by Janice Marriott
Feed your body and soul by growing your own food
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Leave your kitchen and go into the garden. Breathe deeply. Feel the sun. Anyone can grow some food. The trick is to start small, and grow easy plants.
was telling the story of Jack and the Beanstalk to a child. We had just planted beans in a circle and zucchini seeds in an outer ring. It was November last year. “Here’s Jack exchanging his cow for three bean seeds. Wow! His mother was angry! But wait. Those bean vines grew so strong that Jack could climb them to find treasure! Imagine how many beans Jack’s family collected, ate, and stored for the winter! And we know beans grow year after year!” I like to think of Jack and the Beanstalk as being an ancient folk tale about the value of edible plants compared to the value of one cow, and about the value of growing your own. In Auckland I can grow food all year round. In my sloping city garden I have fruit trees, four compost bins and five small vegetable plots. Winter can be a little bit like office work; it’s about planning, future proofing and time management - and dreaming into a mug of hot soup while reading Whole Food Living. But now, early spring, is time to drain the last dregs of pearl barley, get off the couch, go outside and admire the beginnings of new life. There are purple cyclamen, daffodils, and the furry-looking buds of a white magnolia just waiting for the kereru. Being outdoors makes me feel more energetic - and hungrier. Gardening, I am convinced, feeds the soul as well as the gut. Leave your kitchen and go into the garden. Breathe deeply. Feel the sun. Anyone can grow some food. The trick is to start small, and grow easy plants. But what to plant? In The Well-Gardened Mind by Sue Stuart-Smith I read that Israeli archaeologists have discovered that around 23,000 BC some humans living beside the Sea of Galilee grew green peas, lentils, figs, grapes, almonds, olives and a cereal like wheat. Pulses, legumes, fruit, nuts and cereals. Sounds perfect to me. Dig a square plot. Vegetables like loose, light soil so dig deep. Add lime and compost then put a border around the bed. Old bricks or pavers are good. Plant sprawly, scrawly plants like thyme, alpine strawberries, chamomile, marjoram, parsley to grow between the bricks, or you could go bold and bright with marigolds, nasturtiums and onions. These three will annoy any leaf-eating bugs. Sprigs of rosemary around the beds will help deter slugs and snails. Inside your square start with the centrepiece, maybe a dwarf fruit tree. They produce full-sized fruit but grow less than two meters tall, so the fruit is easy to pick, and they rarely need pruning. The Ballerina columnar apple tree is no more than 50 cm wide. Or try the dwarf Garden Delight nectarine. There’s the Belle
de Jumet pear or the Agrigold self-fertile dwarf apricot or try a lemon or a grey-leaved, artichoke. Of course my own centrepiece will be, in honour of Jack, a bamboo tepee around which we’ll plant scarlet runner beans. You can buy your veggie plants as seedlings, or you can try growing them from seeds. If this is your first season growing your own food buy seedlings. But soon curiosity will get the better of you. You and your children will want to be like Jack and plant seeds and be amazed as they transform into plants. Use seed trays or recycled polystyrene fish bins and seed-raising mix for your seeds. When you have tiny filigree seedlings to transplant, after having raised them from seed, it’s much easier if you lay the bunch of seedlings on the ground and pick each one up from there. It’s amazing how much easier it is to separate them this way. Around your centrepiece choose small, well-behaved plants. Small lettuces like buttercrunch or, smaller still, Tom Thumb or Little Gem, are the open-hearted sort from which you can constantly pick individual leaves for salads. Plant them in a shady corner with maybe a red lettuce. Red-leafed Komatsuma mustard spinach is a great cut and come again leaf if you like a salad that tingles. In the summer, lettuces don’t like too much sun so they will flourish in the shade of silver beet or onions. Other easy to grow greens are Asian greens. For a supply of Asian stirfry veggies try Kings Seeds Mesclun Oriental mix. Dandelion greens have about twice as much vitamin A as spinach. Picked early in the spring when the leaves are small, they are slightly bitter like endive or chicory. New Zealand spinach is this country's only indigenous salad vegetable. It takes a while to germinate (up to three weeks) but once it's planted out into your garden or in a pot it will look after itself. It’s a rambling vine with large fleshy leaves that wilt very quickly so harvest just before eating. It turns bright green when steamed (just 1 minute in the microwave or steamer). Peas are a favourite in-the-garden snack for children. They come gift wrapped in their own pod. 'Dwarf Massey' doesn't need staking. I put twigs from the pomegranate tree beside the plants and the peas cling to them. We also love Petit Provencal. Baby squash are ready for harvest in just a few weeks. Yates has three baby squash to choose from in its seed range. Green Button produces little, round, pale green pillows that look good when
wholefoodliving.life | Spring, 2021
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