GROW YOUR OWN - Green Smoothies

GROW YOUR OWN

Green Smoothies

Alice Faeth

Welcome I want to encourage you to grow your own lovely fresh green leaves and herbs. I believe that gardening is a skill that can be developed, and that once you start to get results - you will be motivated to grow even more. My top tips for success: start small, grow just a few of your favourites in the beginning, and enjoy the process.

Alice

Green Smoothie Goodness ....a few ingredients from the kitchen, combined with delicious fresh greens you've grown yourself - perfect!

Fresh greens are a great source of nutrients, fibre, chlorophyll, minerals, vitamins, and anti-oxidants. Imagine enjoying your green smoothie made with your own freshly picked home grown ingredients.

1. Harvest your greens – wandering out to the garden, select your leaves.

Always snip from the outside of the plant, allowing new growth to come through. Take a moment to breathe deeply, see what colour the sky is, listen to the birds, and check over your garden.

2. Bringing your leaves inside, rinse them off. Remove stems as needed, and add to your blender.

3. Add the liquid – good old water, coconut water, nut or rice milks all taste good. Add ice if your liquid isn't chilled.

4. Add some fruit for sweetness and nutrients - a small amount of banana, apple, berries, or mango is all you need - freeze these in small portions for convenience 5. Select some added ingredients for nutritional value or to add healthy fats. Try nut butters, avocado, hemp seeds or coconut oil. Try a spoon of chia seeds, shredded coconut, goji berries or any number of powdered goodies.

BLEND BLEND BLEND - and enjoy

The Top 8 Greens for your Smoothies ...and they are all easy to grow yourself

Silverbeet

Parsley

Easy to grow from seed or a punnet of seedlings, this leafy green grows all year in temperate climates, and comes in a stunning range of ruby, golden, and pale green stem colours. Requires half a metre square of room.

Both the flat and curly leaf varieties can be grown in the garden or in a pot. The dark green leaves are handy for salads, to make sauces, and to add a boost of phyto nutrients to your smoothies.

Perpetual Spinach

Kale

Closely related to the Silverbeet, this leafy green grows well in semi-shade, produces masses of green leaves - and is much less fickle than the short-lived English Spinach.

Recommended for convenience, nutrients and taste.

A member of the brassica family, Kale comes in two distinctly different looking (but similar tasting) varieties. Kale grows best in temperate to cool climates and can be planted in Spring and Autumn.

The Top 8 Greens for your Smoothie

...and they are all easy to grow yourself

Mint

Sage

Best grown in a pot due to its tendency to spread, Mint is an easy plant to grow. Just a few leaves adds a clean fresh taste to smoothies, and it makes a lovely tea to aid digestion too.

Just a few leaves will give you great benefits for memory and clarity of mind. Due to its strong taste only use a few leaves, starting with a small amount to get the balance right with other flavours.

Rocket

Cucumber

Also knows as Arugula, this leafy green tastes best when picked young, the peppery flavour intensifies as it gets bigger. It is a pick and come again plant, so you can get a lot of leaves from just a few plants.

Cucumbers are a summer crop, but if you are lucky enough to live in a sub-tropical climate you can grow them throughout the year.

They help to balance any bitterness from greens in your smoothie as well as adding nutrients (leave them unpeeled).

7 Reasons to Grow Your Own Availability and Convenience Snipping off a few leaves as you need them, adding herbs to your smoothies and salads. You'll probably still go to the markets - but instead of getting the basics, you can stock up on gorgeous fruits and harder to grow vegetables that you don't have yourself.

Nutrient Availability Once stems and leaves are snipped away, or the whole plant is harvested from the ground, the plant cells begin to break down. As the leaves become limp and yellowed, there is less chlorophyll and nutrients left in the leaf. So if you want to maximise your nutrient intake, then consuming the greens as close as possible to harvesting is the best idea.

It's Organic When you have cared for the soil, planted the seed, and tended to the garden - you know exactly what is, and what is not there.

To be absolutely assured of consuming pesticide-free produce, growing your own will give you peace of mind. You should be making your own choices about what is and is not acceptable in your garden.

7 Reasons to Grow Your Own It Tastes Better Freshly picked greens have a sweeter and cleaner taste than those that have been stored since picking. The texture is also nicer, less fibrous. Bitter greens comes with the yellowing after picking, and you will definitely notice the difference using fresh leaves.

You Will Save Money With over 50 seeds in a packet, even if you need to buy pots (I recommend reusing materials) and soil, you will still find that you are reducing your grocery bill significantly within a few months.

Soon enough you will shake your head and smile wryly at those cellophane packs of spinach leaves in the supermarket.

It is environmentally kinder Forget about food miles, we are talking about food metres here.

Growing your own greens reduces the environmental impact of food transport, packaging, and it should also reduce household waste as you will only pick what you need each day.

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It Feels Good Really Good. In fact, you will be so proud of yourself every time you snip off those home grown leaves for your smoothie your wellbeing will go up - and that's before you even drink the green goodness! Growing your own food also brings lessons in patience, gratitude, and a deeper connection to the natural world.

Pots or Patch If you have a small yard, a paved courtyard, or even just a balcony you can still grow your own leafy greens. While as a general rule you need 6 hours of sunshine a day, leafy greens can grow well with just 4 to 5 hours of sun.

If you are growing in pots or containers, be sure to select ones that are at least 40cm deep for best results. The potting mix should be a premium brand also, this is not the area in which to save a few dollars.

Raised garden beds are ideal, especially as you can fill them with a quality soil and get your plants off to a great start. They also drain really well, and are easy to access.

Digging up the ground and establishing a vegetable bed is much harder work. You may need to spend the first year improving the soil, before you get any decent production underway.

Seeds or Seedlings While new gardeners can be a bit wary of seeds, there are many benefits to choosing seed packets over punnets of seedlings.

For starters, growers can select from a much wider variety of plants, and gain access to heirloom varieties not available as seedlings.

Growing from seed is also more economical as a packet of 50 seeds costs the same as a punnet of 6 plants.

Seeds can also be useful to plant successively, for example, planting Rocket every eight weeks will ensure you always have lovely fresh leaves to pick.

Garden Ecosystem The birds, insects, and reptiles we share our gardens with all play a role in the urban ecosystems we live in.

While a caterpillar eating a leaf may be a bad outcome for you, it might prove to be a tasty snack to a bird - who, like us, prefers their snacks without a coating of pesticides.

Over time, with care to create a healthy soil and biodiversity, our gardens will come into balance. This doesn't mean you won't have problems, it just means the difference between a few holes in the leaves rather than a complete wipeout.

When it comes to growing green leaves for use in smoothies, we want to use them straight away with the comfort of knowing they are free of pesticides.

The principles and techniques of organic gardening, are simple to learn two of the core skills are observation and patience! All My Kitchen Garden courses teach organic gardening and we help growers to find kind and clever solutions for any problems we have along the way.

Heirlooms Heirloom varieties are open pollinated which means they are not created through a cross-breeding program, which creates a F1 or a hybrid. Please don't get worried about the term hybrid, it is traditional old-fashioned plant breeding and has been around for centuries...it has nothing to do with GMOs! There are many Heirloom varieties that are only available as seed, so browsing through a seed catalogue can be much more interesting than standing in front of a small selection at the garden centre. I also prefer Heirlooms as I truly appreciate the work that seed savers do, acting as conservationists and stewards of this wonderful genetic material so it is not lost for future generations.

Heirloom varieties are pretty true from one generation to the next, which means the seed can be saved and planted again - which is an enjoyable and thrifty habit to get in to. So if you find a certain type of Kale is growing really well in your garden, you can let one plant go to seed and you will have more than enough seeds for the next year.

For example, I planted one punnet of Rocket four years ago, and since then I have collected and replanted the seeds each Summer, gathering hundreds of seeds each time.

Getting Started The number one thing you need to get started is sunshine! Without at least 4 hours of sunshine a day, your plants won't be able to grow. You also need to be able to get water to your plants, so choose a spot that you can either run a hose to, or easily refill a watering can from a tap.

When it comes to tools, start with the basics: A garden bed, or some large pots Quality soil to fill your beds, or premium potting mix for the pots A long handled spade for filling beds and turning the soil A short handled spade and fork A watering can that holds 8 to 10 litres A bag of mulch, like pea straw or sugarcane mulch Packets of seeds, punnets of seedlings An organic liquid fertiliser, look for the fish emulsion types Kitchen shears for snipping off the leaves A lovely shallow basket to collect your home grown goodies in

Learn more about growing plants from seed, with the grow your own course, perfect for new gardeners priced at just $47

Swiss Bliss Green Smoothie Recipe The ever reliable silverbeet will keep you in greens all year round (in frost free areas). You can pick the leaves as you need them, working from the outside in. I remove the stalk for smoothies, but it doesn't go to waste - the stems are lovely sauteed for a side dish, or if you have a friend with chooks you can trade the stems for eggs!.

1 1/2 CUPS CHILLED ALMOND MILK 2 LARGE LEAVES SWISS CHARD (SILVERBEET) 1 SCOOP CACAO POWDER 2 STRAWBERRIES, HALVED 1 TABLESPOON NUT BUTTER Add all the ingredients to your blender and process until the leaves are in teeny tiny pieces and the nut butter has dispersed through the milk.

Pour into a chilled glass, and drink up!

Get more fresh produce recipes at mykitchengarden.com

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About My Kitchen Garden Offering online courses, we teach and support new food growers through their first season in the veggie patch. By breaking down the complexities of starting and caring for a garden into simple and manageable tasks, we have created a no-fail system to maximise your success and enjoyment.

Each course is complemented by access to a group of growing and cooking professionals to answer all your questions, and share your excitement when you pick your first crops! Including lessons on making preserves and different cooking techniques, you can learn to grow your own!

Meet Alice Alice Faeth is a keen cook and vegie gardener from way back, when she moved into her new house she planted the tomatoes before unpacking her clothes!

Inspired by the food grown, shared and preserved by her hard working Nan & Pop, Alice has set out to develop a positive and community focussed business that assists others with creating and enjoying their own kitchen gardens.