What is the best investment available right now? Shares? Property? How about a packet of seeds?
One packet of parsley seeds costs $1.50, and will give you roughly 40 parsley plants. One plant will give you roughly 70 bunches of parsley in its 14 month harvest season. One bunch of parsley costs $3.20 which means that one packet of seeds can make you 2800 bunches, thus saving or selling $8960, which seems impossible, and can someone please correct my maths?*
About 40 years ago I made enough to live on (which admittedly wasn't very much) selling bunches of parsley, herbs, coloured chard (silverbeet with coloured stems), watercress, flowers, baby broad beans and coloured beetroot to five restaurants. Back then I didn't buy fertiliser, but collected free stable tailings and made compost, mostly from weeds like blackberry.
I'm not suggesting you begin herb farming on your balcony, though you might try swapping some bunches for a morning coffee. You probably don't want 40 parsley plants, either, though their frothy green is prettier than many house plants. Swap seedlings with a friend so you get their spare lettuce and tomato seedlings. But it is amazing how much money you can save, even with the amount of fruit and veg you can grow on a patio.
What fruits? Think any fruit that now comes in dwarf or semi-dwarf varieties, from cherries to apples, bananas, lemons, oranges, avocados (which will survive well on a sunny barren patio if sheltered through their first summer and winter), pears, or cumquat. Add grapes and kiwi fruit to that, or maybe a choko vine, to twine around the balcony, plus large hanging baskets of parsley, buttercrunch lettuce (plant a pinch more seed every fortnight) zucchini, tomatoes, kale, silverbeet, 'bush' pumpkins that grow no larger than zucchini plants, six planter bags of potatoes (one kilo of seed potatoes should give about 10 kilos of spuds) and you have a considerable saving.
You may also have what some designers call "a mess" and others "the mother earth look", especially if you are frugal and use old two-litre milk bottles with drainage holes, surplus containers, or even extra large cans swapped with cafes in return for bunches of parsley. (Paint the cans the same colour and poke drainage holes). A patio filled with fecundity can cost less than $50 if you make your own compost and grow the fruits from seed. This is the perfect time to plant fruit seed, from lemons to apples.
But it is also possible for your patio to look gloriously elegant, as I learned in a Bologna hotel room where the shower didn't work except in hiccups but the window looked over at least 40 roof gardens, with topiaried potted lemon trees or potted olives either side of the door, grapevines on trellises for shade, and herbs and lettuce, tomatoes and zucchini planted in tiny terraces around the garden.
A well staked and pruned pear-shaped cherry tomato is definitely elegant, especially if grown in a tall pot of restrained beauty, as are bushes of tiny eggplant in purple, white or orange. Red-tinged frilly lettuce are frankly gorgeous, like absurdly lacy knickers. Round baby carrots have delightful ferny tops. Coloured chard are bright even in the hottest summer or coldest winter our region can provide.
If you stop thinking "money saving veg" and consider "what veg look beautiful?" you'll find an abundance of choice as well as the basis for lunch or dinner. A patio is also the perfect place to grow fruit and veg, as long as you're prepared to water them every couple of days, or even daily in a heat wave. You can invest in a dripper system, or use the coffee pot to water them with.
Patios are usually weed free. They are also grass free, so you won't have couch or kikuyu runners invading your lettuces. They tend to be warmer than the garden in spring and autumn and even possibly frost free in winter. They are also hotter in summer, which is where the "water every day" bit comes in. But if you want a crop of mini melons, a patio is the perfect place to grow them - and a railing is the perfect place for the vine to twine, with less chance of downy mildew. Just beware of falling fruit below.
* Both the seed price and 'bunch' price are taken from the same outlet.
This week I am:
- Admiring the two potted philodendron putting out a lovely lot of new leaves. Both were houseplants I almost killed, one from neglect and the other because I put it out earlier this year for a few day's holiday, and we had a sudden hot spell and the leaves withered. The lesson in this: don't assume your pot plants are dead. Leave them in dappled shade, water well and wait.
- Wishing crab apple and other spring fruit blossom lasted as well in vases as they do on the branch.
- Picking French lavender flowers to store with our woollen jumpers to deter clothes moths and silverfish. (The only safe place to keep woollens over summer is in a bag in the freezer).
- Watching the last of the limes travel off to become marmalade by the Saucy Ladies of Araluen who raise money for the local Progress Association and hall.
- Wondering if there'll be enough thunderstorms in the summer heat for a patch of red nasturtiums to thrive, or the even hardier yellow/orange ones.
- Noticing that 'Old Ugly' is blooming, the avocado that produces the world's ugliest fruit and that only fruits in high heat. 'Old Ugly' didn't bloom before the last three mild summers. If Old Ugly is correct, we are in for a summer of scorchers.
