In the late afternoon on June 3, when Troy Lloyd and his partner Rebecca Bourke heard that torrential rain was forecast for the next three days (Canberra did receive 100mls), they grabbed a spade and some boxes and rushed from their home in Latham to Troy's garden plot in Charnwood.
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They knew their crop of sweet potatoes had to be harvested before the soil was sodden and the vegetables would rot and before the first frosts.
Without gardening gloves they dug fairly deep to gather more than 100 sweet potatoes. Their hands were cut and the sky was darkening when Rebecca took a couple of quick photos of Troy with the bounty. They filled a wheelbarrow with sweet potatoes and invited their community garden neighbours to help themselves to the vegetables. Rebecca parcelled up boxes of the sweet potatoes and sent them to her Mum in Sydney. The postage cost about $28 but she said it was worth it.
When Troy lived in Sydney he worked at the Sydney Markets so knew a thing or two about vegetables. He came to Canberra 10 years ago and always had a vegie garden at home in Latham, but he and his partner Rebecca got into racing pigeons and they now have 100 birds which has taken over the garden space. So four years ago he joined Canberra Organic Growers Society garden with a plot in Charnwood.
The plot was just grass so he added two truck loads of horse manure from a farm where he was working, then went under the shearing sheds and filled one truckload of sheep manure to add to the garden beds. However, the secret ingredient for growing massive vegetables was the addition of pigeon manure.
The sweet potato experiment started with Troy watching a u-tube video. Rebecca went to Woolworths and bought one purple sweet potato and one orange sweet potato which Troy calls kumera. From GoLo he bought a clear storage container for $6. He put a 2cm deep layer of potting mix in the tub and placed the sweet potatoes on their sides (lying flat) on top and half covered them with potting mix. The tub was kept in the garage with an old reptile heat rock stuck underneath. This was about seven weeks before the Melbourne Cup but, if doing the experiment again, he would start a bit later.
After three weeks the sweet potatoes were shooting. Troy let the shoots grow to about 15cms long then cut them off and placed the shoots in jars of water. They developed roots in a few days. In early November they just took off and he had bucket loads of rooted shoots as there were about 50 shoots from each sweet potato. The purple variety grew as big as footballs and they were sweeter than the orange ones, but both types were sweeter than you can buy in a shop.
Troy had no luck raising carrots from seed until he visited Hall Rural and found some different varieties. The ones which germinated were a Lebanese variety with only Arabic writing on the packet. He sowed the seed thinly and the carrots were stumpy, about 25cms long and 9cm round.
This year he has also grown massive broccoli heads, big cabbages and huge cauliflowers.
Their snake beans, raised from seed from Troy's parents, were delicious and their corn outgrew all their plot neighbours' plants.
As their tomatoes grow better at home than in the community garden, six years ago Rebecca asked her Dad to order heirloom tomato seed for them from the United States. They grew Giant Belgian which was not huge, Oxheart and a little purple type that was delicious but the best variety was a red type called Italian Tree. The largest tomato was 1.6kg and just one slice was bigger than a piece of toast. It had no acidity and was so good they have saved seed ever since. Troy selects the largest fruit and wipes the seed onto kitchen paper towels.
The couple has two bee hives at home and they get lots of honey. Rebecca thinks the large front garden which is full of lavender raised from cuttings is the main nectar source for the bees.
While Troy does the barbecuing, the kitchen is Rebecca's domain. She bakes the sweet potatoes whole, skin on, for 40 minutes, mashed and served with sour cream. A favourite household nutritious soup is made from sweet potato cut into small chunks and added to homegrown butternut pumpkin, potatoes, cabbage, onion, leek, chicken stock, a can of tomatoes, turmeric and cumin.
Rebecca makes a sweet potato bake with slices of onion in between a layer of sweet potatoes and a layer of homegrown Toolangi Delight, Pontiac or King Edward potatoes, a crumbled chicken stock cube, cream and topped with grated Colby cooking cheese or mozzarella, crushed garlic, covered with foil and baked for 40 minutes. They also eat sweet potato leaves in salads.
