Outstanding results delivered from a family vegetable garden
December 5, 2017
Outstanding results delivered from a family vegetable garden
A Case Study – Part 2
12 months after starting a vegetable garden
This is Part 2 of a case study resulting from the establishment of a seasonal family vegetable garden. It was created with my very first coaching client, Kellie. I guided Kellie’s family over a 12 month period to begin to grow seasonal vegetables and herbs in their home across each of the seasons. The family has experienced exceptional results I feel very proud to share with you on their behalf. While i provided the initial guidance their journey is inspirational and worthy of review. You can read some of the surprising benefits of growing a vegetables at home as described by Kellie in Part 1 of this study.
Recently I re-visited Kellie’s home almost 12 months to the day after my first visit. Although I had seen some photos and stayed in constant contact with Kellie over this time I was AMAZED at the physical transformation of the backyard space and the way the garden has also now spread into the front yard. The garden’s physical appearance and set up is just one part of what I have witnessed. I have seen Kellie’s passion for fresh food, family involvement and teaching her children (and other people’s children) develop as a result of this garden. This home and family has made some incredible changes over a 12 month period. A very productive space has been created by the family that will continue to deliver increasing rewards well into the future. The changes to their physical space are astonishing but it is the benefits the process, the experience and the harvests have brought to their lives that make me so proud to have been involved and included just a little bit in their achievements.
Kellie has inspired me throughout this experience. I have learned so much from her approach to gardening and her application of what she learns as well as her dedication to improve results. One of the things I have been most impressed by is Kellie’s record keeping. She has taken notes and logged results, dates, plantings and harvests over the whole 12 months and this is now allowing her to plan for and improve results moving into her second year in the garden. She now knows the most suitable vegetables, varieties and quantities to grow for her family.
You can use the Vegetable Garden Workbook to keep track of this sort of information.
Kellie also has also developed a wonderful way to collate the garden related information she comes across via an indexed folder. She can easily reference the information from this central location as she needs it.
A quick recount of the family background is as follows:
The Family
Two adults and two children aged 9 and 7, plus three hungry guinea pigs. Kellie is sharing her experiences and results below.
The Home
A house block is 820 sq metres with a backyard space for planting of approximately 10m x 5m (total combined over several different areas) … with the front yard having 9m x 3 m. The yard was a blank slate with no existing garden area 12 months ago. You can see the before image in the post published last week.
Our youngest daughter loves flowers so she started begging for flowers each time we visited the hardware store or local markets. I had no idea about growing flowers (and honestly they didn’t really interest me), so I just let her choose.
The Vegetable Garden
We have gardened with Kyrstie’s assistance through all four seasons now and have been able to provide our family with so much fresh, healthy food from our own backyard!
Not having to purchase lettuce, spinach or herbs almost since we started has been amazing.
Benefits of a vegetable garden on family food
Reduced grocery bills:
We eat a variety of lettuce at some point most days and our guinea pigs used to go through 3-4 heads of lettuce each week plus other veggies (celery, parsley, capsicum) now we don’t have to purchase much for them at all.
We have always tried to eat a whole foods diet, especially with our youngest having some illness and allergy issue when she was 18 months old and myself with an autoimmune condition. We would previously buy most of our vegetables and fruit.
As well as the pleasure of just growing things we also know that no sprays or chemicals are used on our food. We are saving on food related costs compared to when we bought everything.
Set up in the first and possibly second year does have additional expenses but we are planning to keep this garden and our beds around for a very long time and they will definitely be a cost saver over the years.
A broad range of fresh ingredients:
We have achieved success where failure was prevalent before in plantings such as such as celery, coriander , carrots, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, basil, cucumber and zucchini.
We have daringly tried growing many foods for the first time such as fennel, parsnip, eggplant, capsicum, edible flowers and pumpkin with a high rate of success and now if something fails we can usually work out (or ask Kyrstie) why that may have occurred so next time we will be better prepared and equipped to try again for success.
Herbs now have a large influence on our garden, we use them fresh to flavour most of our meals but also dry and crush them when we have an abundance so as to have most herbs available yearly. The girls enjoy helping me string up bunches of herbs to dry and checking to see if they are ready to “crumple” by hand.
Seasonal meal planning:
We now look to our garden to see what we can eat for lunch or dinner. I base my lunch most days around a salad and I always enjoy looking down at my plate and seeing all (or most … not growing avocados – yet!) of the ingredients on my plate have just been freshly picked from the garden.
It is also fun to look for new recipes when we have an abundance of something. For example, we may use something like eggplant or fennel only rarely but when there is a lot growing at once you learn to be creative and look for new ideas to try. The recipes and “What to do with an abundance of….” cards in the Kitchen Garden Box® are so very helpful!
The garden growth
After beginning on the backyard, Kellie and her family now also have fruit trees planted in the front yard and a beautiful berry patch. These garden beds have also been crafted by Kellie’s clever husband.
We now have the confidence to try a few fruit trees
We have recently planted dwarf apple, pomegranate, almond, nectarine, apricot and cherry trees as well as blueberries, raspberries and strawberries, orange, mandarin and feijoas.
There are now also many more containers positioned around the garden, filled with edibles such as blueberries and potatoes, mints and native edibles that are not well suited to garden beds. Proving that the addition, or use of containers in a backyard can provide wonderful harvests and additional ingredients for family meals.
Gardening with the kids
Our youngest daughter loves flowers so she started begging for flowers each time we visited the hardware store or local markets. I had no idea about growing flowers (and honestly they didn’t really interest me), so I just let her choose.
She often chose lavenders and daisies, pig face, petunias and dahlias and I told her she could use the garden space close to the front door and so, we planted. This area soon filled and we gave her three empty wooden beds on the side deck to fill and she willingly tended to them daily. These weren’t organised, magazine quality gardens but her areas of the yard looked so happy and colourful (and she was 4 ½) and she loved setting up a blanket and having a picnic next to them with her friends.
Her gardening skills are now utilised in the vegetable garden where she adds her flower seeds providing a haven for beneficial insects and pollinators.
There are some pictures of Lilly’s gardening prowess in part one of this study.
The kids involvement comes in fits and bursts. They usually start out there with us and love planting seeds, labelling tags, sorting worms from castings, etc. Gathering seeds is a good indoor activity where we sit down together chat and collect seeds from dried out flowers into small dishes.
They were also very helpful with the constructing of the Vegepod stand and raised timber beds. They love helping their Dad on the electric tools and filling the beds heading up and down the wheelbarrow ramp with their tiny wheelbarrows.
It is great that they feel they helped “build” our special space.
Weeding doesn’t interest them for long, harvesting is fun for awhile but they often wander off to another part of the yard to make bird nests, look for bugs and save some worms.
Miracles do happen!! My 9 year old usually prefers to have her nose in a book lately and likes to leave all gardening jobs to her 7 year old sister. Our 7 year old was busy a few nights ago so I told her big sister I really would love it if she came out to help me grab some things from the garden to make a dinner from. We had a great time and she washed everything without being asked, chopped some and was fascinated by the lovingly entwined “hugging heart” carrots (our most successful purple one yet!). Even though she didn’t eat much of it, the next night she asked “what can we pick for dinner tonight” and has been happily foraging before school for breakfast for the guinea pigs with her sister!
They aren’t as involved during the week but on weekends they love to help out. They do feed the guinea pigs before school each morning using veggies to harvest straight from the garden. Some days they would rather not help out at all (and that’s ok with me) but often they will end up wandering over to see what I am doing and ask a question or two.
No joy is greater than hearing your kids explaining something to the neighbours or their friends like how the worm farm works or why we should plant some seeds in seed trays and not straight into the garden, why we use “poo” in the garden, etc. Always sure to make me smile and proudly chuckle to myself.
Outstanding Results
We still have so much to learn and many questions to ask but just by simplifying things that we had not known or had ignored because they were “too difficult”, or too time consuming or too expensive
Kyrstie has enabled us to learn and achieve so much more in twelve months than we could ever have imagined.
Both directly related to gardening, but also other aspects that she has indirectly brought to our lives such as an appreciation for food and nature in general. An increase in family time together by doing something that we love and that benefits our family and our health has been a big bonus. She has stimulated an appreciation of where our food comes from and what is “real” food and what is not as well as raising more awareness of seasonal foods and local producers.
Sure I could have found this information in abundance on the internet or at the library but having young children I didn’t want to spend hours searching for answers in many different places. Kyrstie’s book and Family Garden Program has saved me hours and hours of research and wading through information that isn’t even relevant to our exact family situation.
Can you do the same?
The changes Kellie’s family has achieved are possible for you too. Kellie and her family began with one garden bed and it was the beginning of an experience that has transformed their approach to food, family time, shopping, meal planning and community. A vegetable garden has taken them on a journey over the last 12 months that will continue to evolve.
We have more confidence in what we are doing and trying to achieve, more courage to try new things and experiment without the fear of continual failure.
Get in touch now if you would like to start your own fresh food journey. Contact me here.
Servicing: Geelong, Bellarine and some of Melbourne
* I would like to say a very special thank you to Kellie and her family for sharing their story and experience. I feel very fortunate to be a part of your family’s introduction to vegetable gardening.
PS. If you are yet to see the before and after pictures and read some of the surprising results the family has experienced please do so here.
Vegetable Garden Workbook
A practical guide from set up to harvest. From the supermarket aisle to shopping your backyard for fresh meal ingredients
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