Starting out small

Today's Harvest

Many times I look at the small tastes I harvest from my garden, and wonder why I bother? I compare my harvest pictures to the people who have a whole basket of tomatoes, or enough peas to actually cook for a meal. I put so much effort, yes and money, into my garden, yet seem to get so little back.

It's then that I have to remind myself that this garden is only 8 months old. Eight months ago, this place was a bare block, and since that time, I've grown a whole garden. Yes, it isn't particularly productive yet, but I consider that I'm still in the experimental stages. I need to grow some pea plants, or tomato plants, or pumpkin vines, to work out what conditions they like, how close together to plant them, whether I can successfully grow them at all, and how many I am going to use, before I go ahead and plant a whole crop of them. There is no point me going ahead and planting a whole crop of corn say, then finding out that I didn't plant them close enough together so they didn't fertilise. And if I had planted out the whole packet of climbing peas, not having any idea of how high the trellis needed to be, I'd have even more of them falling over and making a mess!

I imagine that in another year or two, I'll be so much closer to my dreams of being partially self-sufficient (I don't know that anyone is ever totally self-sufficient, unless they live on a desert island!), and all because of what I am learning right now. So instead of feeling down about how little I get, I'm going to celebrate what I have learnt with each plant grown, each fruit or vegetable picked, and each mistake I've made.

Today's Harvest 2

For example, today I learnt that the broccoli you can buy in the supermarket is nothing like the real deal. I'm not a broccoli fan, but this stuff is actually edible. When cooked (lightly), it is actually a brilliant green, not that washed out half blue look.

I learnt that to grow decent sized Luffa's, they need a lot more water and fertiliser than I gave these. Yet even so, I have two more luffa's than I had before, and...

... even a tiny, stunted luffa contains enough seeds to grow many many more luffa vines. Like rosella's, once you've bought one lot of luffa seeds, you'll never need to buy another. And neither will your friends.

But the most important lesson of all, was the one my daughter showed me. That even if we never produce enough to eat, not only is she learning so much from watching our garden grow, but she is enjoying it. She carefully arranged this entire basked of flowers, leaves and produce (yes, that's some broccoli and some parsley in there too), and was so proud to show us. She put the trim I'm knitting for her jumper down the bottom. A perfect show of simple living!