Breaking new ground at Holder

Canberran Susan McCarthy was on holiday in Saigon in January and, walking through an outdoor flower market, she saw kumquat trees being offered for Viet New Year. Then, online, she read Food and Wine (Jan 21) and our story about kumquats.

McCarthy sent us photographs of an Eiffel Tower kumquat tree and kumquat trees shaped into horses for Year of the Horse. She pondered how the purchasers would get the trees home on their motorcycles.

Starting from scratch

Last winter, because their home garden for the past 40 years in Chapman became too shady, McCarthy started developing some new plots in the Canberra Organic Garden at Holder. The virgin dirt had never been worked and the first challenge was to eliminate invasive couch grass. She smothered the couch with newspapers and hay and, helped by her husband Justin McCarthy, edged the beds with sleepers and old metal guttering. She surrounded the beds with weed matting on top of thick cardboard and many editions of The Canberra Times. It was hard work. The beds also contained rubbish - carpet underlay, rotted tarpaulin and plastic, rocks, wire and plant pots.

Feeding the soil

McCarthy engaged a dingo driver to rip the beds, added gypsum and dug in autumn leaves, grass clippings, sheep manure and horse manure from Chapman agistment paddocks. She regularly digs the beds with a long-handled ergonomic fork made by Fiskars bought at Bunnings Tuggeranong. Six compost bins, three enclosed and three wire cages, are regularly up-ended. They incorporate sawdust from Justin McCarthy's retirement role as a furniture maker and sawdust is also used as a weed suppressant on paths.

The first crop

Last spring, McCarthy had a monumental pea crop. The crop was conceived as a nitrogen-fixer for the new soil and the seeds were pre-sprouted in August and put into ''toilet roll'' pots under a cold frame made by McCarthy's daughter. They were planted in a block, four rows each about six metres long and the bed was limed, with compost added and a foliar seaweed spray used every couple of weeks. A scarecrow has been made by McCarthy's daughter and grandchildren to frighten crows away from ripening tomatoes.

Plot holders in Holder

Fellow ''plotters'' have shared raspberry canes, parsnip seeds and seed potatoes. McCarthy seed shares with a friend who has a COGS plot in O'Connor, who gave her strawberries and asparagus crowns to which she added asparagus from her son's COGS plot. The ''old hands'' at Holder have passed on knowledge about likely frosts, prevailing winds and planting suggestions. McCarthy has always loved telephone peas and blue lake beans and she buys these seeds from The Garden in Weston. She likes vertical gardening.

The genes

As a child of schoolteachers, McCarthy lived in country towns and her first vegetable crop as an eight-year-old in Lithgow was climbing beans. She came to Canberra in 1969 to take up an Asian studies scholarship at ANU and she recently retired from an international law firm. Susan and Justin McCarthy built in Chapman in 1975 where they raised three sons and a daughter.

She channels her parents when gardening and uses her father's ancient short-handled rake. She has re-homed her mother's wheelbarrow and compost bins and some of her seed collection has been sown for a thriving zucchini crop and silver beet.

Top crop

Crystal apple cucumbers have produced a fantastic crop with 10 ready for picking each day from three small vines. Beetroot, silver beet and radishes are ready for harvesting. A big bed has been planted with russet Burbank, desiree and Dutch cream potatoes, a strategy to break up the poor soil and provide good eating.

The table

The McCarthys mostly cook together. They love Asian food and the flexibility of stir fries in which freshly harvested vegetables like celery, capsicum, chilli, asparagus, shallots, beans, snow peas and baby bok choy can be included. On her recent trip to Halong Bay the pho bo (beef and noodle soup) was loaded with fresh flavours and loaded with Vietnamese mint and coriander picked off branches laid on the table.

>> Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.