Experienced horticulturalist Craig Castree says he would rather pull something out of his garden to put on a plate, rather than something he has to put in the bin.
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Mr Castree has 45 years' experience in creating edible gardens and growing his own food organically.
He said over the past 18 months, more people had been trying to grow their own food with mixed results.
"While we have been in lockdown, I have been trying to teach people to make the most of their gardens and steering them away from the mistake of putting a vegetable patch in because that's farming, and most of us are not very good farmers. That's why we leave things to them," Mr Castree said.
"When you farm and grow things all in a row together they attract their own pests and disease which means you've then got to start with spray and intensively fertilise and the like.
"My method is really introducing them to being able to grow, in amongst their existing gardens, some food plants along with some flowering plants that will attract in the predatory insects that warn off the pests.
"It's a bit of a holistic approach to growing food and it's very easy. Everyone can do it. Even if people have concrete backyards or on balconies, there is always a place to grow food and you don't need to be a farmer to do it."
Mr Castree said vegetables, herbs and fruit plants could be grown in front, beside or under a tree or a shrub, vertically or in hanging baskets
"The fun thing is that as you fill your garden up you get less weeds because it blocks them out. I know what I would rather be pulling out; I'd rather be pulling out something to put on a plate than something I have to put in the bin," he said.
"All you have to do is give them a bit of water. It's a very different way of growing food as opposed to a vegetable patch where you are growing everything together and putting them in rows and turning soil over. I don't do any of that.
"It's really exposing people to a very different way of gardening and it's the way that these plants grow in their natural habitats, so it's really more mirroring a food forest to some degree."
Mr Castree grew up in Glenroy, Melbourne, in a multicultural society where his Italian and Greek mates made their their own pastas, passatas, tomato sauces and cured sausages.
"That really rubbed off on me. When I left school I became a horticulturalist and I stayed with it all this time and I have tried to grow my own food as much as I possibly can," he said.
He said he buys very little from supermarkets and produces his own honey, eggs, yoghurt, cured meats and bread.
Mr Castree, an author of three books, said he wanted people to understand they had choices to where they sourced their produce and what they were putting into their bodies.
He believes people are disconnected from their food and they would be horrified if they knew how their food was grown.
"It's been sprayed six to eight times from paddock to plate. It's forced fed on fertiliser, it's grown at rapid paces, it lacks nutrition, it's got little flavour and it doesn't last very long. It's disgraceful," Mr Castree said.
"One of the things I often say, and it's in my latest book, is that if you're not producing as much as you possibly can, you are allowing someone else to fiddle with that food and they are often loaded with fat, sugar and salt to make it delicious and fill it full of chemicals and preservatives to make it last longer on the shelves and we are feeding that to our families," he said.
"There is a consequence to that."
We might be living longer lives but we are not living healthier ones and our food is slowly and surely making us sick."
Mr Castree will hold a free webinar series for Golden Plains Shire residents on how to turn an existing garden into an edible space as part of the council's new health and wellbeing project.
The series will teach participants how to turn an existing garden into an edible and attractive space without chemicals in a few short weeks.
The Zoom webinars will be held on August on 4, 11 and 18 at 6.30pm. To register, visit goldenplains.vic.gov.au/edible-gardens
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