The Philosophy of Slow Vegetable Gardening

By Peter Hadley

This book is my story about developing several high-yielding vegetable beds in my backyard.

The book provides a description and pictures of my vegetable garden beds, the crops I grow, and my tried and tested techniques for turning poor soil into productive vegetable beds. I also explore reasons why increasing numbers of people are growing their own vegetables. In the last chapter, I’ll provide you with a guide to growing your own vegetables all year round based on my experiences of gardening.

Growing your own is a small step towards reducing your carbon footprint but it is something that is within your control. When you grow your own vegetables, you reduce your vegetable ‘food miles’ to zero.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harry Maxwell Publications
• Release date: Jul 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9780980815924

Peter Hadley

I am an Australian author living in Canberra. I write historical fiction and books about achieving self-sufficiency in a suburban vegetable garden. I have published three books: Return to Rabaul – an epic story about Australians in WWI and WWll; The Philosophy of Slow Vegetable Gardening - about turning my back yard into a sustainable self-sufficient vegetable garden; and Ten Vegetables for Self-Sufficiency. I also write crime novels under the pen name PM Wells. The first novel in a proposed series 'Dark Intentions' was published in 2012. I published the second novel, Twisted Desires in 2014. Both novels are set in Canberra and star crime solving duo criminologist Mike Bales and private investigator Kate Watkins.

Book preview

The Philosophy of Slow Vegetable Gardening

by

Peter Hadley

Published by Harry Maxwell Publications at Smashwords.

Copyright 2011 by Peter Hadley

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Return to Vegetable Gardening

Chapter 2: Growing Your Own

Chapter 3: My Vegetable Garden

Chapter 4: Achieving Self-Sufficiency

Chapter 5: Your Guide to Vegetable Growing

Chapter 1: Return to Vegetable Gardening

This book is about how I turned a large part of my backyard into a productive vegetable garden that provides my family with an all year round supply of fresh, chemical-free vegetables.

Anyone can use my simple methods for developing high yielding vegetable garden beds.

It cost me less than a few hundred dollars to develop my garden beds using recycled pine logs, sleepers and fence palings for garden edgings, mulch, weed mat and newspaper. For this small outlay, I estimate I am saving $2,000 a year by growing my own.

Although saving money is an incentive to grow my own, the health benefits from working in my garden far outweigh the savings. For me, vegetable gardening is more than producing vegetables for consumption. I have discovered the benefits of slow vegetable gardening where I spend as much time appreciating and savouring my vegetable garden as I do working in it. It is a whole of life philosophy based on nature. In my world, nature is all there is.

Slow vegetable gardening is the practice of following local and seasonal growing cycles in the way I plant and cultivate my vegetables. I plant all year round, and harvest from my vegetable garden every few days. In winter, I plant spinach, kale, lettuce, onions and snow peas, in spring I plant silver beet (or Swiss chard as Americans and Europeans call it), lettuce, pumpkin, zucchini, potatoes and tomatoes. In summer, I plant potatoes, beans, and silver beet and in autumn, won bok (Chinese cabbage), silver beet and lettuce. Planting over the whole year increases the amount of time I observe and appreciate my vegetable garden.

So why did I turn my backyard into a productive vegetable garden?

A few years ago, I began working from home. Spending many hours a day hunched over my laptop, I wanted to do something that gave me a break from work, allowed me time to think, and provided me with exercise in the fresh air. With a large backyard, vegetable gardening was the ideal choice. Many years before, I had cultivated vegetables in the backyard. The soil in my backyard was full of rocks, and contained high levels of clay. I threw in dolomite and lime to break up the clay, and built a couple of garden beds, dug in manure and planted silver beet, lettuce, peas, potatoes, carrots and cabbages. I learnt a lot through trial and error. In the first few years, I achieved good yields.

My children had their own little garden beds, growing snow peas and lettuces. They learnt how to grow vegetables from seeds to mature plants, learnt about the seasons, pest control, and the fun of eating snow peas fresh off the vine.

Over the years, the pressure of work and study reduced the amount of time I could spend gardening, so I covered the beds with weed mat, planted a few scrubs and forgot about growing vegetables. For a time,