| By Lauren Mitchell - Bendigo Life
Apart from the benefits of cutting the shopping budget, there’s a lot of pride to be had in a good g
Once upon a time the vegetable garden was an essential addition to any self-respecting backyard, along with the Hills Hoist and the lemon tree.
But with water restrictions and busy lifestyles, you’re now more likely to find a paving patch where the vegie patch used to be.
However, those who persist with this ancient pastime will tell you, the benefits are well worth keeping going for.
Here, meet two gardeners, united by the love of soil under their fingernails and fresh produce on the kitchen table.
Albert Gunstone
Early in the morning, before the day heats up, you’ll find Albert Gunstone in the garden, among a mass of golden nugget pumpkins and perfectly formed eggplants.
And that’s the way he loves it, too.
After spending 34 years working in a bank and living in the suburbs, making the move to Mandurang five years ago inspired a sort of life change.
And taking up gardening was just the trick for a vegetarian.
Albert’s garden is an engine room of production.
When one crop finishes, another begins, so there’s something fresh all year round.
What’s not picked and eaten, or handed with pride to friends and family, is cooked and frozen.
“We’ve almost got enough soup to get us through the winter,” Albert said.
The gardener said his hobby saves he and his wife, Anne, at least $50 a week at the supermarket.
“We wouldn’t buy vegies apart from potatoes, and maybe lettuce when we haven’t got some going.”
Albert is a minority in Bendigo; he has his own water supply thanks to a lily-coated dam on his property.
“We hand water everything, which is time consuming, but it saves water,” he said.
“We don’t water the lawns, we put ourselves on similar restrictions to in town.”
But Albert will tell you, that watering a vegetable garden is water well used.
His vegies taste like they’re supposed to, brimming with nutrients and maybe even a loading of love?
“As an example, Anne will not eat bought tomatoes but will gorge herself on home grown ones.
“Anyone we give tomatoes to comes back and says, have you got any more?”
Those two-metre high tomato plants are coming to an end now, apart from one particularly robust variety, which Albert calls the Sicilian.
“I took them to Keith McDonald’s nursery and he’d never heard of them.
“This friend of mine imports them from overseas and I’m hoping they’re disease resistant so I’ve kept a stack of seeds.”
And so the production line continues ...
Nick Kouras
Step into Nick Kouras’ backyard and you’d think you’d arrived on a different planet. Here, gigantic vegetables hang over the garden like Christmas ornaments, their heavy, hourglass bodies seemingly defying gravity.
“I hit my head on them every day,” Nick said.
The vegie in question is the gourd, a relative of the pumpkin, which grows over a home made frame of steel and polypipe.
Underneath, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers jostle for space, the foliage tangled together in a lush, green jungle.
However, it’s most definitely all about the gourds.
Just don’t ask Nick what they taste like, because he’s never been tempted to try them.
“I’ve never tasted them. I grow them just for fun, just for show,” he said.
“They use them a lot in Greece, especially the fishermen.
“The tie them up to the fishing nets and throw them into the sea and they stay on top of the water so the fishermen can see where their nets are.
“And young kids used to use them as floats when they go swimming.”
Nick reckons he cuts off around 500 gourds from his vine. Many are dried and given to folk artists as unusual canvases for painting flowers on.
The massive vine takes just a few months to grow, and all this happens from one tiny seed.
And plenty of work too, as Nick regularly travels to a mate’s place at Marong, to pump water from his dam and bring home to the garden.
“And I use no fertiliser, nothing, just the ground and a bit of manure,” Nick said.
But there’s another secret to this garden’s success, hanging in clusters between the gourds ... garlic.
A little superstitious perhaps, but who’s going to argue with generations of Greek gardening gurus?
The garlic was brought in after the Kouras’ prized lemon tree mysteriously curled up its leaves.
The tree died right after a visitor proclaimed how wonderful it was. Jinxed it, she did.
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