Home Grown Veg

Despite the beautiful lush rolling hills with meter deep beautiful topsoil here at Lantanaland I am terrible at growing vegetables. Actually all of that is a complete lie. Except the vegetable growing. For whatever reason I just don't have a fantastic track record with veg.

I understand the principles but seem to lose crops to cows, chooks, lack of water, pests, forgetfulness, goats and ducks. It's a bloody shame because home grown stuff increasingly has a far superior taste to any shop bought stuff and I like eating things that taste good.

The best success I've had this year has been with tomatoes. Some have just popped up from the cows eating lots and lots of tomatoes, some have been raised from seedlings. I have planted them everywhere. I'm enjoying a half decent crop too at the moment but not the absolute glut that would mean that I could make tomato sauce for pastas and the like or one of my favorites, tomato jam. I did today have an absolute joy, a bacon, avocado, home made feta and tomato sandwich.

In my ideal world I would be producing the following in amounts that could keep my kitchen running. Carrots, garlic, onions, potatoes, salad leaves, beans or peas, zucchini and I'd like a bit of corn, cucumber (I usually have no trouble with them) and cabbage. I also usually get pumpkins no worries but not in fantastic numbers.

I'll just keep trying, I have the worst soil going and have just started some raised beds so we'll see how that goes. In a perfect world I'd have the chaotic self seeding kitchen garden that they have at Northey Street farm where all sorts of things self seed and thrive in a random mix. I made some fantastic salads for lunch out of that garden, it had no order but fantastic production.

The beauty of having the farm is that I have the raw ingredients and tools to grow good stuff, I just need the knowledge and the practice. I look forward to eating it.