Having a garden to grow your own food in can enrich our life in many ways. Growing fruit and vegetables increases access and consequently our intake as a family, of these foods high in fibre, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants giving you all a huge range of health benefits and reducing your risk of many lifestyle diseases.
As a great weight bearing activity and being outside soaking up those sun rays for vitamin D you can be sure to keep your bones strong, muscles strong, limbs limber and mind happy too.
Home food gardening also greatly reduces our food miles, carbon footprint, food waste as well as the cost of food. So many pluses!
Becoming a good gardener and having a productive food garden takes time, patience, reflection as well as a lot of learning from mistakes.
Learning about how food grows really helps us know what we are eating, appreciate it and even love cooking. Slow down and experience the full sensations of the garden. From the different textures and moisture of the soil, water, plants and produce, to the smells and taste of it all.
For beginners, starting out with a couple of pots is a great idea to learn about plants and get in the habit of looking after plants. I recommend pots with inbuilt water reservoirs and to mulch to reduce evaporation of water and nutrients, meaning more productivity and less failures.
When confident to move on, build up pot numbers and move to a bigger veggie patch or 2, start a compost, keep worms, chickens, bees or even install an aquaponics system for fish. The sky is the limit!
Just like our gut needs a good mix of fibres and bacteria the garden needs a good mix plants and nutrients in the soil to avoid any imbalances and avoid any one pest taking over. Just like alcohol and drugs can wipe out the good and bad bacteria in our gut so do herbicides and pesticides.
So, learning about companion planting, crop rotation, natural pest control and having a range of different plants and flowers helps to keep a good thriving ecosystem and a higher yield. Great flowers to grow include marigolds, nasturtium, lavender, and any herbs that flower, most do.
Easy to grow herbs are parsley, rosemary, mint, oregano, and thyme. Easy to grow vegetables are lettuce, shallot, beans including snow peas, sugar snap peas, beetroot and silver beet which grow and can be harvested all year round, as well as tomatoes, cucumbers, capsicum, beetroot, potato, sweet potato and carrot.
There are a few places where you can meet some new people, learn how to grow food and get some plants
- Visiting your local Community Garden is a great way to see what grows well in your local area, learn, and pick up some seed or plant cuttings. If you don’t have enough space joining your local community garden can be an option.
- Produce swaps are also gaining popularity. ON the coast there are ones at Long Jetty, Matcham Holgate, Woy Woy and SWAMP (Somersby).
Swapping items can include seeds, plants or cuttings, home-made preserves, empty jars, egg cartons, baskets, coffee grounds from a local café and gardening tools.
- Permaculture Central Coast is another community group who meet monthly at various community gardens. Gatherings host guest speakers on interesting topics, have raffle prizes, a swap table and seed bank. The volunteer group do permablitzes and has also started the Central Coast Edible Garden Trail with the next one in May. Another inspiring event to learn what amount of food can be grown on various sized properties.
When it comes back to the plate, I think the best home garden meal is a salad. Salads can include more than just your standard lettuce, tomato and cucumber- try a mix of finely sliced cabbage or fennel, grated carrot and beetroot, green beans, snow peas or sugar snap peas, capsicum, corn, shallot, herbs and even edible flowers like violets and peppery nasturtiums. Add some roasted sweet potato or steamed corn on the cob, home laid chicken eggs or nuts and you have yourself the freshest, tastiest and nutritious meal you can get in town!
If you are interested in starting or building your own edible garden, Join Carin in a short tour of her permaculture designed garden Everything IncrEDIBLE. Book your place here.
