Old-school ways to garden on a budget
If you weren’t a gardener pre-pandemic, you probably are now, but getting started with few funds for tools, plants or seed requires a bit of lateral thinking. JACKIE FRENCH looks back at her own impoverished beginnings, and the kindnesses and help that set her on her way…
Thirty-five years ago, I was living in a shed in the bush with a baby, and was very, very broke. But I had a garden. Even better, next door I had Jean, who, in her 70s, grew almost all her food – plus enough to sell in town each week to fund an annual holiday – on about a quarter of an acre, not counting the paddock for Jackie the cow. (I don’t know if the name was a compliment or not.) Jean had learnt her garden lore back in the Great Depression when everyone ‘made do’.
I’ve written about Jean here before. She didn’t buy plants or seeds, except sometimes from a CWA stall. She never went on a senior citizens’ outing without a large handbag, a pair of secateurs and recycled envelopes. She’d reach over a fence to take a cutting, or gather a head of seeds from a flower or vegetable, then she’d share them with me. If my plants didn’t thrive, I risked not getting a second helping of her sponge cake made with duck eggs, passionfruit, raspberries, strawberries and Jackie’s cream.
Not everyone has access to a paddock for a cow named Jackie. But most of Jean’s produce came from a small, very intensive vegetable garden, and her philosophy of making do with what she could find and sharing it with others is something we could all learn from at this time of general belt-tightening and a shortage of seeds and seedlings.
USE WHAT YOU HAVE
Jean’s grapevines were grown from the seeds of a particularly delicious grape. A vine from the same grape still grows outside our back door. It’s drought-hardy, sweet and wonderful. Jean taught me to plant the seeds from any fruit I like – apple, lemon, apricot, orange, tamarillo, pawpaw, whatever has seeds – and see what happens. She also staked her best carrots to gather their seeds, and selected lettuces that tolerate heat, cold and drought to breed a lettuce that loves being grown right here.
My oldest apple, lemon, apricot, orange and other fruit trees came from Jean’s seedlings. They may not be identical to their parents but they’re good. I buy seeds now, but my seed box is still stuffed with old envelopes filled with last season’s seeds. Useful boxes and pots are saved for cuttings. Best of all, Jean’s generosity was contagious. I still give plants away, and still ask, “May I have a cutting?”
Jean fed her garden with whatever would break down to soil. Weeds became compost, autumn leaves were turned into mulch, and the cow’s droppings mulched the roses. Jean’s chooks fed the garden, and the garden fed her chooks, along with leftovers from the kitchen. Jean’s ducks followed her as she hunted out snails for them. The chooks and ducks ‘mowed’ her grass, too.
Even today, I rarely buy fertiliser, though we do buy chook food, which eventually comes out the other end of the chooks as plant food. But mostly our hens eat the bits we don’t want: outside lettuce and cabbage leaves, the extra helping of lasagne, the maize or sunflowers we grow just for them, or the grasshoppers they adore, leaping high to feast on them. This year’s lavish crop of weeds, post drought and fires, will be excellent compost by spring, magically turning into crops of beans, corn and early tomatoes by Christmas.
I grew up in the postwar years, when refrigeration was rare. Fruit and veg came in the back of the fruit-and-veg man’s ute, or from neighbours’ gardens. When I began my garden, it was planted to feed us year-round. I grew early January apples (Gravenstein, Beauty of Bath, Earlyblaze, and a seedling I think is Irish Peach) and winter apples (Lady Williams, Democrat, a descendent of the Granny Smiths of my childhood, and Sturmer Pippin in August). Plums were grown for early, mid- and late-season maturity, as were peaches, apricots, avocados, lemons and oranges, from
early Valencias to late Navels. The Eureka lemons and Seville oranges would hang on the tree all year. I planted the earliest spring fruits, such as strawberries and loquats, and midwinter crops, including medlars, late quinces and Wandin Winter rhubarb.
Mostly, I planted lots – every kind of fruit I could find – so that no matter what the weather, something would make it through. In this drought- and bushfire-bitten year, we’ve had mostly rhubarb, native limes, tamarillos, chokos, jerusalem artichokes, burdock, cumquats, Japanese raisin tree (the edible fruit stalks), collards, chicory, kale, winter lettuces and natal plums.
Jean also taught me to be canny in the garden. Perennial crops such as asparagus, chokos, artichokes, jerusalem artichokes, runner beans, spring onions, bell peppers, chillies and arrowroot still give you a crop if you can’t tend them for a few months.
Vegetable plantings and harvests are staggered through the year. When beans flower, it’s time to plant another lot. I eat Buttercrunch lettuce in spring, heat-hardy red mignonette in summer, and frilly red or rabbit ear varieties of ‘cut and come again’ lettuce from autumn through winter.
I plant enough maize in spring to feed the chooks, and a year’s supply of beetroot, silverbeet, celery and carrot – enough for us and the hens. I plant more tomatoes and zucchini in January, so the new growth is vigorous as the weather cools. I begin my winter planting in February, and plant lots. You can give away surplus kale, pak choy or winter radishes, or feed it to the chooks.
Grandma and Great Grandma also taught me well. They loved feeding people – a gene I’ve inherited. They cooked in isolated rural areas, then during the Great Depression and World War II with rationing, when if you wanted to eat well, you grew your own, swapped surplus with friends, and learnt how to keep your food fresh.
Grandma taught me how to store the harvest. Pumpkin skins ‘cure’ and harden on the chook house roof. Store them on their sides so moisture doesn’t condense in the top. Don’t keep carrots near fruit because the skin may turn bitter as ethylene is released from the fruit. Don’t store spuds with fruit either, especially apples, or they sprout earlier. If fruit needs to be stored for a long time, wrap it in newspaper, or bury it in some clean, dry sand in a box.
Root vegetables need humidity or they wither. (Ever wondered why shop-bought carrots look lush when yours are starting to shrivel?) Keep them in plastic bags with airholes, or in damp sand. Tomatoes ripen best in crumpled newspaper – and if any of them rot, the newspaper will absorb the juice, so the rest won’t be affected.
GROW THE STAPLES
I still have the handwritten cookbook Great Grandma began and Grandma continued. It has recipes for almost every situation.
No eggs? Add pumpkin or stewed apple to stop cake or scones becoming crumbly. (But always have a chook house!)
No sugar? Keep bees, tap sugar maple trees, grow sugarcane, make sweet syrup from boiled dates, or chop beetroot and boil it for a thick, sweet syrup. Sugar beet is a close relative of our modern beetroot and its juice is almost as sweet, even if it turns your apple cake pink. Grandma’s ‘no sugar’ jam was simply Granny Smith apples and dates slowly simmered until the mix was smooth and thick. It’s deeply delicious. Her sugarless apple tea cake is sweet with stewed apple mixed through it, and her Christmas pudding uses grated carrot and apple instead of sugar.
No flour? Use ground almonds, bunya nuts or chestnuts in cakes and biscuits, or for thickening, and add a third of a mashed potato to your bread or scone dough.
And always have herbs growing by the back door – they turn peasant basics into gourmet tucker. Great Grandma used her back door herbs to create 101 ways with
mutton, from a savoury stew to ‘bone broth’, shepherd’s pie and stuffed shoulder.
Herbs can turn pantry pasta into luxury: homemade pesto; linguine with browned butter and sage; spaghetti with peas, cream and tarragon, or tomato and marjoram, or nothing more than home-grown flaked almonds or chopped walnuts with lemon juice, winter savory leaves and a little olive oil. A pizza topped with chopped potato becomes lavish with a little chopped rosemary. This is the time to experiment with herbs: savoury scones with a touch of grated cheese and your choice of herbs from the garden; herb bread, piquant with chopped chervil or lemon thyme; corn bread given a touch of fire with chilli.
Thanks to my teachers, I knew that daily protein could come via the chook house, and from avocados, chestnuts, almonds, macadamias, walnuts and pecans. This year, the nuts and avocados failed to crop after our bushfire summer, but I’m still in the garden every day, picking something, planting something, watching the birds share the plenitude. I don’t grow all of our food now. I decided that I didn’t want to be self-sufficient any more the night I crawled into the garden during a thunderstorm, with double pneumonia, to pick corn and salad for my son’s dinner. But I can’t imagine life without the rhythms of the garden.
Great Grandma would have thought today’s toilet paper shortage hilarious.
As a last resort, she might have used the choko leaves growing over the dunny. Perhaps the greatest lesson I’ve learnt from Jean, Grandma and Great Grandma is that the earth is generous. Even if you only have a small backyard, or some pots on a patio, you can still have abundance and experience the profound joy of having your hands in the soil and seeing shrivelled seeds or dead-looking sticks become a harvest of vegetables, fruits and flowers, shared with family and friends.