Hello and welcome to Organic Edible Garden and Kitchen. Florence fennel, with its mild aniseed flavour, is now readily available and is growing more and more popular every year. And in a minute I'm going to show you the best way to grow it. Yes I really love the flavour of fennel. I use it a lot in my raw dishes and I like eating it whole like an apple. This week I'm going to be making my version of a green smoothie which includes some of the beautiful kale that Rob's grown here. As it happens it also includes some of the fennel. Green smoothies are an important part of my day and kale is the key ingredient in them. And later on, Nellie's going to join Megan for one of her smoothies and tell us why kale is such a great vegetable. Let's go and pick some of this kale. Florence or bulb fennel is a really easy crop to grow and one of the main reasons is it has very few pests and diseases. There's a few important things to remember when planting Florence fennel. First of all, the plant gives off a chemical which inhibits the growth of other vegetables. So we're going to give them a buffer zone. We're going to put an area here, we're going to put some calendula. We're going to plant the fennel. And then we're going to plant some alyssum. That way it's not going to have an effect on the other veges. When planting your fennel, it's really important to have a good soil. We've enriched this with organic material and chicken poo. And remember it is a root crop so some phosphorus in the soil is always beneficial. The other thing about the fennel is it has a really long tap root. It's at least a foot long. So planting it in beds that have a good depth always works well. I've tried it in pots in the past and it just hasn't done well. We're going to plant calendula on this side. It's north-facing here and these grow about half a metre tall and I don't want them to block out the sun for the fennel. The great thing about calendula is it's a really useful winter plant. It flowers all winter long with beautiful yellow or orange flowers and you can use these in your salads. They also make a really good hand cream as well. When growing fennel like this remember there's a difference between winter bulbs and summer bulbs. Obviously at this time of year I'm putting the winter ones in and they tend to be more round rather than oblong. Another good thing to remember is, if you're doing it by seed rather than punnets like this, it's important that you chill your seeds at least two weeks before planting. Now I'm going to put them in about 20 centimetres apart. You can plant fennel all year round but I tend to like it in winter better. The winter chilling always makes it sweeter. And because these are bulb fennel, you can use the tops which are pretty insignificant. If you want the normal fennel, it's actually a larger plant and will grow to about a metre tall and you only use the leaves. People often say they see fennel around railway tracks but it's actually a different plant - hemlock. You can always tell the difference - the hemlock actually has a striped stem whereas fennel always has that sort of pure green stem. Even though it's smells the same, don't eat hemlock - it is poisonous. And finally, alyssum. This is probably the best plant for your beneficial insects in the garden. It's got a lot of nectar for them which they love and it smells really sweet. And you can always add the flower to salads as they're edible. The fennel should be ready in about three months, although you can eat them smaller before that. But leaving them too long in the ground can make them woody. Green smoothies are an essential part of my diet. They're something that I have every day and they're a key part of recovering my health from when I was unwell. I'm going to make two smoothies today. One is my breakfast smoothie that I have. I'm not a huge breakfast person but this way I'm getting a huge amount of nutrients and fibre that's really easily digestible into my body first thing to fuel me along. And the other one I'm going to make is a really kid-friendly one that Pepper loves. So I'll start with my one. Now I've got some beautiful kale from Rob's garden. This is a really nice soft leafy kale that he's got here. So I'll take... ...one... ...about three leaves... ...two...three. Now you could cavolo nero or spinach or collards or a combination of greens would be a nice idea, if you've got them in the garden. Then I've got some edible weeds. The only weed I have in my garden is chickweed and that's very high in Vitamin C so again a great thing to have in the morning. Pop that in there. And essentials in my green smoothie is some turmeric so I've got a knob of turmeric there. And some ginger too. Pop that in there. And what I do for my green smoothies for flavour is add some herbs. So parsley gives it nice fresh flavour. You can add in the stalks if they're not too woody. And obviously parsley's really high in iron and minerals as well. This is really a very mineral-rich drink. And then I'm going to add in some mint. It's really just to freshen it up again. And because we have it in the garden and then I've also got some fennel. And fennel gives it a lovely sweet flavour. You can add some of the leaves in as well but not too much. So I've got a good chunk of fennel there. And this smoothie is going to be for two. And then I always add a bit of citrus in. So you could add - most of the time I add grapefruit and lemon. I've just got lemons today and then I'm going to add some apple as well. So like I've done before, I just chop the peel off the citrus. You can leave the peel on in the smoothie though. It just can be a little bit overpowering in flavour. When they're in season I add grapefruit. Grapefruit are a very cleansing fruit. Today I'm going to add apple though as we're not in grapefruit season. So I'm just going to add in one small apple. So usually about half an apple per person. Or if it was a larger apple, I'd just add in half. And use a Granny Smith or a Braeburn or something with a little bit of tartness to it. And the next thing I'm going to do is add some water. Smoothies usually always taste better with a bit of ice. It also gives a little bit of body to the smoothie. So I'm going to add a cup of ice in there as well. So as you can see that's a huge amount of greens. You imagine getting that into your body without having to chew it all. It's just going to sweep through you and give you so many nutrients all in one drink. Okay, so we're done. Now I'll take two glasses here. And pour in my breakfast smoothie. Now when you're blending you want to blend really well. You can see hopefully through there that this is really well broken down which makes a nice drinking experience. It's not chunky, it's smooth. It's fibrous but it's still really smooth. So it's still an enjoyable texture to down in the morning. Now I have this as my morning smoothie and I use it as a coffee replacement. You will be surprised but it does give you a lift, similar to what you get from your coffee. It's very addictive. It makes you feel clean and fresh and ready for the day. I'm going to pop these ones to the side for later. And we're ready for the next one. Okay so I've got some frozen fruit. So I've got frozen bananas and frozen pineapple. And I've got some coconut milk here that I made. This going to have quite a tropical flavour to it. You could also make it into a sort of sorbet as well. It's important to use frozen fruit because by freezing the fruit it gives them this creamy texture and as I said for the first one, when smoothies are cold, not too cold, but when they're just a little bit cool, they usually taste a bit nicer. So I'm going to get two leaves of kale for this. And then I've got a whole banana in. Then I've got about five wedges of pineapple. Then to give it its tropical flair I've got the mint. You could use lime in here. I'm going to use lemon. You could even make a sort of green mocktail slash cocktail with this. And I've got my coconut milk. A bit more. And lastly that lemon. And blend. Okay, look at this creamy, delicious kids' smoothie using kale and kale's a great thing to get into kids. It's one of the most nutrient-dense greens there is. So this is a smoothie that Pepper, my daughter, takes to day care. The night before I freeze it in a bottle and then she takes it that day and it defrosts and is ready for her by lunchtime. Wow, look at that beautiful green colour. Which one's mine? This one's yours, this one's mine. That's our sort of detox green smoothie. And then the other one is for Pepper and her friend. So kale, probably the most talked-about of all the leafy greens. It's the king of the brassica family which are also known as the cruciferous vegetables. It's massively high in Vitamin C. One cup of kale has more than a whole orange. It also is very high in Vitamin K which is great for blood-clotting. And of all the minerals - calcium, magnesium and potassium - which are often quite deficient in our diet and are really important for cardiovascular health, bone health and for preventing diabetes. So kale also helps to lower cholesterol in the body. When we eat a fatty meal, the liver converts cholesterol into something called bile acids, which are then released into the digestive system and breaks down the fat for elimination. The bile acids are then recirculated back into the body. What kale is so amazing at doing is actually binding with these bile acids and preventing them from being recirculated, so therefore it lowers cholesterol. Cruciferous veg are very high in compounds sulforaphane and indole-3-carbinol and these have been shown to be incredibly protective against cancers and also great for liver detoxification and elimination. And that's lots of good reasons to add kale to your smoothies.