Gardening for Poh Ling Yeow is a good way to spend time out from running a café, , hosting a stall at the Adelaide Farmers’ Markets, writing her latest cookbook, preparing for an exhibition of her artwork and filming her brand-new series of
“Gardening is awesome. I love to clean as well. My house is chaotic most of the time so it’s nice to get stuck into it.” A novice gardener when she and husband Jono Bennett moved to an outer Adelaide suburb several years ago, Yeow has a few tricks up her sleeve for her fellow green thumb travellers.
1. Love your garden from your head to-ma-toes.
Grow your own tomatoes! “There’s nothing in this world that compares to the taste of a home-grown tomato.”
2. Herb your enthusiasm.
Get on that herb-growing train. “Herbs are probably my favourite thing to grow. They’re so simple, too. And no matter what you have in the fridge, even if it’s looking a bit tired, some fresh herbs will really liven it up.”
3. Be design-smart!
A little design goes a long way here. Poh suggests organising your veggie garden as a grid of beds, as she's done (see it come to life in episode 6).
“The idea was that if something went wrong I could take it out really easily and it wouldn’t ruin the landscape. It’s like when people plant a hedge and one of the plants dies and it ruins the look of the whole hedge. I was avoiding that.”
Poh and Jono build vertical structures in their garden and plant flowers around the base. Source: Poh & Co. S2
4. Your garden, your rules.
Don't grow anything you don't enjoy eating. Fact. But if you do, find a good home for it. “In my case it was eggplant. A really weird variety with lots of seeds. I hate wasting food so I put them in a box at my front gate and someone took them, which was great.”
5. Sometimes you've got to be picky...
Pick your produce before the plants go to seed. “I get greedy and think, I’ll wait until it gets bigger and then I wind up with something that’s really fibrous or seedy or overripe. I tried corn, which was my grand failure – it’s notoriously hard to grow corn where the kernels are tight. They were totally waxy and horrible.”
6. Enjoy the rewards!
Poh loves cooking up her garden harvest. Using some bright beets you too, can enjoy this totally unicorn beetroot cake. Get the recipe !
The beauty of a before and after shot! Source: Poh & Co.
