My Ideal Vegetable Garden

Fresh fruit and vegetables are so much better than shop brought ones, and cheaper too (spinach is a perfect example). Working the garden is also great exercise! I grew up eating produce from a garden my dad maintained, and from fruit trees he cared for (as well as eggs from our chickens and the occasional chicken, too). I know that it's not impossible to grow a large majority of the produce a family needs - it just takes time and effort.

If I had the space and the time to grow all the veggies I wanted, my vegetable garden would ideally include:

• beetroot (you can use the leaves in salad, too)
• tomatoes (large and tiny tims)
• cucumber
• zucchini (just 2 plants!)
• pumpkin and squash
• spring onions
• leeks
• onions
• lettuce (iceberg and loose leaf varieties)
• spinach
• bok choy
• capsicum
• chili
• broccoli
• cauliflower
• garlic
• carrots
• peas (snow peas, green peas, sugar snap peas)
• beans (green beans, scarlet runner beans)
• rainbow chard (the rainbow bit is very important)
• corn

I've never grown sweet potatoes, but if it turns out that they're less backbreaking to grow than normal potatoes I might allow them on the list.

NOT: brussel sprouts.

I would also want to grow things like sunflowers (beauty and seeds), strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackcurrants. I would want an apricot tree, as well as plum, nectarine, peach and cherry trees. 

I would love to have a bay tree (which could be a shade tree or kept small in a pot) and a herb garden filled with rosemary, thyme, mint, chives, parsley, coriander, marjoram, dill, sage, basil (for caprese salads) and more.

I think I'm going to have to hire a gardener.

At the moment, in my nearly non-existent garden, I have mint, thyme, lemon thyme, marjoram, rosemary, lemon balm and a nearly dead sage (it's too cold for it here), toadstools (not good) and a giant, ugly, useless bush.

Kathy xxx