  When I was a kid, my mum and dad used to have a great garden. Dad would spend most of his free time pottering about the garden and as a result, we had a wonderful supply of fresh fruit and vegetables for most of my childhood. One day it hit me about how much better off I was when I had a meal at a friend’s house and the fruit and vegetables were tasteless and horrible. The tomato was woody and had no flavour. After this experience, I managed to get these friends to try a home grown tomato that dad had produced. They were amazed. How could a simple tomato have so much flavour? It was a few years later after I moved to out of home when I was shopping around for fruit and vegetables when I worked out that I could no longer survive on the shop types of stuff.
I started my own garden at the time; it was easy to do as I had a constant supply of stable mulch coming out of the horse stables. I started out with a small space which over time grew and grew. My garden was not taking much of my time (not as much as have horses did) and yet the garden was coming along very well.
I stuck to the same principals of my mum and dad with no chemicals and still my garden produced more stock then I needed. At its peak, I was suppling four households, plus half of my workplace with fresh food that many people had never really tasted before. Everyone was hooked and wanted to know how to start a little garden for themselves. I had invited my then current boss over to my house to see my garden and I showed her something special to do with a real vine ripened tomato. She loved salt on her food; it would be to the extreme when she salted something! We picked a few tomatoes; I cut them into bite sized chunks as we sat outside in the warm artuum sun. I added fresh cracked black pepper as I directed her to open a very cold bottle of crisp dry white wine. Then on each chunk, I place a small salty anchovy. We sat for about two hours, with cold wine in hand as we slowly devoured our plates full of the fresh tomatoes with a simple topping. It was a delightful experience, one that my former boss would never stop talking about for the next 12 months.
Now days my experience with growing fruit and vegetables has been limited for the last few years. My current house had no garden when I moved into it; the soil was dead, hard and nothing wanted to grow. Slowly I have started to build the gardens up, growing a nice range of flowers and shrubs which have started to help condition the soil making it much better to grow things in.
My compost heap is coming along very well, although I do miss not having stable mulch on tap like I used too. On my dad’s last visit, my dad looked at the area that I have marked out for a garden bed, the soil is very poor and I hope to build it up for next spring’s vegetable garden. I guess the test will be in the taste - when next summer vegetables are ready to fill my own and my friend’s tables. 
