She's just bought a boot-load of petunia plants. Admittedly, woman does not live by asparagus and coriander alone, but it is time to be frank. Turn your garden over to vegetables if you want to save money. And buy seeds, not seedlings, to cut the nursery bills by up to 90 per cent.

How much money depends on what you plant, how much you eat and how inspired a cook you are. When you have a veg-filled garden you tend to improvise – vegie stews and veg curries, find a hundred ways with spuds instead of rice or pasta, make a vat of vegetable soup, hot or chilled, each week for the next seven days' lunch, instead of sandwiches, or lunch on veg-rich leftovers from last night's dinner.

Grow what you love to eat. Our summer staples are salads of lettuce, cucumber, coriander, parsley, tomatoes, cobs of sweet corn, vast amounts of chilled melon, tomato-based sauces. In winter it's veg soups and stir-fried and spiced baked veg – pumpkins, carrots, parsnips, choko, beetroot – as well as cauliflower, broccoli, kale and cabbages.

But if you are going for sheer quantity for least work veg, think of these:

Parsley: Plant at least 24 plants. Chop it into salads, stews, omelettes, scrambled eggs and on to pizza. It can become your most commonly eaten green leafy veg.

Shallots: Use the thin tops instead of spring onion and the roots instead of onions, all year round.

Pumpkins: I plant ours at the edge of the lawn. For three months of the year our lawn becomes a pumpkin patch to the annoyance of the wombats who have to pick their way between them. Buy why waste good sun-drenched space on grass?

Silverbeet: Twelve plants will give you an armful several times a week. The more you feed it, the more it will feed you.

Choko: Plant against a sunny wall, feed and water well. It will die back in the frost but by then you will be truly sick of chokos.

Zucchini: Ditto. Eight plants and you'll be handing them out or freezing batches of zucchini and shallot soup (very good).

Tomatoes: Because all the cliches about backyard tomatoes are true and you will never get better and because three bushes of cherry tomatoes will take the edge off even the most avid tomato appetite.

Basil: A bunch of fresh basil at the shop costs the same as a punnet of seedlings or a packet of seeds, both of which will give you a daily fragrant bunch, enough to freeze great luscious bags of pesto for winter too.

Coriander: See parsley. Easy to use an armful a day.

Thyme: Four bushes.

Rhubarb: Six plants, for tarts, pies, jams, gifts.

Lettuce: Because one packet will give you about 2000 seedlings or that's what it will seem like. I grow small ones like Mignonette or Buttercrunch, one per person for a lavish salad.

Apple cucumber: These seem the most prolific and disease resistant for us. The more sun, the more cucumbers.

Climbing beans: Just because.

And snow peas: if you like snow peas, which I don't, but they are the only ones that we can grow as every year there is a new misadventure to our podded peas. Fate seems to delight in choosing new ways to doom our pea vines each year.

Mini watermelons or a variety of rockmelon suited to our cold climates: Because you will never have tasted melons asgood as those just harvested totally, absolutely ripe and not having visited a cold store.

Sweet potato: This is best for temperate to tropical areas, where you can harvest gorgeous tubers almost every day. In climates like Canberra you'll get a good crop in autumn, if you feed and water well, and in the perfect spot by a sunny wall,you might just have the vines survive through winter, to grow again in spring. If not, replant. Coastal areas have a better chance of year round sweet potatoes. The most cold tolerant ones are, sigh, the most anaemic of the yellow fleshed ones, though I much prefer the purple pruple

And then there are carrots, spuds, red cabbage for coleslaw, chillies and about 20 plants of corn, which is more than enough for us, if each plant gives two cobs. And asparagus, artichokes, cassava, which doesn't crop much but then we don't eat much either; capsicum and eggplant in autumn, edible hibiscus greens and Malabar spinach, which we grow in a hanging basket above hot sunny paving, and Warrigal greens, English spinach, amaranth for beauty, leaves and grains, raspberries, strawberries. Oh, and celery, celeriac, scorzonera, okra, tatsoi, mitsuba, mizuna, mesclun greens, chia seeds … work out what you eat a lot of, especially the luxuries you can never quite afford, and grow lots.

It's not just that your veg bills will decrease as your meals become veg rich. You will get incidental exercise and a vast amount of smugness every time you plant, tend and harvest, feed friends or proffer them a basket full of home grown.

Add chooks to eat the gone-to-seed veg and give you manure to feed the garden and, of course, for eggs too. Once you get used to cooking straight from the garden it is amazing how varied your diet can be, with nothing bought except a bag of flour, olive oil and black pepper. Or really go all out and grow your own Tasmannia spp. and use the dried berries, and perhaps plant a few olive trees along the footpath and a patch of wheat instead of a lawn. But that is another story.

The last Open Garden of all

We first opened our garden for workshops with the Open Garden Scheme about 10 years ago – about, as I never took note of the year. And it's been hectic, fun and we have met wonderful people, but this year will be the last for us, as the Open Garden Scheme will finish on June 30 next year.

Our last workshop is on Sunday, November 30. It's bookings only, a morning at Wisbey's peach orchards, a glorious lunch in the cafe looking out at the hills and the orchards, a plenitude of peaches. I'll talk about the history of the valley and how, in a deep sense, it is the background to, and inspiration for, all my books – fiction, gardening, picture books, history or ecology – and, after lunch, we'll head up to our garden. Bookings only, as numbers are limited. Contact the Open Garden Scheme at nswactgardens@opengarden.org.au

* Still picking, eating, luxuriating in artichokes.

* Waiting for the first ripe mulberries.

* Discovering I have forgotten to plant potatoes! And trying to find seed potatoes to plant – we may yet have new potatoes for Christmas dinner.

* Watching the first minute zucchini bud slowly mature towards flowerhood.

* Coaxing the wisteria along the fence, not up the plum tree (wisteria will strangle both fence and plum tree, but the fence is sturdy enough to survive).

* Thanking the hens for laying. And laying. And laying.

Train smash

I did warn you this was bad taste.

Serves 2

1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
4 eggs, well beaten
2 tbsp parsley, finely chopped
4 tbsp butter
4 tbsp cheddar cheese

Saute the onion gently in the butter at a low heat till softish; add the tomato, cook while stirring for two minutes. Add the eggs, stir till almost cooked, then stir in cheese and parsley. Don't over cook or it will be dry.

Microwave dieter's train smash

This will give you a fast, delicious dish with little fat and few calories.

2 eggs
3 egg whites
1 small red onion, peeled and very, very finely chopped
1 tomato, finely chopped
a small handful of parsley or coriander or both, very finely chopped
1 chopped red chilli, optional
2 tbsp butter, extremely optional as this adds flavour, calories and unctuousness

Whip everything till frothy in a high-sided bowl. Microwave on high for two minutes. It will be set and puffed at the edges but still liquid in the middle. Remove and scoop out the still liquid centre and slide it around the outside edges. Microwave for another 30 seconds, check, and give it another 20 seconds if necessary. Don't overcook or it will be tough, but make sure there is no liquid left. Eat hot.

(If the onion is not quite cooked, you haven't chopped it finely enough. And, yes, salt can be added if you are used to salty food.)

Twiggies

Twiggy was a famous model of the 1960s. The following was a family favourite. I will leave it to you to make the connection.

Serves 1

2 eggs, very fresh. Stale eggs run across the pan like they are competing in a sprint.
1 tomato, top and bottom sliced off so they are flat, then cut in half so you have two rounds of tomato
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp olive oil and 2 tbsp butter
more olive oil if necessary
2 tbsp green onion tops
lots of black pepper

Place the oil and butter in a frying pan. Fry the bread on both sides, or make plain toast to lessen calories. Place to one side. Add the tomatoes; fry till browned on one side, then on the other. Place to one side. Make sure the pan is very hot before you break the eggs, or they will stick to the pan. Add eggs. As soon as the white turns opaque add the water so the eggs steam and the yolk sets slightly without needing to flip them. Add the bread and tomatoes again to reheat, scatter on the onion tops. Now place a half tomato on each slice of bread, then top with an egg and pour on any remaining juices. Place the two egg topped mounds side on a plate, to get the true Twiggy effect. Grind on black pepper and eat at once.

Cow pats

These biscuits may look remarkably like the end product of a cow after a few months of eating lush grass, but they are definitely, delightfully delicious.

100g butter
100g brown sugar
75g plain flour
1 cup mixed chopped roasted nuts
1 cup mixed chopped crystallised cherries, ginger and/or pineapple or apricots
150g dark chocolate, melted

Melt the butter; add all the ingredients except the chocolate. Mix well.

Place small teaspoons full on a baking paper lined tray. Leave room between them for them to spread. Bake at 200C for 8-10 minutes, till just browning at the edges. Remove and cool on the tray. Spread with melted chocolate to get the lumpy "pat" effect.