On her website, Toni Salter calls herself The Veggie Lady, but there’s more to organically growing vegetables in the backyard than feeding scraps to your chooks.
Toni is a horticulturist who runs organic vegetable gardening classes at her Currans Hill home.
With her next course coming up on Saturday, November 4, the South West Voice last week dropped in on her veggie heaven in Currans Hill for an interview.
Toni was born in Young in country NSW and raised in Canberra.
The organic gardening bug bit her first, but eventually she realised that she ought to share both her passion and knowledge.
“I started doing it part time – fitting in with the kids, and work, and a little part time retail nursery work,’’ says The Veggie Lady.
“When I was doing the nursery, I’d get a lot of people come and ask me, what can I use to kill this or that, what pesticide should I use.
“Being pregnant at the time I was conscious of these things, and back then you couldn’t get organics like you can now, and I wanted to do things without hurting me or my children.
“So when they asked me for a pesticide I’d suggest an organic solution.
“And they’d look at me kind of sceptical, and to keep my employer happy I’d sell them some manure instead.’’
It obviously wasn’t bull manure Toni was offering because soon she got a bit of a following at the nursery and customers would come back and say to her, ‘I tried it and it actually works’.
“So I could see people wanted to garden organically, but we had lost that knowledge,’’ says Toni Salter.
[social_quote duplicate=”no” align=”default”]“My parents used to garden like that but my generation missed out – we were too busy getting degrees and climbing the corporate ladder.[/social_quote]
“Also the houses got bigger, the lots got smaller so there’s hardly any backyard.
“In the old days we had smaller houses with bigger backyards.’’
Toni and her husband had a bit of a backyard so she was able to find solace in gardening during the period she was having her children.
“I called it my therapy without realising there was a bit of research that supports that,’’ she says.
When her two children were toddlers, Toni remembers becoming conscious of feeding them well and as a result the level of enjoyment from growing things organically, well, it grew also.
“I just found the benefit of being able to grow something organically not just physical as in physical produce that you get to eat, but for the mental health benefits, the stress management, the release you get,’’ Toni said.
“Gardening was just a nice space to sit and relax and forget about life and relish the moment you’re in.
“And with showing people in the nursery at the time I thought, people want to learn here, there’s a bit of a market here.
“So I started some workshops to share my knowledge of organic gardening.’’
Naturally, the next steps in becoming The Veggie Lady meant going back to “school’’ to study horticulture.
Two nights a week over three years, Toni completed a TAFE certificate course in horticulture as well as an advanced certificate in horticulture.
“As I did all my horticulture studies and courses and started doing some workshops, a friend of mine asked me to put in a sensory garden at a disability centre,’’ Toni recalls.
“It was a steep learning curve for me as I’d never worked with disability before, but it was really nice to be able to transform an environment.’’
She went on to do more training in recreation therapy and learned how to run groups in areas such as aged care and mental health.
The Veggie Lady was on her way, with classes running in the Macarthur Community College for the first five years, because Toni figured that would be good exposure for what she offered.
Then some friends suggested she use the backyard as her classroom.
That was 10 years ago and Toni has not looked back.
“I saw straight away that people wanted that, they liked the classroom in my backyard.’’
So who signs up to learn the basics of organic gardening from Macarthur’s own Veggie Lady?
“I get a mix,’’ Toni says.
“There’s people who are just starting off and don’t know where to start, which is great, because I can help them plan their garden before they make mistakes.
“I also I get those people who have a little bit of gardening experience, they’ve thrown a few things in the ground, they’ve had a bit of success, they’re passionate, then have had a few obstacles and don’t know how to solve them, where to go next.
“They are the type of people who want to get more out of the garden but don’t know how to go about it.
“Then there’s people with ornamental gardens, have done it successfully and tried the veggies and don’t know why it’s not as successful as the ornamentals, so they come to my classes to learn.
“Many are retirees who have suddenly found they have time on their hands but are not sure where to start.’’
The Veggie Lady also runs workshops with councils, which are very popular with inner city councils keen to get the sustainable food systems back into the city.
I ask Toni how many people attend each of her classes.
“I limit it to 12 people because there are 12 holes on the muffin tin,’’ she says and laughs at her own humour.
Seriously though, 12 to 16 is the limit for the one day course, which goes from 10am to 3pm in The Veggie Lady’s plentiful garden at Currans Hill.
There’s three beautiful chooks among the beans and strawberries and blueberries and a stack of herbs and fruit trees – it is a real treat for the senses.
No wonder people in her classes say, “you’re living the dream’’ when they walk into her fairly large – for these days – backyard for the first time.
“A lot of people leave feeling excited, saying, I’ve got to go home and do everything properly because now I’ve got the knowledge to tackle the problems in my garden,’’ says Toni.
The next Veggie Lady organic gardening class is on November 4, to check it more details go online at http://theveggielady.com/backyard-veggies-1/
