Veggie Tales

We have an abun­dance of holy sil­ver beet in our veg­etable patch.

Holy not in a reli­gious sense, but rather that it has been nib­bled with gay aban­don by an extended fam­ily of tiny, apple green grasshop­pers. The fact that it is holy in no way impacts on its taste, or the fre­quency in which it finds its way into a mul­ti­tude of dishes. The plea­sure is purely that it comes from our gar­den and tastes like real spinach.

The enthu­si­asm for grow­ing my own veg­gies is tem­pered with the harsh real­ity that we’re in for another scorch­ing sum­mer. With the heat, come a mul­ti­tude of insects that thrive on the deli­cious smor­gas­bord faith­fully planted by their provider.

I am also rather hes­i­tant to brag about my toma­toes, fledg­ling green pep­pers, dwarf beans, car­rots, pota­toes and gem squash. Did I men­tion butternut?

You see, every time I have attempted to endorse grow­ing veg­gies and offer a tiny, well, sug­ges­tion of a boast, some­thing has promptly eaten my crop. Tiny grasshop­pers I can han­dle – it’s the hoofed vari­ety of pests that are far more ominous.

First it was a herd of feral red deer. There is some­thing just plain wrong about spot­ting a stag resplen­dent with antlers stand­ing in a steamy Bris­bane set­ting – look­ing for all the world that it has been super­im­posed from an Alpine scene com­plete with snow-capped fir trees and icy streams.

At first, I was totally enam­oured at the thought of hav­ing deer in my own gar­den, for­get­ting that they are not even vaguely indige­nous species in Aus­tralia at all. My delight turned to pure anger when they chomped the new shoots off all my thriv­ing her­itage tomato plants and the entire tops off  my car­rots and broc­coli. My roman­tic pic­ture shat­tered, I was keenly look­ing to obtain a gun licence and have a go at mak­ing biltong.

Instead of going for the kill, I took pre­ven­ta­tive action. I draped net­ting over my pre­cious veg­eta­bles and hung old CD discs from trees to deter them. Per­haps the sil­very shim­mer of ‘Party Favourites’ in the moon­light would scare them away. It seemed to work. The veg­eta­bles grew once more – even the toma­toes recov­ered from the wan­ton feed­ing frenzy and the car­rots sur­pris­ingly regrew their tops.

And so I started to admire my gar­den once more – accept­ing the grasshop­pers and admir­ing the tiny new gem squash that were grow­ing plumper by the day. A har­vest looked promis­ing. I toyed with the idea of once again telling friends about my green fin­gers – per­haps describ­ing my thriv­ing crop burst­ing with health and veg­gie vigour. “You must come and see my veg­gie patch some­time,” I uttered the fate­ful words one evening to a clearly impressed friend. “Ooh I’d love to – you must teach me how to grow my own,” she enthused.

Two days later my neighbour’s goats escaped their enclo­sure and chomped their way over to my yard. Of course their first port of call, with two lit­tle kids in tow, was my veg­gie patch. Off came the tops of the broc­coli once more – the new shoots emerg­ing from my Maleny mar­ket sourced dwarf beans were nib­bled with unadul­ter­ated glee – in appre­ci­a­tion of their obvi­ous chem­i­cal free flavour. Green pep­per plants were reduced to stalks. An entire chive plant was uprooted. I caught them before they man­aged to gob­ble up my crop of holy sil­ver beet. As I shoo’ed them away, Sarah, the mother of two for­merly adorable kids had the cheek to attempt a head butt – then nib­bled a last few shoots of a strug­gling lemon tree in defi­ance as she saun­tered off with her kids and sib­lings bleat­ing behind her.

A fence is clearly what I need. Until then, I shall remain tight-lipped about my veg­gie grow­ing prowess. I will not men­tion that I com­pletely ignored the local pro­duce supplier’s pre­dic­tion that I was ‘far too late’ to plant pota­toes – and the few wrin­kled old spec­i­mens lying at the bot­tom of my veg­etable bas­ket grew. I will not freely offer the infor­ma­tion that con­trary to a green-fingered friend’s pre­dic­tion that Chi­nese gar­lic is impos­si­ble to grow as it is pre­served with a toxic chem­i­cal to inhibit growth, my fat lit­tle Chi­nese bulbs are thriving.

But you didn’t hear it from me…