Ep 5: w/ Natalya Giffney | Talking what you need to know to start food gardening in metro SA

With spring being prime planting time, this episode will feature food gardening.  We'll be chatting with expert food gardener and educator Natalya Giffney from Green Adelaide. Tune it to find out why food gardening is all the rage now,  and how to easily get started, even with no yard, to save money on your grocery bill!

Welcome to another episode of the Green Adelaide Podcast. We are metro SA’s first environmental industry podcast.

We’re your insider scoop on all things cool, green, and wild in metropolitan South Australia.

This podcast is for those who want or have a career in SA’s environmental industry. 

We feature the experts, including the leaders and ecologists to the planners and marketers to chat the people, projects, and news of SA that you, our enviro-listeners, must know about.

I’m your host Melissa Martin and I’m the Communications Manager at Green Adelaide who loves red-tailed black cockatoos.

Learn about Adelaide's environment: greenadelaide.sa.gov.au

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Transcript

Natalya Giffney:

Tending to them is really lovely. It's beautiful going out in the morning with a cup of tea and watering the garden and really, it's all about the harvesting and the eating. There is the smug factor. Food does taste better when you've grown it yourself. There's nothing more exciting than at dinnertime going down and going, "Oh, I'll just see what little bits I can find," some herbs and some fresh greens and taking my bowl. And I'll just forever look at what I've harvested and just feel so, I don't know, I just feel good.

Melissa Martin:

Welcome to another episode of the Green Adelaide Podcast. I am your host, Melissa Martin, and I'm the communications manager at Green Adelaide, who loves red-tailed black cockatoos. We are Metro SA's first and only environmental industry podcast, where your insider scoop on all things cool, green and wild in Metropolitan, South Australia. Before we jump in, remember, subscribe to our podcast for new episode alerts.

For this episode, we'll be talking about food and edible gardening, why do it, how to do it, and demystifying that it's not that hard. And we'll do it with expert and project support the education team at Green Adelaide and Natalya Giffney. Welcome, Nat.

Natalya Giffney:

Hi Mel.

Melissa Martin:

Thanks for coming on today. First, like all our episodes, we're going to dive in getting to know you a little bit more and your career and journey to today. So to kick off, can you tell us a little bit about your career journey?

Natalya Giffney:

Yeah sure, Mel. So my background is actually in public health and I came to public health because my mom was a nurse and my grandma was a nurse and my uncle was a nurse and I considered nursing until I discovered that you could actually work in a career that was all about stopping people from becoming ill in the first place. And I learnt about public health and health promotion and I just thought this sounded so logical. It made sense. Why work in a field helping people who are already sick when I could work in a field that was really about preventing illness and preventing sickness? And I'm really glad I chose that because all of my work and roles that I've done since have really had this public health lens. And so now that I'm in sustainability and here with Green Adelaide, I really see the health connections.

Health in its broadest sense is so much more than the absence of disease. It's about a positive state of mental, physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. And it's absolutely impacted by everything from our air quality, our water quality, our nature connections through to the food that we eat and how the voice that we have and just all of the things that make us happy, healthy, connected citizens. And so I got into public health and I've had lots of great roles in that space, but my transition point for me was one day reading this article about how soil microorganisms are connected to our mental health and wellbeing. And the more I started looking into this, the more passionate I got about soil. And if you've ever met someone who's a bit of a nutter for soil, we all get very excited when we start talking about it because there's just this incredible cosmos and ecology that's happening just in one teaspoon of healthy soil.

And it's amazing how science is increasingly really coming to understand that our bodies, our own microbiome, which is the microorganisms that live on us and within us, are really connected to the soil and the food that we eat. And what I mean by that is biodiversity of microorganisms is essential for healthy soil, healthy plants, and healthy humans. One of the key ways that our microbiome becomes more or less diverse is based on which microorganisms we come into contact with.

So it just really started to make sense for me that humans have become more and more disconnected from the soil. We don't touch it and play with it and walk on it and sit in it in the ways that we did for thousands of years. And so I went down this path of learning about soil and compost and food production, and I've ended up taking on some great volunteer roles and landing here at the Department of Environment and Border in Green Adelaide in an education role.

Melissa Martin:

What type of volunteering roles did you take on?

Natalya Giffney:

So I helped to coordinate the Unley Repair Cafe, and it's this fabulous service where volunteers come together and we fix things for the public. So people might bring in lamps or chairs or toys or jewelry or really anything that's broken. And we have electrical fixers, a jewelry fixer. We even have someone who specializes in dolls and teddy bears to fix things. And I also volunteer with Permaculture South Australia, which as someone who's a food grower and a food educator and a compost educator ...

Melissa Martin:

So you went from health education and then while you're working in health education, you just are volunteering with those groups, educating in health compared to educating in the environment sector. Is there a difference in who you're talking to?

Natalya Giffney:

Yeah, good question. My background was working mainly with teachers and students in schools. And then now in this role, I'm getting to work more with council partners. Yeah, it's a bit of a difference in who I've been speaking to. But the similarity that I see between health and education, we're largely trying to work with people in behavior change. We're not really trying to make people behave in a different way. It's up to them, but we're wanting to inspire and support people to maybe understand how they could be doing something differently, which might have better outcomes for themselves and others. So I see that kind of similarity there in health and sustainability.

Melissa Martin:

How did you move on to being more of a food, edible gardening expert that you are today in how you educate about food gardening? How does that fit into it?

Natalya Giffney:

Yeah, so I actually went to Urrbrae as my high school, and so I learned to compost in year eight. We had a project where we had to have our own little patch, and that's where I first probably really got into food gardening, and it was great. We were supported and our project was to have a patch and we could sell the produce and we made money. This was great and had all these veggies and I just thought this was fabulous. And my mom had been a grower, so I had had some experience of eating fresh corn off the cob and fruit trees and peaches. And I loved that. We probably didn't grow huge amounts of our food, but enough that I really remembered these beautiful tasting fresh produce. So it was always there. And then I wasn't living in any houses for a while where I had that space, but it was a desire that I had that I just knew that it was important for my health and wellbeing to grow food.

But it was probably that learning about the soil microorganisms that really made me go from, this is something I want to do to something that I am now only going to choose a house to live in if I've actually got the space to do this and I'm actually going to go out of my way to really learn about this. And I think having a background in education and working with adults and running workshops, which I've always enjoyed, it was just a natural flow on that. The more I got into this, the more that I was going to take opportunities to speak to people about composting and veggie garden growing.

Melissa Martin:

Was it last year or the year before? I think when we started with Grow It Local, and I'm not a food gardener, and I joined that challenge and I did grow spinach. I did give up a little bit of the way through, but I did grow them. And I remember talking to you and you explained it in the most plain English way to me that just made it easier. The way you just chuck the seeds in, do this, just a little bit on the top and just leave it. It was just the way you explained it was very simple and easy.

Natalya Giffney:

Yeah, and I love that you do that because it's always such a good reminder to me. I think as a food grower, you do forget because something, it gets so much easier the more that you do it, which is kind of like cooking. I think if you've never cooked anything before, even just how do you hold the knife and how do you do this? It's all a bit overwhelming, but you develop the skills and before you know, it's so much easier and it's really refreshing and great to be reminded that some people are completely starting from scratch. And that's really what the Grow It Local program, which I really love being a part of here, is about. Supporting those people who want to grow food but just have no idea how to get started.

Melissa Martin:

I think of your skillset as an educator, similar to communications in a way that you followed your passion of the environment and sustainability, and used your skills in education and used it on that topic, which is what communications does as well, uses their skills to communicate different topics. So I love how you channeled your passion, but used your skills that you already had to get into that field. What do you wish you knew before you started your career in the environment industry?

Natalya Giffney:

Even this idea of career has never been something that I've really embodied. And I think for some reason I've always thought that the idea of a career was for people who were maybe a journalist and they were a journalist for life and they had this career in one field. And because I've gone here and I've come here and then I've side-stepped over there. And while for me that's been an incredibly enriching way to move through my career, I guess I'll call it a career, I've never really understood that that's what a career is.

So maybe knowing that it can be really great to move across fields because we bring with us a different way of looking at things and a different way of understanding things and sometimes a deeper and richer connection between some different fields. So I think we need people that just absolutely become huge experts in one area. And I think we do need people who maybe move around as well so that we can break down the silos and have different ways of looking at things.

Melissa Martin:

What would you define as success in a day for you?

Natalya Giffney:

On more a day-to-day basis, then you're probably right, it is the aha moments. It is seeing people really get something and get something in a way where you see the penny drop. And I know as an educator, what we do isn't linear. You can't just run a workshop or provide some information and then someone has it and then they act on it. It just doesn't happen that way. We're often one piece in the journey of information and learning, and it often is about value change. We have to value something in the water-sensitive urban design space.

Community have to really value and understand that the small actions that they can make on their property can actually impact the quality and health of the creeks that might not be visible to them. They have to understand that how every drop of water that soaks into the land and can nourish their microclimate and ecology on their land actually helps contribute to a cooler neighborhood and city. So we're trying to help people develop values and that can be slow and it can be messy.

Melissa Martin:

Cool. Now we'll go into the next part, which is our rapid fire round. If you've listened to other podcasts, you know that we go into this round just to change the topic and take us out of the safe zone of the environment and just talk about some random facts about you to get to know you differently. So I'll ask 10 random questions and they're pretty much, what's your favorite thing? What would you want to do? Or this or that type of questions. And just say the first thing that comes to your mind.

Natalya Giffney:

Okay. I did not know this was happening. Okay, hit me with it.

Melissa Martin:

Yeah, get ready. All right. What's your favorite month?

Natalya Giffney:

January. I love new beginnings.

Melissa Martin:

Where did you go on your last holiday?

Natalya Giffney:

Ireland. My partner's Irish.

Melissa Martin:

Where did you grow up?

Natalya Giffney:

In Brompton, in Adelaide.

Melissa Martin:

What time do you usually wake up in the morning?

Natalya Giffney:

6:00 AM.

Melissa Martin:

Describe your style in one word?

Natalya Giffney:

Relaxed.

Melissa Martin:

Cool. What is one thing you regret spending money on?

Natalya Giffney:

Clothing.

Melissa Martin:

What dish do you cook best?

Natalya Giffney:

Oh, I love cooking. I don't know how to describe it.

Melissa Martin:

Is it a ...

Natalya Giffney:

One of my signature dishes are these beautiful big pasta shells with a cashew cream cheese/spinach filling in a tomato sauce and it's really yummy.

Melissa Martin:

Oh, nice, nice. Who is your favorite Disney character?

Natalya Giffney:

I don't know, Cinderella popped into my mind. I liked Cinderella when I was a child. I thought she was pretty good.

Melissa Martin:

What kind of landscape would you like to live in?

Natalya Giffney:

Oh, one with amazing water sensitive urban design and growing food and beautiful trees. And truly that's called a greener wilder.

Melissa Martin:

And what were you afraid of as a child?

Natalya Giffney:

Probably speaking in public and having my voice recorded.

Melissa Martin:

I wish someone would ask me that question because I've got my answer and it's ET who scared me a lot.

Natalya Giffney:

You were scared of ET?

Melissa Martin:

Very much, very much. Cool, thanks. Now that's end of our rapid fire round. All right, so now we'll dive into food gardening or edible gardening. Why do we call it food or edible? Does it matter?

Natalya Giffney:

Yeah, that's the same thing.

Melissa Martin:

Cool. So food gardening's a great way to give you fresh, healthy food at your fingertips. And it's also great in the cost of living crisis at the moment of how you can make things at home at a cheaper cost. So Nat, before we really dive into some bits and pieces into it, what do you like about edible or food gardening?

Natalya Giffney:

Everything from the process of starting and tending and harvesting and eating food. So I love being outside, getting the sunshine, physically moving, growing things, watching them grow. It's so exciting when your seeds germinate and you've got your little plants growing, tending to them is really lovely. It's beautiful going out in the morning with a cup of tea and watering the garden. But really, it's all about the harvesting and the eating.

There is the smug factor. Food does taste better when you've grown it yourself. There's nothing more exciting than at dinnertime going down and going, oh, I'll just see what little bits I can find some herbs and some fresh greens and taking my bowl and I'll just forever look at what I've harvested and just feel so, I don't know, I just feel good. You feel lucky and food tastes better. So yeah, really it is about the end. It's all good, but the end bit is my favorite bit.

Melissa Martin:

Right. And so on a practical sense, what veggies or fruit would you recommend someone to start with if they were interested in doing some food gardening?

Natalya Giffney:

I guess there's two things that often people say, and I agree with them. One, grow something that you really love to eat. And that might sound silly, but just think if there's something like basil. If you love basil, grow basil because if you enjoy it, you're going to be really excited when it gets time to eat it. And the second thing is, if you like your leafy greens do grow your leafy greens. Leafy greens will have some of the highest residues of pesticides and herbicides and things.

So as far as being able to grow your own organic leafy greens, and that's a nice healthy option, but they're often the easiest to grow. They don't need as much sunshine as things that produce fruit, and you can pick them daily. So if you grow something like a rainbow chard or some basil or parsley or lettuce, depending on what varieties you pick, most of them you can just go out and just take what you need for that meal. So you're picking things and chopping them up within five minutes and eating just incredibly healthy food that's just full of antioxidants and it's crunchy and tastes really good so there's no wastage. So yeah, leafy greens are good.

Melissa Martin:

My grandparents who was a [foreign language 00:16:45] because my grandparents are Polish, she had a big backyard and she would grow her stuff all the time. And I always love her strawberries, but in my head I've always thought to grow things you need to have a big backyard and a lots of space to do that. Do you need a big backyard to grow things?

Natalya Giffney:

No. There's lots of things you can grow in pots. There's pros and cons. If you're growing in pots, they will dry out quicker than if you're growing in the ground, so they can take a little bit more care, but you can absolutely pretty much grow everything in a pot. I'd recommend getting some bigger pots so that you can hold more water and not dry out as quick. But a lot of people do amazing things in just small spaces. When I walk down the street and I see all these front yards, empty front yards, I just think about all the food we could be growing.

For me, I'm about to buy a house with my partner. And one of the key things is when we look at a house, as I try to imagine, has this got good sun in the front yard for me to have my vegetable garden, I want to bring down those fences. I want to grow food because people love stopping by and chatting when you grow things out the front and they want to know what's that and this, and before you know it, you've met half your street and can share food.

Melissa Martin:

I guess some people may feel the look of a vegetable garden might look a little bit ugly.

Natalya Giffney:

True. True.

Melissa Martin:

So what are your thoughts around that? I guess people have this idea of nature having to be beautiful in a way that it's very maintained and very neat and tidy. What do you feel, how do you think, what do you think would help people work through this?

Natalya Giffney:

Look, you are right, absolutely. And I'm not the person to ask because I think vegetable gardens the most beautiful thing to look at ever. Just like I think native gardens are beautiful as well, and I know that that's something that people who have this idea of a native garden being a messy garden. I think in time, people will ... what's in fashion changes. So the cottage English garden front garden that's quite popular and still is in a lot of households.

For some people that looks lovely. For me, it just looks really sparse and empty. And I'm just thinking, where's the ecology? You're not supporting wildlife. We're not using this beautiful space that we have. Grass does cool our houses to a degree, but not as much as some other plant communities that we could have in our front yard. So I think there's nothing you can really do except just know that in time what's fashionable and what's seen as normal will change. And the more that we have native verges and wildlife strips and front yards with more diversity and the more that people have food growing, I think people will just come to accept it and see it as normal, and hopefully see it as beautiful.

Melissa Martin:

We talked a lot about veggies. For some reason, in my head I'm thinking fruit's harder to grow. Is that true?

Natalya Giffney:

I haven't found that. So fruit trees, it's really about location, location, finding a spot where they're going to get enough sun. Anything that produces a fruit needs quite a lot of energy from photosynthesis from the sun. And so yeah, you can't have a fruit tree in 50% shade, it's probably not going to do too well. But as long as you get them in a good spot and you look after the soil, pretty much.

So yeah, I've never found that fruit trees are harder. I think fruit trees are just an incredible giver. I had maybe 3-400 mandarins on my mandarin tree this year. It has a big year one year and then a smaller year the next year. But when it's having a big year, there's just so much fruit we can just give away and eat mandarins for a good couple of months. And it's absolutely beautiful, such a wonderful thing to have in our yards, to be able to benefit from that ourselves and to share that with our friends and family.

Melissa Martin:

And still pots, we can put fruit trees in pots.

Natalya Giffney:

You can put fruit trees in pots. So just check on the variety. So I'm not an expert on all the different types, but there would definitely be some that would be better suited to a pot. And that's when it's really good idea to speak to some people who really know about the different species. But absolutely, I see lots of people with the half wine barrels because people really like that look. And having some of the, maybe a dwarf variety of some citrus or something like that, it can work really well.

Another thing that's really interesting if you have a small space is you can actually graft multiple species onto one tree. So you could have a lemon lime, an orange tree, so you could have multiple citrus all on the same tree. So you might be, "I don't need a whole tree of oranges, I'm going to have some different varieties." I think there's the world record for the most number of species on one tree is 17, all on this one tree.

Melissa Martin:

How do you graph though?

Natalya Giffney:

Yeah, so there's different techniques. It was one of the things I got to learn at when I was there, but it's not a skill that I've practiced. And so yeah, there's different ways when we take one plant and graft it onto another. There's different tools you can get, but there's some really great educators in Adelaide who run workshops on this. The Rare Fruit Society are really amazing and would run some really great grafting workshops and you would be able to pay for some expert gardeners to come and do that for you at your house if that's something that you weren't interested in spending the time to learn the skills yourselves. But yeah, there'd be some different ways you could get that done.

Melissa Martin:

And is there a best time of year to do your food gardening?

Natalya Giffney:

So now is probably the most exciting time to do food gardening because there's more things you can plant now pretty much than at any other time of year. So that's springtime, there's just so many options, but you can grow all year round. There's not a time where you can't, right in the middle of winter, I might put some carrots in though everything will grow really slow. There's not much light there, not much photosynthesis capacity for our plants. And it can be a time where you have to really stay patient and know that things will get there. But the other three months of the year, definitely you can be planting things all the time.

Melissa Martin:

And for those people who are new to it and they just need the quick win so they can keep going. What vegetable or fruit would you suggest that they pop in and can see some results pretty quickly?

Natalya Giffney:

Yeah, that's a good question. I would go back to what I said earlier with the leafy greens. I would probably get some established seedlings. If you're wanting quick win, get some plants that have already been growing for four or six weeks. Plant those seedlings and so then you can be harvesting them much sooner. And I would be going my lettuce and rainbow chard and kale and those leafy greens because one really great value for money, you can keep picking from them. A lot of the lettuce varieties, you don't pick the whole lettuce, you just go out and take leaves around the outside. So if you're making a burger or you're making a salad, you just go and get fresh leaves as you need them. There's just no fresher way to do it and no wastage. It really, really is a great way to do it.

And herbs; for me, when I see a tiny, tiny bit of herbs in this plastic container for $3 at the supermarket, I cannot bring myself to buy, I'll just go without the herbs. If I just won't do it. I'll always grow as many herbs as I can because they're the flavor punch. They save money, they really add the interest to our food. And so if you like coriander or parsley or basil or thyme or oregano, planting your herbs absolutely is an essential. And yeah, quick, easy win, you can use them, you can keep picking from them and make your food taste good.

Melissa Martin:

Cool. Now we are going to jump into some random food gardening questions that we got from one of our food gardening campaigns last year. And so these questions are from just members of the public who contacted us through social media or just direct email and just seeing if you've got some answers to them. The first one is how do you keep caterpillars off your vegetables?

Natalya Giffney:

Okay, yep. Really good question. This comes up a lot. So I was a garden educator in some primary schools and we had some really large veggie gardens. It's probably the largest veggie gardens I've managed and looked after. And when the cabbage white butterfly, it's actually a cabbage white butterfly, not a moth. When that is in season, which seems to be more prevalent once or twice a year, that's spring and autumn.

It can absolutely decimate your seedlings and your plants really quickly. They love their brassica. So kales, they absolutely love brassicas. So your cauliflowers, your broccolis, your kales, and they can just decimate them. So when I worked with the kids, I would do lessons of, let's see, we can find the caterpillars and find the eggs and we would actually physically go out and remove them. If you've got a small garden, you can do that. And you need to inspect the leaves and actually learn what their eggs look like and just brush them off.

So if you have time, I've tried that strategy. When I've got at my home garden and I can't quite get out there intently every day, I tend to opt for the netting method. So as soon as you plant your brassicas, you need to basically do it the day you plant them. If you use a netting over your garden bed just to keep them out from laying eggs in the first place, then you absolutely will be safe. And it's only really the brassicas that I've found that I need to do that with. But sometimes I don't do that and I don't have any issues. And the research is really clear that insects are attracted to unhealthy plants. So you'll sometimes have three cauliflowers growing and one is just absolutely covered in some sort of aphid infestation or cabbage white butterfly infestation or the larvae and the others just don't get anything.

And it's really interesting to watch. They'll go for the sick plant and they'll eat it, and that's because plants have a whole range of different defense mechanisms. Some larva actually just can't metabolize the sugars of a healthy plant. So if your plants are healthy, that's the best line of defense. Again, just like us, when we have really healthy immune systems, we are able to deal with a whole lot of things. We can keep ourselves healthy. And so keep your plants healthy, make sure they get enough water, but not too much water. Make sure they get enough food but not too much food. And this is all the things that we learn being a gardener. It's just getting that right.

So in summary, how would I do it? I would use the net. If I'm having a lot of issues that they just cannot get in, then that always works. But be careful if one or two have laid some eggs before you put that net on, then they will mature. The lava will hatch, they'll start eating things, they'll reproduce and before you know it, they all get eaten underneath. So it only works if you get in there early. Some people use some homemade sprays with garlic and chili and things that can work, but as soon as the leaves experience rain or top watering and that will get washed off. So I offer just trying to make sure my plants are really healthy and happy so that they can just deal with it themselves.

Melissa Martin:

And just a very general question, but how do I not kill my plants?

Natalya Giffney:

Yeah, okay. So plants need water. Generally, if they die immaturely, it's because they ran out of water. Plants might struggle, but it's generally water is the thing that they need. So using drippers, having mulch to stop the soil from drying out, and having a good watering regime is the most important thing, and then making sure our plants are getting sufficient food and actually has some good soil to grow in there. So if we start with some compost, we make sure they get enough water and then we give them some food along the way, some sort of organic slow release fertilizer, they'll be pretty happy.

Melissa Martin:

I feel like I heard someone talking about ... Maybe it was you, about you don't need the best soil, you can get the stock standard soil, which sometimes it's got too many nutrients to start off.

Natalya Giffney:

Oh yeah, that was me. And what I was talking about was if you are growing things from seed and you buy soil from a garden center that comes in a bag, we have an Australian certification and there's standard and premium. And premium means that it's had some sort of nutrients, often a blood and bone added to it, but actually too many nutrients actually can inhibit plant germination. So that means the percentage of seeds that germinate might be less if you're trying to grow them in a soil that's got a lot of nutrients. And so some people suggest, and it seems a really good strategy, is to actually germinate your seeds in a really low nutrient environment. And then once they've started growing, then start sprinkling on a little bit of slow release organic fertilizer.

Melissa Martin:

And how do I know if my soil is good?

Natalya Giffney:

A lot of people use home testing kits to see the pH of their soil. And so a lot of books and things will say that our soil needs to be quite neutral to grow vegetables, so around seven. But those home testing kits actually aren't that accurate if you are testing a soil that has a high organic content or generally biased to be more alkaline. And so people often think they've got a really alkaline growing medium, but it's actually just because they've got really good amounts of organic matter in their soil. I personally don't test my soil for pH, and I'm not saying it's a bad or wrong thing if people do it, most of the really good gardeners I know do do it. I don't bother. I just know that compost is essential. Plants need it, they love it, and I love making a really good quality compost at home and feeding that to my plants.

So how do I know if it's good? Any soil that you buy from a garden center might have the basic needs, might have some nutrients in there, but it will be devoid of life. You've got to build that life. And the way that life is built in soil, plants do most of the work. They photosynthesize, they use the energy of the sun to create carbohydrates, taking carbon from the atmosphere, and plants will give somewhere between 20 to 80% of the carbohydrates they've created to the microorganisms in the soil. So they're literally feeding the life of the soil.

Plants give a lot of it away to the soil. And the reason why they do that is because the soil and those microorganisms can give things back to them. So there's certain fungi that can mine minerals and there's certain bacteria that can make nitrogen available. And together the plants and the microorganisms build up a soil ecology. So plants build soil life, but we can help them by making sure there's good amounts of organic matter in the soil that will also feed that microecology. So if you don't know if your soil's good, chances are more compost is generally a good idea and growing things over time will help build up that life.

Melissa Martin:

And what do you think of those apps that you're supposed to take a picture of your plant and it analyzes it for you and tells you its problems? Have you ever used them or found any success with them?

Natalya Giffney:

No. Look, they feel a bit clickbait-y, to be honest. There might be some good truth in them and I shouldn't disregard something that I haven't really tried or looked into myself. But with houseplants, which a lot of those are, people just seem to over water their houseplants. It's the number one issue that people do is they're trying to care for their plants and think, oh, it's looking a bit sick, I better give it some more water. A lot of houseplants just love to be treated quite poorly, and not much water until their leaves look a bit droopy and then we give them some water. And then it's good to give them a really good drink. Some of them can go months without water.

Melissa Martin:

What are some suggestions of what people can do with their excess produce? So once they get into food gardening and it starts to flourish, like, "I've got all this produce," and they can't eat it all, what should they do with it?

Natalya Giffney:

I think they should make zucchini cake and bring it into the office and so we can all eat it. So yeah, if you start growing zucchinis and you haven't grown them before, if you've got a healthy happy plant, you'll have more zucchinis than you and your family and probably your neighbors know what to do with. And so I'm a big advocate of sharing. I use my buy nothing group to give things away, I pickle, I preserve, I bake. But I think when we grow produce, there's nothing more sad than not utilizing it.

We do sometimes have to go out of our way and especially if you have a fruit tree to be like, "Well, okay, I now have to make sure I harvest this." I've got friends that make these beautiful plum roll-ups every year because they just end up with so many plums that they don't know what to do with. So they stew them all and have this method for dehydrating them and there's things that you can do. So yeah, the pickling, fermenting and dehydrating can be really great strategies. But yeah, gift it away, it's a beautiful gift to give to people, whether that's in your office or your school or having a basket out the front or you can have an honesty store.

Melissa Martin:

And some of the questions that we get is around why didn't my particular plant grow in your fruit and you touched on it a bit earlier.

Natalya Giffney:

Yeah, I mean the only one that I'm really aware of, if a plant's not getting enough sun, so it just doesn't have enough energy, it doesn't have enough food in the soil, or too much. They're going to be your key things. Yeah. So too much nitrogen, bad. Read the label and I would always err on slightly less than slightly more.

Melissa Martin:

The topic can be as hard as you want it to be. You don't have to know all these things to get started. It can be as simple as you want it to be or as hard as you want it to be. And it's like any topic, as you get to know it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. But when you get started, it's really you put some seeds in a pot and just keep an eye on them for a bit. And you could grow some spinach, well I did. I grew some spinach, but some barely any attention on the spinach and it happened. I feel like sometimes you might forget that it's actually not that hard. You just got to know where to start and maybe don't pick a vegetable that is maybe a bit trickier to get going.

Natalya Giffney:

Yeah, absolutely. Just get started, try some things, have some success, have some failures. Know that even Sophie Thompson is a really big advocate for showing her failures and maybe even using, that's probably not helpful language to even call them failures, but sometimes things just don't go well. And especially as our climate is starting to have some different variations in weather and temperature, some things are going to get harder. But I really believe for people that grow food are more likely to become more aware of the cycles and climate and be more appreciative of the rain when we get it and have that understanding that the farmers need the rain and people just need to start and have a go.

I just think it's such an important thing to do for people who have an interest. And I know that people who often start with food growing often then learn about other things. And I love that we speak to people through Grow It Local and through Green Adelaide and our gardening campaigns about the role that native plants have with our food gardens, because our food gardens and our native plants are all part of an ecology. And it's always a little bit baffling to me that some people don't see food gardens as nature. Throughout human history, we have all eaten from the landscape. Our food is nature and has come from nature. It always has. So our food 100% is nature.

Melissa Martin:

Based on Adelaide's climate, is there any, from your experience, any maybe no-go fruits and vegetables that maybe don't start with based on our climate here, like bananas.

Natalya Giffney:

Some species of bananas apparently can grow here and I even know people who grow some mangoes and avocados, but you'd want to get the right species and find the right spot. Oh, no-go. I volunteered at some organic farms up on the Northern Rivers in lower Queensland. And all I know is up there and things just grow. They grow so easily, it's warm and there's lots of sunshine and it's just really easy. It's much harder to grow things down here.

But I'm trying to think of something that I saw up there. Thai basil, if you're going to grow basil, grow the sweet basil, that's really common. You'll have much better time with that. Unfortunately, sweet basil, I don't have a lot of success with. Yeah, nothing comes to mind as they completely don't grow, but I guess there'd be a lot of tropical fruits. But luckily our garden centers generally don't sell those things and you can't get those seeds. But just think anything that has a bit of a tropical feel to it, probably stay away from those, go for the things that are more Mediterranean.

Melissa Martin:

And that brings us to an end. Thank you to our special guest, Nat Giffney from Green Adelaide, who talked us through the ins and outs of food gardening and how to get started into it and all the bits and pieces that you need to know to grow food in metropolitan Adelaide. This podcast is your insider scoop on all things cool, green and wild in Metropolitan, South Australia. I'm your host, Melissa Martin. And remember, subscribe to our podcast for new episode alerts and I'll catch you right next ep, late next month. Bye.