Vegetable gardens

“The kitchen garden satisfies both requirements, a thing of beauty and a joy for dinner.” Peter Mayle

One of our neighbours is building a vegetable garden. Building? Yes he is constructing an enclosed space with a wire fence and roof and a gate, with raised beds for vegetables inside. How wonderful thought I. I should really try and get David to do the same for me. But he is not keen and when I think about it honestly, I see that my ability to kill anything in the garden is probably a good reason not to do it.

I really do have a complex about gardening, especially fruit and vegetable gardening, in the same way that some people have a complex about cooking. I simply do not understand people who say they cannot cook, because for me cooking is simply having the right cookbooks, choosing a recipe, reading it through and then following the instructions. Ta da! And I think my gardening friends and family probably think the same of my attitude to gardening. But things just die on me, even if I follow instructions to the letter.

I used to be able to grow tomatoes, zucchini, silver beet and beans, but my last attempts came to nothing. Maybe it's the soil, maybe it's the rabbits or the possums or the birds. They don't have possums or problems with birds in France. Maybe it's just laziness on my part. The zucchini never got beyond the flower stage, the tomatoes were sparse, and those that did appear were eaten by something. The silver beet and beans got eaten before they began. So I have more or less given up, concentrating on herbs, which do well enough if not brilliantly, although I am trying silver beet again. I tried beetroot but it has gone to seed and now will not produce any actual beetroot I am told. The leaves are OK in a salad or a stir-fry or soup though.

But seeing the new vegetable garden down the road being born makes me think I should just try harder. And today I have learnt how to grow potatoes in a plastic bag, too. Thanks to our British visitors. I'm also thinking that the raised beds might well be a way of getting over the poor soil problem, because you could just fill the beds with imported soil and manure, etc. And maybe I should get a worm farm rather than rely on our not very successful compost bins.

"A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables." Gertrude Stein

If only it would say I.

As a child I took enormous satisfaction out of growing a few things like radishes, carrots and strawberries. OK I may have had better soil, a better climate for these things (no vicious summer sun that takes all the energy out of the poor plants), but nevertheless it seemed to take no effort at all to grow them. In one of our houses I had a relatively successful vegetable garden that I constructed on the massive sand filter for our septic system. I even managed to grow corn there. So why can't I do it nowadays?

The French are pretty inspiring. I first encountered their vegetable gardens in the small village of Meung-sur-Loire where I used to pass my summers in the town hall (my exchange friend's father was the town clerk), where they had an immaculate vegetable garden which produced seemingly tons of produce every day. I spent a lot of time helping to top and tail the beans.

When you visit France you will often see these little, sometimes large, oases of productivity, sometimes in the most unexpected places. In the village of Entrevaux in Provence there is a castle on top of a high hill. It will take you at least half an hour, more if you are unfit like me, to walk to the top. But when you get there you will find a little vegetable garden. I have no idea who uses it. And the picture at left above is of vegetables amongst the flowers in a cloister garden in the town of Albi. At right is somebody's vegetable garden. And in England there are still lots of allotments tilled by enthusiastic gardeners. Here in Australia there are community gardens too. I once knew a woman whose entire garden was given over to growing vegetables. They never needed to buy any and I'm sure they were much more delicious. And as for a friend of mine - you can't go to her place without being given a bounty of beautiful things.

"I still cannot decide if vegetables that are grown at home, taste so much better than anything you can buy, even at the best markets, because they are different varieties, or because they are just so fresh. They do taste wonderful, sweet and intense; perhaps they don't look as perfect, but I believe that natural flavour is the most important ingredient for anyone who loves food." Beverley Sutherland Smith

Do they taste better? Well I think so, although I do wonder whether we ascribe a wonderful taste to them because of all the hard labour that we have put in. Indeed it is sometimes hard to justify all the labour when you can buy quality produce today for low prices when they are in season. Beverley Sutherland Smith maintains that because she now grows so much of her own vegetables she cooks differently - more in tune with the seasons - than before. But I don't think I would do this - I think I generally buy what is in season anyway, because it is cheaper and better too. But her book The Seasonal Kitchen is inspired by her vegetable garden and tells you how to grow the individual herbs and vegetables as well as giving lots of wonderful new recipes. It's one of my favourite books.

Of course vegetable gardens have been around since forever, from massive gardens with teams of gardeners for the aristocrats and landowners to modest little plots in cottage gardens. Nowadays not so much, though attempts are being made to get people back into it again. Jamie Oliver had a campaign about it a while back, although truth to say he has a gardener to do it all for him. Community gardens are a big thing in trendy, hip suburbs, and you can get a vast range of seeds and plants in nurseries, Bunnings, supermarkets and online. So there really is no excuse.

Yes I should try again. And when you read something like the quote below you feel that you really, really should.

"The smell of manure, of sun on foliage, of evaporating water, rose to my head; two steps farther, and I could look down into the vegetable garden enclosed within its tall pale of reeds - rich chocolate earth studded emerald green, frothed with the white of cauliflowers, jeweled with the purple globes of eggplant and the scarlet wealth of tomatoes." Doris Lessing

Besides your vegetable garden doesn't have to be just vegetables - you can grow flowers in there too. Marigolds, nasturtiums, sunflowers ...