I only started experimenting with growing vegetables, fruits and herbs in the spring of 2014 when I was working with respected gardener Simon Rickard on his book, Heirloom Vegetables. At the time, I had no idea what an heirloom was, and afterward my world expanded and turned green.
We launched Simon's book at The Diggers Club in Dromana. I got there a little early and looked around the nursery and at all the packaged seedlings, seeing varieties I'd never knew existed. I asked the man behind the counter what do I do to start my own veggie patch, so he set me up with a palette to grow the seedlings, a rich soil and helped me choose some great veggie choices that were ready to sow. I bought heirloom tomatoes, heirloom capsicums, Tuscan kale and eggplant to start off, and decided to even give avocado sprouting a go! Take a look.
Of course, days later little sprouts began to emerge from the soil and my future father-in-law, Tommo, started to prepare the garden bed within our backyard that had been covered with tarp over the last few years when the family had given up on having an active garden. Tommo really got into it too and started to bring other vegetables to plant, we had beetroot, silverbeet, zucchini, cucumbers...check out the space. A good friend of mine saw this photo of our zucchinis and told me it looked like the soil was lacking nitrate, I had no idea! I learnt so much that summer, when the first tomato emerged I was in awe, I didn't realise the produce developed from the flower - I really should have paid more attention in those classes at school!
Soon our garden was becoming its own jungle and to the awe of quite a few of my friends and family as they watched me take so many produce shots!
Have a look at some of the produce we were picking: tomatoes, kale, zucchini and capsicum,eggplant; and a garden shot.
We began to cook some really incredible dishes, Stipe loved stuffing the capsicums and I can't even begin to tell you how incredible the house smelt. Heaven.
Of course we didn't stop there. One weekend Stipe and I drove down to The Diggers Club in Blackwood and I felt right at home. I really wanted to experiment with a winter garden bed - although admittedly it was a lot harder to get out there and find the motivation in those colder months! Tommo helped me replenish the soil and give it a good churning, then we got to work in sowing the new seeds, it was pretty exciting watching the cabbage start to form itself and a few months later really come into its own. Unfortunately, we started to have a lot of issues with pests and I could not work out how to get rid of them, I asked so many people for advice and bought quite a lot of pest controls and tried natural methods too, but to no avail, it was such a shame. Stipe's uncle came over and told me that I had been quite smart without even knowing it - I had companion planted. I had sacrified the cabbage for the broccoli, which was in fine form and replenishing itself days within cutting off the stalks. We had a bit of luck with cauliflower too, but found you had to use them quite quickly before they started to discolour. Oh, I was especially proud of this one - check out the heirloom carrots!
It has been quite a ride this garden of ours. This is a shot from about a month and a half ago, our summer bed for 2015/16, it's getting toward the end of the season now and is quite a mess. I made a slight blunder and planted the tomatoes way too close together, so much so that the gate we have holding them up is now leaning like the Tower of Pisa!! The leaves are starting to die away now too and making quite a mess.
In case you were wondering, the avocado seeds are doing pretty good! We've had a few misses and have thrown them out, but with each new seed we make sure we give it a go. This shot is from the start of summer. And this one is a shot I love from outside the garden where I house all the pot plants - we've tried to get a little creative with wheelbarrows that house strawberries, lavender and basil. Amongst the pots are blueberries, raspberries, mint, chocolate mint, thyme, oregano, dill, corriander, lettuce and nasturniums.
Not bad for some garden experimenting, hey! The neighbours can see over our fence and usually say something when we bump into them, I think they think we're some kind of pros at this, but really we're just having some fun with it, learning from our many mistakes and trying out different things. My favourite part is bringing produce to family and friends who are so impressed by the taste, always commenting that they've never tasted a flavour like it before; the second is when my family and friends show me their own attempts at a garden and telling me that I've influenced them to do the same - what an honour!
I thought I'd close off with the produce I picked tonight from the garden - check out those heirloom tomatoes (I even saved the seed from last year's crop to plant these ones, how cool is that!), and we made this incredible ravioli dish, which I picked up from the Prahran Market's Fresh Pasta Shop, along with the sauce we made from the pick, it was a winner.
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