Edible gardens

 

Vegetables, fruit, wild greens, herbs and even edible water plants are easily grown even in tiny gardens and can be successfully incorporated into a variety of garden and balcony settings. You can also consider adding protein in the form of eggs, chickens and fish, or even harvesting honey from your own beehives. Growing and maintaining an edible garden allows the development of a different kind of relationship with your garden; one that values it as a veritable food source.

 

Top tips for a successful edible garden

 

Use no-dig or progressive methods. Prepare garden beds well by using either the no-dig or progressive method (see this page). Both encourage great soil-conditioning and will support a very healthy vegetable patch.

'Companion plant'. It promotes the right pollinators and makes fertilisers more available while keeping most pests away. This allows you to minimise use of artificial fertilisers or pesticides while growing a healthy garden.

Use straw to mulch. Lucerne is highly nitrogenous and a great source of plant food while keeping soil moist, encouraging worms, keeping weeds out and soil well protected in summer. Pea, barley and wheat are fine too, but have less nitrogen.

Rotate seasonal vegetables. Keep beds healthy and rotate vegetable beds to ensure the soil provides the right types of nutrients for the right seasonal plants. As a general rule, nitrogenous plants (beans and peas) and greens are followed by fruiting vegetables (tomatoes, capsicum, eggplant, corn) and cucurbits (zucchini, cucumber, pumpkin), then brassica (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages) and then roots (carrots, potatoes, beets, parsnip, leek). Also ensure beds are left fallow (unplanted) for at least a fortnight after clearing and re-manuring.

Save and swap seeds. Save and re-use seeds for the following year's crops. It's a great way to grow vegetables at almost no cost. Also, exchange seeds with neighbours and friends to ensure strong and healthy variety and crops.

Protect from frost and hot summer winds. These can kill some vegetables in a day. Ensure spring seedlings are covered from frost by a light cover of loose green material or raised perspex panes. During extended hot periods and whenever there is a hot wind, cover plants with shade-cloth or sheets pegged overhead to minimise scorching and plants going to seed.

Prevent snails and slugs. A number of natural approaches exist to keep seedlings and succulent greens and vegetables free from these voracious feeders. Try a regular sprinkling of ash or sawdust around susceptible plants or the traditional beer trap placed in the bed.

Control aphids and caterpillars naturally. Keeping chemicals and artificial sprays out of the vegetable patch is common sense, but what to do about sap-suckers like aphids? Try natural sprays and the numerous home-made remedies such as milk mixed with water. Leaf-chewers like caterpillars can be discouraged with natural garlic sprays.

Water wisely. Veggie gardens need regular watering and can be watered easily with treated greywater. If you use greywater, be mindful that alternating this with another source (such as harvested rainwater) is critical to maintaining a healthy veggie patch.

Protect ripening vegetables and fruit from marauders. If necessary, use bird netting and other relevant barriers to protect ripening fruit and vegetables from possums and birds; if you don't, you risk losing your harvest overnight.

Add protein with chooks and eggs. Consider a couple of chooks for eggs; a larger chookyard could also provide chicken for the table. It's a great way to ensure that your eggs and chooks are not fed any additives.  Chooks are also terrific recyclers of kitchen waste (but never feed them eggshells). Compost chook poo in a mix of shredded green waste and hay or in the compost for at least 2 months before using on vegetable beds to reduce the risk of manure being too fresh and ‘burning' the roots. Keep chooks out of the veggie patch; their scratching and pecking can be quite destructive to seedlings and ripening vegetables.

 

Aquaponics

Aquaponics combines aquaculture and hydroponics for sustainable food production and can be utilised as a supplementary food source in backyards. The idea is a little like rice paddy fields where the water used to feed plants also supports fish for eating. Aquaponics supports the production of vegetables and fish from the same system and reduces the input of external nutrients, allowing small-scale fish harvesting whilst reducing the pressure on declining global fish-stocks.

Basically, a heated and covered fishpond (to cope with Melbourne winters) is housed side-by-side with gravel beds containing herbs, greens, salads and possibly fruiting vegetables. The water from the fishpond is regularly recycled (via a bio-filter) through the gravel veggie beds; this feeds the veggie garden with rich nutrients whilst filtering, cleaning and oxygenating the water in the fishpond. Aquaponic experts suggest that with these systems, plants generally mature twice as fast, and for every 1.5kg of fish feed, about 1kg of fish protein is produced. This is much more sustainable than the food inputs required for cattle or commercially farmed fish. The system also saves on scarce water resources as plants are fed using the same filtered, recirculated water daily. 

To visit local examples of natural and organically grown edible gardens, visit the EcoCentre.

To view a working example of aquaponics, visit CERES Nursery in East Brunswick. For more information on aquaponics, visit www.aquaponic.com.au or www.backyardaquaponics.com.au.