Self-sufficiency in a kitchen garden

Each year, for some years past, I’ve gotten a phone call in January asking me to talk about kitchen gardening at the Rare Fruit Society’s annual mini-conference. The cook gets called up too – she tells a tableful of folk all about pickling, lacto-fermenting and preserving food from the garden.

Folk who attend these evenings – and its a huge hall packed with people – have a broad interest in all things to do with home gardens. Topics range from bee-keeping, grafting, native fruits and pruning to mulches, composts, netting, figs, citrus and berries.

All good, but I’m famous for being unable to give the same talk twice, and I’d already covered seed-saving, mulching, irrigation, soils and so forth in earlier years.  Caught on the back foot, and with a decision and abstract required that very day, I had to hang up and hope for inspiration while I ate my lunch…

Perhaps peering into my lunch box – at stuff both purchased and home-grown – prompted me to talk on self-sufficiency, a subject I’ve had to bat away regularly on garden tours. It’s a suburban dream that I’ve tested harder than anyone, and I’ve never even come close to living off the garden. Therefore this year’s topic is ‘Kitchen Gardens – Living Off your Back Yard. Can it be done?’

So I’ve set myself the small task of writing a series of articles about what decades of growing my own food has taught me. I burned through all 35 tips in 20 minutes at the Rare Fruit Society; I suspect it will take somewhat longer to get them into print over the coming weeks.

Seed-Saving – Free Public Lecture

“These lettuces have had it!” says the cook

“Somebody’s asked me to talk about seed-saving” says the gardener “If they fall asleep during the lecture, at least they get free lettuce seed at the end”

“Huh!” says the cook.

Last year some kind folk from one of the local markets asked me to talk about backyard veggie growing. If they take the trouble to track me down and ask me to speak, I make the effort to get along and share what I know. So I did that. It can’t have been too shabby, because they’ve invited me back to give another talk, at

10.30am on Saturday morning 15th March 2014 at the Payneham Community Centre, 374 Payneham Road (corner of Arthur St), Payneham South Australia 5070.

But there’s just this one thing – I can’t seem to bring myself to give the same lecture twice.

So I hunted around for some other theme, and decided to take my seed-saving activities on an outing.

“Huh?” they said, just like the cook. “How about a flyer?”

So I wrote a flyer – here it is:

'Going to seed!' - how backyard farmers preserve the heritage varieties of vegetables ignored by corporate agriculture.

Over 95% of the vegetable varieties that existed over a hundred years ago have disappeared; they simply don't fit the needs of the corporate food chain looking for tough-skinned, long-storage, travel-the-world vegetables being trucked up and down the country from cold room to supermarket to home refrigerator.

Yet these old heritage varieties still exist in the hands of families and old gardeners who have adapted them to local conditions or grown them on over many generations as a family favourite.

Seed savers keep these tasty sweet remnant varieties alive and pleasing the palate of kitchen gardeners the world over.

Andrew will talk about how to get your hands on old open-pollinated heritage vegetable seeds, how to store them and how to grow them on yourself year after year.