staples
Posted on January 13th, 2013
I often worry the I haven’t planted enough, or I’m not caring enough for the veg that I am growing. I get despondent when I visit other people’s gardens and when they appear like a veritable food jungle in comparison to my patch. As a result I often leave feeling deflated.
It’s part and parcel of relying on yourself to supplement much of your food supply by being a veg grower. You stop worrying so much about money and start worrying more about your vegetables (for the record I still worry about money, more so the lack of).
It’s like clockwork at this time, in the middle of summer, when I start complaining to myself that I should have mulched earlier, or that I planted the wrong variety, or that I haven’t watered enough. It’s all very much useless energy I spend in worrying. I can’t change anything about it my annual habit of mid-summer glumness. It is what it is. I’ll always be hard on myself. For example, in this yard I have planted so many onion only to see them fail as a crop. Many small onions, and many just weren’t even worth harvesting. I torture myself thinking that it was something I did wrong. But the truth is, it’s been too cold and wet this past spring and not ideal conditions for a productive onion crop. It’s just something I have to accept. On the flip side though, pea and broccoli did really well. Spuds have been a challenge here, and it’s mainly because of position. I think if we had the entire vegetable garden located elsewhere we’d have better yield but it’s the place I’m growing in at the moment, so it is what it is.
Onions didn’t do as well as I’d like but shallots did! Go figure.
One positive side to renting is that you tend to grow a lot of food in pots. It’s an insurance policy, just on the off chance you’re landlord tells you they might want to move back, our sell the place. Plants like chilli respond well to this arrangement as they like the heat of residing in pots, it’s a micro climate, and they also like the soil to be well drained. We have one chilli plant that is fruiting like mad at the moment but the rest are just at budding stage. I had to make a batch of salsa picante for an event I’m cooking at on Australia Day for The School of Life. I committed to making both my salsa picante and my hot zucchini relish to marry with rabbit burgers and the famous Farmers Larder Pork Sausages. The salsa is at its best when it has a few weeks to brew in bottles, it seems to bring out the ‘slap in the face’ flavour, and adds a little more complexity to the salsa. I mixed my chilli with some (cough!) store bought chilli, and the end result is there….BANG! CHILLI!!
For us chilli is like potato and onion. It’s something we eat everyday. Be it fresh in summer and autumn, or dried in winter. Be it a salsa made in summer and enjoyed in winter or maybe as a garnish on fresh caught ocean fish. It’s one of our staple ingredients. And for that reason I grow lots of it now. It makes sense to me to grow lots of the things that we consume a lot of. Thats my approach to veg growing.
I have to three main objectives in veg growing.
1. Grow lots of things that you need a lot of
2. Grow veg that you need a little of here and there in the kitchen like celery, herbs, carrots etc
3. Grow heaps in summer that you can store and eat in winter
And because I can’t grow everything I take what I can get from other growers when I can get it. These blackcurrants I scored form my longtime mate and ex-boss the mad Polish Pete. This guy has a love, a passion for growing fruit that I’ve not seen in any other human. He truly believes that the dude upstairs invented fruit and veg for us guys downstairs and to celebrate that eden he’s set up a 100-variety fruit orchard that’s always made me drool when I make a summer visit. He has so many blackcurrants this year he doesn’t have a use for them, so we picked some (and a bucket of plums, limes, lemons and peaches) in return for some of our elderflower cordial and a copy of my book. A fair deal, as we don’t have the selection of fruit trees as he does! Clever kitchen Kate made a knockout spicy plum and current jam and a smashing blackcurrant cordial (goes terribly well with vodka and ice).
Our garden is now still in transition. It got knocked about by three days of hot dry wind and almost 40C days, but it’s survived. We had a grass fire on our road, but thankfully the CFA got to it before it took hold, we could have lost everything I suppose. But the staples garden is still there, growing us beans, tomatoes, pumpkin, broccoli, potatoes, carrots, beetroot, beans, lettuce, pumpkin, and more beans and pumpkin. Staples. They feed us over winter.
ah the fun and games of growing your own fruit and veg, either a feast or a famine! the joys of fighing off possums, bugs, grubs and birds! all worth it for that fresh peach/tomato/whatever…and the excitment of finding a zuchini big enough to make a boat out of at the back of the patch
Oh it’s so easy to lose faith in our gardening abilities at this time of year! My garden looks so sad! But I’ve noticed that every gardener I talk to is doing it tough this year. Bring on the autumn and the cooler weather.
Hey Rohan i often get despondant and gloomy about the stoopid things like my business etc. But you never have to travel far to find other people in the same boat. Those who are seemingly a step ahead have probably just benefitted from a bit of a kick in the ass. I need it from time to time thats for sure. You are clearly an ambitious man and i admire you greatly but remember to take time out to recognise what you’ve acheived. Send me an email if you want to fill your freezer sometime. Tim
Its the same in NZ – tomatoes only seem to be setting a few trusses each plant, my garlic crop was abysmal – and as a squirrel I an always concerned that I haven’t completed quite as many chores as I should have come the return of autumn, would love a zuchini relish or salsa picante recipe (unless they are hidden in the bowels of the blog) ??
I’m almost embarassed to link to my own blog, the photos alone (in comparison to yours) shame me but I was thinking along similar lines to you last week when I harvested our two garbage bins of potatoes. http://13mimosa.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/1002.html It’s an amazing journey, growing food, I find it exhilarating, fascinating and absolutely humbling.
Some things’ll work. Some won’t. It’s part of the fun I guess. We can try to be as self-sufficient as possible, but that requires us to be adaptable.
The wins for us this season–tomatoes (enough to get us through to autumn, no doubt), corn (almost ready to pick), herbs / leaves (as many as we could want), chili (loads), watermelon (here’s hoping!).
Notable losses–the pumpkin and cucumber don’t seem to be doing much and our radishes are teeny tiny and weren’t as easy as we expected.
I can’t wait for winter. I yearn from the cool and planting another crop!
Weall liked the bush it wAs fun&
Darrun
I have come to same conclusion grow lots of what you eat lots of. No more fancy zucchini or heirloom tomatoes for us this year just the solid producers that we eat lots of. And love you book by the way, just got my local bookstore in Nelson, NZ to order it in and happy happy reading and cooking to come. Cheers
Hello, i love reading your blogs. The bottles in the last picture with the wooden tops, where did you get these from, they are adorable.
Have a lovley day
Peace
Meg
It’s an interesting life being a ‘doer’, especially a self sufficient doer; not everything works out how you would like. What do you (and others) do about vegetable destroying birds, the sort that, given half a chance, leave you nothing? Netting of seedlings gives the young plants a reasonable start, but mature crops and fruit can really cop it.
I sympathise! The planting stage is so full of promise for what’s to come. Then there’s the seedlings popping up or the signs of the first flowers to really get you excited about those huge tomatoes, spicy chilli’s, cool cucumbers… then the reality of summer in Australia sets in and everything quickly looks washed out and brittle.
Our young avocados were doing incredibly well, now they’re really struggling with the very little rain we’ve had over the past 6 weeks. Everything seems to be slow and struggling this year.
As for aubergines and chilli’s – don’t know why I persist every year! The aubergines never do well and the chilli’s tend to get all their growing tips eaten by slugs before the dry weather even gets to them. We do have some this year though, so it’s an improvement I guess
Dude – whats not to love with what you have grown this summer? The grass is always greener, and you have a mighty fine selection going on there. I have garden envy for your garden, if that makes you feel a little chirpier….
hi I’m in the UK, and I am have to garden in clay soil… so I found out that potatoes do pretty well in thick black plastic bin bags, they call them rubble sacks over here, but they cost pence,theres obviously no digging(where you do tend to put your fork through at least a few of your carefully nurtured spuds), and they dont take up space where you can grow another crop…I did really well for potatoes like this…and I grow chillis in the house, where you can keep them growing year after year….
….
Every time I go outside at the moment, I feel depressed, my entire garden just looks like the life has been sucked out of it by the heat (I feel the same way actually, I am not a summer person!). We’ve had days and days of over 40˚C in Perth, and not much left in the vegie garden that’s still alive. Our corn finished a few weeks ago, and we’ve got some tomatoes clinging on, and capsicum…and a mad passionfruit that is going like the clappers, but no fruit yet. Everything else looks like it’s on its last legs.
By the way Rohan, I bought an Elder about 18 months ago, and got lots of flowers off it last year, but they had no smell or taste whatsoever, and it never produced berries. This year much the same story. Do you think it might be because it’s young, or have I just got a dud cultivar designed to withstand Aussie conditions, but has in the process had every reason you’d want to grow one bred out of it?
Oh, forgot to mention…hubby loved your book (his Christmas pressie)!
Hi Rohan
There’s nothing like gardening to make you a humble individual. There is so much to learn each season and every mistake or failed crop is a lesson to be learnt. My Parents became market gardeners when they migrated from Italy and my Mum still recalls when peach crops failed or the carrots were too small to sell (She hates hearing about little veg being in vogue in restaurants.)
So just keep digging and learning. It’s what I do in my humble little patch.
Elisa
It’s so funny how garden-critique timing is. I’m in the middle of my winter, and now’s the time for me to reflect. You’re in the middle of summer, and you’re critiquing. Always happens that way, doesn’t it? The seasonal flip flop.
Sorry about your onions. Ours didn’t do too well last spring. We planted a fall crop to see if that makes a difference. Our past few springs have been short-lived and veeeeerrryyy WET.
Having had gardens in four different locations now, I’ve come to realize that it’s such good experience. Getting to know what plants do and don’t like based on all sorts of factors is quite beneficial (…if frustrating at times.)