you are not gripping elsewhere. It is counter-productive to hold yourself tightly in an effort to ‘work harder’. This disrupts holistic balance and coordination and interferes with sensitivity to fine adjustments in a movement – not to mention making the exercises much less enjoyable to do.

Unlearning tension can be a difficult process, in the same way that it takes time and persistence to retrain your movement patterns. Nevertheless a release technique can be as simple as becoming aware of your breathing. You can often release tension from your jaw, neck and shoulders simply by breathing out and this is a useful thing to remember throughout the day.

Exercise itself can help you relax. As you concentrate fully on your physical self, your mind calms down and tensions from everyday life recede. Your session should leave you feeling refreshed, deeply satisfied and returned to yourself.

Extracted from Bodywise, discover a deeper connection with your body; ABC Books; rrp: $34.95; fully illustrated. Available from all good bookstores.

Bodywise is written by staff at The Australian Ballet. In 2005 The Australian Ballet is performing throughout Australia and internationally. Visit The Australian Ballet’s website, www.australianballet.com.au for details.

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June 29, 2005

Figure eight arm swings

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This exercise gently releases and mobilises the spine.

Align your bones in the standing position.
Soften the knees and swing the arms diagonally across the body with fingers dropping towards the floor.
Lift your arms up to the ceiling extending the legs and begin to turn your head to the other side.
Soften the knees and swing the arms diagonally down across the body to begin making ‘figure eight’ patterns in the air on the other side.

Keep movements loose and relaxed and feel the weight of the bones as they fall and swing. Experiment with your natural breath to assist in finding a rhythm for this exercise.

Extracted from Bodywise, discover a deeper connection with your body; ABC Books; rrp: $34.95; fully illustrated. Available from all good bookstores.

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June 29, 2005

Gardening jobs for July

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Mooch around your garden before breakfast and see where it’s coldest, where frost has gathered, or where there seems to be a sunny, sheltered patch. Most gardens have these “microclimates” – cold spots where bulbs may thrive, warm spots where heat-lovers will thrive.
Warm yourself up with some heavy work in the garden – dig a new bed for spring planting, or good big holes for shrubs.
Use plastic tree guards to shelter young plants from cold winds – even recycled bubble-wrap can make a good tree guard.
Move any shrubs that are in the wrong spot.
Check that dahlia tubers are well covered with soil – big tubers can break through the surface and will rot.
Have your lawn mower serviced – don’t wait until spring to find it won’t start!
Keep pruning deciduous trees and shrubs.

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June 29, 2005

What to plant in July

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Frost-free climates

Plants for beauty: any ornamental shrub in the nursery; seeds or seedlings of alyssum, Californian poppy, calendula, cleome, coleus, gerbera, helichrysum, honesty, impatiens, kangaroo paw, marigold, pansy, petunias, phlox, salvia, sunflower, Swan River daisy, torenia, zinnia.

Temperate

Plants for beauty: Bare-rooted or potted roses and other deciduous shrubs; seeds of alyssum, calendula, heartsease, lunaria; seedlings of bellis perennis, Californian poppy, English daisy, evening primrose, Iceland poppy, love lies bleeding, primulas, pansies, polyanthus, Iceland poppies, viola.

Cold

Plants for beauty: Bare-rooted or potted roses and other deciduous shrubs; seedlings of alyssum, bellis perennis, calendula, Californian poppy, Iceland poppy, primula, pansy, stock, sweet peas.

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June 29, 2005

How To Grow Avocados

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Which variety?

Grow at least two varieties, or three, for better pollination, and choose Hass as one of those, as it ripens much later than the others so you’ll get fruit for longer.

Avocadoes are VERY easy to grow from seed – but you MAY need two varieties to cross-pollinate each other or you won’t get much fruit, so it’s best to stick to grafted varieties for your first two or three trees – then if, like me, you become an addict – or want a hedge – plant masses of seeds or as many different varieties as you can.

Alternatively, plant several sorts of seeds (you don’t need to know the names – just make sure the avocadoes you got the seed from REALLY look different from each other) about half a metre apart from each other. Avocadoes grow happily in clusters – and as they are so close they’ll dwarf each other, so your garden won’t turn into an avocado plantation.

How to grow

Avocadoes will grow in tropical to cold areas- but trees in those cold areas MUST be sheltered from cold winds. Avocadoes also require perfect drainage, in full sun or semi-shade and hate ANY wind. Prune only to keep them manageable. MULCH THICKLY at least once a year, preferably with lucerne or with wattle tree slash (wattle branches, with lots of leaves, fed through a mulcher); feed with hen manure in spring. Cover with a hessian or shade cloth shelter for the first 2 – 3 years in hot summers or cold winters.

Trees can grow BIG – Wurtz is probably the smallest variety available, but even varieties that like to reach for the sky can be kept severely trimmed; in bad fruit fly areas don’t plant thin skinned varieties. (Haas are pretty tough and are one of the smaller trees too.)

Harvest

Avocadoes any size are edible – but the longer you leave them the better; different varieties and different climates crop at different times; if it comes off easily in your hand it’s ripe. Small ones shrivel but still ripen eventually. Avocadoes don’t soften till after they’re picked. I leave some of ours on the tree for 18 months, long after the new crop is ready – and these elderly ones are SUPERB. (With luck – and if the birds don’t get them – you may well have avocadoes all year round.)

Store

There is rarely any need to store avocadoes – they keep best on the tree, for up to three months after the ‘proper’ picking time. We have been picking fruit from the Haas tree in the upper orchard for the last six months. If you must pick them or buy a ‘special’, keep them in the fridge, away from citrus fruit which will help ripen them. If you buy them hard and green and want to ripen them, stick them in a paper bag with a piece of citrus.

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June 29, 2005

How to grow kiwi fruit

Wondering how to grow kiwi fruit in Australia? Look no further.

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How to grow

Kiwi fruit will grow in most of temperate Australia – and with careful placement even in areas that seem unlikely.

Kiwi fruit MUST have chilling – 700 hours below 7°C; MUST have well drained soil; MUST have good watering for the first three years; MUST have mulch and water when the temperature is over 35°C for the first three years; and you MUST have a male and a female vine (or nine females to one male – but one to two females are more than enough for a kiwi fruit addicted family and all their friends and birds.

Avoid male and females grafted onto one vine – they almost always break down.)

If you’ve got all of those – it’s easy.

Train your kiwi fruit onto a pergola, fence or up a tree in warmer climates. Be warned: the vine will get very big and heavy even if you prune it rigorously once a year – fences et al can well collapse under their weight.

The first year prune back to the central trunk, with two main arms. The fruit is produced on this year’s shoots from last year’s growth – in other words, you get fruit from one year old wood, and anything older needs to be pruned back.

If you don’t prune, you’ll get a jungle that even Sleeping Beauty’s Prince wouldn’t be able to hack through and rats love to nest in the tangles.

Every winter prune back vigorously – if you’ve trained it properly the first year or two, you’ll have lots of long ‘laterals’ growing out of the two main arms.Keep about half of these and trim them back to a reasonable length. You’ll also need to trim back any new laterals off the main arms in summer.

I know this seems complicated. In fact kiwi fruit are so vigorous that after five or six years, if you just cut it back to manageable size, you’ll still have enough last year’s wood and this year’s shoots for masses of fruit. Just remember that if you do go for a very drastic cut back, you won’t have any fruit next season.

Harvest

Fruit should appear after 2 – 3 years; some authorities recommend picking before frosts, but I find that frosts tenderise and sweeten them. Don’t wait for the fruit to get ripe on the vine though – it doesn’t.

Pick and wait for anywhere from three days to two weeks for them to ripen indoors. The riper they are, the sooner they’ll soften inside. If they don’t taste sweet, they aren’t ripe enough to pick and if they leave a furry taste on your tongue, they are definitely not ready.

Note: Your home-grown fruit will be MUCH sweeter than shop bought stuff; and will have more flavour too – commercial kiwi fruit never seem to have much flavour at all, just vague sweetness and a hint of scent.

Pick the latest fruit first – kiwi fruit are best stored on the vine. We let the birds get most of ours – the display as they try to balance and peck is worth losing the fruit for – and, anyway, a few hundred kiwi fruit is more than enough for us.

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June 29, 2005

How to grow mulberries

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Mulberries can be delicious, if they’re perfectly ripe and from a good tree. They will also stain clothes, fingers and paving, but that’s no excuse for not growing them – just bung them down the backyard where the kids can climb the tree and eat the fruit – just make sure they’re wearing old clothes when they do.

How to grow

Very adaptable tree once established – drought and frost hardy. So can be planted throughout Australia except for the wet tropics (unless you have very green fingers) and the most arid deserts(ditto). It’s a great tree to grow – little work, no pests, and if you don’t want the fruit, the birds will eat it for you.

Mulberries bloom late, so they don’t get zapped by frost. Trees often sulk for a year or two after planting, then grow very fast indeed – and they make wonderful climbing trees. A large part of my childhood was spent up a mulberry tree.

If the berries taste sort of ordinary, or fall before they are really rich and ripe, try feeding two or three times a year – trees can grow vigorously but still need feeding for a decent crop. As to which mulberry to buy – Black English has a short season, but superb fruit, Hicks Fancy has a longer season and smaller reddish fruit, and Downs Everbearing has longer black fruit. You can also buy white mulberries, which don’t stain your clothes and don’t taste of anything much either, except sugar – they are very, very, very sweet.

Don’t pick the berries till they are really ripe – they don’t ripen off the tree.

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June 29, 2005

How to grow lemons

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Which variety?

Eureka lemons give year round fruit – a thick skinned, tough cold and heat resistant lemon. Most other lemons give most of their fruit in winter. Lisbon has the most beautiful flavour and aroma.

How to grow

Lemons need sun, frost protection and dislike wind, relatively rich soils and a reasonably constant supply of moisture (otherwise you tend to get fruit drop or dead trees).

They also need LOTS of feeding – use well made compost, a complete citrus food or Dynamic Lifter at least twice each summer. I also give ours a dose of seaweed spray once a year. Plants in pots need to be fed once a month while they are growing strongly. Mulch well – they’re shallow rooted.

NB: If citrus leaves stay yellow even after feeding, look for scale, or use a complete citrus food and seaweed spray together in case they have a trace element deficiency. Citrus leaves often look yellowish in cold weather. (They’re trying to decide whether to die or not).

In arid or drought prone areas try rough or bush lemons, also called citronelles. You get lots of peel, sweetish pulp, lots of seeds – but they do survive. They used to be used as grafting stock for other citrus, so when the graft above dies the rough lemon took over. They grow very fast from seed. In very dry areas mulch citrus well and grow among other greenery to shelter them. Our area is drought prone: I grow ours surrounded thickly by deciduous trees. These shade them in summer. In winter the citrus get the sunlight when they need it.

The main pest is scale (they look just like tiny scale on the leaves). Use an oil spray like Pestoil when the temperature is under 24°C; stink bugs are attracted by rotting ripe fruit and so are fruit fly. (In bad fruit fly areas you can net trees in tubs). If your citrus trees don’t put out new leaves during most of summer – or if the new leaves are darker than the old leaves – the poor thing is hungry. Feed it. Most people starve their citrus. (The rotters!)

Harvest

We have lemons on our trees all year round – constant picking means we don’t have one great big ‘flush’ of fruit and then none for the rest of the year. But lemons are best in winter – soft and sweet.

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Home Page 5500

June 29, 2005

How to grow passionfruit

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Which variety

Usually only Nelly Kelly is a available – a good, vigorous passionfruit. Avoid seedlings, as they don’t grow as strongly as grafted ones. Banana passionfruit are best for cooler areas, with long yellow fruit, not as sweet as the black ones. In tropical areas try Granadillas too.

How to grow

My favourite passionfruit vine grows in a pot in its owner’s bedroom. It then twines out a specially drilled hole in the windowpane and clambers along the wall outside. (To pick the fruit you lean out the window at grave risk to life and limb

Passionfruit also grow very well in large pots on a balcony. They would be worth growing even if they didn’t fruit – complex white and purple flowers, glossy leaves – and the banana passionfruit, which is even more cold tolerant and vigorous than ordinary passionfruit, has great, vivid pink flowers too. Ordinary passionfruit do best in temperate to sub-tropical climates; try banana passionfruit in cooler areas in protected spots against a sunny wall or granadilla in tropical areas. In all cases do buy grafted vines – they are much hardier and faster growing. They need full sun, shelter from winds. Passionfruit do well growing on netting against a sunny wall, but you can also train them up posts so they take up less room.

A poorly growing passionfruit usually gets sick. Feed each month with a scatter of hen manure; give at least one dose of seaweed fertiliser a year and MULCH!

Passionfruit is very susceptible to viruses, root rots, insect attack – which makes it sound like the least likely plant to succeed in your garden, EXCEPT – a strongly growing passionfruit vine outgrows almost all problems.

Most passionfruit are grafted and the graft suckers. Pull them up at once or they can wander all over the place.

Harvest

In warm areas the vines fruit most of the year; in colder areas in late summer. Pick them when they change colour and shrivel just slightly. Choose heavy ones – light ones have less pulp. They will keep for several months in the fridge or a cool cupboard, but will gradually lose their sweetness. Passionfruit pulp can be frozen in iceblocks for later use.

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June 29, 2005

What uses are the for quinces?

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Question

What is quince?

Answer

Quinces are in season at the moment so now’s the time to make the most of this unbelievably delicious fruit.

Some people draw breath at the long cooking times but if ever “good things come to he who waits” had credence, it’s with the quince.

Take one hard, yellow-green, nondescript, lumpy, acerbic fruit; just add water… and a few hours’ cooking time… and wait for the metamorphosis into an indescribably deep-pink-ruby-coloured fruit that’s slightly textured but deeply soft, a mouth-feel similar to a cooked pear.

It is believed to have originated in the Caucasus and Ancient Persia but rapidly travelled to the Mediterranean: many people believe that the quince is the “golden apple” found in the Garden of Eden.

The cooked fruit is extremely versatile: Greeks, Moroccans and Iranians all use it in traditional meat dishes-and it’s terrific with roast pork; it’s superb in jams, jellies and preserves thanks to its high pectin content; coupled with cheese, particularly brie or manchego, it makes a delicious accompaniment to a glass after-dinner of a sweet wine; and as a dessert – whether on its own or as an ingredient – the delectable possibilities are endless. Here is a great poached quinces recipe.

Pics: bauersyndication.com.au

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Frost-free climates

Temperate

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