Southbank feast to showcase urban vegie patch produce

When Bek Stiegler was five years old, she would help her grandma Anita pick plums, figs and cucumbers in her Ardeer backyard.

"I would pull up carrots and think, 'oh my God, here is this green foliage and underneath is these bright orange carrots'. It felt kind of magical."

She likes to think Anita, who died in 2008, would be proud that Bek has revived that same garden, although she has gone rather over the top.

Ms Stiegler, 31, a dietitian, is 90 per cent self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables, growing 50 varieties of vegetables and 136 types of fruit. She's been known to proffer free spinach, raspberries and obscure tomato varieties to friends and workmates.

In 2009, when Ms Stiegler moved in to Anita's 1970s brick veneer, the garden consisted of a cypress tree, three fig trees, a stack of corrugated iron and a few house tiles.

She planted a lemon tree she had been carting around rental houses in a pot for years. It is now flourishing, and there are three yards around the house full of food plants, and a pen with two chooks for eggs.

"I'm probably excessive in my hobby," Ms Stiegler admits. "But some people love computer games, some people love go kart racing. I love gardening."

Pluses include a drop in her weekly grocery bill from about $100 to $40 a week. An $8 raspberry plant yields her a kilogram of raspberries, and regenerates each year, whereas buying an $8 punnet from a shop would give a one-off 150 grams of fruit.

One of the few fruits she does buy is avocado-growing the large trees that can take 10 years to fruit has so far defeated her.

The health benefits are a no-brainer. "I would rather spend half an hour pottering around the garden and collecting something like this for dinner than going to the supermarket and spending half an hour fighting through the crowds."

Ms Stiegler is vying for a place in a Local Growers' Feast being held on March 1 for the Sustainable Living Festival at the Testing Grounds community arts space in Southbank .

Fifty backyard gardeners will contribute produce to – and then consume – a meal to be cooked by Pope Joan chef Vanessa Mateus.

The event, dubbed "crowd farming", is inspired by one held in Bondi, Sydney in 2012 for 200 people and in 2013 TedX hosted 2200 people at the Sydney Opera House.

It is part of a Grow it Local movement encouraging urban food farming.

Melbourne growers must register their patch at growitlocal.com.au by February 27, and the 50 most unique or interesting entries will be selected for the Southbank feast.

Ms Stiegler, said the Local Growers' Feast was "a fabulous idea" that would bring home gardeners together to swap ideas. "It's usually something people do in isolation."

And is it a little about showing off? "Of course, absolutely."

In her blog, Bek's Backyard, she will occasionally post some of her failures, but at the feast "you'd want to bring the best produce you've got". She would bring in tomatoes, cucumbers, plums, eggplant and corn, which are in season.

She hopes the feast inspires people to give growing food a try, "even if it's herbs on a balcony or a couple of pots of tomatoes", and to live more sustainably.