Tomatoes are Phil Thomsen's favourite to grow in the garden. Photo / Kem Ormond
The Country’s Kem Ormond, who writes a weekly gardening tips column, found a keen gardener to talk to about his love for growing his own vegetables. She didn’t have to look far – it’s her partner Phil Thomsen.
Phil Thomsen has been growing vegetables since he was about 5 years old.
He had a little plot on his parents’ sheep farm on the East Coast.
They were keen gardeners, as were his grandparents.
Ever since his first garden, he’s grown veges wherever he was living – student flats, rental units and houses on desolate sand hills.
Thomsen revels in the magic of watching the seedlings emerge from the soil in early spring and bringing the first ripe tomatoes proudly into his kitchen.
He enjoys all aspects of the garden – propagation, forking the beds, planting, watering – even weeding is a delight to him!
All of his weeds are returned to the soil under the chop and drop regime, resulting in dark friable soil.
There is no need for fertilisers or manure in Thomsen’s vegetable patch.
“I never bring in anything to improve my soil, nor do I dispose of any green matter; it just gets mulched back into the soil,” Thomsen said.
“I also enjoy letting good weeds go to flower, so bees can enjoy the benefit.
“Borage is something I always have in my garden and is a firm favourite with them,” he said.
Thomsen enjoys the fabulous sense of self-sufficiency that comes from growing his own vegetables.
During the 2020 Covid lockdown, a friend showed him a punnet of sweet corn plants she had planted and explained that the produce was going to sustain her family.
Clearly, this wasn’t a realistic prospect; however, Thomsen feels that it’s the sense of security and doing what you can to sustain life, which is key.
He acknowledges that vegetable gardening is actually a lot of work, or “healthy exercise”, as he puts it.
He also doubts that even the most avid gardener would greatly reduce their supermarket spend through their produce – he believes that it’s more about the feeling of self-reliance and satisfaction in the achievement of a successful harvest.
Some people ask Thomsen whether he actually gets a financial return from his hobby of growing vegetables.
His response: “Do you get a financial return from your skiing holiday?”
He’s in no doubt that he makes a saving from growing his own produce, but he feels that it’s not really about the financial return.
One of the things that Thomsen loves most about vegetable gardening is the camaraderie.
Many of his friends and neighbours love pottering in their vege gardens.
When they get together, they talk about whether it’s time to plant cabbages for winter, how the sweet peppers are ripening and whether they finally beat fungal rust with their garlic.
“It’s much healthier than talking politics or the price of butter,” Thomsen said.
His gardening friends visit and admire each other’s gardens and proudly give away surplus seedlings and produce.
One reason that Thomsen likes to grow as much of his own food as possible is that he’s very reluctant to buy factory-made foods from supermarkets.
He looks at the lists of chemical ingredients – flavourings, preservatives, colourings – and feels that these aren’t added for the benefit of the consumer.
When Thomsen makes a batch of soup for preserving and future consumption, he knows that the tomatoes, onions and capsicums have come from his own spray-free garden.
Thomsen comments that the freshness does make a difference in the taste of produce.
He says the sugar in sweet corn starts converting to starch the moment it is harvested, and the only way to get peak sweetness in corn is to grow it in the backyard and pick it as soon as it is needed for a meal.
Thomsen likewise points out that broccoli loses its freshness soon after harvesting.
Tomatoes are his favourite to grow.
He points out that they take up little room, as they clamber up their supports.
Although it takes time to train them and remove surplus stems and leaves, Thomsen finds that it’s totally a labour of love.
He also appreciates that they are so versatile – apart from eating them raw in salads over summer, he processes and preserves them as pasta sauce and various sauces and chutneys.
His other top crop is beetroot – he unashamedly brags about the huge, blemish-free roots that he grows, without the application of any chemicals or artificial fertiliser.
He pickles it in jars, and the rest is given away.
When Thomsen isn’t working in his vegetable garden, he is writing gardening books.
His latest, Down to Earth Gardening: Tips from the Practical Kiwi Gardener, was published a few months ago.
Thomsen’s publishers took Down to Earth Gardening to the Frankfurt Book Fair in October, with the hope of gaining international exposure.
Thomsen writes for the home gardener, hoping his books will encourage people of all ages to learn how to grow healthy food for their family in their own backyard.
He also produces a weekly YouTube video called Phil the Practical Gardener.