I know I’m always going on about freshly picked produce and farmer’s markets but what if you could become your own little farmer? Toni from The Veggie Lady who was at the Organic Expo and Green Show this year holds regular classes on how to transform your garden into a bountiful paradise! Firstly, you take a trip to Camden and see Toni’s own garden where you will take the principals from Toni’s garden and learn how to transform your own backyard into a food forest, whether it’s a tiny balcony or a 5 acre property!
You also learn how to divide your garden into zones for entertaining, flowers and vegetable growing, fruit and perennial orchard, and even backyard poultry. Topics covered include placement and layout, plant grouping, garden structures and chicken-keeping. Start the day with home-baked morning tea and enjoy lunch from Toni’s own garden as well as other tasty local gourmet produce. Organic seeds and other garden needs are also for sale.
Thanks to Toni The Veggie Lady I am giving away a gift certificate worth $174 which you can use for you and one of your friends to come to one of their organic veggie garden workshops. All you have to do is tell me the vegetable, fruit or flower that you’d like to grow the most and why! Simply add your answer as a comment to the story. The competition ends at Midnight AEST 17th of October, 2010. You can enter this once daily. This competition is open to people in Australian that can make it to the Camden location (sorry darlings, John Travolta is flying Oprah in my private jet 
).
***Congratulations to the winner Margaret H.!***
Lots of love,
Lorraine
xxx
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86 Comments | Add your own
Oh yes, yes, yes please!
We’re desperately trying to grow our own garlic this year, both for the wonderful flavour of homegrown, but also to avoid the horrible chemicals they spray on all garlic imported into Australia! Thanks for the opportunity to enter, Lorraine! 
I would love to grow zucchini flowers because I’ve never managed to try them and I never see them in the shops (living in the sticks is like that!)
My little guy would love to see my garden grow too and I want to give him the joy of picking his own fresh carrots out of the ground, washing them off and putting them into his mouth!
Oh this is a great giveaway. I would most want to grow corriander. I keep killing the thing!
I would love to grow choy sum because I love cooking with it!
Hi Lorraine! I would so love the chance to win as we’re building our house at the moment and planning all the goodies we’ll have in our very own backyard after renting units all these years! I would definitely want to plant all my favourite herbs – basil, coriander, chives, spring onions. Not to mention, at least 1 fruit tree and I’m leaning towards lemons/limes. So versatile! Hubby is also wanting us to keep chooks in the backyard for fresh eggs and I’m a little scared, but I’m sure Toni’s class will take that fear away!
I would love to grow figs, they are my grandmothers favourite fruit- she lives up the coast and doesn’t have access to them. Her face lights up when I buy them for her, she would be SO proud of the gift of a homegrown fig!
Raspberries! I love them but they’re so expensive and delicate. I’d love to just be able to walk out and pick some.
Lorraine, I just had a lightbulb moment reading this post! If I won a Toni the Veggie Lady workshop, I would take along my daughter who WILL NOT EAT fruits or vegetables. It is such a worry. Perhaps if she can see how they can grow in her own backyard, she too will have a lightbulb moment and begin to enjoy them. And the vegetable (or I should say fruit) of choice would be the tomato. Nothing better in summer than a beautiful, rich, red, juicy tomato. How could my daughter not love their sweetness; the cherry variety are like little lollies. This could be a turning point!!!
Wow, this sounds fabulous! I’d love to grow tomatoes, i try, and i fail
There’s a real lack of tasty tomatoes in the fruit shops in my area!
I would love to grow tomatos so that I can bottle them down and make my own sauces- instead of using rubbish canned ones that are imported from Italy!
Snow Peas. They are so pleantiful in the garden at the moment. We(the kids and I)love to wake up in the morning and pick a handful to eat before breakfast!!
I would like to be able to grow zucchini, especially the zucchini flowers. I would have plot after plot of zucchini so I could eat them every day, in pasta or grilled and eaten with pesto and eggplant on ciabatta bread. Yum
I would have to say the veggie I would love to grow the most is different lettuces. Not only can you make a myriad of beautiful salads but they lettuces themselves hold their own beauty in the colours!
Kara
We want to learn how to grow Chilli’s so we can spice up our Asian cooking with fresh, organic ingredients
If I have a garden of my own, I would really jump at the chance of attending this workshop….
The fruit that i would love to be able to grow the most would be passionfruit having always planted vines and never had any luck (even after 6 years of them being in the ground in a “perfect” position) other than that i would love to have a full fruit and veg garden complete with tomatoes and and strawberries just like when i was little
I would love to grow blueberries because they’re so expensive at this time of the year and blueberries are really tasty and full of antioxidants.
If I had to choose (very difficult as I love all fruit & veges) I would like to grow apples- Red Delicious or Royal Gala as I live on them & eat one every day!
I would love to go to this workshop; my partner and I are about to move out together and really want to start a veggie garden of our own so we can grow some fresh delicious produce (and save some money!).
What I would like most to grow in my garden would have to be rhubarb – it is a bit of a selfish wish, but I just love the taste and colour of rhubarb! Good rhubarb is such a beautiful, deep crimson and its taste is like nothing else. I just love to use it, baking it into pies and tarts, and I’m also desperate to try Nigella’s rhubarb schnapps recipe O:)! And it seems so difficult to locate good rhubarb, that having my own source would be perfect to fulfil all of my rhubarb needs! Rhubarb.
I use to love growing my own veges (& would love to again if I had time to close off a section from the dogs!).
What a great prize
As the unmarried daughter who lived an great expatriate life overseas, I was summonsed home by my sister to look after my Mum and Dad who are both in their 80′s and failing in health, she thought it my turn to help out – fair enough. When I found out what they were cookig for meals I was horrified, Dad (chief cook now since mum is wheelchair bound) thinks toast and baked beans are suitable for any meal. So, I’ve been on the fresh veg campaign since living back here, Dad, bless, has even started his own herb garden after seeing how expensive basil and corriander are at Eastgardens. Unfortunately he has no idea, and either do I. I’d love to do this course with him, I think it would be great for him to have something to grow and nurture and I’d be able to help him.
Marg
Oh I’d love to win this for my Son & Daughter in Sydney. I know they’d both LOVE to learn how to knit their own organic veggies!
)
My Gran gave me a little gardening book called The Tiny Utopia & ever since then I’ve imagined I’d like to turn my somewhat brick n morta courtyard into an oasis…, but, alas, I need help & instruction & yes please Lorraine, I’d love to win this one then I could have the best herb garden any little gardener could hope for. Any herb would do, (is herb a vegetable?).., but Im longing for basil at the moment.
Just to know what to plant with what so the bugs don’t get the vegies before we do would be a bonus. Broadbeans would be a treat!
id like to grow heirlom tomatoes because they taste great look amazing and leave your houseguests wondering what on eath they are (esp the green and gold stripped variety). id love to step outside to my garden and whip up a mean panzanella
Obviously I cannot enter this…shakes fist…but can I still answer your question? Because I’m dying to tell you that I want my own fig tree. Luscious, ripe figs for my sandwiches and just to munch on by themselves. And I want a kabocha plant, because lord knows they can be an expensive addiction. And maybe cauliflower and broccoli, so I don’t have to worry about lugging them from the grocery store.
My partner and I would love to have an organic garden that enables us to be self sufficient … Heritage non-g.m. vegies (especially some tasty cucumbers and zucchini flowers) water tanks, worm farm, compost bins and our very own chickens (with at least one funky silkie … Gotta have a funky chicken
)
great giveaway….good luck to all who enter, located in Texas so this one I will have to pass, but I would love to grow berries and tomatoes
sweetlife
I’d like to grow anything at all sucessfully – we rent our house so are limited with what we can do – and I’d love to know the best way to use it. I’ve never had a garden before – and didn’t even know what bindiis were.. until I trod on one.. So I’d love to be able to learn how to grow food (not interested in plants I can’t eat unless their sweet peas) so I can help the kids learn and maybe increase their interest in veges..
i would love to grow strawberries cos they are so yummy and good for you, and even people with high blood sugar like my mum can enjoy them too… ^^
I’d be very interested in this as we are just about to start our veggie garden. The very first things I will be planting are tomatoes and basil…nothing beats fresh and home grown.
I’d like to grow passionfruit and herbs like pennyworth and lemongrass!
Oh me, me, me!! I would love to win this! Blueberries. Thats what I would like to try and grow. They are so expensive, yet so good for you. It would be a happy day if I could just go and pluck my blueberries before popping them in the pancake batter.
Lorraine…enjoyed the spread…sorry I wasn’t in Oprah’s audience either…the lucky buggers. Being loyal paid off big time ;o)
Ciao for now and have a great weekend,
Claudia
This sounds a fantastic opportunity. I would like to grow ginger, I have tried for the past 3 years, eventually about 3 inches poked out, my daughter’s dog came around, knocked it over and it has never grown back, there must be a knack to it and I would like to meet that person with the knack.
Hubby & I discoverd Hargraves, a nursery in Dural about 6 weeks ago. Everything that they sell guarantees to grow so if they die you can return them back within the year! How insane is that! We have been there 3 times to date (we are “renovating” our garden) & each time I ponder about getting some corn which I love.
I’d grown dragon fruit and star fruit since they are so rare in Australia and so delicious in summer fruit salads ^_^
What a great comp Lorraine. I’d like to grow chemical free pink lady apples. I just planted my baby dwarf tree named “Pinkabelle” and want to learn how to think “happy thoughts” over it instead of my black thumb curse.
Oh Lorraine, I have been itching to get back to growning my own veggies incorporating organic principles to nurture soil and produce. I was saying yes, yes to everyone’s suggestions above but the first thing that came to mind because I have been complaining to my husband for ages now that the specimens that I find in the F & V shops are hardly worth the fortune that they charge is – Beetroot – I love it cooked fresh and served in a salad with Labna, I love it grated raw and served with lemon and fennel, I love it baked with my potatoes and pumpkin with a roast -what an underrated vegetable it is!
id love to grow more heirloom varieties because they taste like they should, everything i plant never quite grows as well as it should so having tips might help produce more, plus my kids eat anything they pick so its giving them a great diet
Strawberries! Because they are so yummy and I have had a hard time growing my own they always fail
Id love to know how many plants to plant for two! So that we can continuously eat our own food. I would especially love to grow raspberries – too expensive to ever buy fresh!
I’m just 15mins from Camden and I’ve never heard of this lady! How wonderful. We have a little veggie patch and a small problem with our compost – things keep self seeding that we didn’t plant! We get pumpkins, millions of cherry toms (so many that they actually strangle the things we do plant!), lettuce, and parsley every year – not to mention the mint that is growing through our pavers and taking over the herb garden – without actually planting them
I think we need some lessons. We’re having a go at blueberries and raspberries this year – hope it works!!
While not having a particular fruit or vegie as a favourite to grow, I love being out in the sunshine and fresh air to try to grow anything! The problem is I have a ‘Black Thumb’ and every plant dies on me
I would love to learn to grow my own broccoli. My 6yo daughter can’t get enough of it!!
No matter what I do, I kill corriander and tomatoes. Every single time. I would love to know how to stop this!
I have just moved to a new home and am ploting a new veggie garden, this would come in very handy before planting any plants.
I know who I’d take if I win this workshop – my sister! We walked past a plant stall at a market yesterday and were admiring the herbs & vegetables that we COULD grow if only we knew HOW to……
I was most fascinated with the eggplant, thinking in my head: mmmm sambal eggplant, roasted garlic & eggplant, Baba Ganoush.. different dishes / ideas were running in my head! We would love to learn how to grow something edible at home!
Wow, what a wonderful prize!
The list of what I’d like to learn to grow is long. At the top would be tomato, strawberry, basil and corn. We have lettuce growing and my kids (2 and 4) pick a few leaves and make a salad for dinner every second day or so. It would be so wonderful if the tomato to go with it was grown by us and actually tasted like tomatoes used to!
It has to be tomatoes because they’re one of my favourite summer foods – and there’s nothing better than a home grown one!
I have just bought an olive tree for our balcony only to be told they take about 50 years to grow olive haha. At least when I am old and grey I will be enoying them. They say olives are great for wrinkles
I would love to grow beetroot! But its limiting as we live in an apartment so pretty much anything thats happy to live in a box, I would love to grow!
i would love to grow a fruit salad tree! they are a clever little invention where different trees have been grafted onto the one plant. id choose the stone fruit one which grows peaches, plums, nectarines and apricots. imagine all the different pies and jams you could make with that. nom nom nom nom
Hmm…I was going to say garlic for much the same reasons that Celia mentioned. But then I thought….lemons. We used to have a sensational lemon tree in our garden but then it suddenly died. I have planted about 6 replacements but have had absolutely no luck at it. I love lemons and would love to have a huge, prolific tree in the backyard so I always had a lemon or three at hand for an emergency cake, dinner, or whatever!
I would love to be able to grow fresh herbs like coriander, basil, etc. as I never seem to be able to use them up before they go off when I buy them from the shops. And chooks would be great as well to eat all those kitchen scraps.
Birds eye chilli’s!
I would love to learn how to grow carrots and sweet potato. Call me childish, but it’s been a childhood dream to dig up some nice carrots and sweet potato and eat them fresh. I want to feel a little like bugs bunny lol
(might steam the sweet potato though)
I want to learn how to grow Bird Eye chillies so that I can have them with every meal!
Oh yes please, my husband and I would love to learn how to grow organic tomatoes – the flavour in mass market ones is terrible!
Amazing price – I would love to win! My fiance loves gardening and growing vegetables and herbs. We really want to grow Meyer lemon trees – delicious! We also want to get chickens soon
*I meant prize, not price!
Wow – I don’t know where to start. I’d love relive my childhood – I grew up with my grandparents who are very special and loved, and I always loved helping my nan with everything. One of my favourites things was before we would start to cook, I would be sent to run down the backyard and grab the fruit & vege’s that we would be using for that meal. There was nothing like it – I loved picking them and would have to pick almost double cause I’d eat them on the way back to the kitchen. Rather then running home from school and eating sandwiches or junk food, I had a plate of steamed vege’s from the garden. Just to name a few I would like to grow Peas – any/all sorts, tomoto’s, carrots and beans. There’s just nothing better then grabbing your dinner from the garden. There are so many more I would love to grow -unfortunately Nan’s no longer here to help me setup my own garden.
Lorraine, what a wonderful comp.
My hubby and I would love to grow our own brocolli.
We just never get enough of this.
Even though Strawberries are selling for roughly $1.50 (or less) per punnet at the supermarkets, I’d love to grow some at home ever since watching Jamie Oliver describing those wild strawberries ( http://www.channel4.com/food/on-tv/jamie-oliver/jamie-at-home/series-2/Episode-11-strawberries_p_6.html )
Who can resist them growing in a backyard?
We always seem to run out of tomatoes at home, so learning to grow some in the yard would be handy – imaging plucking them out from the vines, the freshness would be perfect in any salad during the summer. If I have to choose a type of tomato, it would be cherry tomatoes – pop one into your mouth and squish, out comes the juice & seeds!!
I was planning to enter until I read Commenter No. 21 “Marg” – I think she & her Dad should win this!!!
I am hoping to plant a miniature vegetable garden in the coming year. I would love to plant some purple carrots, lovely and earthy, delicious and healthy and absolutely gorgeous!
I am actually about to redo my vege garden. I have decided that I am going to hunt down spaghetti squash. I think this is such a fun veg and you just can’t find it in the shops anymore.
Sweet Potato because it’s my favourite!
I would love to grow my own organic strawberries as they are on top of the “shame list” (of produce you should buy organic), and they are just so darn delicious!!
I would love to grow my own sprouting broccoli. It is so delicious and you just can’t seem to find it in the shops here in Australia.
Eating deep coloured fruits is my real desire, so growing blueberries that are that deep bluey-purple colour and so juicy when bitten would be devine.
We need all the help we can get just set up a vegi patch at the local school growing herbs and veggies want to grow a Fruit Salad Tree nearby to show the kids grafted plants.
I would love to grow some eggplants, purple and shiny! They are my favourite vegetable by far!
I would like to know how to grow Organic Kale and purple amaranth in which I cannot find in Australia
We’ve has some success but many losses in my garden…dunno why..I would love to grow strawberries. The ones we get off the pot is only good to fill 1 punnet annually even after using seasol…I want to know how to get more out of that plant…
Would love to grow tomatoes, as shop bought ones never taste the same as home grown. It is also my little 3 year olds favourite.
I would love to meet the veggie lady! and I would love to learn how to grow fabulous mushrooms. They are the only vegetable my three year old will currently eat!
I would love to grow blueberries. Imagine, opening your backdoor, walking into an amazing garden filled with all kinds of fruits,veggies and herbs- organically grown by hand and being able to pluck those fresh sweet tasting blueberries. I would then make a tasty sweet blueberry pie with homemade blueberry jam and enjoy with my husband. Scrumptious!! Fresh and made with love. xx
I would love to grow basil and zucchini flowers, as I love the fragrance and versatility of basil in all my cooking, but it dies so quickly it’d be handy to have it growing in abundance in my backyard. And Zucchini flowers, just love eating it and would love to experiment with my own.
Lemons! When the tree is mature, they produce a great harvest every year, enough for your cooking, baking, and gift ideas AS WELL AS all your gin and tonic needs
Please! Please! Please! Pick me!!! My carrots are growing like freakish gargoyles in weird shapes with extra legs and third nipples…I cant work out what I am doing wrong….
And there is a job coming up next year at a Marrickville Community Garden, and if I can just get a little more expertise I could be growing veggies with community groups and school kids two days a week! Its the sea change I need… Plus, I just really do like straight carrots… XOXOX Kyls
I have no delusions of grandeur and I do not aspire above and beyond my somewhat dubious gardening capabilities. My aspirations for my postage stamp size backyard are humble but desperate. I have attempted three rounds of herb growing so I can indulge in my love of pesto, two pots of apple trees were eaten by a pair of beautiful Galahs (they were pretty, I wasn’t at the time) and the one humble strawberry I managed to somewhat sprout was steadfastly picked by my neighbours three year old who giggled and smiled as beautiful strawberry juice ran down his face. My garden would (hopefully) serve the small tight knit street I live in and allow us to indulge in the delights of homegrown. Something I have continually promised, but never delivered. Who knows, perhaps when I become an expert gardener I can educate the rest of my street?
I would love to learn how to turn my small garden and water usage to healthy, organic food. One of twin boys loves apples, in particular Pink Ladies, so I think that would be a great thing to learn how to grow in limited space.
Hi! I’m an inner city kitchen gardener (very hit and miss atm) and I’m interested in expanding to be as completely self-sufficient for fruit and vegies for my family as possible! I’m a beginner so this class would be most excellent! I’d love to try growing capsicums on a trellis as well as fruit and nut trees (eek!). Hope you pick me xoxo
I’d love to grow pumpkin successfully as they look like they will be difficult to grow, but have so much sweet flavour that I can use for so many different recipes.
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