Vasili's Garden Episodes
Every year I look forward to attending the annual home made wine festival held by the City of Darebin, 5 years running now and I’ve attended every event with over 100 entrants all competing for the Annual ‘Best Home Made Wine award.’
And I must say for a man who doesn’t drink, even though I do like a glass of red on the odd occasion, I’ve been able to pick first and second winners nearly every time. It must be the wonderful Greek taste buds I have and the fact that I don’t spit out the sample.
Why waste a good drop like that?
Just recently I was invited to attend the 40th home wine show of the Eltham and District Winemakers Guild, thinking that it would have about the same range of wines to taste as the Darebin Wine Festival, I was looking forward to the opportunity.
Well folks, what can I say but WOW!
I always dream about the day I retire, what I would do, where I will be…
First I said it would be at 35 - who was I Kidding?
Then I thought maybe there’s a chance by 40?
Well didn’t 40 come and go faster than the last Melbourne cup!
But when I do retire, which would be more than likely around 65-70, I want to spend my days in the garden just like Angelo in Chirnside Park.
How cool would it be to wake up in the morning, go for your morning stroll then straight into the gardening for some good garden therapy.
I love my family just like everyone else, and I wish nothing more than good health and happiness for everyone, but lets be honest now, having a wonderful productive garden does not only bring you pleasure for effort you put into the garden, it also opens the door to many of other life’s experience that you would otherwise never get to enjoy.
What am I talking about, you ask?
Oh my god!!!
I couldn’t believe it, as soon as I walked into Mark’s place I thought I had shrunk in size.
Everything in his garden was just huge, giant Birds of Paradise, Palm trees that seem to reach the sky and Birds Nest plants large enough for a pterodactyl to nest in.
I was left speechless on how everything had grown so well within a few years, but Mark explained clearly that it didn’t just happen; it was a labour of love and a lot of hard digging in the beginning to achieve these great results.
Being such a perfectionist in everything he does, Mark, spent many days researching his plants, learning everything there is to know about tropical plants and their growing needs. Once he had enough info, he went out and dug deep trenches everywhere and then layered the earth with compost, straw, paper and even broken pieces of granite which he explains helps to keep the moisture in the ground. Looking at his garden now, I’d believe anything he said.
But gardening wasn’t always as easy and one 1, 2, 3 for Mark. In the past, he’s had long running battles with the ever so clever and persistent possums, trying all sorts of gadgets and concoctions to control them but at the end I think it came down to a level of acceptance, Mark has now allocated an area for the possums to live in which he calls outside and the other area that he calls inside is where he and his family live, so no more possums in the roof.
Meet Vincenzo, a retired assistant mechanic whose passion now lies within his garden of paradise.
He never knows much about gardening when he first came to Australia, but he didn’t waste time learning everything.
He puts it down to the simple love and pleasure of nature that he has and the beautiful fresh organic produce that he harvests every day for him and his family. Due to unfortunate health experiences, Vincenzo hasn’t been able to do the same level of work in the garden as he used to, this is where his son Vittorio comes to his rescue.
Just like his dad in the early years, Vittorio had no idea about growing, propagating, harvesting anything, all he know how to do was to eat the great meals his mum prepared with the produce from the garden for him and his brothers.
Now a few years down the track, Vittorio has admitted how regretful he is for not getting involved in gardening earlier in his life, but he is ever so grateful that he has now. For him himself said that one day dad won’t be with us, so who was going to take over the veggie patch and look after the trees?
This week we went out to meet Adrian and his family in Wheelers Hill and what a lovely family they are too!
Every week we talk about keeping the traditions alive in gardening and all things about sustainable living and Adrian is doing just that.
Only in his early 20s, Adrian was inspired to get into gardening as recent as 2 years ago but if you were to take a look at his garden you would think that he’s been gardening for years.
Still living at home and sure you might say that dad is secretly doing it all but that’s not that case here.
Dad is too busy reconfiguring all the grey water outlets around the house and harvesting them so that nothing goes to waste and it’s all recycled.
For example: All the shower water is collected in a drum then gravity fed back to be used in the toilet, and as Luigi said himself, with each shower they have, the water collected provides them with at least 5 toilet flushes, so there’s none of this ….’If it’s yellow let it mellow’ at Luigi’s place.
And if Luigi is not working on the grey water harvesting system, he’s relaxing in the cellar of the house having a drink of his wine while thinking about the next contraption his going to implement.
Actually you are never too old to learn about gardening from the young ones either!
That makes more sense.
If it doesn’t then that means you are not listening to today’s young ones.
The kids now days want to participate more and more in gardening and everything about sustainable living, and it’s as if it really comes natural to them.
You know what… It really does!
When you take a child and show them some basic techniques on traditional gardening practices, they absorb this information like a sponge, yes like a sponge! Not like us older crustier types who forget everything that’s said the moment it’s said. Even some of us can’t string two words together to make any sense!
A bit like my writing at the moment!
When Michael and his family invited me over to see his garden, I was quite confident that I would be well impressed with everything.
I met Michael and his wife Carolyn at their local shopping centre in Melton, Michael began to explain that it was only his second year that he was gardening with lots of attention given towards sustainable gardening practices.
Because I always love to visit people’s gardens I couldn’t refuse to go over to see Michael’s and learn about their approach and methods to gardening and believe me when I say that there is always something to learn from everyone. Whether it is water saving techniques, composting or just simple planting methods, there is always something to learn.
As I was heading out to Melton, driving along the highway I noticed that the grass along the nature strip and fields was literally turning yellow as we neared Melton, frightfully I thought the same for Michael’s place but when I arrived I was totally surprised with his garden.
Wouldn’t you know it!
Some people work 24/7 and some literally are on holidays 24/7.
My good friend Peter rang me last week asking for my help to plant some spring veggies in his garden.
Obviously I accepted to help with open arms but then I found out that he is in Greece and taking it easy…
He was supposed to return a month ago, but no…. he couldn’t resist, he had to stay a bit longer and now it’s my job to plant out his garden.
What a shock I got when I turned up to his place, Pete’s back yard is totally barren, all he has are some well established conifers along the boundary line and some very tired looking Lilly Pillys too.
So I thought that there’s no better time than this week to demonstrate how simple it is to create a veggie garden out of nothing and use very little products to do so too.
Having very sandy soil means it will hold very little nutrients and next to no moisture at all, and I bet many of you would have similar of soil.
Maresi!
Normally when we go out to film a place and come across a house that is practically full of fruit and veggies in the front garden instantly your mind goes to the older Italian and Greek generation.
Well wasn’t I in for a surprise!
Meet Simon, your typical Aussie whose love for the organic and sustainable approx to gardening oozes with passion.
Has hasn’t got a huge parcel of land but what he produces out of it is amazing to say the least, he has left nothing out when it comes to practicing sustainable gardening.
So where do I start?
That’s what the sign said when we turned up at Des’ place out in Dingora West Vic.
As soon as we arrived all I could think about was getting some worm tablets into me, but I was quickly assured by Des that it’s not those types of worms that he has, its compost worms!
With all this beautiful rain we’ve been having lately, surely the water tanks and all the buckets lying around in the garden would be full by now?
Give us plenty more I say, ’cause you can never get enough of that precious liquid.
But one thing’s for sure, not only have the buckets filled with water, so have the gardens with many unwanted plants!
Weeds!
Well that’s what you call them if you’re a little naïve like me, and in next to no time run out into the garden at the first sign of a break in the weather and attempt to pull them out or spray them with some sort of herbicide.
But wait!!
If my friend Marion has anything to say about this she’d tell you to leave them alone.
“They’re not weeds” as she’d say. “They’re herbs!”
And that is exactly how her garden is, full of weeds….. I mean herbs.
If you love a bit of salami in your life well you’re going to love this week show where we meet Sam his wife Rita and their lovely daughter Maryluise.
When ‘comedian’ Gabriel Rossi invited us over to meet his father, he warned us that his dad just loved to talk, and as passionate as they get when it comes to organic gardening, we are talking traditional gardening folks!
Well he wasn’t far off the mark about his dad being so passionate let alone wanting to share everything he knows about gardening.
You are never too old to garden, and just like Costa’s house they’ve been gardening for 65 years.
We visit Costa and his wife Thomaiy at their typical suburban block in Coburg.
For those who of you that love wine, when ever you are in Greece I seriously recommend that you go and visit Gerovassiliou winery.
On Todays show we visit a beautiful town Aghia Kiriaki in the province of Kastoria, it was named after the church which was once burnt down during the war.
On today’s show we go to Platania, a very small town in the Province of Kozani where we meet Haralambo who is a goat herder and his wife Dimitra with her veggie garden.
If you love sweets you will just love Elenidis pastry shop and if that’s not enough, you can make your way down to Hatzis sweets.
We head to Prespa to learn how the best beans in the world are grown and maybe take some of their great ideas and practices back with us to try in Australia.
We folks, on this show you will get it all in one, from wine production with another award wining vineyard, to visiting an animal protection site for bears, and then to finish off the show we visit another cheese factory.
Unlike Australia, Greece’s history dates back thousands of years so we thought we’d better go and visit a couple of museums to learn a bit more about it.
Never enough wineries I say, the more the merrier and the drunker we get.
If you ever wondered about owning a farm but were worried that you might find it too hard to grow and maintain the fields on your own, well rest assured that we have the answer for you.
More wine folks, that’s right more wine, but this time it’s not a major production company like Alpha or Gerivassiliou winery, instead it’s just Yianni and Maria from Velvendo who take us through the growing fields and back to the winery where we taste some really nice wines.
Greece is not only about wine and cheese as some of you might think, it does have some beautiful sights to see too, as you will see when we visit some beautiful waterfalls a very old monastery and church and even a newly built dam, something that we in Australia are in desperate need of.
With so much fast food ‘junk food’ that exists in the world today isn’t it time that we learnt how to make some good wholesome traditional Greek food, and what better way than to have the 3 wise ladies of the north to teach us how.
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