Bones of the Garden

I always think of the food garden as like a living body, which has bones and muscle and less permanent features in the form of skin and hair.

If you have good bones in your garden and then concentrate on building up your soil, the muscle in the form of plants that reseed, or retoon or live longer than a few months,  will thrive and your annual plants will produce good crops.

The bones of the garden are the perennials, those plants that last for years and mostly just require a bit of maintenance.  Amongst these I would include:

  • Orchard trees whether they are citrus or stonefruits, nuts and tropical fruits
  • Grapes vines
  • Raspberries and other berries if you are lucky enough to be able to grow them
  • Kiwi fruit
  • Asparagus
  • Native food trees

The muscle of the garden are those plants that will probably take a while to produce and which may reseed easily or reproduce, or just last maybe three to four years before you need to dig it out and replant:

  • Strawberries
  • Water chestnuts
  • Potatoes and Sweet potatoes
  • Herbs such as Rosemary, sage, parsley, oregano, thyme, mint
  • Chives and spring onions, shallots,
  • Passionfruit and choko
  • Leeks  ( I include leeks here as they will stay in the garden a long time, sometime reseed well and cutting them rather than pulling them out will encourage a retoon
  • often tomatoes if the soil is good and fairly frost free
  • Basil and coriander – these can last quite a few months, and sometimes years if in the exact right spot
  • Capsicum if protected from the frost

And lastly, the plants that come and go, usually boom or bust  or in other words you end up giving half of them away or feeding them to the chooks if you are not careful about it:

  • Pumpkin (although mine come up each year by themselves and they keep well)
  • Cabbages – I grow Oriental as they stay in the ground longer and you just pick the leaves
  • Lettuce, rocket and spinach  (I grow mignonette when I can get them – see above)
  • kale and silverbeet
  • Watermelon and rockmelon
  • Peas, snow peas and beans
  • Cucumber (although I have had these come up by themselves a few years)
  • Zucchini and squash
  • Corn
  • Onion- I grow mainly red onion
  • Garlic

If you have the bones of the garden in place and have good enough soil for the muscle plants to thrive, then you will have something to use at just about every meal, pretty well all year round.

The annual plants, those in the 3rd section, are the decoration on the cake or should we say the crowning glory of the garden and will provide you with  entire meals at times if you are careful, but will also often feed the neighbours and the local poultry.

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