Organic garden: Food for thought

This bountiful backyard serves up more than fresh produce – it’s full of ideas ripe for the picking - by WORDS Jane Parbury

Self sufficient

Fifty or 60 years ago everybody had a backyard vegetable garden. There were chooks, fruit was grown and apples were stewed. Everybody had access to home grown. That is the bliss of gardening yourself. There’s always something you can find.

Sue Stubbs

Bedside story

Large sleeper beds were exchanged for more manageable small ones, planted with a broad variety of vegetables and herbs. Perennial asparagus flourishes in the long narrow sleeper bed on the left.

Sue Stubbs

Chickened out

The vegie garden thrives on companion planting and ideas from Mel Bartholomew’s classic book Square Foot Gardening while chooks supply fresh eggs nearly all year round.

Sue Stubbs

Naturetrail

The paths that meander through the garden and provide access to the beds in the vegetable patch are sawdust, which is wonderfully soft underfoot. It’s topped up twice a year.

Sue Stubbs

Fruit plantings

Nothing beats the taste of freshly plucked apples.

Sue Stubbs

Vegie plantings

Easy to grow, red cabbage can be grown in seed trays, and can be planted out in four to six weeks.

Sue Stubbs

Flower salad

Marigold flowers make a gorgeous salad garnish.

Vegie patch

Spring is the best time to plant parsley, although it can continue during summer and autumn.

Sue Stubbs