More home vegetable gardens as food costs soar

With the rising cost of fuel and food, many Australians are going back to growing a vegetable garden in their back yard to help reduce their household expenditure.

Horticulturalist and Assistant Retail Manager of Eden Gardens has recorded that over the past year the sales of fruit and vegetable seedlings has risen 50% on the previous year, while sales of regular garden plants had stayed stable, indicating that more families are growing their own to save some money.

Most people have come to the realisation that the world oil price is staying high, and rather than sacrifice good quality vegetables people have turned towards growing vegetable gardens to ease the financial burden that increased fuel costs and drought have brought.

The Diggers Club, a group who grow and sell organic heirloom fruit and vegetable seeds formed in 1978, marketing manager Lisa Remato says that in an area of 10 square metres you can grow enough vegetables for one person.

A lot of keen home gardeners have known this for years, I have only began to branch out into growing fruit in the past 8 months with a passionfruit vine (I’ve had many a lemon tree!). My biggest challenge has been moving to a new climate which has very hot summers that burn off alot of my vegetable crops.

The Diggers Club are offering health-care card holders (lower income families) a package of seeds for $19.40 which should be able to grow over two tonnes of food! 350kg of pumpkins, 1025kg of tomatoes, 619kg of cucumbers, 9kg of peas, 200 heads of brocoli, 100 bunches of silverbeet, 8kg of beans, 700 lettuces, 1200 carrots, 300 parsnips and 300 onions!

That’s a lot of food, and when compared to buying it at the supermarket it’s really cheap if you’re up for a little work each week.

The biggest problem that the world faces is that there is a generation of people out there who have no idea how to grow vegetables. It is great to say that people could grow two tonnes of food, but it’s the knowing how to do the job that counts.

I’ll leave you all on a modified anecdote

Give a person a basket of vegetables and he will eat for a day, teach a person how to grow vegetables and he will eat for a lifetime.

Share your gardening knowledge with everyone, and you will both be rewarded.