Volume 8

Soul Food

Gardening has often been described as healing and rejuvenating and Patrick's story is testament to that.

by Patrick Lias Thornbury, Victoria

A few years ago I was in a car accident while on a band tour of the United States. We were on our way to New York City from Detroit when a deer ran out in front of our car in the pre-dawn hours of an Ohio morning. Our driver swerved, the car rolled and two of my best friends were killed. My other band mates survived with injuries and have since recovered. I escaped with nothing but a scratch on my elbow.

I returned to Melbourne, and the mundane brutality of everyday life, with a mix of confusing emotions—grief at losing my friends, the trauma of the accident, subsiding adrenaline at having survived a near-death experience and the sense of resolve that comes with it, feeling that I had been spared death and must now live my life with a new found sense of purpose. Finding that purpose wasn't the hard part. For some time before the accident, I had been concerned about the environment and the exploitation of our planet. I started to read up on climate change and peak oil. I learnt that the world's natural systems and resources are under stress and the environmental challenges facing the world are huge. So the question I was left with was "How do I make a difference?" I felt both beaten and inspired at the same time. I needed time to heal, but at the same time I felt as if I didn't have a minute of life to lose. I knew life could not go on as before, but it did. The bills poured in, I returned to an unreliable, unfulfilling supermarket job and the dole queue to pay for my artistic endeavours, and I found myself in a tumultuous relationship.

But another thing I did was plant a vegetable garden in my inner-city share house backyard. I suppose you could say that in planting a vegie garden I was seeking a sense of new life, a reminder that life goes on in spite of death. Another analogy you could make, judging by the withered foliage surrounding me after my first attempt, is that if you don't do things properly, you're likely to yield nothing for your halfhearted efforts!

Except for zucchinis. They grew like crazy, even in my first attempt, creeping into the patch where the pumpkins should have pollinated and the melons should have swelled. Most of the meals I ate that summer featured organic zucchini as a key ingredient. My advice to anybody who has survived a traumatic experience, is suffering from grief, or who has felt as I have, a little lost, existing in a space somewhere between living for the moment, living for the weekend and living for some grand narcissistic scheme to save the planet, my advice to you is … plant zucchinis. If those things can survive in my garden, they must breed on chaos.

I came to realise that one of the most personally empowering and politically important acts that a person can undertake is to plant a garden that yields food. On a personal level, gardening is simply good for your soul.Outside in the elements, you're getting your hands dirty doing something that yields tangible and satisfying results. Especially for those, who like me, live in an urban environment, by creating a garden, you are designing your own little microcosm of nature. Every hour that you spend in the garden growing food you are learning a skill that has been essential to human beings throughout history. Even today, growing one's own food remains an important subsistence skill in much of the third world, except where the poor have become detached from the land and don't even have that privilege. On the flipside, much of the affluent first world lives in the delusion that science has struck a conclusive blow over nature, and that we'll never be so humble as to have to grow our own food again. A future of peak oil, climate change and overpopulation suggests otherwise. Regardless of what the future holds, it is my contention that food gardening is simply a good thing for the existential soul.

Whilst my existential crisis has not yet been completely soothed by the spiritual promise that food gardening offers, I no longer have narcissistic delusions of madly fighting to save the planet from impending environmental doom. I have since moved to a block of units where I live with my new partner. Whilst money (or lack thereof) plays a big part in why we are in a small unit rather than a house with a garden, we have decided to stay put as I've started a communal vegie patch out front with our neighbours. In between studying an Environment degree, I also now work at a primary school once a week teaching kids the basics of vegie gardening. I t's my belief that the most fundamental and powerful thing I can do as an environmentally conscious person is to help the planet by helping myself become more self-sufficient, and to help others to do the same. The best way to start is by growing a food garden. For all the lost souls out there who have been inspired by my words but don't know the first thing about gardening … I suggest zucchinis.

A few things about zucchinis

Zucchinis like a fertile, sandy loam soil with a ph range of 6.0-7.5. They're a water-hungry plant when fruiting, so it's important to prepare the garden bed with well-rotted compost before planting (to improve soil structure and to aid water retention and drainage). Where the soil is clay based, like in my garden, it's especially important to add sufficient organic matter to build soil structure. I will also be double-digging my garden bed to reduce compaction and to aid deep root development for my zucchinis this spring.

• Zucchinis like full sun, are vulnerable to frosts and need a warm soil to germinate, so plant them in a sunny position after the last frosts have passed. Make sure you allow plenty of space between plants.
• There are many unique and delicious varieties of zucchinis other than the one or two types you typically see in the supermarket. These varieties include Black Beauty, Cocozelle, Fordhook, Golden, Golden Arch Crookneck, Gold Rush, Rondo De Nice, Round Zucchini, Solar Flare and Yellow Straightstick.
• I will be buying non-hybrid zucchini seeds this spring so that I can save the seeds for re-planting. Zucchinis are of the Cucurbitaceae family, along with cucumbers, pumpkins, and melons, and require bee-pollination. When saving seeds it's important to try to avoid the cross-pollination of cultivars of the same species so as to stay true to type. Because zucchinis require pollination it's also beneficial to encourage a thriving bee presence in your garden. I will be considering these factors when drawing up my plot-plan next spring.
• Zucchinis are immature marrows, which if left to grow will have a spongy and less appetising texture than their younger incarnation. Pick zucchinis when they are about 10cm (4 in) long. Once a zucchini grows into a marrow the plant will stop producing fruit, so pick young zucchinis regularly.
• Zucchinis may be inter-planted with corn and runner-beans in a 'three sisters' arrangement. The zucchini plant acts an under-crop to corn and helps to suppress weeds, while saving space and producing multiple yields through stacking. However, it's important to make sure that the plants are not competing for nutrients, so choose complementary varieties suitable to a 'three sisters' arrangement.