We moved to our property during lockdown in 2020. Starting a veggie garden was something we’d always planned to do at some point, but the question of access to fresh food was top of mind at the start of the pandemic, so as soon as we could buy plants, we got planting. Our first little veggie patch was on the side of the hill behind our barn. We dug straight into the clay and figured out quickly that we needed to fence off any plants we wanted to grow; otherwise, the rabbits would be the only ones who got to eat the produce.

That first little garden was quite a humbling experience. Mark grew up on a farm in the Bombay hills with a flourishing market garden, and my grandparents were incredible home gardeners. I think our backgrounds gave us the idea that growing vegetables is easy. We had a lot to learn, and we still do.

Pest control was one of the first challenges we became aware of, and it’s still a constant battle. Besides the rabbits, our garden has played host to some relentless pests: snails, slugs, aphids, caterpillars, and the arrival last summer of the insatiable tropical armyworm. We eventually solved the rabbit issue by rabbit-proofing the fence that runs around the boundary of our acre and acre-and-a-half property, and haven’t seen rabbits on the property in the last two years.

We live in a high wind zone, so we’ve had to adapt to some of the challenges that come with that. We eventually abandoned our first little veggie patch to build a quad of four tiered raised garden beds in a sheltered position behind our barn. With wind gusts as high as 100km per hour, any structure we built needed to be solid enough to withstand that. The garden beds are surrounded by a grid of concrete reinforcing steel, which serves the dual purpose of providing a climbing frame for passion fruit vines and bean stalks and allowing us to hang shade cloth to provide more wind protection. Sometimes, though, we can do nothing when strong winds come from an exposed direction and decimate our plants. Mark finds it difficult to accept, and I don’t think he’ll ever stop developing new ways to protect the plants he cultivates.

One of my favourite things about our garden is how our kids love eating directly from the plants. They barely let us hose the dirt off the carrots before they start munching away on them. I’m convinced that we’ll never be able to outpace their appetites for strawberries or sweet peas; so far they eat every one as soon as they’re ready (or even just before!). We’re early in our journey and still have a lot to learn, but I love going out to the garden to harvest what I need when cooking. There is something so wonderful about picking the herbs that I need fresh instead of buying a packet that I know I’ll only use a fraction of before they lose their flavour. In the long term, we aim to grow all the fruit, vegetables and herbs we eat here on our property. In the short term, we aim to eat more of our veggies this summer than the tropical armyworm does.