Food for the Soul

The happy garden in various stages of growth. Notice the frangipani still losing summer leaves.

Winter in the garden is a restful time for me. I love how the vegetables seem to grow overnight, the hose and sprinklers stay idle as the rain waters and washes off unsuspecting ‘nasties’. The whole process of reproduction and food production goes off with barely a hitch. But I’ve felt something missing of late and it took a lady some streets from here to remind me what it was.

One afternoon I heard my husband chatting to someone as I waited for him to return with some freshly cut herbs. I listened to their conversation from inside and heard her comment how she comes past almost every day to see how my vegetables are growing but she never seems to catch me in the garden anymore. In an instant I knew what was missing. It was the human contact tending to the garden each day had given me! I have met more people in our front patch in the last 4 years than the previous 22 in our old house. I burst out the front door to say hello and we were soon chatting about what we were picking this week and how soon I would do a bed of green manure and what would follow it and how the cumquats had ripened early and….. I soon forgot the food on the stove!

A garden gives us so much more than our food. In a world where contact is now so often via the Internet and our lives too busy to walk to the shops, the part of our home that is open to the world, is our portal to the neighbours and community. This is where I learnt from the older Polish lady (who just happened to attend school in our home when it was a church and Catholic school) gave me her family recipe for dill pickles, where I have met new people to the street, where I say hello to the Nun who diligently walks past everyday to the new Catholic church, where Tessa, our dog’s ‘girlfriend’ thrusts her nose through the fence to say hi each morning. This is where I met almost all our neighbours when we first moved in and how I gauge whether I am running late for school by who has been past yet!. Our front garden is the window to our community and will remain so, even if I have to spend a few minutes a day battling the elements on cold winter mornings!

So,  back to the vegetables! This year has seen us have a bumper crop of broccolini and broccoli. Once the main heads were picked, the side shoots went crazy and from 12 plants, we have been eating every 3rd night for 8 weeks (and I am talking about a lot of broccoli)! It is my favourite winter vegetable in our garden as it just keeps producing the most beautiful stems. We blanche ours most nights, preferring it au natural and crunchy! Sometimes I add it to silverbeet and make a gratin which is just delicious.

A full bed of broccoli with kale in the foreground.

We were very lucky to be given two mature potted cumquats from family and these have gone from strength to strength, with every 1½ kilo producing 8 jars of chutney, made by my superstar friend Rosi. Next year, I shall make it as I have been promised the recipe. The cumquats were suffering a little when they first arrived, quite deficient in iron but have really changed colour 2 weeks on after a good dose of iron. 

Sad, nutrient deficient cumquat leaves before treatment.

My first cumquat harvest!

Brussel sprouts are new to the garden this year and also to me, as far as growing them. Until I researched them a few months back, I was totally ignorant of the fact that the brussel sprouts grow on the trunk above each stem! They really look so cute and photos of mature plants are going to be mindblowing in their 'weirdness'! No one seems keen on eating them in this household but I am told that if picked young, they are so delicious and not at all like the ones we buy at the supermarket. 

Healthy, happy brussel sprouts.

Sprouts growing on the trunk

What else is in the garden? Chillies, kale, basil, silverbeet and chard, lettuce, carrots, leeks, garlic (they take such a long time but we will soon harvest a whole year’s supply) and all the usual suspects as far as herbs go. Oh, gooseberries also.

The last of the beetroot were eaten 3 weeks ago.

Kale continuing to thrive

Chillies loving the wet weather.

The last large bunch of basil picked 4 weeks ago

Basil still thriving

Gooseberries

And, no bug deterrents used in the last 2 months with only 12 caterpillars, 6 snails and one huge grasshopper found. The broccoli has been free of any pests (except for 3 snails) the whole season! No idea why, maybe the resident kookaburras over the road have been helping out!

 There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.  ~Mirabel Osler

In the Beginning

I’m fairly proprietal about my garden. Just ask my husband when he tries to do me a favour and water the ‘crop’ to save me time in my day. The wild woman in me threatens to behead him and it is only his fearful face and apology for being so thoughtful, that allows me to see it for what it is. He doesn’t want ownership, he just wants to help.

I wasn’t always like this. Ask the poor flowers and shrubs I grew at our previous home – they barely got a ‘look in’ once a week. How things change though...

Five years ago, we bought our present home, a 103 year old converted church whose previous life was as a Catholic convent school. The religion I leave to others, but I have a love of big, spacious old buildings and this one close to Perth city, was about as close as we were going to get to an old European stone farmhouse. Grand it is, but without the acreage we’d one day promised ourselves. We got the house, but not the paddocks. However, determined to live at least part of our dream, we set about creating our slice of ‘The Good Life’.

Keen to get the taste of ‘real veges’ into our family of four, we installed raised garden beds in the front , courtesy of ‘Your Patch’, an organic vege company. In addition to the beds, Cameron also came along in the deal; he visited fortnightly, dispensing advice and planting seedlings. It kind of defeated the purpose of growing our own but he provided invaluable knowledge.  For me, it clearly was a case of ‘watch and learn’. Four seasons later I was on my own and reading everything I could about being a city farmer, believing that to obtain the knowledge, I’d have to follow the advice of others. 

Our very first weeks - 2008

October 2009 and we are on our own!

October 2010 and getting daring - learning to shade plants with companion plants

October 2011 - a few weeks from winning Subiaco's Sustainable Garden Award

October 2012 - still going strong!

It took me some time but one day it all just clicked. The only way I was going to learn was through trial and error and constant vigilance. My plants became like children; if I didn’t check what they were up to, they would soon take off and do their own thing, with whomever they chose to do it with! This explains my initial response to my husband and his good deed! The opportunity to be in constant contact with my growing ‘babies’, means I can watch and see every change, and which bug good or bad, has moved into my territory!

This blog is as a way to share the bits of knowledge I have found along the way and provide somewhat of a diary through the seasons. Recipes, tips, failures and successes will be written about, photographed and collated. Please feel free to share my blog with anyone you may think will like it and do give me feedback or any tips you have. I plan to post weekly, but then I know that the best laid plans often go astray! 

Fiona.

'My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant's point of view.'  ~H. Fred Dale