Visit Karen 19 March 2017

On Sunday 19 March the Food Garden Group visited Karen's garden at New Town:

As you walk past the house the first impression is that you are entering a large, level, classically styled, ornamental garden. But when you look past the pleasingly trimmed hedges, nicely ball-shaped bushes and arches, you begin to see a very interesting array of food plants, some of which are not common.

Karen (2nd from left) welcomes us and discusses her projects

Fruits and vegetables can be found throughout the garden. The area in the photo below is one of two specifically dedicated to them. It has vegie beds (foreground), a large netted berry area behind that, a hothouse and a chook pen. The chooks were happily foraging in a sheltered area between the berries and the fence. The second vegies area is at the other end of the garden and is maintained by Karen’s husband.

Karen's main veggie garden

Karen demonstrated making netting out of recycled baling twine (photo below).

Karen making nets in her gazebo

She uses these nets for instance to grow zucchinis along them (see photo below). The system is working well because she does not allow her zucchinis to become too big. The netting gently moves in winds. It is a great way to grow zucchinis without taking up very much ground space.

Zucchini plants happily growing skyways

The photo below shows an Italian zucchini variety called Tromboncini (seed bought from Diggers). They often have a more circular ‘trombone shape’. This one may have ‘gone straight’ because it is hanging.

Zucchini Tromboncini

This year Karen grew a tomato variety named ‘Sam’s Tomato’ (bought it at Denis McKercher’s tomato sale). There was still one giant on a bush when we came, but my photo did not make it clear how big it was. Below is a photo Karen took a few weeks back. The largest one was 120mm across.

Sam's Tomatoes are enormous

A nice crop of capsicums

Sweet corn going strong

One of Karen’ ongoing projects is growing bananas. She is building up a collection of banana plants, all at different stages of growth, both in her hothouse (see photo below) and north-facing sunroom. She hopes to gradually arrive at the situation where she can pick some ripe bananas every year, but this is not so easy to achieve in our climate (for more info about Karen’s banana growing see blog post Growing bananas in Hobart  on the main Food Garden Group blog).

Two banana plants and two aubergines in the hothouse

Karen demonstrated how to separate a young shoot from its parent banana plant and pot it up (see photo below).

Separating a shoot and putting it in its own pot

Against a warm north-facing wall of her house we saw a Yacon (South American – grown for its sweet tasting tuberous roots). The plants were tall and looked very happy in this spot. Karen digs up the tubers in mid winter when there is not much produce coming out of the garden.

In the same patch another uncommon plant, Sweet Potato (see photo below). Karen showed us how she had pegged a Sweet Potato branch to the ground in the hope that a new plant will develop.

Sweet potato growing vigorously

Around the corner we found an interesting variety of citrus trees in pots. This Kaffir Lime (photo below – notice the double leaves and remarkable spikes) stood out for me.

Kaffir Lime

This visit once again made it clear that every food garden is different and there are always interesting things to see and learn. I always come away with new ideas re what I would like to add to my own garden.

Many thanks, Karen, for sharing with us your enthusiasm, expertise and creativity. It is great to see someone experimenting with unusual food plants.

Also, a big thank-you to everyone who came and contributed to the produce table and morning tea. It made for a very enjoyable morning that was appreciated by all.

This text was previously published on the Food Garden Group blog. It was written by Max Bee.