How to grow 300kg of veg in the ‘burbs

A PASSIONATE Northcote home gardener who grows up to 300 kilograms of fruit, vegetables and honey in her garden each year is a winner in this year’s Darebin and Banyule Sustainability Awards.

Kat Lavers with some of the produce from her garden and eggs from her quails. Picture: Sarah Matray

Judges named Kat Lavers as the winner of the Home and Garden category at the awards ceremony in Preston recently.

The program aims to engage the community in environmental action and support it to adopt more sustainable living actions at home, work and in the community.

“I’m grateful to live in a place like Darebin where we have such support for home food production,” Ms Lavers said.

“They do a really good job of linking up and supporting home growers.

“I think it’s a lot more convenient to go out and pick what you want for dinner and head inside instead of going to the supermarket.”

She built the garden, nicknamed The Plummery, due to her love of fresh food and said its success was based on its permaculture design which uses minimal resources for growing produce.

Ms Lavers said she grew the large quantities through a “systematic elimination of little jobs” in the garden and “careful planning” of the amount of plants she needed.

“It’s putting as little in as possible for maximum output,” she said.

“I don’t try and grow more of something I know we can’t eat.”

Other winners in the awards included the Rossmoyne Street Community in the community group category for initiatives including planter boxes, reading exchanges and a carshare bay.

Swept Away Eco-Friendly Cleaning won the business category for its eco-friendly cleaning methods and Farmer Incubator won the education award for its pop-up garlic farmers initiative.

WeCycle and Save Our Citrus were joint winners of the community environmental project category.
WeCycle collects, restores and distributes bicycles to disadvantaged community members and Save Our Citrus organises community presentations on the impact of citrus gall wasp.

Paul Shelton was named ‘Local Hero’ for his efforts as president of Transition Darebin and co-ordinating a variety of gardening workshops in the community.

Darebin mayor Kim Le Cerf congratulated the winners on their efforts to live a more sustainable life and help others in the community do the same.