Benefit Cost analysis of growing vegetables in the backyard

People often tell me that growing vegetables costs too much, or that they are cheaper to buy from the shops, my reply to them is "you are doing it wrong".

Growing vegetables will save you money.  If you are spending more than you save you are doing something wrong.  Grow some food, it will save you money. 

If you have a back yard you should grow some vegetables.  It is simple and it will save you some money.  I will tell you how I used to grow vegetables cheaply in suburbia with limited space and give you an idea of how much money it saved us.

Heirloom tomatoes - one days harvest

Growing Vegetables in the backyard to save money

When we first bought a house with a small yard I put in a small vegetable garden, I sat and thought before each purchase as I wanted to save money.  I tried to make sure that everything I bought would return the investment in 3 or less years, if anything would not return that investment I asked myself if I really wanted it.  Sometimes the answer was still yes.  Why did I choose 3 years, I cant remember, it is just the rule that I go by when making purchases.

When I was about to start that garden I looked for something to make it from for free.  We had a sandpit in the lawn left behind by the previous owner, I dug out the sleepers and used them as the vegetable garden edging.  I dug over a section of lawn that was out of the way, put in the sleepers as edging, and included some of the old sandpit sand to improve the drainage.  It cost me time which I otherwise would have spent in front of the television, and I bought a cheap spade and wheelbarrow (which I needed to buy for other projects), but other than that it was free up to this point.

I needed to buy some vegetable seeds or seedlings to plant, this was my first real cost.  I decided seeds were cheaper than seedlings and offer the best return on my investment.  A packet of tomato seedlings costs about the same as a single tomato plant and can be used to grow many tomato plants over several years.  I also decided that any seeds I bought must be of things that I could grow out and save seed from each year or of something perennial that would not need replacing each year.  This makes seed buying a once off expenditure so even if they never break even they will still be providing me food for years to come.  At that stage I had no intention of ever selling seeds or breeding my own superior varieties, I was only planning on saving a little money by growing vegetables in my spare time.  Saving seeds lowers costs dramatically, you should save some seeds for yourself.

I normally dont include costs and things in blog posts as they vary from place to place, but to demonstrate how growing vegetables in the backyard is far cheaper than buying them from a shop I am going to include some dollar amounts here.  I am also going to try and be realistic and include things where you may lose money.

Yellow pear tomato, seeds are cheap and yields are high

Benefit/Cost comparisons of growing vegetables in the backyard versus buying vegetables

I payed $3 for a packet of tomato seeds so I wanted to get at least $3 of tomatoes in less than 3 years.  That was my goal, everything had to break even within 3 years.  I cant remember how much each plant produced, or how many plants I grew that first year, but all together they returned about 12 kg of fresh tomatoes.  According to this site one kilogram of tomatoes costs about $5.  Not surprisingly one single tomato plant returned a lot more than $3 worth of tomatoes in a single season.  I am not talking organic gourmet tomato prices (even though I grow everything organically and I probably have what is considered gourmet varieties), I always calculate using the cheapest vegetable I can find.  I then saved seeds from those tomatoes and actually still have that variety today.  That was 12kg of tomatoes the first year for $3.  Already, with that one purchase of tomato seeds, I had lowered the costs of my fruit/vegetables a tiny bit.  I was already ahead.  We were already saving money by growing vegetables.

If you are not breaking even in under 3 years you are doing something wrong, perhaps you are growing the wrong variety or perhaps tomatoes or whatever it is are not suited to your climate and you should grow something else.

When I payed $7.50 for a kilogram of seed potato that first year I wanted to get at least $7.50 worth of potatoes in under 3 years.  The first year that 1kg of seed potatoes returned 20kg of good sized potatoes plus a few kg of smaller ones that I saved to plant the following year, the second year they only grew 15kg of large potatoes plus some to save, the third year they yield 8kg.  Thats right, I keep pointlessly accurate records of things like this.  So for an initial $7 investment I got 43kg of potatoes over 3 years, not too bad.  Again, if you are not at least breaking even you are doing something wrong.  The average price of potatoes is around $3.78 per kg, so around 2kg breaks even.  The $7.50 for seed potatoes was well worth the investment especially considering the 20kg return the first year.  It is not difficult to save money by growing your own food in a small backyard garden.

That first year we spent $10.50 on tomato seeds and seed potatoes and ate around  $135.60 worth of fresh produce.  It is not difficult to see how much money can be saved by growing a few vegetables at home.

Perennial leeks, plant once harvest forever

We grew a few other things that first year, almost all of them returned far more than I payed for them.  Beans and snow peas grew tremendously well that year and I saved seed to grow in following years.  As well as providing a delicious crop, being legumes they also sequestered nitrogen from the air and made the soil more fertile and productive which was an added bonus.

Some seeds I bought did not provide great yields in that tiny vegetable garden.  It is important to know that this is going to happen too.

I bought multi coloured carrot seed, they grew well but when carrots cost $0.65 per kg I did not get $3 worth of carrots out of them that first year due to lack of space.  I probably got about 50 cents worth of carrots.  I saved some of their seed and planted the following years, to be honest I dont think I ever got $3 worth of carrots from them and should have probably stopped growing them.  You need to grow a lot to break even when they cost so little from the shops.  Space was the limiting factor there.  I was not saving money by growing carrots so I stopped growing them and used the garden space for more productive and worthwhile crops.

I bought an apple tree in our second year to plant by the fence, after counting and weighing the apples that we ate from that tree (I cant help but to weigh, measure and record certain things) and factoring in the cost of apples of the same variety from the shops I found that I broke even part way through the second year.  There is no point using the cost of organic apples as I would not buy them, I would buy the cheaper ones.  

I was also given some strawberry plants which performed wonderfully, it is difficult to work out how much they saved us as I would never buy strawberries because they are too expensive and do not taste very good.  These plants did replace other "afternoon tea" and "dessert" type foods so actually did save us a decent amount of money.  Considering that they cost me nothing to begin with I was more than pleased.

Herbs are worth growing, but they probably dont save you money

I also bought some herbs, this is where costing got even trickier.  Normally I would never buy fresh herbs as they are too expensive, so no matter how productive the plants were they would never truly break even.  This is ok when you factor it in with other things that actually did lower costs.  It is good to know that there will be things that are worth growing that will never break even, it is wise to make informed decisions about such things.  Lets be honest here, growing ornamental flowers never breaks even yet they are a multi-million dollar industry in Australia.  I think growing a few herbs is a great idea as they taste great, it should be a once off purchase as many herbs are perennial and it is simple to save seed from most annual herbs.

Then I bought some things that I had never seen in the shops, things like yacon.  I figured this was dead money as it was not replacing anything I would (or even could) buy.  I was willing to proceed as everything else had grown so well and lowered costs.  The trick here is not to ensure that each individual plant breaks even, but to make sure if something will lose money that you are aware of it before hand and have accounted for it somewhere else.  

The yacon grew amazingly well, the kids and I love to eat it.  It had saved us no money as it was not even replacing some other fruit or vegetable.  Yacon roots secrete sugars into the soil and attract and feed beneficial soil life such as earth worms.  Everything that grows near yacon seems to be larger and healthier, so it probably does save us money in some way that is too difficult to calculate.  Yacon is a perennial vegetable and I still have that same yacon growing today, it is one of my all time favourite vegetables.  I believe it was money well spent.

Production costs of growing vegetables in a small suburban backyard

People often complain about all the hidden costs which I have conveniently ignored so far, what about fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, water and most importantly time?  Again I say if you are not saving money by growing vegetables then you are doing it wrong.  Lets look at these hidden costs.

Fertiliser

People often complain about the cost of fertilisers when growing their own food, I have never used them.  You dont need to use them in a backyard, it is cheaper not to.

When we lived in town I would compost the lawn clippings as well as tea bags, egg shells and whatever vegetable scraps we had and use that as fertiliser.  It was virtually free as we were using an otherwise wasted resource and the vegetables grew tremendously well with that as the only fertiliser. The soil got richer and more fertile each year, this cost us nothing.

After a while we got chickens and also used their manure and bedding as fertiliser.  Someone gave us their old guinea pig, this little guy worked tirelessly eating weeds/grass and turning that into manure.  He lived a long life with us, reaching a ripe old age of about 7 eating nothing but grass and weeds and producing high quality fertiliser for us.  I miss him, he was a hard worker and a placid friend for my children.

There is no need to spend money on fertiliser as you will have something around that you can use for free.  I can understand large acreage buying fertilisers, but if you are spending money on fertiliser in town you are doing it wrong.

Chickens, a great source of manure (dont worry they did not live like this for more than a few minutes, we were only carrying them from the incubator to the brooder and this tiny box was the safest and easiest way)

Pesticides

People often complain about pesticide costs, again I have never used them.  If a plant gets hammered by insects then perhaps I should grow something else.  There is no point beating a dead horse, sometimes it is wiser to cut your losses and grow something else. 

Some pests can be beaten using other means, others sadly can not.  Cabbage white butterflies for example do not like to like to lay eggs where there are a lot of other white butterflies.  I tie some string running along the length of the bed next to the brassicas.  I then cut white plastic bags into small rectangles and tie them in their middle along the string.  The end result looks like a heap of butterflies fluttering along the crop in the wind.  Dont be fooled,  this does not eliminate the pests, but it does reduce them to a sensible number.  We went from several dozen caterpillars per leaf of every plant, which I was removing each day, to only 1 or 2 per entire row of plants.  This cost me a little time, an old plastic bag and a length of old string that I found in the garage. 

I keep slugs and snails away from seedlings by surrounding them with crushed egg shells.  Apparently the slugs/snails find them too sharp and do not go over them.  This has to be reapplied every now and again as birds or something steal the pieces of shell.  Egg shell is virtually free, my chickens and ducks lay eggs which we eat or hatch and I use the shells either in compost or to protect seedlings.

Crushed egg shells protect seedlings from slugs and snails

Herbicides

People ask me "what about weeds and weed control?".  In a back yard you should not have weed trouble that you can not dig out easily enough.  Large scale broad acre farms may be different, but in a back yard if you can not dig out a weed something has gone wrong.

If you have chickens or guinea pigs they can be put on a vegetable plot between crops to eat out weeds and fertilise the soil for you.  Chickens can be very destructive in the vegetable garden so I would only use them between crops and I would be careful they do not scratch all the soil out of your garden.

I dont see the point of using a herbicide in a small backyard vegetable garden.  If you do not have chickens or guinea pigs then pull out the weeds yourself, dont spray them.  If you can not pull out the weeds yourself due to ill health or something consider mulching heavily with newspaper or something.  People will give you piles of newspaper for free if you ask.

Water 

People often drone on and on about how much they will spend in water if they grow vegetables, in a small backyard this is not the case.  When we lived in town water cost $0.55 per kiloliter, I dont know how many thousand liters I would have used watering my tiny patch but all up it would have added up to maybe a few dollars each year.

The cost of water is undoubtedly a lot higher these days and would certainly vary from town to town, even so you would probably be looking at the cost over an entire year in single digits.  This is not a large cost and can easily be factored in to a productive vegetable garden.  There is certainly no point complaining about such a small cost each year when the financial benefits are so great.

Duck potatoes growing in a bucket.  Water is cheap, duck potatoes are expensive

Time

I can not put a dollar amount on your time, I also cant tell you how long you will spend gardening each week or total over a year.  This will depend on how much time you are willing to spend out there.

People often talk about how gardening is great exercise and excellent for good health.  Others tell me that they find gardening therapeutic.  Some people claim that the clean, organic, nutrient dense food they produce will save them medical costs, doctor visits and give them greater quality of life when they are older and less sick.  I dont know about this so can not comment.

I cant tell you the benefit/cost ratio regarding time in growing your own food in the backyard.  I dont know anything about that, but I do often think perhaps my time is better spent growing my own food rather than working so that I can pay someone else to grow it for me.  When we lived in town the time I spent in the garden was just time I otherwise would have spent in front of the TV.

I can grow a lot of things that I can not buy in the shops, and I can grow other things that are best fresh.  Some things such as sweet corn only taste their best when eaten within 15 minutes of being picked.  After that the sugars convert to starch and you lose a great deal of quality.  The time it takes to drive home with your fresh corn from the shops is enough to stop it tasting its best.  I find that the small amount of time required to grow corn is more than worth it when it tastes so good.

Sorrel, you dont find this at the shops

Yacon, more than worth a little time to grow this at home

How much food can you produce in an average backyard?

Back in the old days most people grew most of what they ate, but back then life was easier and the world was a vastly different place.  House blocks were generally a lot larger and people had a great deal more spare time, it was quite rare for both husband and wife to have payed employment outside of the house.  Producing meat in your backyard was seen as pretty normal back then, today if you even consider butchering a chicken you would be frowned upon.  Back then people rarely bought much food, unfortunately times have changed.

If you wanted to you could probably produce all of your fruit and vegetables in your yard, but few of us have the time, the space or the inclination to do that.  Your yard would no longer be useful for anything other than producing food.  You are better off just growing some things that you like, still having a pretty normal looking yard that is still functional, and saving a heap of money along the way.  A 1m by 4m plot along the fence can be tremendously productive.

When we were in town we had two vegetable plots which were just under 2m x 2m, about 7.5 square meters together.  That small amount of land produced about 10% of our vegetables.  For 5 weeks each year we did not buy vegetables at all, then we got a few handfuls of vegetables throughout the rest of the year.  You can see how such a small amount of land can save you rather a lot of money.

I personally think that if you are not saving money by growing food then you are doing it wrong!  If you have tried and things are not going well talk to someone who may be able to help.  Just like the carrot example above you may need to change your plant choices.

Where to get heirloom vegetable seeds and perennial vegetables

There are many places that sell seeds and perennial vegetables.  Whenever buying please look at things that will either be perennial and grow for multiple years, or things that you may be able to save seeds from.  By doing this you will lower your costs as they will be a once off purchase.  Some things will be too difficult or time consuming to save seeds, that is ok too as long as you are aware of it and are saving seeds from other things.  Try to pick varieties that are different from what you can buy, many varieties that are available in shops are excellent for large scale farming and distributing over large distances but are not great for home gardens.  The aims of a home vegetable garden are different to that of a broad acre monoculture.

I sell some perennial vegetables and heirloom vegetable seeds through my for sale page and can post at cost to most of mainland Australia (not Tasmania or WA).  There are many other good small home seed sellers, as well as some larger ones that are good.  If you deal with the smaller family run seed sellers they are more likely to offer advice if something goes wrong as well as give you fresher seeds.  One of the largest and most well known heirloom seed sellers in Australia is dreadful, and ebay is very hit and miss, so do some research prior to buying anything.

You have little to lose and a lot to gain, grow some vegetables and save some money.

1 Thessalonians 4:11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you,

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Rainbow Jelly Cake

I took on the stupid idea of making Mr 4 a rainbow jelly cake for his birthday. With some sound advise from a friend I embarked on using agar agar as it sets much quicker. This sure was a help. The cake looks great besides some colouring issues. But it is nasty to eat. It sort of crumbles in your mouth, the texture makes me gag. Flavour is fine though.

I found very few recipes online for Jelly cakes using Agar Agar is was just a bit of luck of the draw if it would turn out. I think I will only use half the agar next time, will run some tests first to find out just how little agar agar can be used so the cake still stands up but is actually edible. The recipe I used is this

Blue top layer with lollies (I would do a clear top layer to show the lollies better next time)
250ml liquid (I used part blueberry juice from stewing some blueberries and part water)
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp agar agar

Milk Layer (I would colour this blue next time or whatever colour I wanted on top)
125ml water
125ml milk
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp agar agar

Red Layer
250ml liquid (about half a punnet stewed and mushed strawberries, rest water)
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp agar agar
(I also chopped the remainder of the punnet to put in this layer)

Orange Layer
250ml liquid
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp agar agar

Green Layer
250ml liquid (I used pineapple juice, really should have used this for an orange or yellow layer)
just under 1/4 sugar
1 tsp agar agar

I made each layer as I went
1. place each layers ingredients in a saucepan, brought to the boil for a few seconds to make sure all had boiled. Pulled off heat and added the colour till desired colour.
2. pour into mould
3. Start boiling next layer.
4. pour into mould once the previous layer was JUST set, I have read if you let it set too much the layers wont stick together and slide apart, you can gently scrap the previous layer with a fork if this happens. Each layer took longer then the last to set. The first set before I had the second layer ready. I had to wait and reheat the green layer as the orange wasnt ready.

Keep going till you have all layers done. Then I set in the fridge over night.

Good luck with your making :)

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Tree Onions

Tree Onions

Tree Onions are also known as Egyptian Walking Onions or Topset Onions.  They are an old heirloom vegetable dating from back to at least the 1850s but their exact history prior to that has apparently been lost.  Originally thought to be Allium cepa var proliferum but now we know that they are a interspecific hybrid between Allium cepa (the common onion) and Allium fistulosum (bunching onion).

Apparently tree onions used to grow in every backyard vegetable garden in the past, but recently they have fallen out of favor and have all but disappeared in Australia.  Not surprisingly they are not well suited to mass mechanical production, so it is unlikely that you will find them in the supermarket, but they are very well suited to the home grower.

Bulbils on a flower stalk which have sent up a stalk of their own

How to grow tree onions

 I have put some notes on how to grow them here.  Basically they grow the same as any other onion, but are a lot hardier and more forgiving if things do not go well.  They prefer a moist but well draining soil with plenty of nutrients and no competition from weeds, but will survive pretty much anywhere that is not too wet.  Raising the pH of the soil is helpful for any onion, this can be done by adding ash from the fireplace or buying some lime.  I have been told to harvest the bulbs when the stalks dry down, but this may or may not happen.  We harvest after flowering when the bulbs look larger, or whenever the bulb looks large enough to bother digging it up.  Sometimes in late summer I stop watering them so that they dry down for me, this seems to work.

Tree onions in less than ideal conditions

How to multiply tree onions

Tree onions reproduce vegetatively, do not  set viable seed and will not cross pollinate any other type of onion you may be growing.  As they reproduce vegetatively they are stable and will always grow true to type, as such they are one of the very few hybrids that I will bother growing.  Just like all the other perennial vegetables I grow, they just keep doing their thing year after year just as long as I do not eat all of them.

Tree onions are kind of like potato onions in that they are edible perennial onions that can divide underground.  The bulbs are a little larger than potato onions, and they do not divide as much underground, and the leaves are much larger than potato onions so they are easy to tell apart.  The underground bulbs of the tree onions normally grow to around the size of a ping pong ball.

They then grow small onion bulbs, called bulbils, on top of the flower stalk.  These small bulbils sometimes then send up a flower stalk of their own which grows more smaller bulbils.  This strain sometimes produces some real flowers as well, but they wither and drop quickly as all the energy is directed to the growing bulbils.

Unfortunately the flowers are only around briefly and only on a few flower stalks, I am always busy when they are around so I have not had a good look at them.  I would be curious to know if tree onions display cytoplasmic male sterility or if it would be possible to remove the bulbils and get the flowers to set viable seed.  If they could produce seed (even with a fair amount of intervention on my behalf) I would love to try and grow some out and see if I could produce some new varieties of tree onions.  But that is a project for Future Damo as I have a lot of other things going on that are more important at the moment.

The bulbils normally reach the size of a marble or a pea as the climate is so harsh here, I have seen them far larger when grown in more mild climates.  If the bulbils touch the soil they grow roots surprising fast.  When I have broken some of the bulbils off and planted them they always have roots by the following morning.  The roots of tree onions grow deep, far deeper than you would expect from such a small plant and certainly a lot deeper than any other onion I know of. 

Tree Onion bulbils just starting to grow

What Tree Onions are used for

The entire plant is edible, we use the bulbs in any recipe that calls for onion, if eaten straight away they can be a little insipid, if stored for a while they tend to taste a lot stronger.  The green parts can replace spring onions (we generally use the Everlasting onions for this though), and I am told that the bulbils are good pickled but am yet to try that myself.

The bulbils can be picked before they sprout and stored for many months, so far I dont bother doing this and just plant them when I find time, if I dont find time they plant themselves and I just transplant them when I get around to it.  The underground bulbs are meant to store for up to 18 months, I cant comment on this as I have not tried to store any because we just dig them up to eat as needed.  That is the beauty of perennial vegetables, many of them do not need to be stored and can simply be dug up, broken off, pulled out, or cut down and cooked when they are needed.

As well as being edible, tree onions are a garden curiosity that always attract comments from people who see them.  Children love to grow tree onions even if they have no desire to eat them.

Small tree onion bulbils, they grow far larger than this

Tree onions are very hardy!

Tree onions are very hardy little plants, they have survived drought, flood, severe heat, and hard frosts here and still gone on to produce a decent crop. They are pretty much impossible to kill by mistake.  Last year I lost most of my regular onions (as well as potato onions and a bunch of other things) to the drought and crazy heat, but the tree onions were happy, I put that down to their deep roots.  They can also be grown in pots, the roots seem to either go through the drainage hole into soil below, or the roots stop growing if the pot is off the ground and they they hit air.  If the pot is too small they tend to get very root bound and survive, but they do not often end up giving a large crop.  Even though they are very productive and hardy I dont think they pose a weed threat at all.  If you do not want any more it is simple to remove flower stalks, if you miss some and they happen to touch the soil and grow they are simply to pull up.  If any parts are left in the soil they do not tend to grow unless they have part of the base plate attached to a piece of bulb.

It is too dry for grass and weeds to survive, but tree onions go on strong

They are the cold hardiest of the onions and will survive in frozen ground for quite a long time.  As well as being productive little survivors they are unusual enough to be grown in a childrens garden.  I have taught children who do not like onions, or any vegetables, beg me to let them grow these purely as a fun oddity.  I see that as a great way to teach kids about growing food.  Tree onions are very forgiving and will survive and produce at least some food even in the most neglected childrens vegetable garden.

I first started growing tree onions when I was barely a teenager, I was fascinated by them, the thought of eating the underground bulb and replanting a small aerial bulb appealed to me.  Unfortunately I lost them when I left home, it took me a few years but I am glad that I was eventually able to track them down again.

I do sell tree onions from time to time on my For Sale page.

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Yacon Pineapple slaw

I love yacon, it is sweet and crunchy.  I mostly eat yacon raw, I just peel it, slice it thinly and eat it.  We have tried eating it a few other ways and most were good.  It tends to take on the taste of whatever it is in with so is reasonably versatile.  I have even used some of our yacon roots and water kefir grains to make yacon water kefir which was nice enough even though I prefer regular water kefir.

I normally leave the yacon in the soil until I want to eat it, if I happen to leave it for too long the plant simply gets larger and stronger and returns a larger crop next time.  Recently we have moved from our property into a rented house in town, as such I dug up a small number of yacon plants to grow as well as a heap of the tubers to eat.  Being so hot and dry out here the tubers do not last overly long.  I wanted to find a few new ways to eat yacon as I can not stand the thought of wasting it.  I looked on the internet and stumbled across yacon pineapple slaw.

Yacon growing in a pot - it belongs in the soil

I found a nice sounding recipe, then changed it a fair bit, and made it with a group of school children.  It was delicious and super easy to make.  I am putting the modified recipe here partly to share it and partly so that I have it saved somewhere so I can make it again.

Ingredients:
Yacon tubers, 1 large tuber or a few small ones
1 can of pineapple (or a real pineapple peeled and cut into small pieces)
The juice of 1 lime or a lemon (lemons are the poor cousin of the lime, but they are cheaper)
1 chilli (this can be left out)

Method:
1) Juice the lime (or its poor cousin the lemon)
2) Peel the yacon tuber
3) Grate the peeled yacon
4) Add lime juice to the grated yacon.  Mix together.  You have to do this as soon as possible otherwise the yacon will turn black
5) Cut pineapple into tiny pieces, add pineapple and any juice to the yacon
6) Remove the seeds from the chilli.  Cut up the chilli into tiny pieces
7) Mix it all together and serve

It really doesnt get any easier than this, and it tastes great.  It would be easy enough to add other things to this too as long as they are cut up tiny.  I think something crunchy and relatively tasteless such as shredded cabbage would bulk this out nicely.

Some of the more tropical and fruity tasting chillies could also work well in this as they would add taste but would still be crunchy.  There are a heap of tropical tasting chilli varieties, some have no heat while others are super hot, but few are available unless you import the seeds and grow them yourself.  One great place I have found for chilli seeds is pepper lover, they seem to love what they do and tend to include extra seed packets with orders.  Only some species can be posted to Australia so please do check the AQIS BICON database first.

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Growing notes for Perennial Vegetables - Plant Once Harvest Forever!

This is my growing notes page, for my "For Sale" page please click here.

I used to grow some amazing vegetables when I was a teenager, when I left home I lost most of them.  Slowly I am tracking them down again and now have a rather eclectic range of vegetables which I sometimes sell for other people to grow and enjoy.  Some of these vegetables are on the brink of extinction in Australia, others are far more common, regardless I have found them all to be valuable, productive and worth saving and distributing.

I offer to provide growing notes to people for the plants they buy from me, but after cut and pasting emails I think that making a list of growing notes here and linking to them is probably a better way of doing this.  I plan to put in some more growing notes when I have time, if there is anything that I have sold you that is not covered please let me know and I will email growing notes through to you.




How to Grow Water Chestnuts (Eleocharis dulcis)

Water chestnuts need frost free warm weather to grow properly.  While technically they are a tropical plant (just like the tomato) they can and do successfully grow in cool climates such as Canberra.  If you buy corms in the cooler months store them in damp soil somewhere dark and safe until Spring.  Please check on them from time to time to ensure they are not rotting, they should be firm to the touch.

When planting water chestnuts the biggest mistake people make is rotting them.  If you put the corms under water and they do not have any leaves above water they will drown and rot.  They need leaves to be out of the water as they use them like a snorkel.  I start them in a punnet of moist but not wet soil, just like any seedling.  I normally do this towards the end of the frosty months and keep it under cover somewhere as they do not like frost.  

When they have sprouted I put the punnet so the bottom half is under water and the top half is in the air.  This way they have a lot of water but the corm is still above the water level.  When they are about 10cm tall I pull them out of the punnet, separate them and plant them in their proper home which can be anything from a 10L bucket to a swimming pool.  I fill that with water so that only just the tips of the leaves are poking out of the water.  From there the plants get a lot taller and I keep that water level as constant as I can until they die down in Autumn.  After the water chestnuts have died down I let them dry off for a few weeks prior to harvest.


You will get a huge yield of corms from each one you plant, the further you space them apart the larger the corms they will produce.  I am told 1 to 2 square meters per corm is adequate, but I dont have that kind of space.  If you crowd them they will produce masses of tiny corms that are too fiddly to bother eating.  These tiny corms can be planted the next year and will produce huge yields of large corms if given the room to grow.  The better the soil the better they will grow.  I have put more comprehensive notes on how I grow them in buckets on my water chestnut page here.





How To Grow Perennial Leeks  (Allium ampeloprasum)

When posting these I trim the leaves, wrap in damp newspaper and put into a zip lock bag, I have found that by doing this the plants undergo less stress and grow faster.  They do sulk a little after being replanted, but if you give them a lot of water they pick up pretty fast. 

You will need to plant them deep to help them produce long white shanks and water them a lot to get them established.  Once established they will survive with minimal watering but will produce best with regular watering.  We normally plant about 10cm apart, if you plant them closer they will still grow but will not get as large, if you plant them further apart they will grow larger.  Frost is not a problem for these and if it gets too hot and dry they may die down to odd little bulbs and reshoot when it is cooler.

Harvest them when they are the right size for you, some people eat them when they are tiny others when they are large.  When you harvest they should have multiple babies growing that you can replace them with.  In the early years to help build up numbers you can cut off the roots with a few mm of shank attached, if you put this in a jar with a little water it will reshoot and can be replanted.  Sometimes they will send up a dozen shoots, other times only 3 or 4.

They do not often produce viable seed so I normally try to cut off the flower stalks so they can put energy into growing.  If they flower the pollen may cross with other leeks so be careful if seed saving other varieties (apparently the offspring will not be as good as either parent).  I have had viable seed produced once after floods and odd weather.  Those flower heads also produced tiny leeks on the flower stalk as well as seed.  I have planted both but have not had them long enough to see if anything useful results from them.  If either are exceptional I will keep them separate from the regular perennial leeks and offer them.


 
How To Grow Babingtons Leek (Allium ampeloprasum var babingtonii)

I have gone into a bit of detail on how to grow Babingtons leek in a different post.  They will grow much like any other leek.  The closer together they are planted the more competition they have and the smaller and slower they will grow.  As I have wanted them to grow as fast as possible I give them up to 20cm between each plant.  Planting them as close as 5cm between each plant will still give you a crop, but they may take a few extra years to flower and they may never develop thick shanks.



How To Grow Giant Russian Garlic (Botanically this is a type of leek and not a true garlic Allium ampeloprasum)

This plant is botanically a leek, but used in the same way as garlic, it will grow and produce well in areas where garlic normally will not survive.  Heavy frost is not a problem, nor is dry heat, or humid heat, this plant survives a lot of neglect but produces best when taken care of, weeded and well watered.  Frost is not an issue for these and it makes the taste stronger, and they tend to die down around Christmas so are not too water hungry.

Generally planted around the shortest day (June 21) and harvested around the longest day (December 21) but does fine if planted a few months either side of these dates.  I have planted cloves that are over 18 months old and they have performed just as well as the fresh cloves. 

I normally plant them about 3cm deep with the pointy end up (if planted upside down they may die), and about 15cm apart.  If you plant too shallow they will work it out, if they are too deep they may not have enough energy to grow to the light.  In the future if you cannot remember which way up to plant, plant them on their side and they will sort themselves out.

Russian garlic has a slightly different life cycle than regular garlic.  If you plant a single large clove, in a growing season it will generally grow into a large bulb made of 5 or 6 cloves with a heap of hard bulbils growing underneath the bulb as well as a large purple flower head made of hundreds of flowers.  The bulbils may or may not grow if planted; if they do grow they mostly grow into a large single clove about the size of a ping pong ball called a "round".  Small cloves also generally produce a single round instead of a large bulb.  If you plant the round it will usually grow into a normal clove of 5 or 6 large cloves.  I try to plant a mix of small cloves, large cloves and rounds each year.  With that said: some years we get mostly rounds, some years we do not get any.

Harvest plants after they die down around Christmas time.  The flowers are said to be sterile, but they are not.  I normally cut the flower head off after the plant dies down and leave it on the soil somewhere.  Out of the thousands of seeds each flower head produces I normally have 2 or 3 plants sprout up.  As far as seed saving goes they are not meant to cross with any other alliums so should not give you any problems.


 
How To Grow Yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius formerly Polymnia sonchifolia)

Yacon is by far my favourite vegetable, I have never met anyone who dislikes the taste of yacon, all kids love yacon!  It is easily grown in full sun or part shade, they grow from waist height to well over 2m tall depending on the year.  The more fertile the soil the better harvest you will get.  They can survive on low water but do best when given a lot of water.

We normally plant them 5cm deep and about 30cm apart, if you space them further you will get a larger crop.  They tend to shade things out that are growing under them, but you can easily grow a fast crop of something like beetroot under them while they are little and something like a climbing bean growing up them when they are taller if you would like.  They exude inulin and other sugars from their roots which feeds earthworms and helps nearby plants grow better.  We had very few earthworms when we moved here, but I could always find them under the yacon.

Here growing is dictated by frost, frost kills down the tops of the plants and I harvest the tubers a week or two later.  If you leave the tubers a week or so after digging they sweeten a lot, if you eat them too early they taste like a spicy carrot.  To harvest I carefully dig them up, they will have small purple crowns and large brown tubers that look similar to sweet potatoes.  The brown tubers are the part that is normally eaten, the purple crown is the part you replant to grow more yacon.  Most years you can divide each plant pretty easily.  I keep the purple crowns in a bucket of soil in the garage until spring, but they can survive in the ground if you mulch them and they are not frozen.

We normally peel the tubers and eat them raw, but they can be cooked in a variety of ways and go well in a fruit salad, a stir fry, or any dish that a water chestnut is used.  The tubers store well for a few months but can be frozen and kept for ever.  Frozen tubers are then peeled, chopped and eaten frozen to taste similar to a frozen banana custard!  If you let them thaw they turn black, slimy and look bad so we eat them still frozen.  All parts are edible, but we only eat the tubers, we skin the tubers as the skin has a resinous taste to it.  I suggest trying a little of the skin to see if you like it.  The leaves can be made into a tea that is meant to be good for diabetics and has a lot of other medicinal properties.


 
How To Grow Everlasting Onions (Allium cepa perutile)

These do not really grow a large bulb, they are more of a spring onion type of plant.  That being said if they are divided each year they can form a small bulb that is very similar to the French Shallots that are found in supermarkets.  Plant 10 to 15cm apart and plant reasonably deep, if they are not deep enough they will work it out for you.  Water a lot to settle them in, then water as you would any spring onion.  Over summer they may die down to a small bulb or they may keep growing, it depends on the climate.  The more fertile the soil the faster they grow, but once established they will survive dry and poor soil.  Frost is not an issue with these plants but it may slow their growth a little.

They do not often produce viable seed so I cut off the flower stalk when it appears so they can put more energy into growing and dividing.  If you dig them up and separate them each time they divide it does not take long before you have a large patch of them.  If you do decide to eat the small bulb you can replant the roots with a few mm of bulb attached and it should sprout and continue growing for you.  As with any of the perennial vegetables I sell, unless you want to kill them you will always have them growing and producing food for you.


 
How To Grow Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus)

We plant the tubers about 20cm to 30cm apart and 5 to 10cm deep.  Each tuber can produce well over 1kg of tubers in a regular season so they are very productive and valuable to have in the garden.  They grow 2 or 3m tall in a season and grow small sunflower like flowers that do not seem to produce viable seed.  A rich soil and plenty of moisture returns the greatest crop.  If you do not dig them up and eat them or divide them they tend to produce a crop of smaller tubers which are difficult to clean.

It is said that they will stay where you planted them forever as you always miss some tiny tubers when you dig them.  Even though we always miss some tubers I have found that I can easily get rid of them by pulling out any plants early in spring.  Guinea pigs and sheep love the stems and leaves and the high inulin content is meant to be good for ruminants.

I plant in winter or spring (or transplant in early summer) and let them grow until the tops are killed by frost.  Sometimes it takes a few frosts to knock them down fully.  They are sweeter after being hit by frost, but you can dig them up earlier if you want (or if you live in a frost free area).  You do not have to peel these to eat them, just scrub the soil off and either cook any way that you would cook a potato or eat the raw.

They do not store very well out of soil, they store in the crisper of the fridge OK but we find that digging them as needed is easiest and saves space in the fridge.


 
How To Grow QLD Arrowroot (Canna edulis)

Plant 30cm apart with the tip of the growing point at soil level, easy to divide to obtain more plants.  These things love water but do OK out here where it is very dry as long as I mulch or water them.  They grow 2 to 3m tall with large lush tropical looking leaves.  For such a tropical looking plant they survive on very little water.

Very easy to grow, extremely productive, mine do not flower here but I am told that they flower and produce viable seed in other places.  I grow them on the Western side of the vegetable garden to screen the hot summer afternoon sun, I have heard of people growing them in a semi circle under fruit trees to cut as mulch.

Frost kills the tops and leaves but the tubers survive and grow again in spring.  This will form a clump, to create new plants divide it with a spade as long as each part has a growing tip it should do fine.  I tend to separate them in winter and spring before they start to grow but they can be divided at any time of the year if you give them enough water.

Best to eat small tubers as the larger ones get a bit fibrous, leaves can be used in place of banana leaves in cooking or fed to animals.  Tubers can be made into arrowroot flour and is said to have the largest starch particles of any plant, you can even see the starch particles with the naked eye.  Very few people have eaten these in Australia or even recognise them as a valuable food plant, but they are cooked regularly in South America. 




How To Grow Comfrey   Read More..

OSU Blue tomato

I have grown a lot of interesting tomatoes over the past few years, one of the more interesting tomatoes I grew last year was the OSU Blue tomato.  I have had a lot of questions over it so thought I would write a blog post.

OSU Blue tomato

OSU Blue was one of the first high anthocyanin tomatoes, it was bred using conventional methods (ie NOT GM).  In case you were wondering "OSU" is an acronym for Oregon State University.

From what I have read this tomato was developed by Jim Myers, OSUs Baggett Frazier professor of vegetable breeding and graduate students Carl Jones and Peter Mes.  The genes involved in producing the OSU Blue tomato are Aubergine (Abg), Anthocyanin fruit tomato (Aft) and atroviolaceae (atv), these genes came from the wild species Solanum lycopersicoides, S chilense, S cheesemanii, respectively.

This means that, just like every other domestic tomato, the OSU Blue is a complex yet stable hybrid.  I am happy to say that this is a very stable hybrid just like many other types of tomato and seeds are simple to save and they grow true to type.  Being derived from the wild tomato species I had hoped it would be resistant to a bunch of diseases, at this stage I dont know if it is or not.

On a side note I rather like S cheesemanii but they are as rare as hens teeth in Australia, if you happen to be growing any please talk to me as I would love to get some seeds from you.

The anthocyanin is the same colour that is in eggplants and it is a rich antioxidant.  The fruit ripens to a dark blue/purple/black colour wherever sunlight hits it, anywhere the light does not hit ripens red.  If a leaf or calyx or whatever is on the fruit it gets a shadow of red.  If you were to put a sticker on the unripe fruit it remains red underneath allowing for all sorts of sillyness such as spelling out the names of your kids one letter per tomato.

OSU Blue Tomato, not overly large

 The plants grow and look much like any other tomato plant.  They are indeterminate and grow a regular leaf, the flowers are yellow and much the same as any other tomato.  The leaves and stems may take on a little purple colour if the temperatures are low and the light intensity is high.  When the days get too hot the plant does not colour up as much.  The fruit takes on more colour with low temperatures and high intensity light.  People who grow these to sell seeds on Ebay and such use grow lights to get the fruit to take on more dark colour.  The colour seems to be variable even on the same plant, my plants grew a range of dark to super dark fruits.

The fruit are small, but not too small, about 4cm across.  The dark colour is mainly concentrated in the skin and a little in the flesh just under the skin.  The flesh remains red and the seeds look much like any other tomato seeds.

OSU Blue

OSU Blue with some skin removed

One question I get about the OSU Blue tomato is about the taste.  If you read about any of the high anthocyanin tomatoes on the Oregon State University web page they sound like they taste absolutely terrible.  In reality they taste ok,  certainly not the greatest tasting nor the worst tasting.  If I had to choose one word to describe the taste it would be "underwhelming".

They tasted slightly better than an average store bought tomato.  Tomatoes from the shops are pretty dreadful at the best of times so this is not a glowing review.  If you are expecting a great tasting tomato because it is home grown then you will be disappointed, other than that they are ok.  It does taste better than other tomatoes I have grown such as apollo (or possibly roma) so are not all that bad.

They lacked any real depth of flavour, they were not very sweet and were not very sour.  They were not overly insipid which was a positive, but they really didnt make a memorable impression on my taste wise.  I have certainly eaten a lot worse tasting tomatoes.

Unripe OSU Blue tomatoes

The blue colour starts long before the fruit is ripe, the unripe tomatoes look very nice while you wait for them to ripen and become edible.  The plant itself is nothing spectacular, it does not crop all that heavily and is not overly robust.  That being said it was not a weak plant and did return a reasonable yield in far less than ideal conditions.

I saved a reasonable amount of seed from my plants and do plan on growing this variety again.  I have a few breeding plans and would love to incorporate the colour into a better tasting, higher yielding variety.  I have seen some people use this to breed a great tasting tomato that has the black/blue skin but is yellow on the inside, I have also read about someone who grew tomatoes that were red and had dark stripes like a tiger.  Lots of fun.  There are many options and I only have so much space/time to pursue them.  We will be moving to town  shortly so I may not be allowed to grow many vegetables for a while.

I have also been asked how they got into Australia.  I have no idea how this variety found its way to Australia, it was bred after they closed the doors on the importation of tomato seeds.  Perhaps a university or the CSIRO imported them legally and they leaked out from there, perhaps some private grower or a sneaky large seed company imported them on the sly and was able to evade quarantine (please do not try this).  Perhaps someone or some company payed a small fortune to get the right tests done in order to legally import them.  The person who I got the seeds from initially received them unsolicited from another grower and asked no questions.

I guess I will never know how they got into the country, I also dont particularly care.  Now that they are here I can grow them, distribute them and use them in all kinds of tomato breeding projects.

Read More..

Perennial Annual Vegetables For Sale in Australia

We have sold our lovely property, have moved to town and are in the process of  moving again.  I will not be able to post any plants for a while (but I should still be able to answer questions that people have).  When I am able to sell perennial vegetables and seeds again I will update this page.



This is my For Sale page, for notes on how to grow perennial vegetablesplease visit here.

From time to time I sell vegetable and herb plants and/or seeds, some of which are so rare that I do not know of anywhere else in the country that is selling them.  I only sell things that I have grown on the property here and I only grow plants that I think are amazing in some way or another.  Most of these plants are heirlooms, some have even been in my family since before I was born, while others have only been with us a few years and have proven worthy.  All of my seeds are pure and not crossed, they can all be grown open pollinated and I do not and will never grow or sell any GM plants or seed.  I can only sell some plants in their correct season; other plants can be sold all year.  Most people live too far from me to pick them up, unlike most plant and seed sellers I post these out at cost.  I post plants on Monday or Tuesday after payment has cleared, I only post Monday or Tuesday so that plants are not stuck in the post office over the weekend.

We are not certified organic and never will be as I do not use any of the organically certified poisons and fertilizers that most organic farms use and do not want to be associated with the use of such so-called “organic” poisons.   Many of the organic poisons can be worse for you than the synthetic ones.  Some such as rotenone, have been linked with Parkinsons disease and are banned in most countries in the world, yet they formed the backbone of organic farming in Australia for decades.

Instead of using organic or conventional poisons I control pests with integrated pest management (IPM) principles.  Basically IPM uses predator insects, spiders and other animals such as poultry to control pest insects.  I believe that IPM is far safer for my children and better for the environment than commercial or organic farming in every respect.

I plan to put links to growing information for each of these plants on this page.  If I have not done so and you order something please do not hesitate to ask me and I will email you growing notes.

No plants to Tasmania or Western Australia at this stage due to domestic quarantine, sorry.

If you would like to order or have any questions please contact me via the contact form on the lower right hand of this blog.


Organic Heirloom Vegetable Seeds - mostly not perennial but certainly worth growing these

Immali Corn (Zea mays) prototype.  A very early release of a beautiful and delicious sweet corn.  I have created this amazing variety myself, the colours are not changed during cooking (we ate the cob in the photo).  Produces 2 to 6 cobs of super sweet corn per plant.  This variety is not yet entirely stable so please do not save seeds yet.  Corn will cross pollinate with other varieties of corn so you may have some yellow seeds if someone is growing yellow corn near by   $5 per packet of about 20 seeds

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