The season has been a wash-out for zucchini but despite the rain Nev Sweeny harvested carrots, silverbeet, bok choy, capsicum, tomatoes, beans, corn and lettuce from his backyard in St Clair in Western Sydney last week.
He could have added sweet potato leaves and tubers, water chestnuts and a wide array of herbs and spices to the menu, but he’ll have to wait another few weeks for the chokos on the vine engulfing the orange tree near the back deck and for the butternut ripening on the fence.
Nev Sweeny in his garden in St Clair, Western Sydney.Credit:Robin Powell
Sweeney is in good company as a food grower: research by Greener Spaces Better Places in 2021 found that two out of three Australians grow something to eat. Many of those growers are new to edibles and if they are anything like Sweeney when he started out they are currently in the grip of glut. “Neighbours would shut the doors when they saw me coming by again with bags of zucchini!” he says.
Glut is a problem encouraged by seedlings sold by the punnet: few households can consume eight plants worth of zucchini, or deal with eight cauliflowers ripe at the same time. Even eight lettuces can be a stretch.
Sweeney evens out the peaks and troughs of harvest through a schedule of fortnightly succession planting that provides 80 per cent of the vegetables he and his wife Linda eat, year-round.
The process begins in the greenhouse. On the soggy afternoon I visited, the glasshouse held one punnet containing one each of broccoli, bok choy, cauliflower and cabbage; two varieties of lettuce and a couple of silverbeet. A second punnet was filled with leeks.
Further along the bench were a handful of little newspaper pots in which silverbeet and lettuce were growing on, having been pricked out from the punnets two weeks earlier. The potted seedlings were about to be planted out in the beds, the punnets were about to be planted into the little pots and fresh seed sown.
The beds themselves, 14 in all, are maintained by a “chook tractor”, with three chickens working over a harvested bed for two weeks, before being moved on to the next bed. Sweeney’s schedule requires his attention about half a day a fortnight, not counting time spent harvesting or watering.
Sweeney shares his sowing schedule on his website, Under the Choko Vine, as part of his project to share what he’s learned in more than 30 years of trying to live a more sustainable life. There’s great stuff on the website, but don’t miss the chance to quiz him in person – about off-grid life, solar ovens, reducing waste, better use of water in the garden, as well as growing food – when he opens the garden as part of Sydney’s Edible Food Trial on the weekend of March 26-27.
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