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Vegetables & Herbs / Recipes

‘Rooted’ to culinary delight with carrots!

Carrots were probably one of your first ‘solids’, boiled and mashed with other stuff into a tasteless goo and force-fed into you as soon as you were weaned of breast milk.
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Baby Cabbages – dynamite in small packages

Like all things miniature, baby cabbages have an appeal all of their own.
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Back to school with healthy snacks

In January, most food gardens will have a variety of vegetables to harvest: corn, tomatoes, spinach, beetroot, brinjals, beans, carrots, green peppers and members of the pumpkin family like zucchini (courgettes) and butternuts.
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Beat the heat

Vegetable plants, like many other plants in the garden, suffer when it gets too hot.
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Beetroot for your health, and pheromone bliss for your feline!

Beetroot (Beta vulgaris var. esculenta) is an easy-to-grow veggie, suitable as a salad ingredient (cooked or raw), as a dramatic colour contrast between other root vegetables roasted with olive oil and fresh herbs, and also used raw as a healthy ingredient in juices and smoothies.
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Bountiful Basil

To experience one of nature’s most delicious perfumes, just bury your nose in a handful of freshly picked basil leaves.
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Broad Beans – Hearty and Healthy

There are varying degrees of difficulty when it comes to growing vegetables, but most seasoned veggie growers agree that one of the easiest of winter crops is broad beans.
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Building an edible garden from scratch

One of the most exciting types of gardening is creating your own edible garden.
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Cheeky Chillies

  Chillies are the most rewarding plants to grow. They are as hot on the eye as on the tongue, with glossy, multi-coloured fruit that glows against the dark green leaves.
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Cheers! With Home-Grown Herbs (Pineapple Mint)

Using aromatic herbs which you have grown yourself in punches, cocktails and alcoholic coolers always adds a festive touch.
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Chives

Chives (Allium schoenoprasum) are members of the Allium family, along with garlic, leeks, onions, scallions and shallots, but with a mild onion flavour.
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Citrus

If old Louis XIV, the ‘Divine King of Kings’, lurking in his lavish Palace of Versailles, could think of a way for his subjects to grow citrus trees by rolling them out on wheels on sunny days and tucking them away at night when frost was imminent, then you can too!
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Citrus Fruit

Citrus secrets

Brighten up your winter garden with the brilliant neon colours of edible citrus fruits!
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Cool Cauliflower

Cauliflower is regarded as the aristocrat of the vegetable world and there is something venerable about a large, snowy white head of cauliflower.
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Cool Cucumbers

Cucumbers (Cucumis sativus) are one of the few vegetables that can be sown in December in most areas – their planting window generally stretches from September to December.
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Edible Doorstep Garden

South Africa’s favourite holiday is surely our National Braai Day, and fresh-picked herbs transform good food into the best of meals.
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Edible Garden make-over

July is the time of year when the garden takes a holiday, packs up and leaves for sunnier climes.
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Edibles in the Garden

Taste sensations with Asian greens It is hard to believe that mere leaves can result in culinary bliss for humans – one would have thought that only snails and cutworms would enjoy such a menu… But, believe it or not, there are certain members of the brassica (cabbage) family that are used in oriental cooking and are known as Asian greens, and which can give you quite a taste sensation if used in leafy broths, salads or mixed with other garden-fresh veggies in quick but filling stir-fries.
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Entertaining Autumn Outdoors

It’s April, and probably the last opportunity to soak up a lovely warm-ish day in South Africa before the cold chill of winters approach sets in.
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Family Feasting from the Garden

Autumn is the perfect time to harvest all those delicious vegetables that have been ripening in the warm summer sun as well as planting out winter crops such as beetroot, leeks and Chinese cabbage.
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