Designing a backyard market garden to feed the local community | Discovery | Gardening Australia

Clarence meets a couple who have created a market garden in their backyard to grow food for the local community. Subscribe 🔔 http://ab.co/GA-subscribe
In the temperate subtropics of the Illawarra, less extreme weather than many parts of Australia can make it the ideal situation for growing food all year round. And growing, sharing, and of course eating food is always an important part of bringing a small community closer together.

Sarah and Ben Anderson’s “backyard wonderland” behind an unsuspecting brick house on the edge of the escarpment, is doing just that. Rows and rows of crops interspersed with fruit trees and an artistic wooden shed with a green roof fill the backyard. They conserve the natural ferny creekway.

When they bought the “old school block in suburbia Woonona” in 2011, the yard was an “overgrown jungle” that had been in one family for a century with a history of market gardening and historic farming over their 4000m2 site. After removing tonnes of grass “we put in 35-40 fruit trees when we first moved in” including bananas, finger limes, Brazilian cherries, and figs, and “it’s evolved over the last few years” with the help from neighbours and friends all chipping in ideas, materials, and time. The well-mulched crop beds use drip-line irrigation and are full of herbs, lettuce, silverbeet, edible flowers, onions, pumpkins, potatoes… currently pumping out up to 7kg of salad leaves a week! Sarah supplies local cafes with same-day produce and creates beautiful fabric-wrapped seasonal bunches for a growing number of household customers each week.

Sarah’s first tip for anyone getting started is “to sit in your space and have a look at it for a while to get a feel of the conditions of the garden first and be aware of rain or access to water.” Looking for ‘micro-sites’ that will allow for certain plants to grow better has improved chances of success, such as a “sheltered spot for a peachcott.” Sarah also works with a “basic leaf, root, fruit, legume-based rotation “We’re endeavouring to build the soil and in turn it’s teaching us a lot in the process.” No pesticides are used on site, which means everything is ready to eat, but it also means more time spent picking off caterpillars and on night hunts for snails, along with using exclusion netting and being ok with having some write-offs.

Since starting the garden, Sarah and Ben applied the principles of “context and common sense”, “constant observation through the seasons” and “making things do as much of the work so you don’t have to do it.”

But really it’s just about “having a go! Sometimes some trees and plants will defy logic and just do really well … you can read until your eyes cross over but sometimes you need to just play in the soil,” Sarah says, “have a crack at all of it”, learn what does and doesn’t work specific to the site, “Being eternally curious” has kept her growing and is what she tries to pass on to her kids.

The most important aspects of having a large patch for Sarah and Ben are helping to “build more food secure communities” and sharing space and knowledge with others. Their garden has become part business, part community hub. This approach came from a family adventure a decade ago where they worked on farm and garden projects in exchange for food, accommodation, and knowledge (through HelpX, a similar program to WOOFING). From apple orchards in France and Japan to an off-grid market garden in Canada, it was an invaluable opportunity to start learning about horticulture and sustainable practices from people with vastly different backgrounds and experiences. The most important outcome was not the gardening knowledge though, it was the “human energy exchange, sharing stories”, and bigger picture philosophies about food, protecting the land and strengthening communities.

Featured Plants:
FINGER LIME ‘RAINFOREST PEARL’ – Citrus australasica cv.
COMFREY – Symphytum officinale *
ZUCCHINI ‘BLACKJACK’ – Cucurbita pepo cv.
* Check before planting: this may be an environmental weed in your area

Filmed on Dharawal Country | Woonona, NSW
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