Learn from experience

The best way to learn about growing vegetables and understand how your garden operates is through your own or others' experiences. Once you have a couple of growing seasons under your belt you will be better able to identify common pests that baffled you last season and the current needs of your plants. You should never pass by the opportunity to learn from the masters, those that have lived and breathed veggie growing for not only seasons, but decades on end.

I recently took the opportunity for my Italian grandma (La Nonna) to puruse my veggie patch in Northcote. Now not only is the garden spotless but she's passed on some useful tips that i'm eager to experiment with and learn for myself. One tip is to tie the garlic foilage in knots near harvest time to increase the size of the bulbs. Garlic is notoriously hard to grow to size so the theory behind tying the foilage is the impede foilage growth which then passes growth to where we desire it - the bulbs. I'll be tying off half, leaving the rest as standards and then reporting the results.