Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden 

Sonia Nista  

Kitchen Specialist

Liz Scott

Garden Specialist

The Patch Café

Spring is just around the corner but there are still plenty of lovely winter greens in the garden waiting to appear in a tasty dish. 

Even though we are unable to prepare and share a meal together in our school kitchen, the SAKG recipes are simple and use common ingredients for you and your family to follow at home. 

Cooking a meal brings the family together and is a fantastic way to make learning fun by simply reading a recipe and measuring ingredients.

During lockdown last year I created various videos for some simple winter dishes, these can still be found at the Kingswood Learning Hub. Some of my favourites were:

Spanakopita

Ricotta Gnocchi 

 Minestrone Soup

We sometimes find it too cold for Salads in winter, but there are some lovely warming recipes:

Beetroot and herb salad

 Pumpkin and Chickpea Leafy Salad

Many of the students also enjoyed our easy recipe for Bread rolls which are fantastic accompaniments with any hearty dish! 

All of this year’s recipes are available to students in years 3-6  Google Classroom. 

Please reach out for other recipes or simply share a delicious creation!

Happy cooking!

 “News from the Patch”

Whilst in remote learning the garden continues to provide us with produce. However, the winter veggies have been thrown into turmoil with the few warm days we have had, the cauliflower is tiny and broccoli keeps going to seed. 

For the first time in 8 years, we are sharing our veggies with a little visitor that comes into the “Patch”. We are still unsure as to what creature it is, that is breaking off some of our veggies. 

When our veggie plants go to seed, we choose to leave some and the remainder we pull out and feed to the chickens. 

We like to leave ¼ to flower. This contributes in looking after our local bees. By giving them flowers to do their job and continue to cross-pollinate before heading back to their hives fully loaded with pollen. 

We then collect the seeds and dry them. Not only do we save money not having to purchase seeds, but we also collect seeds from our edible flowers.

Marigolds come in beautiful hues of yellow, orange and deep red. They are an amazing giver of seeds, often best kept in pots unless you are happy to have them take over your garden beds.

To save the seeds take off the dead heads and open the pod to reveal the seeds. (The pic below shows all the seeds from one pod). I like to keep the seeds a little longer in a paper bag to allow them to completely dry out.

What to plant now!

Time to plant up your spring, summer herbs and vegetables. 

Examples of what to plant; tomato, eggplant, capsicum, corn, beans, beetroot, lettuce, rocket, basil and kale to name a few.

Hopefully, your tomato seeds are sprouting, if not you can purchase plants. It might be hard for you to visit a nursery with the current 5km Covid-19 restrictions, but you might get lucky as most supermarkets are stocking a variety of seedlings and potting mix to have you ready for planting.

This time of year is a great time to get your potatoes in. A great one to do with the kids is to use an old bucket or tub, drill holes in the bottom fill it ⅓ of the way with soil, pop your potatoes in, lightly cover with soil. Once they start sprouting you can add another layer of soil to build it up, repeat over time until the bucket is filled. Water regularly and pop in full sun. Feed with a good fertiliser, your potatoes are ready when the plant leaves die back, this can take up to 100 days.

The image below shows how the potatoes grow, please don’t feel you have to cut a container like this, it is just to show how layering encourages more potatoes to grow. Plant now and you will be harvesting to enjoy them in December.