How to grow wasabi in Canberra

When you squeeze Japanese wasabi over your sushi or sashimi, do you look at the ingredients on the container? Usually, there is 1.8 per cent wasabi, horseradish 9 per cent, corn syrup, sorbitol, rapeseed oil and soy fibre.

One Canberran who lived in Japan for four months in 1987 and again in 2012, decided to grow his own wasabi plants. Dr Harvey Marchant bought the rhizomes from Diggers in Victoria and Four Seasons Herbs in Coffs Harbour.

The scalloped leaves of these plants have a zing but the rhizomes are not yet ready to harvest.

Wasabia japonica is a member of the same family as horseradish. It is a perennial herb growing in the mountain streams of Japan. The sap produces the green, pungent paste when the rhizome is grated. Wasabi takes two years to mature and should be planted in autumn into well matured compost. It can be grown hydroponically but this is said to be difficult.

Stephen Welsh, at Shima Wasabi, now in Devonport and formerly in Launceston, Tasmania, has been growing wasabi in climate-controlled greenhouses for the past 12 years. Welsh says they produce a pure, freeze-dried wasabi powder for home use that is available from their website: www.shimawasabi.com.au

Marchant and his wife, Liz, an excellent cook, have many Japanese friends who enjoy food, wine and sake. The Marchants are members of the Canberra Wine and Food Club where Harvey is Cellarmaster.

Most years, since the early 1990s, Harvey Marchant has made wine. In Weston, he uses a garage under their house that has never had a car in it. He crushes about a tonne of grapes that produces about 600 bottles. He says that getting good grapes from close to Canberra is a problem, though he has made shiraz, merlot and pinot noir bottled under his own label. Marchant did a PhD at the ANU and the University of Colorado, Boulder, in biology. Most of his career was with the Australian Antarctic Division, based in Tasmania, and he has been to Antarctica 16 times as part of the Australian program, but also with the Japanese and United States programs.

Wherever possible the family has grown their own vegetables. When they moved from Kambah to Hobart in the late 1970s, Marchant gave his compost heap to a friend. In their garden in Weston, where crop rotation is practised, tomatoes, sweet corn, peas, beans, zucchini, butternut pumpkins and eggplants are standards, but he enjoys trying different plants like Asian greens and soybeans (edamame). He is experimenting with fermenting the soybeans in an endeavour to make soy sauce.

Homegrown garlic is a staple with about 150 plants "adequate for our use". He has tried numerous varieties but has zoomed in on Monaro Purple because of its flavour and longevity in storage.

In the past, he has bought garlic for sowing from Diggers and organic garlic from the Wursthaus in Hobart but now plants his own saved bulbs.

Strawberries and fig trees are grown in half barrels in the Weston garden and a dwarf Meyer lemon tree produces a huge quantity of citrus. The tree is kept well watered, fertilised and pruned.

The Marchants freeze the juice in 330ml bottles and thaw as required, which keeps them in lemon juice for the year.

For the past four years they have been making limoncello to a recipe adapted from one in Delicious magazine. Peel the lemons with a potato peeler to get the zest and a little pith. Steep the zest in the juice, sugar syrup and vodka for about nine months. Every week towards the end, taste the liquor. There should be a trace of bitterness from the pith but too much and it is unpleasant.

When it tastes just right, remove the lemon skins. It takes another couple of months for the solids to settle and they like a clear finished product. The lemon skins and solids go well in desserts.

Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.