How to start a food garden from scratch

Ash Burke, his wife Nikita, their three children and two dogs, live in Geelong, Victoria. Four years ago, Ash started creating a backyard food garden, featuring vegetables, fruit trees, a beehive, chickens and a composting system. Today, it feeds the family and is the perfect place to de-stress and enjoy simple pleasures.

“Being in the garden is a great opportunity to spend time with the kids and teach them where food comes from,” says Ash. We spoke to garden influencer Ash for his tips on how to start a food garden from scratch, including:

• Food garden layout ideas including raised garden beds, a chicken run, composting area and a beehive.
• Tips for planting seasonally, the benefits of homegrown produce and how to compost at home.
• How to build an organic garden, including going pesticide free and practising ‘companion planting’.
• Why keeping hens, composting and using drip irrigation are the key to maintaining an eco-friendly biodiverse garden.

Ash’s food garden layout ideas

After moving into their house in late 2021, Ash got to work straightaway, sectioning off a 70 square metre area in a sunny corner of the backyard. His design featured a series of raised garden beds, with a chicken run along the back fence beneath a row of fruit trees, as well as a composting area and a beehive. Ash did all the construction, building the raised beds from 50mm-thick sleepers and installing gravel pathways to link everything together.

The finished garden feels very much like its own ‘room’, divided off from the rest of the yard by an entrance gate and an archway that’s smothered in flowering sweet peas every spring. “I wanted to create the feeling of a mini walled garden in the suburbs,” says Ash. “I also wanted it to look attractive, because it’s in view from the back of the house, so flowers play a role, too.”

The profuse blooms, including nasturtiums, lavender and showy zinnias, ranunculus and dahlias, rise up through the vegetable patch to make their presence felt during spring and summer. With them comes a great diversity of crop pollinators and beneficial insects, helping to create a natural ecosystem which looks after itself.

How Ash runs his food garden

Inspired by his grandfather’s garden and other vegetable gardens online, Ash wanted to create something which would be large enough to feed the family, but compact enough to be manageable alongside a full-time job and busy family life. Ash’s careful planning has worked out well, with the garden now offering harvests across the seasons in return for a couple of hours a week, plus a little more at peak planting times. And just as important to him is the health and nutritional benefits of homegrown produce. “I love knowing exactly where our food is grown and that there are no nasty chemicals sprayed on them,” he says.

Three essentials for a thriving food garden

This eco-friendly garden thrives on healthy soil, organic care, balanced watering and biodiversity. Ash’s essential ingredients are:

• Happy hens: Backyard chooks provide eggs and natural fertiliser.
• Rich pickings: Nutrient-rich homemade compost is a great soil booster.
• Drip irrigation: Water is delivered efficiently and directly to the plants’ roots.

What vegetables to plant now

With his own mini-greenhouse in the garden, Ash is able to grow many of the vegetables and herbs from seed, though he also buys seedlings when required, as a timesaving measure.

• His top-producing summer crops include tomatoes, salad greens and zucchinis.
• His cooler months crops include broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, snow peas, onions, leeks and garlic.

Tip: Ash grows his zucchini plants vertically, tying the main stem to stout timber stakes. This has the advantage of saving space (a great tip for small gardens), but also keeps the fruit off the ground, making them easier to harvest.

What is companion planting?

As part of that balance, companion planting is practised, whereby pests are deterred by, or sometimes attracted to, another plant in the garden. For example, marigolds are planted near tomatoes to repel soil nematodes and aphids, while alliums are planted close to brassica crops, such as cabbage, to help deter cabbage moth. Nasturtiums act as a good decoy plant too, according to Ash, attracting bugs that would otherwise attack his vegetables. Diversity in the garden also attracts many beneficial insects like ladybirds which, in both their adult and larval stages, feed voraciously on aphids.

Organic gardening basics

The garden is run on organic principles, so there are no pesticides, weedkillers or “anything nasty” used. Ash is inspired by the idea of building a diverse mini ecosystem in the backyard, and believes it’s OK that bugs will eat some of his produce now and then. “It’s all about creating balance,” he says.

At the beating heart of the whole production system is the soil, which gets fed and nurtured with lots of organic goodies throughout the year. “Before each new season’s planting, I dig compost, pelletised chicken manure and blood-and-bone into the beds,” Ash explains. “Then a layer of mulch goes on top.”

Ash makes as much of his own compost as he can, using a 400-litre bin which he fills with old bedding from the chicken coop mixed with green waste from the garden.

Extras for the food garden

The garden offers a few sweet treats, too. The beehive, which was harvested for the first time this year, yielded 10 kilos of honey. And there are fruit trees, including two apple, three citrus, a peach, a pear and a passionfruit vine. The pear tree is being trained as an espalier against a fence, which is a new horticultural challenge for Ash.

Garden extras

Clever adaptive ideas in Ash’s garden include a potting bench made from a recycled metal sink and old pallet, archways formed from welded mesh sheets to hold climbing plants such as beans, and a stake and twine support system for tomato plants. A small pond, hidden among the greenery, keeps the birds happy, while visiting insects can check into their own ‘hotel’. In keeping with the rustic feel, earthy-coloured steel strips edge the path to the garden, separating it from the lawn.

Keep in mind…

• Wear gloves and a mask when handling mulch, compost and potting mix.
• Before installing a pond, check your local authority’s safety regulations and guidelines, and always closely supervise children around any body of water.
• Always check with your local authority if watering restrictions apply in your area, and adjust timer settings to suit.
• Check with your local council for rules and regulations about keeping backyard chickens.

Looking for ideas to reduce food waste?

Use your vegetable garden scraps and find out how to compost.

 

Photo credit: Sue Stubbs.