For those of you who are like me and who find a picture in your mind a really useful thing, I have drawn a little map which explains the concept of garden path food.
A very wise person I know once said ‘It is a lot easier to care for a productive garden; as we pick our produce we will also do what needs doing ’ It is the principle of doing a little bit every day as you wander around the garden.
The roam around the garden to inspect and pick produce and do a job here, anther one there, can be one of the most relaxing ½ hours of your day.
I often start with an inspection of the worms and maybe run off the liquid, add to it and water whatever young plants I feel need a boost. Then I inspect the herb and annual garden to see what I want for dinner, check out the strawberries and leeks and then walk around to the tank where the mint and some other annuals lurk.
If it’s the right time of year, I can pick some scrub cherries to nibble on as I go through the native hedge and in to the true garden out the back. (I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not having a permaculture garden in the backyard close to the house, so we have a little compromise there).
Out the back behind the shed, there is a hedge of asparagus, so roll on Spring when we dine like kings for at least eight weeks. At present the potatoes and sweet potatoes are hiding under the hay waiting for the frost to pass, but the mandarine trees are producing.
Out here we often have watermelon, which seem to plant themselves regularly and tomatoes, usually near the compost bin.
Back along the driveway, there are still pumpkins, sheltering from the frost under the hedge and waiting to be turned in to pumpkin soup and of course, roast or steamed pumpkin.
I return through the gate and on my eastern fence, we had a choko vine, which has sadly passed on with the frost, but I have kept a few to replant. The passionfruit has survived the frost so far but it will succumb no doubt sooner or later. Under the passionfruit, there are tubs of water chestnut, which are about to be sorted and stored, and comfrey, which I generally use as a compost starter.
On my walk, there are bits and pieces of other food plants hidden in with the ornamental and natives, but we won’t tell my husband that and he won’t notice.
The front gardens are food free at the moment except for the olive trees which hide among the myall and grevillea. I don’t expect a crop from them for quite some time yet.
I don’t always follow the same path or the same direction, since it depends on what is producing and what we are having for dinner and what jobs need doing, but that is what makes it a small adventure everyday, that and finding new babies in the garden just about every time I look.
Garden Path Food 