Mat Pember isn't trying to be smart when he says his company, The Little Veggie Patch Co, started organically. He'd been working as a landscape gardener, mainly concentrating on ''ornamental gardens in big, posh houses around Melbourne'', but had always had an interest in edible gardens, having grown up in the backyard of his Italian grandparents, where figs, blood plums, grapes and prickly pears were often on the menu.
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He realised there was a growing interest, if you'll excuse the pun, in edible gardens. That people wanted to grow their own food but often didn't know where to start, and he soon began installing them for friends and friends of friends. He knew he was onto a good thing but wondered where to take it next.
His sister, Elise, was working with Fabian Capomolla, who was writing a blog called The Backyard Farmer (backyardfarmer.com.au/), so she ''hooked us up''.
''As it turned out, we had lived almost parallel lives,'' the pair write in the introduction to The Little Veggie Patch Co: How to grow food in small spaces, a book which is a practical guide to setting up an edible garden.
''Each joining our respective families making sugo every autumn, making slightly different takes on very similar recipes for home-made sausage, regarding the smell of a tomato plant as one of our first memories, and, generally, living a life that revolved around the kitchen.
''When we met for our very first catch-up in a cafe on Fitzroy's Brunswick Street in Melbourne, it quickly became clear we connected on the same fronts, right down to the thyme field mushrooms and polenta special and even ideas on how to maintain scruffy facial hair.''
Just like tomato and basil, Pember and Capomolla complemented each other. Each brought a different skill set to the business, which has recently evolved from the landscaping and the blog into a retail shop and website, but also brought a shared passion for helping people realise how easy it is to grow their own food.
It seems a little strange to be so enamoured by a gardening book, but The Little Veggie Patch Co is written with such charm, generosity and practicality that spring might pass you by while you're busy reading it.
After introductory chapters on ''veggie patch fundamentals'' - more about those later - the book breaks into sections on edible plants from A to Z.
I spend nights planning what might go into our humble patch this season. Maybe it's time to give Asian greens a go, or silverbeet, carrots or even cabbage. Parsley, basil, mint ... dare I try coriander?
Slow down, Pember and Capomolla advise. It's best to get the basics right before you start. That's a common problem among veggie patch novices, jumping in without really thinking the process through from thestart.
''You have to work out how it's all going to fit in with your lifestyle,'' Pember says.
''There are lots of people out there with not a lot of knowledge but plenty of enthusiasm so you want to be realistic.
''Tell yourself this isn't going to replace the backyard cricket pitch or where you hang your clothes; integrate the garden into your current lifestyle.
''We always suggest to start small and master that space. From that you're encouraged by successful endeavours rather than put off by failures ... it's a matter of choosing things which are easy to grow so you'll get spurred on and things you're going to use and eat.''
The first steps involve picking a location, ideally close to the kitchen and facing north so it catches the winter sun, with a level site and good air circulation. Next, think of size.
Here, keep things manageable. A couple of square metres is a productive size in an average garden but don't be deterred if you only have a balcony. Pots are a perfectly good way to grow food.
Also, think of aesthetics.
''An attractive and defined patch will drawyou and your family towards it as wellas give you ownership of your endeavours; an uninviting patch, on the otherhand, will help you become an even better procrastinator.''
Look at other basics such as watering, read up on companion planting and crop rotation, and then decide what to plant.
''You've got to grow things that you're going to use a lot and things that will regenerate as you're using them,'' Pember says. ''Leafy greens and herbs primarily, soyou can go into the garden most nights andpick a few leaves of lettuce, put them intoyour salad and two nights later the innergrowth has regenerated and is ready for picking.
''There's a lot of lag time in things like tomatoes, as rewarding as that is, but you really want to see things coming up quickly to captivate you.''
One area The Little Veggie Patch Co has branched out into is installing edible gardens in child-care centres and schools.
It is a partner of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation Learning Centre and has been involved in the ongoing development of the SAKGF Learning Centre at Collingwood College.
The company designed the kitchen garden in collaboration with the foundation and donated time to construct the garden with their products over 10months.
Many of their private clients are the parents of young children.
''They're concerned about what's going into their food,'' Capomolla says, ''and theonly way they can be sure is to grow itthemselves.''
As the father of two young children, Jack and Olive, he says it's crucial that children know that vegetables do not come from thesupermarket.
''Teaching children the fundamentals of gardening and showing them that food comes out of the ground is a great thing.''
The seeds were sown for both Capomolla and Pember by their own families. ''Mat and I take it for granted,'' Capomolla says. ''We've grown up with an Italian background, where the whole backyard wascovered in vegetables. We've picked upour knowledge from our families, ourgrandparents.
''But there are whole generations of people that have lost that information, know little about simple things like how to plant seedlings, how to save seeds.
''That's where the book comes in, giving information, basic fundamentals on how to go about that sort of stuff.''
The idea for the book developed every time someone would visit the blog entry, ''How to build a raised garden bed'' - http://backyardfarmer.com.au/organic-gardening/how-to-build-a-raised-vegetable-garden-bed-out-of-ewood/.
Capomolla says he hasn't updated the entry in more than two years, but it is still the most visited page.
''It amazed us that such a simplistic step-by-step sequence of nailing timber together was what people wanted to see most,'' they write in the introduction. ''It highlighted thatpeople wanted to know how to do it, rather than why.''
Capomolla and Pember realise they're writing for a new generation of gardeners. There's nothing staid about this book, or The Little Veggie Patch Co philosophy on the whole, for that matter.
The website contains videos of Pember bunny- hopping a tractor; there's wheelbarrow cam; several bands - the Drums, the Antlers, Wild Nothing - all get mentioned in the acknowledgments ''for getting us through''; there's links to Twitter and Flickr.
Who thought gardening could be so funky?
The Little Veggie Patch Co: How to grow food in small spaces. By Fabian Capomollo and Mat Pember. Plum. 225pp. $45.
http://littleveggiepatchco.com.au/
