How I Grow
Gardening chats.
How I Grow
Green-Thumbed Magic: Penelope's Journey from Weeds to Wonders | An interview with Penelope from @Queenpenelopespatch
An interview with Penelope from Queenpenelopespatch on Instagram
Instagram: @Queenpenelopespatch
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More about this episode:
Embark on an enchanting expedition into the lush world of organic gardening with none other than Penelope from Queen Penelope's Patch. Alongside me, your host Gemma, we unveil the tapestry of Penelope's experiences, from her childhood fascination with seeds to her thriving fifteen-year-old garden. Our conversation meanders through the challenges and victories of cultivation, from a once meager and weedy backyard to a verdant paradise boasting 'Raspberry lane' and fruit trees that reach for the sky. Penelope's garden isn't just a feast for the eyes—it's a testament to the miracles that patience and a bit of green-thumbed magic can achieve.
Join us as we share a pot of wisdom on the art of conversation with plants and the secrets of successful harvests. Who knew that listening to your garden's whispers could lead to an abundance of chilies, even in cooler climates? Penelope graciously offers her hard-earned insights into nurturing your greens, from recognizing when they cry out for magnesium to celebrating the self-sufficient joy of homegrown and preserved produce. The warmth of her stories about preserving the fruits of her labor might just inspire you to don your gloves and revitalize your own soil.
In our heart-to-heart, Penelope and I don't shy away from the emotional resonance that gardens hold. We reflect on the gladioli that bloom in remembrance, the once-troublesome mandarin tree that now bursts with life, and the bees that find solace among our flowers. As we share our passion for fostering pollinators, you'll find yourself drawn to the beauty of multi-purpose plants and the profound well-being that blooms from a personal connection with the earth. So, whether you're a seasoned gardener or a budding green thumb, this conversation promises to plant seeds of inspiration and cultivate a deep-rooted love for the natural world.
'How I Grow' is produced by The Seed Collection Pty Ltd.
Find out more about us here: www.theseedcollection.com.au
You're listening to how I Grow with the Seed Collection. My name is Gemma and today I'll be speaking with Penelope from Queen Penelope's patch on Instagram. We'll be delving into Penelope's organic backyard journey with her and the lessons she's learned along the way. Thank you so much for being with us today, penelope. Hey, gemma, how are you? I'm well, thank you?
Speaker 2:how are you? I am blushing like the tomatoes that are growing in the garden.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love it. I love it. So excited to be speaking with you today. I can't wait to learn more about how you grow and, in fact, after seeing photographs of your produce, I actually plan on taking some notes. So I guess I'd like to start by asking what inspired you to garden and why is it important to you?
Speaker 2:So I've always loved gardening, from the time I was a child, I would say. These aunties of mine grow little flowering plants and stuff in pots and I like that. And what intrigued me more than anything else was to be able to see life grow out of a tiny seed and see it blossom and grow and just every step of it, like right from a flower it would grow into a fruit. The whole process kind of got me intrigued and what I learned from a young age was that I actually have green fingers, because every seed that I would get and I'd put in the ground it would grow. That just got me more interested. It got me more interested that we times when I would just take a tomato, I would throw the seeds and I would see the plants grow. But because I lived in an apartment back in the day people didn't have that big gardens and apartments they're a thing now but back then I would grow the seedlings and I'd give it to my friend who had a garden and I would say grow this, and they would grow it. So I always knew I had green fingers. It was something that I always wanted to do.
Speaker 2:I was going to have my own garden and it's once I moved over to this country and we bought our first house. While buying the house, I was looking for the basic things you want in the house a nice big kitchen and when I saw the backyard, I thought, oh, this backyard looks huge. This is a plus point. I didn't know how much the garden would evolve. It was not in my plan that it would evolve so much over the last 15 years, but it's just done that and I love it. It's my space.
Speaker 1:Oh beautiful, that sounds very special. So when you say your garden has evolved, could you talk to us a little bit about how it started out and what it looks like today?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. Oh, wow. Going back, going back, memory lane of flash flashbacks. When we bought the house, we had nothing in the garden. It was a blank canvas. There was weeds that were knee high. That was the main patch, and on the sides of the garden we had these succulents, calanchoi, which was growing, along with a lot of pebbles. On another side we had rose bushes that were growing.
Speaker 2:And the one advice that I got because you know how sometimes you want to go and start gardening and you think, oh, yep, I'm going to buy everything and put it in and it's all going to grow. It doesn't always work that way because it's expensive, let's be honest. It's expensive, it is time consuming and it's a commitment. The best advice that I got back then was divide your garden into different parts and work on each one, each section, and the first thing I did was I started with fruit trees. I love fruits, so that's the first thing I started. We started off with five fruit trees, and then I'll tell you I wasn't working back then. So gardening is a bit pricey, so for me, I had to medically sit down and say all right, what do I want? Have this little garden budget the day I got my first job in the next two months. I looked at my husband and I said all right, I want to do the garden. Can you do this? What if I lose my job? Let's do the garden now. Let's get it done.
Speaker 2:We took 10 days off and we transformed the garden straight away. We already had the fruit reason. We had a few plants on the side, we put a lawn in, we put two veggie beds, two massive veggie beds and we thought, yep, this looks fantastic. For two people, this is enough. That was the initial stage.
Speaker 2:What my husband did not know and I'll tell you he's a very patient man it was over the last few years after, and I was scheming different ideas in my head. No, I love it. I was looking at the garden, I was looking at the sides and I'm thinking you know what? We have all of this space. I really want to put it to use. The first thing I did then after that was the side where we had a pagola. I started putting fruit trees in there. I put a pear tree, I put a, I've got a goba tree in there and I've got a pomegranate tree, because I wanted to have that nice place. You know where you're sitting in the pagola and you have the fruit trees laid in with fruit, you can go and pluck out a fruit and eat. That was the vision in my head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sounds ideal. It does. It is magic. I love it, it is. It is a form of magic. It's like what you were saying earlier Watching your aunties grow things from seed and then develop into the flower and fruit. It really does feel like a form of magic sometimes, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:It does it does. The last side that we transformed, I would say during COVID time, was what we call as Raspberry lane, which is about a 20 meter strip that we have at the side of the house. Every house has that 20 meter strip where you either just throw mulch or you'll put some yakas in there. But I saw potential because what I saw was the daylight you get. That part of the garden gets just a little bit of sunlight. Good enough for about five, six hours. I thought you know what? What's the best that can grow here? Raspberry's. Let's put every colored berry that I can think of in here and see what happens. It's been a massive berry patch. We formally call it Raspberry lane because it has every color berry that we have growing in it. I have more berries than I can eat.
Speaker 1:Oh, wonderful.
Speaker 2:I have more berries than I can eat, I end up giving it to friends, I end up making muffins to take to work berry muffins to take to work and I end up freezing them and using them throughout the year.
Speaker 1:Oh lovely, and I'm sure your colleagues were pleased with that.
Speaker 2:Oh, they have high expectations, I'll tell you that. But yeah, I do like sharing stuff, so I don't mind doing it.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. So cooking is also a part of your gardening journey, is that right?
Speaker 2:I love to eat, so definitely cooking is part of my journey. Cooking, preserving food.
Speaker 1:Oh lovely. There's nothing quite like the taste of your homegrown produce, is there?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. And I'll tell you, I grew a radio the last couple of years for that, the last bit that we had was the lawn. And I managed to convince my husband, saying you know what? We don't have kids. Why do we have a lawn? Why do we have a lawn? I do not want to have a lawn. I'm I kind of I don't want to give out my age, but I'm at that age where you think, like you know, if you don't do this now, when are you going to do it? And that's when he said, ok, I managed to convince him to get rid of the lawn. We got rid of the lawn, we got the lawn, which is such a big deal, and we managed to put in about seven more beds. So in total, I now have 15 garden beds.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, I love it. So what? What kind of land are you working with their Penelope? Is it quite a large block?
Speaker 2:It's a regular suburban block. I would say that the garden itself would be around maybe 200 meters. Oh, ok, 200 square feet, 200 square feet somewhere around there. Yeah, that's excellent.
Speaker 1:So, in addition to your berries and the fruit trees are you growing? Vegetables or.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, absolutely I love growing vegetables.
Speaker 1:Lovely. So what kind of things do you currently have in your garden?
Speaker 2:At the moment being somehow we've got everything. Some of that's growing. I love growing. I love growing things that you don't get in the market. Yes, that's not like tomatoes. Different colored tomatoes, different flavors, different sizes that whole rainbow on the plate is something that I like looking at. So different colored tomatoes. We've grown cucumbers. I have to tell you they are my arch enemy. They give me trouble year on year, but this year they're being good.
Speaker 1:What kind of challenges do you face with the cucumbers?
Speaker 2:I. My biggest challenge with cucumbers is once I grow them from a seedling and I put them in the ground. Either they are stunted or they grow, they don't pollinate and they die off, and I've always wondered why was that the cause?
Speaker 1:Oh, ok. So sometimes a lack of pollination can be caused by a reduced number of bees and pollinators in the area, so that could be occurring. Have you ever hand pollinated your plants?
Speaker 2:I do. I find cucumbers a bit dicey, but I have learned a little secret to it. Oh, what's your secret? I can tell you, please, what I've done this year. I'll tell you. I realized that with the soil that we had in one of our garden beds it is the word that's called it's called hydrophobic. Hydrophobic means when you put water on the soil, it runs off. The soil doesn't absorb it. So that was one of the main problems, and what I've learned is you've got to fix that before you can even put your plants in. So what we did this year was we used a whole lot of homemade compost Lovely, we used manual and we used coil and we mixed it up really well and that helped with the soil. That also helped with the plants because they were able. I noticed that they were able to grow much better this year and we grew a lot of flowering plants around, so that definitely helped with pollination.
Speaker 1:Oh, fantastic, wonderful, yeah, so a bit of composting and ensuring that the flowers attracting those pollinators are present.
Speaker 2:That's correct and the soil is everything. It's something that I guess we don't generally pay attention to. We take it for granted, but really your soil is everything.
Speaker 1:That's very true. Lots of people do overlook the soil. We sometimes tend to think, oh well, there's some dirt we can plant in it. But it's not always that simple, is it?
Speaker 2:That is correct.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's quite a lot to ensuring that the nutrient levels in your soil are correct, and particularly for what you're trying to grow, too. Different things require different levels.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And worms? You have to see worms in your soil. You know that soil is good when you see those worms wriggling out.
Speaker 1:Yes, lovely. You mentioned earlier, penelope, moving to the country and to this country and the differences in gardening there. Are you happy to share a little bit more about that, where you've come from and what the differences are?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely so. Now, if I tell you my heritage, I'm Indian. Yes, I was born and brought up overseas, in the Gulf and the place that I'm used to over there, I've always lived in an apartment, so I had more of an indoor garden. I wasn't able to really grow fruits and veg back home because, again, it was difficult, there was lack of knowledge. There wasn't much knowledge. The time when I started to expand my garden collection in India was when I used to go to my mother-in-law's house my third mother-in-law's house, what she said, my mother-in-law because while I had to pass the house, there were about six nurseries in a line.
Speaker 1:Oh, lovely.
Speaker 2:And I used to go meet her and after that I spent the rest of the next few hours just going through the nurseries learning about plants, trying to understand the structure of the soil, everything else. I'm originally from Bombay, so for me I used to tropical plants. I'm used to tropical plants, tropical fruits. The flavor is so sweet I'll tell you. In India, if you buy a papaya, it is like sugar.
Speaker 2:It's like eating sugar, even mango Goavers everything Mangoes are, and you know what. There are so many different types of mangoes in India. It's insane.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, where did you have? Did you have a favorite?
Speaker 2:The. There's one called as the Alfonso mango. Okay, it is the sweetest you can. When you, when you smell the top of the mango, it should smell like sugar. Oh yeah, that's how you know it'll be sweet.
Speaker 1:Lovely. So you mentioned you learned about soil and things like that early on in the piece, so you really started from the ground up, so to speak.
Speaker 2:I did, I did, and you know what. What I realized as well is that you have to. You have to learn by looking at your plants, because I feel like plants actually talk to you. They tell you when they need something Like my lemon tree is very vocal. She'll tell me if she needs iron, if she needs magnesium. She'll throw a tantrum and drop leaves if it's too hot, because she wants water, and then I'm like okay, I get you.
Speaker 1:What are some of those cues in terms of a plant lacking magnesium and things like that? What would she say to you? How would you communicate that with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, she would show me yellowing between the veins. It could be either yellowing between the veins or yellowing on the outside of the leeway. You can see that there's more green between the veins but a slight hint of yellow. So, not to confuse myself, I give them both, I give them happy. I'm like here is your magnesium, here is some iron and you know what? It's not just lemon trees, but it's any tree, it's any tree. I find that a plant performs much better when you give them magnesium, especially at the seedling stage. That's what I do with my tomato seedlings. Like you, can grow them in a tiny pot in that seedling pot only for some time, but there's only so much nutrients that little pot will carry. So you have to keep topping it up. You have to keep looking at the leaves, looking for signs, seeing if they are fungal diseases, and treat it accordingly.
Speaker 1:Very true indeed. So what do you apply to increase the magnesium levels?
Speaker 2:You can buy magnesium from the store, like they call this, epsom salts. You get them at bunnings. Yeah, it's just a plain packet. They're little white salts. You can just buy them and apply them If you wanted to work quicker. You get it in a liquid form as well, where you can just pour in. The plant can absorb the nutrients directly. But I just go the powder where, just before the sprinkler, some powder every quarter keeps everyone happy.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, lovely, thank you. And when you mentioned before the tomato plants, while we're on nifty tricks, have you ever heard of burying a banana peel at the base of the tomato plant?
Speaker 2:I've heard that. I've heard about the banana. I've heard about the egg. Oh, the egg.
Speaker 1:I haven't heard that one.
Speaker 2:There is the egg, there's fish heads as well the banana I dig into the soil. So what I do is one thing I do is I love going lettuce and salads, and sometimes you find all of these things just tend to go to seed with a change in weather, that's all. It requires One hot day and it's like, oh no, I'm done for the day. So these things that go to seed, I have the habit of just it's called the chop and drop method, where you just chop them down and you turn them over in the soil and what that does is that breaks down. And while I do that, I try to feed extra stuff that we have from the kitchen all your kitchen scraps, like your watermelon, watermelon rind, your banana leaves, your apple core, anything I find around the house. I'm like, yep, this can go into the, into the soil. I will just, I will just start to turn it over into the soil.
Speaker 1:And you find that quite effective.
Speaker 2:I do find it effective because again you have the microbes in the soil that break it down and then you get that it all becomes compost. You have nice soft soil because of the microbes, the earthworms.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, lovely. So what has been one of your biggest challenges in the garden, penelope? Perhaps a failure that you would be happy to talk about, that others can learn from?
Speaker 2:Growing chilies. I have to say growing chilies. I love chilies, being Indian chilies are my thing. So when I was not able to grow chilies, I was worried. I was like this is not right. This should happen automatically. Why is it this happening? But there are tricks to it.
Speaker 1:There are some tricks. The soil temperature is the most common hurdle that I found with the chilies. Yeah, they need a nice hot temperature in the soil to germinate, which can stump some gardeners.
Speaker 2:That is correct. And also with that I've learned that in Melbourne you've got to start early. Yes, you have to start early. You cannot wait for, like October to put your seeds in. You have to start like I'll tell you. I personally start in at the end of June, beginning July. I start putting my seeds in potting mix, put it on a heat mat till it germinate it just starts to pop out and then move it into individual little pots and underneath a grow light.
Speaker 1:So you have found a way to overcome that challenge with the chilies, then Correct, wonderful, wonderful, and I'm sure they don't grow to waste in the kitchen either, as you say. You love to eat them.
Speaker 2:I have to tell you I don't buy chilies anymore. I just grow them and I freeze them.
Speaker 1:Oh, wonderful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like preserving food. I enjoy preserving food.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's very important skill to learn too. Do you have a favourite method, penelope?
Speaker 2:If I'm doing tomatoes it would have to be the canning method wherein you puree your sorry, you make a puree off your tomatoes so you boil them till they become really thick. I tend to blend them after that. Then, while the puree is hot, you put them in jars. Your jars also have to be hot. They'd have to go into an oven at 100 degrees so that they are warm. So they always say your liquid or whatever you're putting into the jar needs to be warm. So warm liquid, warm jar pour in a jar. Then I would seal it. I would just put the cap on and close and leave it on the table and it pops automatically. Some people use something called as the Fowler method, where they put the jars in boiling water. I used to do that but I don't do that anymore because I find that both methods actually work. But one thing I do do is I add a teaspoon of citric acid to my tomato puree because I know that that'll extend the shelf life.
Speaker 1:Oh, very clever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and anything I jar, I add a teaspoon of citric acid. That's one thing that my mom's friend had taught me a long, long time ago.
Speaker 1:Oh lovely. It's the beauty of shared wisdom, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Speaking of the beauty of shared wisdom, is there any particular plant or flower that takes you back to a special moment in your life? That could be a moment in the garden with a loved one, or just something that you learned that you hold very dear.
Speaker 2:I would have to say. The one thing that I love a lot is and I recently started to like them more as flowers growing flowers. It's something that I wasn't into a long time ago and back in the day. When you buy flowers, flowers are expensive. Let's be honest. You can't always buy flowers every week. My mom loves gladiolize. She loves, loves, gladiolize. We had every vase in the house had gladiolize. Plastic, mind you, plastic, not real plastic ones.
Speaker 2:And it was typical back in the old days that you'd put plastic over everything. So all her plastic gladiolize had plastic and she would always tell me I really like these flowers, I really like these flowers. So I started growing gladiolize because she likes gladiolize and I've taken a liking to them because it reminds me of her.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and while she's in the funny part now, while she's no more with me. She passed away two years ago.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry to hear that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all right. I still grew gladiolize because of her. What a beautiful tribute. Yeah, and they. You know what they flower in her birth month. Every year they all flower in January. My mom was born in Jan. They flower during that time, so it's even nicer, it's special to me.
Speaker 1:Lovely, that is very special. Thank you for sharing that story with us, Penelope. That's lovely. So the gladiolize would they be your favorite plant to grow?
Speaker 2:They are because of my mom. They're. I wouldn't say they're my favorite, they're probably my second favorite. My favorite plant would be my mandarin tree. To be honest, I love my mandarin tree to death.
Speaker 1:Oh lovely. Is it a dwarf variety or?
Speaker 2:He is a dwarf, he's an imperial mandarin tree, oh yum. He was a little problematic child when I bought him. Oh yeah, he was a little problematic child and I'll give you some wisdom about citrus trees, which is what I learned as well. Yeah, with citrus trees, most people, when you buy the tree from the shop, if they are very advanced, you will get the fruit. You might get a few fruit, but with citrus trees it takes three years for the roots to develop under the soil and only once the base is developed then the top will take off. Okay, it took me five years with this plant. I almost gave up because, with him as well, when we bought him from the store I didn't realize that he had there was those leaf miners. He had leaf miners on him.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, yep, oh, they can be quite the hassle.
Speaker 2:They are a bit of a pain. Yes, we killed a leaf miner, we put him in a spot and he was not happy because, again, citrus don't like wet feet.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't like wet feet. He wasn't happy there, moved him somewhere else, lost all his leaves, sat there for two years and one day I just thought you know what this plant is useless, let's chuck him out, as everyone says. I went to pull them out but he didn't come out. I tried to pull him, pull him and I fell down on the ground pulling him, and then I said, all right. I was like if you want to live, live. If you want to die, it's up to you. And I walked away and in two months he took off. He just took off.
Speaker 1:He just needed some encouragement. Perhaps.
Speaker 2:That's it, that's it. And now we get. I'll tell you, we get at least about three to 400 mandrons every second year.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's fantastic. That's wonderful. And how did you treat the leaf miner?
Speaker 2:I do not use sprays. All I do is I flip the leaf at the back and I use my fingernail to actually crush the leaf miner.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, and that's quite effective.
Speaker 2:It is effective because they die instantly. It's quicker than putting a spray and waiting. I just use my finger and just crush them off. I don't have that issue anymore because the tree is very healthy. So I've freed the tree with magnesium. I give them iron, I do. I do six monthly feeds as well of of manual oh, okay, Last worm compost. So I try and keep them as healthy as I can. I don't get these issues. They do come, but not often.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh, that's good. It sounds like you take a lot of preventative measures in the garden as well. Yes, yes, as they say, prevention is better than cure.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's very true. So what about? We've touched on some challenges. What about some of your triumphs, or your greatest successes in the garden?
Speaker 2:That's a good question, jamma. That's an absolutely good question. My recent triumph would be and I've not yet put on Instagram, but would have to be my pear tree.
Speaker 1:Oh, or pears are delicious yeah.
Speaker 2:We bought this little. I don't think she's a, I think she's a pixie pear tree, one of those do-offy ones that grows only up to two meters high. Ah yes, we bought her about 11 or 12 years ago and we put her in the ground. We would feed her everything possible every year and we never got fruit. Oh, and we were like what's happening? And I thought, okay, at least it's got green leaves, it looks nice, that should be fine. And then, finally, we were my husband's like, but why aren't we getting any fruit? So we so we named her the free loader. Oh, so yeah, we've like certainly given up on the tree, thinking, yep, nothing's going to happen, nothing's going to happen. So we spotted pears on the tree. They're so lovely. So, and it's been like I can't believe it Like look, after 12 years, you suddenly see bears. 12 years, 12 years for bears. Wow, I think about seven or eight bears that are on the tree. I've been like guarding the tree, like don't ask, but like no critter, no wind, no lighting, nothing's going to touch these bears.
Speaker 1:That's understandable. I think 12 years is a very long time to wait.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're a patient, lady Penelope, oh Wonderful. So when it comes to your vegetable beds that you mentioned, that you now have 15 beds, what are they made up of primarily?
Speaker 2:So I use the corrugated iron beds. Ah, yes, yeah, I like them because I feel like they're sturdy, they're hearty, they're good, they've lasted me a long time.
Speaker 1:They also add a really nice rustic feel to the garden too, don't they?
Speaker 2:They do. They certainly do, but you have to be careful with your layout when you put those beds. I feel like the normal way where people put one behind the other. And my dad called us out when he visited me last year. He looked at the beds in between and one said that we had. In between were four Sort of. There was one on the left, one on the right and one at the back, one in the front. And he looked at it and he said what are those coffins doing there? And I'm like dad, those are garden beds, they're not coffins. He's like they look like coffins and that's why I thought, yeah, we should have thought of a nice way of designing that. But it's all right.
Speaker 1:The beauty of hindsight, though, so.
Speaker 2:Yes, but they're very sturdy. They're good beds. I'll tell you, they last long.
Speaker 1:Oh, good, good. And what are you growing in those?
Speaker 2:So, with some of our vegetables at the moment, we've got beans. We've got two different types of beans. We've got the yellow wax beans, We've got the purple climbing beans, the scarlet beans. We've got heaps of chilies and capsicums. Oh lovely, I'm just trying to calculate. We've got three beds of chilies and capsicums. I like dividing my garden into sections, so at the moment we have got about I'm just trying to think we've got about three different beds of tomatoes and because they're in a certain section, we call that tomato town.
Speaker 2:Oh, ok, suitable name Suitable name Because when you enter there there is tomato town. Yeah, and on the corner there is there's chili corner, because there's just chilies and capsicums going around the corner.
Speaker 1:I like it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's chili and capsicum corner. We have got. We had sunflowers. I love sunflowers. They're a bit crazy, especially when the seeds start to scatter everywhere. They just pop up, which is so beautiful. You see little yellow heads all around the place.
Speaker 1:It is lovely, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We have onions in another bed. We have one more bed which is full of potatoes, full, full of potatoes, love potatoes. We have zucchinis, zucchini squash. We have dahlias. We have carrots growing somewhere else. There's always spring onions in the garden because you know fried rice is the best thing to eat, so there has to be spring onions, oh yum, delicious.
Speaker 1:Yes, I have to agree with that. Fried rice and potatoes.
Speaker 2:Fried rice and potatoes, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm a big, big fan of potatoes myself too.
Speaker 2:Oh, really Yucky.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, yeah, and it is a vegetable, so it's OK.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. It's a good cup. That's gone at a good cup, that's right. Yeah, herbs. Herbs are everywhere around the garden.
Speaker 1:Oh beautiful. What herbs are you growing?
Speaker 2:We have the. We have perpetual basil, because regular basil dies with me, so perpetual basil is safe.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, basil is one of my favorite herbs too, oh.
Speaker 2:I said OK, I love it.
Speaker 1:I love drying it Very versatile.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you do dry your herbs and do you then grind them and use them as the seasoning, or how do you store them to keep?
Speaker 2:I do not always grind them, so I grind a portion of them. So I have I'll tell you what I do. I grind so with all the herbs I grow. So I have parsley, I have Vietnamese mint, I have basil, we have regular mint, we have bay leaves as well, plus we have lemon myrtle. A part of these are dehydrated, our dehydrated, so I dehydrate them and I grind them to a powder, and the rest I keep fresh. The ones which are ground, I like to add in marinades.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, you make the marinades yourself and add in your herbs. Yes, beautiful.
Speaker 2:That is correct. Marinades, pizza sauces, curries in patties, in burgers, salad dressings.
Speaker 1:Oh, that sounds mouth-watering. I'll look forward to a dinner invite.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. Come home anytime. We're never short of food in this house. Come home anytime.
Speaker 1:Isn't that wonderful knowing that you can rely on yourself as well for your foods, your vegetables and your herbs and fruits, and it's such a good feeling, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It's the best feeling. I'll tell you, that's when I felt grateful during COVID time, especially when there was that scare that everyone was going didn't want to go out of the house. There were. I remember the ceilings and bunnings were all over seeds. People had bought seeds, yes, and I had some packets of expired seeds which I thought, oh, let's give this a try and things grow, properly grow, so many things grow and I was like, oh, it's good.
Speaker 1:So is there anything you would like to see more of in the gardening realm? Do you think more people should be getting their hands dirty and learning about growing their own foods?
Speaker 2:I think with today's generation, I think the youngsters need to learn more about where their food comes from and have a better appreciation towards their food. To be honest, Like a lot of them do not know that to grow a single tomato takes you six months.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's true. Understanding where our food comes from does provide a whole new appreciation for it. Yep.
Speaker 2:I was going to say, even if people, if you can't grow fruit, like I have, a lot of friends say, or I kill plants, I can't grow plants, I kill plants. Okay, grow flowers, not for yourself, but grow them for the bees.
Speaker 1:Yes, indeed, yes, a lot of people too, it's they don't realise without them, we have no food. It's not just the flowers, it's the food that they pollinate. They are vital and they are in trouble.
Speaker 2:Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you have a favourite flower to grow for the bees?
Speaker 2:At the moment. The bees love dahlias. They're enjoying dahlias. I like calendulas. I find calendulas the most reliable flower because they can grow throughout the year.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and colourful too. They add a nice pop of colour to a garden, don't they?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, it's a medicinal plant as well. Yes, yeah, it is one of the best flowers and it's self seed, so you don't have to do anything, it just grows by itself. Oh, and that's a bonus?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I actually had some nasturtium self seed and I know they can be quite difficult to germinate nasturtiums. So anytime I see some popping up in the garden that I didn't plant, I'm very grateful and I make sure I let it know. That too, I say a little thank you.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's cute. They are a really good flower. They do their own thing.
Speaker 1:They do, yes, and the bees love them as well. And again, also a medicinal edible plant. The nasturtium is a bit peppery.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. It's such a good plant that you can use for it's a multi-purpose plant, isn't it? The leaves, the seeds, the flowers.
Speaker 1:Indeed, yeah, and they make quite pretty decorations too in presenting a meal cakes or biscuits, things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it can look quite beautiful, that is correct.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do really appreciate plants that have that multi-use that you mentioned. I find that very enriching for the garden.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is correct. Always looking for benefits, always looking for benefits.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, A bit of companion planting too, Both the calendula that you mentioned and nasturtiums. They're fantastic companion plants too for certain types.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can fill an empty space also in the garden. If you've got an empty space, they can fill up that little empty space, so it doesn't look bad.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's true. Yeah, and it's quite nice too, and they can be rambling. The nasturtiums can be quite sprawling and pretty yeah, Now that's a very good point. There are some. I have some favourite space fillers in my garden. Do you have any in particular that are your go-tos?
Speaker 2:I at the moment want to. This is my plan to get a lot of pansies and violas and put them in.
Speaker 1:Oh lovely, yes, very pretty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it will self-seed as well. The garden will get more colour. That's on my wish list at the moment because we've just been From the time. We've redone the whole garden, we've just been trying to just manage it at the moment and I keep thinking we do need to get some more colour in the garden.
Speaker 1:Yes, lovely. So may I ask you, penelope, what do you personally get out of gardening? Second to the produce, of course, what does it do for you? What do you love most about it?
Speaker 2:It gives me happy. It just gives me happy, beautiful. It's like. It's that mental happiness. It's exercise, which is another thing, that's true, yes, and it keeps your brain going. It's one of the things my friend was telling me about a while ago. She said that you need to have a hobby that keeps you busy, that keeps your brain busy, because if you have your brain busy which is again all this planning, thinking I need to pick this, pick that you have your body working. It's the best thing.
Speaker 1:It really does take a lot of boxes, doesn't it Like the spiritual, mental, physical.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, that's the word I was going for.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is. It's quite wonderful, and one of the best things I find is that there's always more to learn. We won't ever stop learning in the garden, and that's, I think, quite powerful.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely there's. You can write as you can read it, as many books as you want, but you'll still keep learning.
Speaker 1:Indeed indeed. Is there anything in particular that you've learned on your journey that you would have never expected to learn?
Speaker 2:With gardening, you require patience, you just require patience, and you can't give up, because I mean, why would you give up? You can't give up. I've tried to give up and I thought you know what? This is not me. I need to do this. The chili plants that died. I was like no man. How can you die on me? We need to try this again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it, if at first you don't succeed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just do it, just try it again. Just do it and expand. I think every gardener who you speak to is always looking for a way to sneak in new plants and expand, grow something different, add more fruit. Can't sit quietly with two plants and think, yep, that's it, I'm happy.
Speaker 1:No, no, it's quite addictive. It is addictive, but it's a good addiction in the garden. So what about future plans? Speaking of not being able to sit still, is there anything that you'd like to try with your garden in the future, penelope?
Speaker 2:Yes, I do want to try. It's on my list. It's one of my things to do in winter is basically plant a couple more fruit trees. I have my mind on a persimmon, because I love persimmon it is such a beautiful fruit and a cherry tree. I've got a cherry tree which I almost killed twice over the last two weeks because of the heat span. Oh no, but that is the goal to try and grow both of those fruit trees.
Speaker 1:Lovely, so is your plan to have fruits available each season.
Speaker 2:The funny part is it actually works out that way. I'll tell you how it works with me. So the raspberries and the berries and this is one thing I've. It took me time to learn because you don't know these things you go into a shop and you just buy a plant, but every fruit has got three seasons. They have the early season, the mid season and late season varieties. I did not think about that when buying fruit trees With my garden. Luckily it works out this way that from the end of November till almost the end of mid of December we get a lot of raspberries, the raspberries, blackberries, yellow berries. They continue. The whole berry season continues till December.
Speaker 2:From Feb starts the nectarines. The nectarine season starts in my garden from Feb, going till about mid-March. That's when. That's when, after that, the fig season starts. Fig season starts in my garden. After the fig season starts the apples. So I've got two different types of apples. I've got Pink Lady and I've got the Granny Smith. That continues from about April, may and goes on till June. I'm going to say it goes on. And most people wonder why does it go on till June? Because I picked the fruit when they are the ripest, when they are red when they are the sweetest, because that's when you'll get the flavor. Then you can store your apples for at least about five, six months. That's what I do in the coolest room of the house, yeah, once the apples are over. Well, now we're getting pears. This year we have the pomegranates as well. Pomegranates work after that, oh delicious. Then starts the lemon and the mandarin. So we sort of have a pattern going on here for six months where we just have fruit from the garden.
Speaker 1:That's wonderful. I love that. That was an accidental reward, was it?
Speaker 2:That was an accidental reward.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sorry, you have to love those, you have to love them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's one of the benefits also of taking the time to observe your garden, which is it's also one of the principles of permaculture. Is observation To watch your garden for an entire year, so all of the season cycles pass through, and that gives you a much better connection to your garden, a deeper understanding of what's appearing, when and what may need to be repositioned or is thriving in particular areas too. So it sounds like the fruit trees in your garden are very happy.
Speaker 2:They better be. They are happy, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Oh, I hope you're biting into some delicious pears in no time, I'm sure you will.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Yep, yep, looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:So is there anything, penelope, that you were hoping I would ask you, and I haven't?
Speaker 2:Let me think about this One thing I would like. I'll tell you one thing that I would like people to do. And I see a lot of people mostly like, once they get a lot of produce especially new gardeners they're most happy about yeah, I've got so much produce, what do I do with it? And people ask me as well. When they see my post, they're like oh, you've got so much of food, what do you do with it? Because there's only two of you. But I think that there is an art in preservation and people should really learn to preserve food more than anything else. I love preserving food. I love preserving food. Now, in the next two weekends, I will take out the potatoes from the, from the veggie patch, and I'll put them in cardboard boxes and I know that those potatoes will serve me for at least the next five months five to six months.
Speaker 1:Oh, wonderful.
Speaker 2:Wonderful. So, yeah, I feel like the art of preservation is massive and I think it's something that people need to learn. Like even apples we keep apples in the coldest room in the house for a good six, seven months and we just eat them whenever people aren't really aware of these things. Like even lemons this is the first year I learned to make lemon silo and I'm over the moon.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Out of preserving these things. You get great to share stuff with family and friends, but learn to preserve these things for yourself for the long run, because you never know the way the world is going when you actually have to stop and become sustainable.
Speaker 1:That is very true, very true. And, as you said, storing the apples for six months. I think lots of people don't realise the apples that they'll pick from the supermarket shelves are often already that old, so they think you know. Some people may be hearing this and saying you know they're not going to be able to store apples for six months, but they do. They last quite a long time in the right conditions, don't they?
Speaker 2:They do. We have pumpkins that have sat on the table for a year. They just sit on the table. That's it. Yeah, lovely.
Speaker 1:They're happy or lucky. Yeah, they're good storeers. Pumpkins Do you have a particular variety of pumpkin? You find stores best?
Speaker 2:I would say the Cinderella pumpkin. I love the Cinderella pumpkin. It's my favourite. I'm not a fan of eating pumpkins, I just like growing them because they're so pretty. When I get over my, when I look at them and I get over my OK, I'm done looking at them. I will cut them, divide them and give them to friends, or we freeze part of them.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, that's a good idea too. Yeah, so would that be your advice to anybody starting their gardening journey now, penelope, would you say that you'd advise them to learn the art of preservation?
Speaker 2:I would. I would ask them, if you're just starting their garden, to have patience. Have patience, do not give up. It's OK if you kill a plant. I've killed plants. I've killed so many plants, but you know what. That's why they have so many seeds, so you can grow them again. That's right. Yes indeed.
Speaker 2:So keep trying, keep trying and learn to preserve your food. Preservation is a beautiful skill which, if I'm not mistaken, everyone's grandparents, great-grandparents all did. Back in the day when we didn't have fridges, everyone did preservation. So it's not an old skill, it's not a new skill. Sorry, it's an old skill, but it's a great skill to have.
Speaker 1:And very important too, like you say, food security as well. It's our best to know, correct Indeed. So before we sign off, Penelope, could you please share with us how our listeners can find out a bit more about you and your garden? Where can they find you? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So I have an Instagram account. It's called as Queen Penelope's Patch and they can follow me there. If they have any questions that require any gardening help, just shoot me and shoot me a message, and I'm always happy to take a look. I'll probably ask you for a photograph if you tell me my plant is a disease. So just send me a photograph or look at it. I'll give you my advice, tell you what I think. I will cheer you when you have your wins in the garden. If any of you have your failures, I will stand by you and say you know what that plant was? A stupid plant. Anyway, let's do another one.
Speaker 1:Wonderful, wonderful. So some gardening support also. And for anyone who has not yet seen Penelope's Instagram page at Queen Penelope's Patch, I think you should definitely jump on and have a look at the amazing thing she's growing, but the photographs are absolutely divine. Penelope, I think you'd have some luck trying your hand at some professional photography too. I've thought about it.
Speaker 2:I can't say I haven't thought about it. I have thought about it.
Speaker 1:Vibrant, the colors are rich. They're truly wonderful.
Speaker 2:The produce speaks for itself.
Speaker 1:Perfect, perfect Well, thank you so much for your time today, penelope. You've been a real wealth of knowledge and I've absolutely loved chatting with you. I truly appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Emma. You are awesome and I wish you the best. Have fun in your garden.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you and likewise Thanks for listening.