The ultimate garden

I consider myself to be a pretty fanatical gardener, but lawns, rockeries, herbaceous borders, shrubberies, gravel terraces and the like do absolutely nothing for me. My kind of gardening centers around food and I am fascinated by edible plants of all kinds: annual vegetables, perennial vegetables, water vegetables, bush fruit, stone fruit, tree fruit, citrus, vines, edible wild plants, useful weeds, herbs and much more. I will attempt to grow any food plants I can get my hands on, even if I know it has no chance of making it in my climate (bananas, papayas, avocados), just to get to know it a bit better. When I started my garden I had a vague idea of creating the ultimate food garden, one filled with every edible plant I could find that would grow here. This is a lot because I’m very fortunate to have a climate that allows me to grow a very wide range of species from both cool and warm climates.

Because the main purpose of my garden is to produce food sustainably, a large proportion of the plants are edible, useful or contribute to garden fertility (the rest are mainly natives). I have found that the most practical way to do this, without creating an overwhelming amount of work, is to split the garden up into several areas. My annual vegetable garden gets most of the attention because it is the most efficient way to grow the familiar crops that we eat every day. I also have a lot of fruit trees and shrubs (these produce much delicious food with so little work), scattered all over the place and some in a kind of semi-wild semi-forest garden setting. I also have areas for bush fruit and arbors for vines. There are still many vacant areas, but I aim to eventually fill them with plants that are both productive and low maintenance (chestnuts, blackberries).

The food garden isn’t just a place for growing delicious food, it has other, less obvious, benefits too. It can improve your health physically through better nutrition and gentle but sustained exercise. It is a refuge where you can reconnect with nature and soothe your frazzled 21st century psyche. It further enhances your life by stimulating the senses, challenging you intellectually and artistically, and by providing a beautiful, biologically rich and peaceful place to live. It also helps to reduce your impact on the earth, not only by growing food (home grown food requires far less energy and water to grow than commercial agriculture) but also by giving you a way to reduce, reuse and recycle household waste products. It can even supply a lot of the materials (posts, poles, rocks) needed for its own construction.

The food garden even gives you a way of reclaiming some independence in a world where most people are totally dependent on a system that is out of control and unsustainable. A sizeable food garden is also a form of unemployment insurance, because food is the one essential of life that isn’t usually free. If you lose your job tomorrow you might be able to support yourself by growing something of value (and even if you can’t sell it, you can eat it).

The garden isn’t a farm though and productivity isn’t the only concern, it is also your home, a place to be lived in and you should give some thought as to how you can make it comfortable.  You mainly do this by creating beautiful spaces where you can relax and enjoy your surroundings, places to sit and talk in the evening, interesting places for the children to play, a place to dry laundry. Make these areas special with a combination of furniture, artwork, water, productive plants (also beautiful and maybe scented) and other fun stuff. There is no reason the productive garden can’t be as beautiful and comfortable as any ornamental garden (and all the more pleasurable for being a place of production).

Few existing gardens actually accomplish all of the things I want from a garden, but it isn’t at all difficult to achieve There are three aspects to creating a productive garden, design, construction and management. As you might expect designers tend to over-emphasize the importance of the design part, but it is actually the least important. You just need enough design to get the various components in the right places in relation to the sun, the land and each other and to put the plants in the right places. Most food gardens end up containing variations of the same components, because these are the ones humans need and use. These commonly include an annual vegetable garden, a patio or deck living area, a fairly ornamental front entrance garden (planted with the most attractive food plants), a play area, herb garden, water garden, greenhouse, shed, workshop. Areas not needed for a specific purpose can be planted with low maintenance plants that produce food without too much attention (food producing trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, annuals and fungi). There is no need to worry about making the perfect design right from the start, just go at your own pace, in your own way, for your own satisfaction. You will do a lot of the design while you are actually constructing the garden and dealing with real garden problems.

Design doesn’t stop even when the garden is established though, as you will come up with many improvements during your day to day gardening activities. In fact this is when you really get to know the garden and its (and your) needs. Once set in motion the garden will keep evolving and changing, a little piece at a time, for as long as you live in it. Circumstances change, the plants get bigger, you grow plants and materials for various projects, you gain new insights, find interesting new plants and generally one thing leads to another. Persistence is more important than special skills or knowledge (you acquire these during the process of creating the garden). The ideal is to create a garden that maintains itself without consuming all of your free time, but in reality it probably will anyway (because you will want it to, rather than because you need to).

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire

Having so many free chestnuts in my garden has made me into something of a chestnut aficionado in recent years and have tried quite a few methods of preparing them. My favorite method by far is to roast them outdoors over an open fire (yes I know there is a song about this very subject, but it is really about Christmas and contains hardly anything about what kind of fire to use, or the best way to roast them). Apparently in parts of Italy going in to the woods in autumn and roasting chestnuts on a fire is a favorite autumn pastime, which just affirms for me that the Italians really know how to live (I can't think of a nicer way to spend an afternoon).

With chestnut trees within 20 feet of my house I go into my garden for this treat, rather than into the woods. I only have to go far enough so smoke from the fire doesn’t blow into the house, which means just out past the biggest chestnut tree. I light my small fire in a metal fireplace because it has a rack that holds a Dutch oven very nicely. I use this cast iron pot because it has a thick base and distributes heat evenly (and because I already have it), but a cast iron skillet would work just as well (in Italy you can buy special chestnut roasting pans).

Before you roast the nuts they have to be punctured to allow steam to escape, otherwise they tend to explode (actually it’s more like popcorn popping, but messier). Basically you have to cut through the skin (this is usually done on the flat side as it’s easier), ideally without cutting into the nut itself. A small X is traditional but a simple slit works just as well and is quicker. Some people like to soak the punctured chestnuts in water for 15 minutes, saying it makes them moister.

Roasting the nuts couldn’t be simpler, they are simply placed in the pan over high heat and stirred frequently so they cook evenly and don’t burn on one side. The traditional way to tell when they are done is to put a couple of unpunctured nuts in the pan with the rest; when these explode the rest should be done.

The tricky part of preparing chestnuts is the peeling, as there is not only the obvious thick brown outer skin, but also a thin inner skin (pellicle). The outer skin on a cooked nut curls back at the cut and can be removed fairly easily. The inner skin is a lot harder, though it turns crisp and brittle on a well roasted nut and can usually be rubbed off. It is essential to peel chestnuts while they are hot; as they cool down the pellicle gets harder to remove and when cold it is almost impossible. One of the virtues of a heavy cast iron pan is that it holds heat and so keeps the chestnuts hot for longer.

There is something special about chestnuts that I can't quite put my finger on, they are just a wonderful food. A well cooked nut is moist, sweet and delicious and it makes my mouth water thinking about them. In fact writing about this has inspired me to go out and do it.