I was looking through stuff my Mum had collected from when I was a kid, school reports, piano grades and some other stuff but amongst it was a garden document I had filled out when we had gardening completions at primary school. This brought back some memories.
In the 60s we were encouraged to enter school garden competitions which were part of lamb and calf day.
My dad measured out a plot next to his garden and we were given seeds to plant and we were given these pamphlets and were expected to document the process. I found this part pretty boring
After a time someone came around and judged the garden.
When I found this plan it made me think about how normal it was to grow food when I was kid.
My Mum and Dad had a garden, grandmothers had gardens. Maureens parents had gardens, It was normal behaviour.
My grandparents would have begun with almost zero artificial, chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
I do remember them having Derris dust which was a Rotenone based product extracted from the Derris plant.
Im not sure how safe it was none the less.
Apart from that I think the grandmothers mostly used animal shit, as did my Mum and Dad.
Growing food in my grandmothers time meant food security, if the garden was planted there was food on the way.
They had big gardens, often sending visitors home with produce.
My Dads oldest brother talked once of people leaving vegetables at the end of the driveway for people during the depression.
Now it makes sense that I feel good on the inside when Im planting the garden but these days it has extra benefits. I know what has gone into the garden, or what hasn’t more to the point.
Lots of our produce are enormous, healthy and tasty
and we put almost nothing in there but a yearly dose of EM (Emnz.com)
Which is a micro organism booster
We also empty our compost loo somewhere on the garden and leave in a heap for a year. On the rare occasion. We may add some sheep pellets. Just lately some peat from the pond. That’s all.
If you look after the soil, it will look after you.
I have come to realise it begins as an act of faith and if I hadn’t seen my grandmothers and parents gardens I would have no reference to encourage me onwards so Im acknowledging their influence and encouragement.
Once I visited my grandmother and was telling her about my garden, I was in my mid 20s. Before I left she gave me a container of carrot seeds. At that point growing carrots was way over my head as was growing anything from seed.
I took the seeds and forgot about them for at least 5 years. One day the penny dropped and I realised she had most likely been taking those seeds for many years, maybe even from her parents.
Sadly none of those seeds germinated but the lesson wasn’t lost.
When we first started trying to feed our young family we were often battling blight, pests and other diseases because our gardens were young, not long been lawn and lacking life.
These days after many years of trials and errors we have very few issues. Our soils are alive and thriving. There are always varying degrees of success but mostly it’s getting easier.
Timing is crucial and often it all happens like a plan, a plan that isn’t written down but when its time it happens.
Our mate Kath pointed out the benefit of having perennials growing near our vegetables to give the micro organisims some where to retreat when you harvest. Waiting to migrate back to the new veges.
So obvious once you know. (Thanks mate!)
There’s also a growing spiritual aspect to our gardens, we both feel very connected and fulfilled in the garden.and these days I wonder about the relationship between the bacteria in the soil and the bacteria in our gut and elsewhere in our bodies.
These bacteria have been in the same community for a long time, kind of like old neighbour's.
The garden is so much more than a garden, it’s a community, a world within a world, a place to meditate, to connect, to thrive.
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