The poem about roses passes through my mind as I walk through a suburban garden.  Whilst flowers and ornamental trees and shrubs are very pretty, I’d prefer a to see an edible garden with flowering vegetable patches instead.

Edible gardens are nothing new.  Growing your own food was certainly familiar to our ancestors. However, most of us live in cities these days with small suburban blocks and are far removed from where our food is grown, far away on industrialised farms.  In that time we have forgotten how pretty an edible garden looks and feels to walk around. 

No doubt the reimergence of edible gardens has been inspired by hikes in vegetable and fruit prices but also a renewed appreciation of how attractive an edible garden can be. 

Edible gardens are very pretty.  Pumpkins in full bloom have bright yellow flowers that open for pollination. Scarlet runner beans have red and white flowers that snake along its vine and make pretty decorations to fences and walls. Brocoli has smaller, delicate flowers at the end of its season whilst peanut shrubs have orange flower buds and bright green leaves.  Tomatoes have their combination of red fruit whilst squashe have edible flowers that can be used in stir frys. Beetroots have a lovely green and red leaf whilst walnut trees have gorgeous brown and green tinges.

Not only the flowers of the growing plant are attractive but also the end result. Pumpkins of varying colors, the greens of zucchines, white cauliflowers, yellow squashes, red beetroot, purple and yellow beans, lush green foliage of strawberries and so much more. As I wander round my 2 acre property I imagine it all edible. I drop snow peas and bush peas as I walk to see them grow up the old fencing. I plant seedlings from my greenhouse all over the place even if the dogs sometimes trample on them. I have sunflowers with their beautiful smiling faces dropping seeds or feeding the birds.  The sunflowers are my favourite flower of all. They greet you each morning with their big open faces that beam and say hello. Designed to make you feel happy, they are truly a gift of nature. 

You can start small with an edible garden and plant herbs and vegetables in pots.The French and Italians do their vegetable growing to perfection in pots. People are very creative with their outdoor spaces and their are lots of inspiring websites to get you started. Remember, edible gardens not only save you money but are a great way to encourage people to garden and offer a more sustainable future.

Links to useful sites to get you started: 

http://www.ediblegardens.com.au/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4qlh9pe
http://www.ediblekidsgardens.com.au/
http://www.productivegardens.com.au/

Image sourced from: cascadiapermaculture.com

Edible Gardens

• 3 cherry trees
• lemon tree
• lime tree
• quince tree
• peach
• 2 plum trees
• nectarine tree
• 2 walnut trees
• 2 chestnut trees
• 2 almond trees
• 1 normal apple tree
• 2 dwarf apple trees
• apricot tree
• fig tree
• 4 olive trees
• an assortment of native trees including banksias
• 2 normal sized  trees
• a dwarf pear tree

In the shrubs I’ve planted:

• a blueberry bush
• a thornless blackberry
• 15 raspeberry canes
• 8 strawberry runners
• rhubarb

In the vines I’ve planted:

• 3 kiwi fruit
• a red grape vine
• passionfruit

In the vegetable section besides the pumpkin, corn, zucchini, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, beans, peas and cucumbers I’ve added:

• lettuces
• broad beans
• eggplant
• kale
• cabbage
• artichoke
• heirloom potatoes (a mixture of varieties)

I have also planted edible sunflowers this year. Last year I had quite a few large sunflowers but wasn’t sure if I could eat the seeds so left them alone. This year however I made sure I got giant edible sunflowers so that I would be left in no doubt what to eat.

Our greenhouse has tomatoes, watermelons and cantelope growing this year. I didn’t have much sucess with any of these last year so I’m hoping with the greenhouse I’ll be able to grow them better. I’ve also planted lots of vegetables outside of the enclosed vegetable patch this year. I’m hoping the rabbits, possums and wallabies won’t be too hungry and inade the patch. Otherwise I’ll have to get some netting.

I’m looking foward to this years crop. The garden just keeps growing with more edible trees and plants.

Sadly, these pigs may have their days numbered. Of course I still enjoy the pigs but the problem is they have now gotten so big that the fencing around our property is no longer containing them. I came home from work last week to find the field they live in empty and the pigs happily digging up the farmers land next door.

The farmer is currently growing thousands of dollars worth of bulbs to sell for flowers and the last thing he would want is pigs digging up his prized field. Luckily, they only needed to dig up a couple of bulbs to discover they weren’t the tasty treat they’d broken through the fence to get.

Instead they eyed off the food that the farmer had left for the cows and started running over the hill and far, far away. They came back easily enough once I called out to them and had a handful of apples ready. Food is the only bribe you can use with pigs – a sure way to their heart.

Realising that the pigs would either be shot or we’d be in trouble from the farmer we left them in the stables for a few days till we could sort out some new fencing.  Doug fenced off the main area that they were breaking through and we let them out. An hour later they were back in the farmers field. Clearly we needed stronger wiring.

Doug then brought some rabbit proof wiring and spent half the morning fixing up the fence.    This time it took five minutes for the pigs to make a quick exit. They headed straight for the hay that the farm hands had earlier left for the cows. The cows were bemused to have two pigs joining them for lunch and though they could easily have trampled Louie and Ziggy they kindly let them share.

Soon enough the farm hands returned on quad bikes wanting to know why two pigs were eating the cow fodder. After politely listening to my excuse that the pigs kept escaping and I was at a loss on what to do, one of them said, “chop em up and put em in the freezer, that’ll sort it out!” I protested and said the pigs were pets and it would be like eating my dogs (I didn’t bother mentioning that I was vegetarian because they were already horrified that a pig could be a pet).

I enticed the pigs back and the farm hands rode away. However, knowing that the current fencing won’t hold them and not having the resources to build stronger fences the future looks grim for the pigs. Many people have offered to eat them but somehow, looking at them munching happily on their apples I don’t want bacon to be their fate.

I’m hoping for some kind of miracle, a kind old lady with a few acres so that the pigs can live out their life without the threat of being butchered.

My Tuscan Garden

The harvest from this year’s summer crop just keeps on giving. So far I must have harvested over 40 pumpkins. I’ve given a lot away, the pigs have had quite a few but there are still 20 or so left with at least another 6 ready to pick.  We’ve had mashed pumpkin, pumpkin pie, baked pumpkin, pumpkin soup, spaghetti and pumpkin and I’m thinking of making some pumpkin scones.

The other vegetable that keeps on giving is zucchini. We had 3 zucchini plants and they are still producing alongside the green beans, cauliflower, parsnips and carrots.  This was my first harvest and whilst I’ve certainly done a lot of weeding over the past 8 months that was all I had to do. The plants took care of themselves. Over summer I left the sprinklers on them for around 30 minutes each night. The insects were not overwhelming, the biggest problem being the snails but even they didn’t do much damage.  I’m looking forward to seeing what the next harvest will bring.

The beans, cauliflower, silverbeet and pumpkins

Sunflowers, tomatoes, pumpkins and corn

Scarlet runner beans, cauliflowers, cucumbers and broccoli

Sunflowers love to say "hello"

Louie and Ziggy have gotten rather large over recent months – nothing like the supposed mini-pigs of the advertisement from Wings Wildlife Park. Not that they are huge – for boars they are pretty small but they are still growing. Right now they are about the size of Max, our Labrodor. The pigs have gone on a holiday because they make a lot of noise and they keep digging up the garden.  The garden needs a rest or there won’t be much left of it. The pigs like the tree roots and have munched away on the Sycamore and Popular tree roots with great appetites. They also dig up the grass and create mounds of dirt which quickly turn into rain soaked bogs.

The bogs are good for the two ducks we got at the organic festival but it makes your boots sink in the mud when you try to walk around the pig enclosure. Also, the constant squealing can become annoying. They squeal when they see anyone or the dogs walking around because they want to go to the apple tree. Under the apple tree are a lot of fallen fruit and they love to munch away on this when I let them out. In fact, Louie is so good at getting apples that he jumps for them. I’ve videod him on my mobile phone and when I work out how to slow down the frame rate so that he doesn’t look like he’s in a sped up movie then I’ll post it on the site.

I do miss the pigs though. Despite the noise and the mud, they add a bit more life to the property. The ducks, chickens, dogs and kids still add to it but somehow the pigs have become a part of the landscape as well. I’m glad they are only holidaying and that a worse fate didn’t befall them. I miss not being able to give them the kitchen scraps because it seems now that it all goes to waste. Sure you can compost scraps but it was more rewarding giving it to the pigs.

By all accounts the pigs are going well. They are not making a lot of noise and have adjusted to the new location. They should be munching away on tree roots for a few months before they return. I’m not sure what size they will be but I know they’ll squeal all about it when they return home.

My observation from training, consulting, conferences and general discussion is this – men still dominate IT in every way even though they are not necessarily better at it than women. Take for instance the recent Computers in Education Conference. The majority of trade stalls and talks were presented by men. Sure, a few women were there to hand out showbags and to sit behind the trade stalls. With the exception of Apple however, there were no women to be seen presenting on topics like whiteboards, educational consulting, elearning or a plethora of technology related hardware/software. There were women presenting as teachers and what they used in the classroom to stimulate their primary/secondary students and there were academics presenting on the latest crap research that keeps them in tenure but apart from that, the men ruled.

It is interesting that out of many professions IT is still well paid. Why is this? Could an explanation be that it is men who make up the bulk of the workforce in this area? Generally men are paid more than women and this is certainly true when you compare professions such as teaching and nursing (traditionally female) with IT and corporate work.

Yet I’ve found in my teaching practice that women are better at IT than men. They are easier to teach, produce the goods on time and generally give you what you ask for. Men, on the other hand, rush through the project, don’t always check the client brief and then expect to be given a pat on the back at the end of the task. 

I’ve seen men dominate IT companies without any worthwhile IT experience either as an undergraduate or in t he workforce. I see men deliver training sessions on software without paying much attention to whether the audience is keeping up. I see them dominate in all sorts of programming languages, hardware and software development and writing texts and manuals.

Why are women so underrepresented? I believe it boils down to the ‘gift of the gab’. Men are not afraid to talk themselves up, to look as though they are well networked and capable of delivering the goods. Women however, lack a lot of confidence, can become easily flustered and are not as good as lying through their teeth to pretend they are accomplished and competent. 

Like I said though, this I base my writing on observation and there are always exceptions. Take Lynda.com – a training provider that has an extensive library of software tutorials. Linda established the company, and was entrepreneurial and a go-getter from an early age. However, most of the training tutorials on her site are delivered by men. The men are very good but what a shame that few women are able to deliver the training.

Maybe women just aren’t interested. However, I think we just can’t be as single-minded as often needed when working on IT projects. We can’t always justify sitting in front of computers for extensive periods. This is why most gamers are men. Who else can sit in front of a screen shooting fictional characters for hours on end and feel they’ve had a productive day?

What a shame the computer wasn’t designed by women. Then we might have something that makes a cup of tea,  minds the kids, washes the dishes, tells us we’re beautiful and rewards us with a huge salary at the end.

It is hard to remember when Melbourne last had that kind of weather. Certainly not in the last 20 years or so. Amazing to think that in my lifetime the weather pattern appears to have altered quite significantly. However, despite the lack of rain, people still have magnificent gardens and the trees were green. Melbourne may have broken out of the grip of the drought so lets hope it is many more years before it is hit by another one.

When I returned to Tasmania it struck me how green it was in contrast to Melbourne. Flying in over Wyndard, the small plane turning left and right over the Bass Strait, the green hills loomed up as testament that the rain had never left Tasmania. Although the locals and science suggest that even Tasmania has less rainfall than it used to, it is not immediately obvious. The island, at least around the North West Coast, is still lush.

I expected to find the weeds in my veggie patch to have progressed with vigour while I was away. Encouragingly though, they seemed to have behaved themselves and have only grown slightly since my time away. I don’t mind the weeding (the bane of many gardeners) because I feel like I’m letting my plants breathe. Sure, a garden without weeds would be a bonus but I’m happy enough spending a few hours a day pulling out those pesky intruders.

Soon I will let the ducks into the garden to finish off the snails. They do seem reluctant at the moment to move far from their enclosure but we have only had them just over a week so they are still getting used to new surroundings.

It was lovely to come home, particularly after the stuffy confines of computer conferences. Little rooms full of laptops and overhead projectors, people talking about technology as though it’s the second coming. Mind you, I would have been like that once, but now it all seems rather pointless. Why not teach the kids a bit of gardening instead. Let them out in the sunlight, get them to observe animal behaviour and to realise that really, we are not so much individuals after all. We really are part of an ecosystem and whilst technology has its place, being able to use IT in the classroom won’t make much difference when it comes down to growing a few veggies.

Yes, its nice to be back and to appreciate the slower pace of life, watch the seasons change and harvest the vegetables. Technology can never compete with that!

Organic Festival

The organic festival was held in Penguin last Sunday  after a five-year hiatus. The festival was run by the Northern Environmental Society in the hope of reviving and energising the disparate groups of organic enthusiasts currently living in Tasmania.  There were over 500 people congregating in a field and wandering through the various stalls. Bee keeping displays, food and books were on offer as well as numerous guest speakers. People milled around chatting to the stall holders or participating in question and answer time with the various guests.

The guest stars ranged from grizzled permaculture specialists to energetic tv presenters and the information presented was pretty scary. For example, vegetables can be sprayed up to 65 times before they even get to the supermarket, with an extra spray before they go on the shelf for good measure. Farmers, I was told, don’t even eat their own Broccoli because it is full of so many chemical sprays. Whilst I knew that vegetables were sprayed, I had no idea of the level of toxins sitting on the vegetable and fruit shelves. Luckily I grow all my own vegetables because I certainly wouldn’t want to be getting them from Coles or Woolworths.

Organic Festival Stalls

Mingling amongst the crowd reinforced the belief that there is a thriving counter-culture in Tasmania. This is also reflected by the recent State election results where the Greens picked up 5 seats.  People are wanting healthy food, not chemical soaked, frozen and polished muck that has to be aesthetically pleasing. Tasmania is well positioned to provide organically grown food so that chemicals can be confined to the dirty, industrial farming of the 20th century.

When I say they got the chop I mean they were castrated last week. Although I’d been told by Colin at Wings Wildlife Park that there was no need to castrate them I didn’t  believe him. After all, everything I’ve read and heard about boars advises to get them castrated unless they are being bred to mate. Since I’ve got two boars it seems unlikely they’ll ever get the chance to mate with anything other than the chickens and the dogs that occasionally cross their path.

Despite the fact they’ll never use their gonads, they put up a mighty fight to keep them.  The veterinary surgeons round here make house calls and Graeme, the affable vet from Wynard was given the job of castrating our pigs.   “You’ve got the job of the day,” he tells me when he arrives. “Job of the day?” I replied. “Yes,” said Graeme, “when you rang through the job early this week about castrating 5 month old boars we thought, Jeez how will we manage that?  Five month old boars are ready for slaughter, they are huge but these little fellas are just fine. Mini pigs you say?” He looked at them and prodded them for a minute. “Usually mini pigs are retarded,” he said. I was about to defend the intelligence of my pigs before he added, “What I mean by that is people usually underfeed them to keep them small but these pigs look fine, well fed and healthy.”

I felt rather pleased by Graeme’s assessment until he joked. “You wouldn’t get much bacon off them.”  I sighed, even the vets round here want to eat my pigs.  However, Graeme turned out to be a very efficient vet. “Hold them down,” he said as Louie struggled and screamed. Graeme jabbed the sedative into his backside and within a few minutes the drug had started to take effect. As Louie started to sway and stumble,  Ziggy saw an opportunity. Straddling Louie he started humping without much accuracy, thought or care as to Louie, or his own, impending castration. Louie tried to escape but given the sedative was blurring his vision and buckling his legs there was no way to avoid Ziggys lust. Graeme quickly assessed the situation and stuck Ziggy with a sedative before he got the chance to use his manhood once in his life.

With both pigs down, Graeme washed his hands, took out his knife and clamps and slit open the pigs testicles. He pulled out the round clumps  the size of golf balls and threw them onto the straw. It was all over in a matter of minutes and Louie and Ziggy snored away happily, probably dreaming of pumpkins and carrots in some far away land where they are surrounded by a bounty of beautiful sows.

Graeme was rather relieved, “That wasn’t so bad at all, believe me,” he said as he packed away his instruments.  The pigs didn’t need any stitching as the skin just closes up around the empty sacs. Graeme gave them a shot of penicillin, packed away his tools and put them in his car.  ”Castrated pigs taste better than non castrated pigs,” Graeme added as he drove away.

They woke up about 20 minutes later and stumbled around as though they’d had too much to drink.   I think they know that they are not quite the same pigs they used to be. They are quieter and sleep more heavily and frequently than they did before. They also don’t like strange men coming near them. You can’t blame them really, with everyone offering to eat them they should think themselves lucky they’ve only lost their testicles.