Kem Ormond’s vegetable garden: Strawberry spinach and other unusual seeds

Strawberry spinach is an heirloom vegetable that is more than 400 years old. Photo / Wikimedia, Derek Ramsey

Kem Ormond is a features writer for The Country. She’s also a keen gardener. This week, she’s embracing the vegetables that love spring.

OPINION

Nothing is more rewarding than sitting on a sunny verandah and going through your seed box.

I love the unusual and interesting seeds available; it is like being in a candy store.

Some of the seeds I have discovered this season have names such as Strawberry Spinach, Watermelon Radish, Rainbow Blend Carrots, Pepino, Cauliflower Confetti (coloured cauliflower), Water Spinach “Bamboo Leaf”, tasty purple-red Mustard Spinach and organic tomatoes called Sunrise Bumble Bee.

If you want a real talking piece, try growing strawberry spinach, an heirloom vegetable that is more than 400 years old.

It is a unique vegetable with red berries and spinach-like leaves.

Sow the seeds in early spring and harvest the edible leaves and berries throughout the growing season for fresh salads and garnishes.

Some vegetables just love spring, and if you are impatient like me, you will want to start having a few salads and fresh salad greens you can harvest.

Now is a wonderful time to plant some radishes, as they are ready to harvest after only about 4-6 weeks.

Another is Pak Choi (Bok Choy), which thrives in the cool weather.

It is great to plant and harvest before the heat arrives, and it decides to bolt.

If you plant now, you will be harvesting in 60 days.

To prevent that bitterness you sometimes get in lettuce, try planting this month.

The moderate sun and moist soil are to its liking, and you will find it far tastier.

Silverbeet is one hardy vegetable; it tolerates frost and will keep growing through spring into summer.

The small leaves are great in salads.

You should plant spring onions all year round; they are such a handy vegetable to use in a broad range of dishes, especially when you have no onions on hand.

There are a lot of herbs that prefer the cool spring air, and coriander is one of them, as is dill.

This is the time to plant coriander before the heat of the summer sends it sky high.

Do you know that your carrots are sweeter when grown in cooler weather, as the sugars tend to build up while the roots are doing their thing underground.

I find it great to use the thinned-out carrots in salads, leaving room for the other carrots to develop.

If you are like me and have an abundance of parsley at the moment, then make some chimichurri sauce.

Perfect over meat and chicken, and you can use it as a marinade or to just top your cooked meat.

Or you can use it to top your baked potato, pop a blob on your poached egg or drizzle some through your rice or polenta - delicious.

Recipe: Chimichurri sauce

Ingredients

1 cup tightly packed chopped parsley leaves, either curly or Italian

1 cup tightly packed chopped coriander leaves

½ a red onion, coarsely chopped

¼ cup red wine vinegar

4 cloves of garlic

1 teaspoon coarse salt

1 teaspoon dried oregano

½ teaspoon chilli flakes. more if you like more of a kick

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

Method

Combine parsley, coriander, red onion, red wine vinegar, garlic, salt, oregano, chilli flakes and pepper in the bowl of a food processor; pulse a few times.

Pour the olive oil in slowly, while pulsing a few more times, until the chimichurri is chopped, but not mushy.

Leave in the fridge to marinate for a few hours, so all the flavours fuse.

The variations of this recipe are endless; just adjust according to what you have in your herb garden, but parsley should be the star.