Kitchen garden: Christmas fairytales

So I dashed out to Bunnings to buy seedling replacements. Tomato 'Rapunzel' is in Floriana's Fresh Start premium vegetable range ($6.50). Named after the Brothers' Grimm fairytale the tomato is said to be eye-catching with sweet, long trusses of fruit. Let down your hair, and try it.

To add to the ratatouille, I bought Eggplant 'Fairytale', a new release from Floriana in the 'Cut & Cook' advanced range for balconies and patios. Presented in a 200mm squat pot, it already had flowers with fruit on the way ($13.95 at Bunnings). The small purple and white striped eggplants are perfect for sauteeing.

Knowing the magnificent Versailles exhibition was coming to our National Gallery of Australia, some months ago a kitchen gardener from Campbell and another from Chapman told me about the Potager du Roi, tucked away in a hidden area just a side-step from the Palace.

Having visited Versailles decades ago, I was surprised not to have seen it, but the restored kitchen garden was not reopened to the public until 1991.

Louis XIV's vegetable garden was developed on land which later became the St Louis district.

The gardener, Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie, started working on it in 1678 and produced fresh vegetables and fruit for the table of the King. There were 5,000 fruit trees pruned to geometric shapes and forty herbs for the royal salads.

Walled and manicured, with pebbled pathways, the gardeners now harvest 80 tons of produce each year. Among them are favourites of the King, asparagus, strawberries and peas.

In Canberra, visitors are greeted at the Gallery with the scent of orange blossom but local gardeners with a lemon tree near the door have just rejoiced one of the best ever years for lemon blossom, a delicious citrus fragrance that might just keep insects at bay.

Members and friends of the Australian Garden History Society met in Pialligo to celebrate 30 years since the formation of the ACT Monaro Riverina Branch. They walked through the farmhouse gardens of Pialligo Estate, led by gardener and horticulturist Michael Thomsett, then moved to a private garden for drinks and savoury nibbles. Two spectacular cakes by Nada's Cakes of Pearce, were decorated with old roses and raspberry hazelnut tasted scrumptious.

Sunflowers were growing in the kitchen garden at A Baker early this year. I asked the chef where they came from and he said from microgreens at Merici College as he popped the punnet soil in the garden and any ungerminated seed or the cuts ends then sprouted.

At the Kitchen Cabinet Spring equinox dinner at the National Arboretum, Fiona Buining gave a talk about "a year in the garden at Merici" where she teaches sustainability. On the tables as decorations were small pots of red cabbage, daikon and purple radish microgreens raised by Fiona. Guests also planted seeds in punnets to take home and made planting calendars.

Four years ago, a friend had loaned Fiona a book about growing microgreens and chef Janet Jeffs at the Arboretum trialled some free samples and has been buying them as a fund raiser for Merici.

The enterprise grew so, in September this year, Fiona moved it to a greenhouse built with her partner Dr Michael Wilson in the garden of their home and Ainslie Urban Farm was born.

For sustainability, the microgreens are grown in in soil in natural light and reuseable trays, rather than hydroponically in vermiculite or perlite in throw-away containers. Fiona experimented with lots of different varieties of seed from Australian wholesale seed merchants and some of the microgreens are seasonal.

Now Ainslie Urban Farm supplies Aubergine, Pulp Kitchen, Casey Jones, The Little Prince catering company, Muse, Temporada as well as A Baker and the Arboretum. (Contact: info@ainslieurbanfarm.com.au).

Fiona and Michael also grow vegetables at home and they follow the Allsun Farm planting calendar. Beans, corn and cucurbits are in as summer crops and seeds of carrots and they are raising seedlings like fennel and brassicas, and carrot, parsnip and beetroot which grow in the warm weather to ensure a steady supply of root crops for the couple during winter.

If you are a Facebook follower, popularity is important. On a local garden website, here are the three Kitchen Garden columns this year which received the greatest number of Shares. In January, was Michael Radovanovic, of Evatt, with his 100 capsicum plants and 31 varieties of heirloom tomatoes. In August, viewers liked the potager style garden of Michele England, of Braddon.

The most followed was Troy Lloyd and the sweet potatoes in his garden plot in Charnwood. Not only did thousands of people Share the story, but another 400 set up an online discussion group to tell of their success, failure or proposed plantings of sweet potatoes.

As a result of writing about Troy and his partner Rebecca and their "magic ingredient" of pigeon poo, I am trialling two summer vegetables in pots of homemade compost with added pigeon poo from birds in Kambah.

Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.