What I am growing and why

Just last night I ducked out to our kitchen garden to pick some lettuce leaves from the 'cut and come again' tiny patch I am growing in a large recycled tub which the "Buy Nothing" FaceBook group I belong to had provided. The leaves were tender and succulent and sweet. With the pasta we were eating, the leaves helped to make a fresh side salad. I have a variety of leaves to choose from -rocket, French sorrel, nasturtium, basil, mint and parsley can all go in the salad. With such a variety the salad has plenty of taste and each plant has time to recover before we come back to cut them again.

Lettuce  and other salad leaves are one of my favourite things to grow in the garden. We have a pretty small suburban plot -just 700 square metres -so the decisions we make about what we grow and based on some important principles:

1. I grow what we eat. This is pretty obvious: I don't want to waste time and energy growing kale for example. I grew it once, and we all decided that there are much better things in this world to eat than kale! I always have spring onions because we just cut the green tops off and they keep on growing for a long time, and they can fit nicely in a tiny spot in the garden, and I use them frequently in salads and stir fries. This season I have broccoli -once we cut the main florets off we can still harvest the side shoots for a good month or more. Did you know you can eat the leaves as well as the florets and stems?  Peas have gone in to grow on the trellis in the back yard: you can also eat the leaves in salads.

This is the way we know what is in season- from now on there will only be tomatoes in the shops which have travelled a long way from the north of our state up near Kununurra or Carnarvon where the seasons are warmer in winter than down here. Their prices go up from now on too, so I will need to make our salads from other ingredients which are in season. Once when I was in Switzerland I was served a salad made of finely sliced carrot dressed with lemon and olive oil- there are other cultures than ours who can show us how to make fresh local ingredients work even when the cucumbers and tomatoes and capsicums are gone for the winter. Coleslaw is great in the winter- we add fennel fronds and seeds for extra flavour. We will add the frozen pomegranate seeds now in the freezer to our couscous and sprinkle them on hummous. Roasted root vegetables like pumpkin and sweet potato can make a great salad with some rocket, parsley and nuts.

2. I grow what is expensive to buy. We don't grow carrots, potatoes or cabbages- they are cheap and good quality from the shops, and they take a lot of ground, which I don't have. This season I have put in a lot of garlic -it is easy to grow in tubs and costs about $24 per kilo. I grow a lot of herbs for the same reason -they are expensive to buy, especially when you only need a sprig of this or a pinch of that. Fresh herbs are so much more flavoursome than dry herbs, and in our climate most of the common herbs like basil, parsley and rosemary do very well. I can't grow coriander though -it bolts to seed in our warm weather- instead I grow Vietnamese Mint as a suitable substitute. I have curry leaves, makrut  or Thai lime leaves, a bay tree, and lots of thyme and lemon thyme.

Most herbs will self -seed here if left to set seed at the end of summer. I have some tiny dill seedlings popping up all over the place at the moment, and flat leaved parsley is everywhere.

We also grow fruit for this reason -lemons, pomegranates, olives, limes, mandarins, grapefruit and quinces. Our grapevines give us both shade and fruit. We usually have so much that after we have harvested and stored as much as we can, we still have lots left to give away to friends and neighbours.

I have strawberry plants growing -but haven't had much fruit yet -and have a new rhubarb plant which I have great hopes for!

This autumn season is a time for some concentrated gardening. The old beds at the end of summer needed a bit of tender care -out came the tomatoes and eggplants and then we fertilized and improved the soil with minerals and compost. I have been working most mornings for the past two weeks to get the winter crops in -but after that concentrated work I won't have to do much more than harvest things for several months.

3. I grow what I can manage. 

I have some sore joints, so I don't want to do lots of digging, but I really enjoy working in the garden, which is for me the best kind of gymnasium. I was a member of a gym a couple of times - I really didn't like the loud music and the fact that I couldn't even see outside. The garden provides me with mental and physical stimulation and challenge in the open air where I can notice the birds, smell the herbs and flowers and feel a sense of accomplishment.

We grow in wicking beds and have an automatic watering system which covers most of the garden. If we leave it to go away for a while most of the garden will survive.

Each watering can weighs at least 9 kilos, so I get some strength training lifting them around the place, when I am using the water from the rain tank and the home made liquid feed I make from the liquid from the worm farm. The worms are the only 'livestock' sadly -no chooks here for us. The garden is a bit too small and I don't want to cope with the extra work of cleaning the chook pen.

I have three big steps up to the upper level in the back garden, so I am getting my  'step class' going up and down them. I have to kneel to weed, and stretch to get under a bush for that last straggly bit of couch grass.

DH and I like to keep the trees pruned to a manageable size where we can reach the fruit without a ladder and move around the garden easily.

If we ever get to the position in the future where we can't manage the work I will just get a gardener in to remove some of the fruit trees and the veggie beds and we will turn it over to local native species which will need less work.

4. We do it because fresh is best and it is fun 

The whole point of the fruit and vegetable garden is that we can grow organic fresh fruit and vegetables right here at home, with no carbon miles (because they have been flown in from far off places), just picked before being eaten.  Our diet is thus more varied as a result, than it would be if I was buying everything from a supermarket or green grocer.

We are not aiming at self sufficiency, but it is clear we can fit a lot of food growing in this small space  using pots to supplement the bigger vegetable beds and mini orchard.

The best thing, however, is the tremendous sense of achievement that you feel when you go out with a basket and a pair of scissors and come back with the makings of a meal, or when you hand out bushels of fruit to your neighbours as you have such an abundance.  You plant a seed and then you go out each day to see if it has come up. You experiment with your food because you try a new taste and you like it (or not, see Kale above!)