Finally good news form the Roadhouse Spring Garden! Six days ago, on Tuesday last week, Li Fengquan with hes crew planted the herbs and the lettuce, as well as the cucumber, to our precious garden. This was after quite a long time of preparing and finding out what things to take into concideration. I feels great to have most of the plants planted – it feels like we are actually achieving some goals. In addition, the spring onion and the pink radish are doing great and are soon ready to be served in our restaurants. During this week, we are going to harvest some leafs of the pink radish, which our chef Randhir is going to use all of our three restaurants:
-As a part of the salads served in The Schoolhouse
-As a part of the complimentary vegetable plate served as an appetizer in Xiaolumian and The Roadhouse.
Radish leaves will be the second "own plant" served in our restaurant this spring, first being the Xiang Chun. Radish leaves have a slightly peppery flavor similar to arugula’s, and are supposedly really tasty. Radishes are rich in absorbic acid, folic acid, and potassium. They are a good source of vitamin B6, riboflavin, magnesium, copper, and calcium. Healthy, again! Isn’t it great to be able to use different parts of the same plant in culinary purposes? I didn’t know before that one could eat radish leaves. It is things like this that gets us closer to the goal of using our own food as efficiently as possible.
So, what we have growing at the garden right now is three different kinds of lettuce (lollo rosso, butter lettuce, lettuce mix), basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, dill, two kinds of parsley (curly leaf and flat leaf), cucumber, spring onion and pink radish. Rucola and the rest of the vegetables are being planted soon. The amount planted was one small bag of seeds of each plant. How much this really is depends on the species, for example with oregano this meant 1500 seeds, parsley 1000 seeds and basil 750 seeds. This probably doesn’t say anything to anyone - at least it doesn’t to me - but it was enough to fill the plot designed for each plant. When it comes to the lettuce, however, the whole area was not planted now, as I did explain in earlier posts. Lettuce can’t be preserved, and so it is good to plant it in a few different times, to guarantee a continuous supply of fresh lettuce, and to reduce the risk of lettuce being thrown away.
Yesterday I finally got all the signs done for the garden, after a few problems. They are laminated plastic signs telling the name of the plant in English and in Chinese. Many thanks to Michelle, my collegue, for translations! We went on site this morning with Li Haixin and Li Zhan Zi at last to put some signs where they belong – so far there are signs telling where basil, oregano, dill, rosemary, thyme, spring onion and pink radish is growing. I would like to get the rest of the signs there tomorrow. As can be seen from the garden map I posted earlier, there are three walkways going through the garden. The signs are along these walkways, so customers can take a short walk in the garden and see what we are growing there. After, or before, being served some homegrown vegetables or herbs, what would be better for the customers than to actually see the plant they are eating? This should really give a feeling of eating organically and sustainably. We must really educate the servers to tell customers whenever they are eating our home-grown food - that, I think, is essentially important. Another option is to put the information on the menu, so that customers can read about the garden growing behind them.
We also separated different spots – not yet all though – by strings today. The material used for this purpose is iron wire, which was readily available and actually suits the purpose really well. Every second section is white wire and every second red wire, just to make it more interesting. The rest of the strings should be on site really soon, now when it's started it shouldn't take long to finish it.
-As a part of the salads served in The Schoolhouse
-As a part of the complimentary vegetable plate served as an appetizer in Xiaolumian and The Roadhouse.
Radish leaves will be the second "own plant" served in our restaurant this spring, first being the Xiang Chun. Radish leaves have a slightly peppery flavor similar to arugula’s, and are supposedly really tasty. Radishes are rich in absorbic acid, folic acid, and potassium. They are a good source of vitamin B6, riboflavin, magnesium, copper, and calcium. Healthy, again! Isn’t it great to be able to use different parts of the same plant in culinary purposes? I didn’t know before that one could eat radish leaves. It is things like this that gets us closer to the goal of using our own food as efficiently as possible.
So, what we have growing at the garden right now is three different kinds of lettuce (lollo rosso, butter lettuce, lettuce mix), basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, dill, two kinds of parsley (curly leaf and flat leaf), cucumber, spring onion and pink radish. Rucola and the rest of the vegetables are being planted soon. The amount planted was one small bag of seeds of each plant. How much this really is depends on the species, for example with oregano this meant 1500 seeds, parsley 1000 seeds and basil 750 seeds. This probably doesn’t say anything to anyone - at least it doesn’t to me - but it was enough to fill the plot designed for each plant. When it comes to the lettuce, however, the whole area was not planted now, as I did explain in earlier posts. Lettuce can’t be preserved, and so it is good to plant it in a few different times, to guarantee a continuous supply of fresh lettuce, and to reduce the risk of lettuce being thrown away.
Yesterday I finally got all the signs done for the garden, after a few problems. They are laminated plastic signs telling the name of the plant in English and in Chinese. Many thanks to Michelle, my collegue, for translations! We went on site this morning with Li Haixin and Li Zhan Zi at last to put some signs where they belong – so far there are signs telling where basil, oregano, dill, rosemary, thyme, spring onion and pink radish is growing. I would like to get the rest of the signs there tomorrow. As can be seen from the garden map I posted earlier, there are three walkways going through the garden. The signs are along these walkways, so customers can take a short walk in the garden and see what we are growing there. After, or before, being served some homegrown vegetables or herbs, what would be better for the customers than to actually see the plant they are eating? This should really give a feeling of eating organically and sustainably. We must really educate the servers to tell customers whenever they are eating our home-grown food - that, I think, is essentially important. Another option is to put the information on the menu, so that customers can read about the garden growing behind them.
We also separated different spots – not yet all though – by strings today. The material used for this purpose is iron wire, which was readily available and actually suits the purpose really well. Every second section is white wire and every second red wire, just to make it more interesting. The rest of the strings should be on site really soon, now when it's started it shouldn't take long to finish it.
Here are some pictures taken today. I'll put some more when all the strings and signs are there, which should be really soon!
The garden this morning, before the signs and strings were installed. See how well the onion and radish is doing!
The herbs are planted. From front to back: Dill, thyme, rosemary, basil and oregano.
The lettuce trinagle after first plantings. Right in the front you can also see cucumber growing.
Pink Radish growing well at the garden. Here you can see a close example of the signs, too.
Li Haixin and Li Zhen Zi putting the strings to separate different plots. Behind, you can see the first signs along the walkway.
Thumbs up for our garden!
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