Mashed potatoes are a much-loved comfort food and go well with fish, meat or chicken. The best mash potato is made from floury, dry varieties of potatoes like Desiree, King Edward, Spunta, Pink Eye and Sebago.

Pan Fried Fish with Braised Leeks, Pea and Potato Mash

Serves 4

Pea and potato mash

1 kilo Desiree potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

1 cup shelled peas

75g butter, softened

150ml milk

1 tablespoon horseradish cream

Salt and pepper

Braised leeks

20g butter

2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil

4 baby leeks, washed and trimmed

3/4 cup chicken stock

Pan fried fish

4 large slices prosciutto

4 x 150g Blue Eye Trevalla fillets, skin off and bones removed

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Roasted baby tomatoes, to serve

Simmer the potatoes until tender, about 20 minutes. Add the peas to a pan of boiling water and simmer for 3 minutes.

Drain the potatoes and mash until smooth and blitz the peas with a hand held blender until smooth. Add 3/4 of the butter and milk to the mashed potatoes and the rest to the peas. Season both and mash and whizz again. Mix them together gently with the horseradish and season well.

Meanwhile, heat the butter and oil in a medium shallow frying pan and add the leeks and stock. Simmer uncovered for 10 minutes or until the leeks are tender and the liquid has reduced.

Wrap a piece of prosciutto around the centre of each fish. Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan over a medium to high heat, add the fish and cook for 3-4 minutes each side, depending on the thickness of the fish, or until cooked.

To serve, place the mash on to a plate top with the fish and braised leeks and serve with roasted baby tomatoes.

Barbecued Rosemary Lamb kebabs with a Radish Tzatziki and Beetroot, Feta and Rocket salad

Serves 4

4 long rosemary branches, leaves removed leaving some at top

2 garlic cloves, crushed

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon sumac, plus extra to dust

1 tablespoon lemon juice

500g lamb fillet, cut into 2cm cubes

Salad

2 large beetroot or 4 baby beetroot, washed

200g Greek feta, crumbled

1 bunch rocket leaves, washed and dried

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon caster sugar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Radish Tzatziki

4-6 radishes, depending on size, trimmed

1 Lebanese cucumber

200g Greek plain yoghurt

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tablespoons mint leaves, chopped

Soak the rosemary branches in cold water for 30 minutes to avoid burning.

In a medium sized ceramic or glass dish combine garlic, oil, sumac, lemon juice and season well. Add the diced lamb and toss well to coat. Cover and place in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours.

Meanwhile, trim the beetroot stems and place into a medium saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil and reduce heat to medium and simmer for 40 minutes or until beetroots are tender but still a little crunchy. Leave to cool.

Wearing plastic gloves peel the beetroot by rubbing off the skin gently. Cut into wedges and set aside. Combine olive oil, vinegar, sugar and mustard in a screw top jar and season well.

Combine the beetroot, feta and rocket in a medium bowl and toss with the red wine vinegar dressing prior to serving.

Coarsely grate the radishes and cucumber and place into a sieve to squeeze out excess moisture. In a medium bowl combine the yoghurt, garlic, mint, radish and cucumber and season well. Set aside.

Heat a char-grill on a high heat. Thread the lamb evenly amongst the branches.

Cook the lamb on the char-grill for 6-8 minutes turning occasionally or until cooked. Serve the lamb with radish tzatziki and salad.

SNAILS AND SLUGS

Beer Traps

If there’s a little beer left over from last nights’ party, don’t waste it! I’m not suggesting you drink it! Instead, tip it into a few glass jars and sink them into the soil about the garden. Snails will quickly slide on over for their final farewell drink with buddies… before they meet their maker! Empty and replace beer regularly.

How does it work?

Snails and slugs absorb the beer, get drunk and die! Who’s for another drink?

Coffee

It gives us a lift in the morning, but it’s deadly to snails and slugs.

Dilute one part of strong caffeine-rich coffee with 10 parts of water. Spray it all over the foliage of your plants as well as the surrounding soil. Alternatively, sprinkle cheap instant coffee in a circle around your seedlings and the boarder of your garden.

How does it work?

Snails and slugs absorb it through their sensitive mucous membrane, they suffer a heart attack and die! Herbal teas just don’t have the same effect!

APHIDS

Quick Clean Soap Spray

Clean up aphids, lace bugs, bronze orange bugs, whitefly and scale (on ferns) with this simple soap spray. Combine 2 cups of water with 2 teaspoons of dishwashing liquid (or 5-10 g pure soap) in a spray bottle. Give it a good shake and spray it all over the insects. Do it 3-4 times every 5 days to put a stop to big infestations. Note: apply it late in the day when temperatures are cool to avoid leaf burn.

How does it work?

On contact, the detergent dries out the pest’s sensitive coating and they die.

SCALE (and sooty mould)

Homemade White Oil

Effective for controlling scale, mites, aphids, soft skinned grubs and citrus leaf minor. Avoid using it in very hot weather (over 25°C) because it can burn foliage. Simply take an empty plastic bottle, pour in a cup of ordinary cooking oil and ¼ cup of dishwashing liquid. Give it a good shake – you’ll see it turn white! That’s your white oil concentrate.  Label with bottle with the correct dilution rate – ‘one tablespoon per litre of water’. It’s important to stick with this rate because too much oil will cause leaf burn. Mix it well before and during spraying and make sure you cover the under surface of the leaves and any crevices where sapsuckers hide.

How does it work?

The coating of oil suffocates the sap-sucking insects. In the case of the adult citrus leaf minors, it makes the surface of leaves unattractive when they are looking to lay eggs.

GRUBS & CATERPILLARS

Miracle Molasses

Many organic gardeners find Molasses useful in repelling leaf chewers like caterpillars. Dilute 1 tablespoons of molasses in a litre of warm water, a few drops of liquid soap, let it cool and spray it on the foliage regularly.

How does it work?

Chewing insects find the solution far too bitter and go elsewhere.

Molasses is a very effective deterrent to the root knot nematode that attacks plants like tomatoes, causing them to wilt. Simply dissolve 1 litre of molasses in 4 litres of warm water, allow it to cool and use it to drench the soil.

How does it work?

It dehydrates the nematodes and they die.

Warning: This will also kill good guys in the soil – like worms. This method is a quick fix and should only be used as a final measure. For long-term nematode control, incorporate loads of organic matter in your soil on a regular basis (nematodes don’t like it) and practice crop rotation to avoid a build up of the pest.

Chilli Sprays

Insects like caterpillars are reluctant to feed on plants that have been sprayed with chilli. Also useful for aphids and ants.

Handful of fresh chilli, puree with 1 litre water and add a squirt of detergent.

POWDERY MILDEW AND BLACK SPOT

Milk Fungicide

You only have to go as far as the fridge for this one! Milk has been found to control powdery mildew on cucumbers, zucchinis, melons, pumpkins, roses, tomatoes, grapes and begonias. A Brazilian scientist discovered its effects in the late 1990’s. Tests found it more effective than traditional chemical controls. Simply mix (1) part full cream milk to (5) parts water. Spray it on upper and lower leaf surfaces (in the morning) once a week.

How does it work?

It’s the fats and antibiotic qualities of the milk.

Bicarb Fungicide

Bicarb has so many uses in the home and it also makes a very handy spray for controlling powdery mildew and black spot on roses. In one litre of water, add two level teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda, a drop of detergent and a drop of vegetable oil. Shake it well to dissolve the bicarb and spray it thoroughly on all surfaces of the leaves – once a week.

How does it work?

Detergent helps to spread the mix over the leaf surface. Oil enables the bicarb to stick to the leaf. Bicarb makes the leaf surface alkaline and that inhibits germination of fungal spores.

Some gardeners replace the oil in this recipe with a tablespoon of fish emulsion. It has a little oil in it, but more importantly, it contains beneficial bacteria that have antifungal properties. Also, fish emulsion has an NPK of 10:9:3, so every time you apply it, the plant will be absorbing some of that nutrient making it healthier and more disease resistant.

A champion rose grower passed on this recipe to me. It’s useful as a preventative treatment for black spot and mildews that affect roses.

4.5 litres of water

3 level teaspoons of bicarbonate soda

3 tablespoons of fish emulsion

Stir the liquid to completely dissolve the bicarbonate powder. Spray it 3 times over 2 weeks to get on top of the problem then follow up with a weekly application saturating the plant each time.

NEVER spray in full sunshine or in the heat of the day as the leaves may burn. Instead wait until early evening.

FRUIT FLY

FRUIT FLY TRAPS

Fruit Flies enjoy their vegemite for breakfast, lunch and tea! It’s the yeast that they can’t resist.

Simply combine ¼ teaspoon of vegemite with a cup of water and pour it into a plastic drink bottle. Make some holes in the side and use some wire to hang it in trees neighbouring the on you want to protect. Fruit flies enter through the holes and drown in the water.

You need to hang lots of traps to maximize the impact and it’s important to remember to empty and replace traps weekly.

Rain and moist conditions can unleash a stampede of snails in your garden. Let them loose amongst your seedling and they’ll make a meal of them, so you need to take measures to  protect your crops from these marauding invaders.

Late night patrols are a good way to start reducing your snail population. Head out in into the vegie patch with a torch and a bucket and grab as many as you can.

Even during the day, you’ll find lots of them. Check under leaves and in the crevices of strappy leaf plants as well as under pots then feed them to the chooks.

Aussie snails love a beer. Grab some old dishes or jar lids, place them around the garden and pour in a little liquid gold. They’ll soon come in from everywhere lured by the promise of a good time.

Coffee really gets their party started. Mix up one part strong espresso to 10 parts water then spray that liberally over the plants and surrounding soil once a week. The caffeine gives them a kick that they just can’t handle.

If rain is persistent, it will wash off or dilute these controls. That’s when you may need to reach for commercial snail baits. Some products can be harmful to pets and wildlife, so read the packaging and get one that’s based on iron. They’re far less harmful.

And if you want to be sure, use an old drink can to make a trap. Make the hole a bit bigger first – for the fat snails – pop in some baits, then pierce the tin with a sharp stick, driving it into the ground. That way your pets can’t get to it.

I just love English spinach. The leaves are so sweet and tender and you can toss handfuls into just about anything you’re cooking… salads and soups, stir fries, pies, you name it and it gives every meal a nutritional boost.

Spinach loves to grow in the cool season and I always look forward to April/May when it’s time to get a crop in the ground. It’s easy to grow and it’s a great crop for pots. If you can grow lettuce, you can grow English spinach and just like lettuce, you just pick the outer leaves as you need them. The harvest can carry on for a couple of months.

They need a sunny spot and a rich soil that’s been well prepared with plenty of compost, manures and some dolomite to sweeten it (if your soil is acid). Drainage must be perfect, so mound the soil.

The best way to plant is by directly sowing seeds. Make furrows about 20-30cm apart, dribble in the seed and cover them with about a 10mm depth of soil. Water in well and keep moist until they germinate. Germination is possible in temperatures as low as 5ºC and takes about 10-14 days… soaking seeds overnight before planting may speed this up.

Each seed will produce a little clump of plants. Avoid trying to separate these – they hate root disturbance. As plants mature to a harvestable size thin them to about 25-30cm apart.

English spinach needs to be grown quickly so give plants a light side dressing of all purpose organic fertiliser once a month and kick them along with weekly applications of fish emulsion and liquid compost. That’s the secret to lots of sweet smooth textured leaves.

This really is one of the most beautiful vegetables to grow so get in and give it a go!

Onion weed is one of the peskiest weeds known to gardeners… and it can be difficult to control.

Digging it out won’t do…  each one of these leafy shoots has an onion like bulb at the base … and when you take a closer look you can see they have lots of little baby bulbs growing off the side. They fall off really easily, dropping back into the soil creating more plants… so you’ll never really get rid of them that way.

Spraying them with common glyphosate weedkillers will eventually control them… but you must be persistant and get onto any little plants that appear after the first ones die off.

If the onion weed is in your lawn or amongst other valuable plants, you risk killing everything if you spray. You could paint on the weed killer with a paint brush but, that is a very slow and tedious job. You really need a high tech tool like the one Phil showed on Prime News… he called it the Guru’s Wacky Weed Wand. It’s nothing more than a couple of bits of sponge glued on to a cheap pair of BBQ tongs, but it’s brilliant in these situations.

To use it, you just dip it into a solution of your weed killer, give it a good squeeze to get rid of any excess then go around and give each one of your weeds a wipe. It’s that simple.

Try it out on other persistent weeds like nutgrass and oxalis. It works a treat!

Potatoes are easy to grow at home. Just grab an innocent spud, bang it in the ground and in a few months, you’ve got more spuds. In fact, each one will return up to 3kg. How good is that?

Even if you don’t have a garden, you can make yourself a fabulous planting cylinder with chicken wire and tomato stakes.

Just grab some mesh, shape it into a cylinder and set it up in a sunny spot… put it straight on the lawn if you like. Then grab 3 tomato stakes and drive them firmly into the ground to help keep your cylinder in place.

Once that’s done, toss in some compost, a little soil and some blood and bone… make it around 30cm deep. Then it’s just a matter of popping in a few spuds, covering them with mulch and watering it all in.

When they start to grow, backfill the cylinder in layes of compost and soil. That will encourage the plants to form even more spuds along the stems, filling the cylinder with beautiful spuds. When it’s time to harvest, just pull it all apart and dig in.

Spuds grow well in warm areas during the cool months and in cool areas during the warm months. If you have trouble with the odd frost, this cylinder makes it easy to cover your entire crop at night.

After a gruelling couple of weeks editing and editing again, the finishing touches on my new book are done and it goes in to print today.

‘Down to Earth Garden Design – How to Design and Build your Dream Garden’ takes you through the planning and design process step by step then shows you how to build everything from pergolas to pathways and retaining walls.

It’s fully illustrated with lots of easy-to-follow step-by-step diagrams, inspirational photographes and ready made garden designs.

Look out for it in store this September (ABC Books/Harper Collins)

One of the most important groups of edible plants for the cooler months is the cabbage family… that includes broccoli, cauliflower and all the Asian greens like wombok and bok choy.

If you’re growing any of these… here’s something you might have seen … evidence of something else eating your crop. What’s doing it? Well, it’s a caterpillar that’s doing that … the larvae of the cabbage white butterfly. You may have noticed the butterfly fluttering around your patch. It looks nice… but it’s laying eggs… and if enough of them hatch… the results can be devastating.

Cabbage White Butterfly Larvae

Good news, there are lots of ways we can control them. You can pick them off … but you need to do that regularly… and check the undersides of the leaves where they hide.

One fella I know puts little bread clips on the leaves to imitate the adult butterflies. That makes them think…. there’s someone there already and they go somewhere else… give it a go… and don’t worry about what the neighbours think!

There are a few of sprays that are effective… one you may have heard of … Dipel … it’s based on a bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis… hard to say if you haven’t got your teeth in… the other is based on a compound called spinosad… these work well… and they won’t harm you or your pets.

Another thing organic gardeners find effective is molasses… just dissolve a tablespoon in a litre of warm water, add a teaspoon of dish washing liquid and spray it liberally over the top and undersides of leaves… it’s a great little home remedy.

Autumn is the time to plant strawberries in the sub-tropics … they love the mild winter conditions. Gardeners in cooler areas plant in spring after frosts have past.

Punnets are the way to go. The ones I planted on Prime News gave me 4 established seedlings for around $5. It’s a much more economical way to go than individual pots. And if you’re serious as I am about strawberries… your going to need around 20-30 plants to guarantee a good supply for an average family.

Strawberries love plenty of sun and good drainage. Make sure you mound the soil to improve drainage… and if you’ve got a heavy clay… then dig in some gypsum, some coarse sand and a heap of compost and you’ll get your soil draining really well.

Don’t forget, you can grow strawberries very well in pots too, but go for a large pot at least 20-30cm’s deep and add some coir peat and compost to your regular potting mix.

When it comes to fertiliser… go for something for fruiting plants like a tomato or citrus food or if you like… a little blood n bone and potash … and mix that in really well.

When you’re planting these little babies… space them around 30cms apart… andmake sure that the central growing point is kept just above the soil surface… otherwise they’ll rot and die. Once you’re done… mulch them well and give them a good drink.

You’ll start getting a harvest about 12 weeks after planting … and with regular fertilising and watering you’ll be enjoying the freshest and sweetest strawberries you’ve ever tasted.