Down Under, Gardening Isn't Lost in Translation

Foreign travel is said to broaden one's horizons, but Australia turns it around backward. Let's start with the sun. There it still rises in the east and sets in the west, but it traverses the northern sky instead of the southern, moving from right to left. At night the moon's crescent turns the opposite way, and Orion is upside down. If you leave home in spring, as I did on a recent lecture trip, you arrive in fall, two calendar days later.

Driving on the left is befuddling enough, but just talking can give you a case of jet lag. "It's harvest time," you remind yourself. "And we're doing it in metric." Acres must be translated into hectares, feet into meters, planting depth into centimeters. What little rain there is falls in millimeters. Instead of fencing out deer, it's kangaroos and wallabies. And none of the snakes are friendly.

Many common vegetables have different names, too. Corn is called maize. Peppers are capsicums. Swiss chard is silverbeet, to distinguish it from the closely related beets that grow underground. These are called beetroot. Many such names are the same used in England, but not all, as I found out after showing a slide of an heirloom eggplant and calling it an aubergine. "No, no," they all cried. "That's only in New Zealand. Here, it's eggplant."

When it came to getting down and digging in the dirt, it was once again clear that all gardeners speak the same language. Whatever the climate, the soil type and the amount of rainfall, the basic principle is the same. Building a great soil with plenty of organic matter for good tilth, a full component of minerals, and conditions that encourage biological soil life in the form of bacteria, fungi and other small organisms -- this is what makes plants grow well, no matter what side of the equator you inhabit.

Gardening with Aussies was a bit of a time warp -- in the best possible way. They have never abandoned the tradition of the home veggie garden. Even in the middle of Canberra, the nation's capital, households displayed their tomatoes and zucchinis proudly and prominently in beds close to the house for easy kitchen use. A home flock of chickens (that's "chooks" in Australian), kept for fresh eggs, is a common sight. People love gardening, and huge sections of their bookstores are devoted to it. Modern Australian cuisine, no longer a simple matter of steak on the barbie or bush tucker, is eclectic and highly dependent on fresh produce, much of it home grown. For that, I say "Good onya." Translation: "Right on."