Ruminations on the Vegie Patch - Supply and Demand

The old garden bed is still going. I have put in potatoes in one end, and in the other I will probably be putting in either herbs or some of the many seedlings I have growing. The eggplants suffered quite a lot during a snail plague, and unfortunately I had to dump the cauliflower and broccoli that were growing, partially due toimmense snail damage, but also my old friends the aphids.

I have been thinking occasionally on emergency plans. Diggers offers an emergency seed kit to people with a healthcare card. A healthcare card is a card you can access if you earn below a certain income, and gets your pharmaceuticals and other bills cheaper than usual. The seed packets boast hundreds of kilos of food from nine packets, and is very cheap. Diggers also have a very cheap support your family kit for $20, which is what I purchased last year.

I found that there's a requirement for intensive farming and planning to be able to make use of it as instructed, and a lot of the mass weight came from lettuce. While we like lettuce somewhat, we're not about to start living on it, and this once againt drew my attention to the great divide between what we have and what we want.

The big problems with budgeting food and developing a garden is supply and demand. If the silverbeet is the only thing in season, then you need to be eating silverbeet. And if it's the only thing ready for a week, then you're going to run out of ways you can prep it up and serve it up. Whether it's you or the family who hits the point of ENOUGH first, it's going to happen. So no only do we need to think of fresh vegetables and boredom, but we also need to consider - do we know what to do with excess harvest when we get it?

So not only do we need to learn what grows well in our backyards, and how to look after it, and grow it, and stop bugs getting to it, but we also need to learn to plan well in advance so we *don't* end up eating silverbeet for three weeks running, and if we do, find ways to preserve it for times when you want silverbeet, and it's not fresh. It's easier, of course, to go down to Coles or Woollies and buy something, but it feels like a hollow traitorous act.

Diggers also have a self sufficiency plan free for use. Link here:
http://www.diggers.com.au/pdf/MiniPlotPlan.pdf

In the Diggers book they provide illustrations about where you can slide in a square metre of vegies, cane plants or fruit trees. I find this all to be a very handy tool as I stumble about in my apprenticeship, struggling to learn everything I can while I have the luxury of time.

If we suddenly had no source of income, I would invest in Asian greens. Fast to grow, minimal space, I can stirfy them a thousand ways. I love eggplants, they have been prolific and a good support for a lot of dishes. I am finding the celery to be very useful in my quest to make better soups. I can't stand to eat it, but it does season stocks beautifully. I love the flat leafed parsley I have, so would love to develop my herb garden some more. We've bought the pots for our grape vines, so they will be in very shortly.



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Sarah