Growing your own vegetables is good for the budget, creates a healthy, home-based hobby – and brings social rewards if excess produce is shared with friends.
Simon Wong vouches for all these benefits, following his foray into gardening this summer.
The former Aucklander, who moved to Marlborough to work on the Express, says he had never given much thought to where or how vegetables and fruit were cultivated, much less considered personally tilling the soil.
Then he moved to Blenheim, and the house he started flatting in last September already had a hothouse and a patch of land where silverbeet and asparagus grew.
"Nobody ate the silverbeet and it had gone to seed," he said.
So had the asparagus.
By mid to late-October he started making garden plans.
Reducing the flat's grocery bill was the first good reason for growing vegetables, he says.
"And I just wanted something to do."
Flatmate Anna Hewson liked his idea and she and her parents, who own the house, helped Simon get started.
He had already pulled out the silverbeet and transplanted the asparagus to create a bare patch of land.
In one afternoon Simon, Anna and her parents spread bags of compost and rotting sawdust over it, then covered the surface with pea straw to help retain moisture.
"I had no idea what I was doing," Simon says.
But he now speaks informatively of the different procedures.
A glance at the garden makes him look like an old hand.
Excess cucumbers and zucchini had to be given away, thinned carrots are maturing, potatoes are nearly ready to dig, broccoli, cauliflower and lettuces are forming heads and beetroot will soon be ready to pick for Simon's other flatmate – a chef – to pickle.
Simon leads the way into the hothouse where tall roma and cherry tomato plants are dripping with fruit.
"These ... are what I'm most proud of," he says, lifting a branch and removing a lateral stem.
"You have to trim the laterals to focus the growth," he explains.
"So I'm told, anyway."
- The Marlborough Express
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