13 January 2025

Here's why gardening might be the biggest scam of the 21st century

| By Zoe Cartwright
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flourishing vegetable garden with tomatoes

Tomatoes, like many other garden crops, tend to either boom – or bust. Photo: John Coleman.

Gardening is a scam.

It’s caught me hook, line and sinker, but you can learn from my foolishness.

I treasure childhood memories of “helping” my dad, grandfather and uncles in their veggie patches.

It could just be that I was very small, but I remember bean trellises high overhead, corn you could get lost in and miles and miles of potatoes (I think Dad said something like, “Never should have planted those bloody things here in the first place.”)

I remember hauls from the veggie patch that fed the family all summer, autumn, and into the start of winter.

Either the green thumb is only passed along the Y-chromosome, or my childhood memories are bulldust.

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As an enthusiastic – if inconsistent – gardener for most of my adult life, there’s always either too much or not enough.

In 2023 I was borderline hysterical as I pushed armloads of tomatoes onto everyone I had any kind of tangential relationship with.

Colleagues? Tomatoes. Friends? Tomatoes. People at the gym? Tomatoes.

Our household had eaten tomato salads and tomato sandwiches for months. I’d made massive jars of sauce that would last us at least the next year.

The tomatoes kept coming.

“Tomatoes,” I thought to myself in my hubris, “are easy”.

Alas.

This year our harvest so far consists of two undersized toms, with another two on the bushes that refuse to flower.

Cucumbers seem to follow a similar feast-or-famine pattern. This year we have them in abundance. None of us particularly like cucumbers.

Herbs all bolt at the same time. So does the rocket and the lettuce.

Faithful silverbeet is about the only thing that provides a consistent supply without threatening to engulf the entire patch, but you have to battle the slugs and caterpillars for every good leaf.

Husband dearest was delighted when I first cleared out the wasteland beside our place to put in the veggie patch.

“We’ll save so much money on groceries,” he said excitedly.

After spending in the vicinity of $5000 on tip fees, beds, dirt, compost, tools, seedlings, seeds, fertiliser and a worm farm I reckon all told we saved about $1000 on produce, pickles and sauces over a year or so.

I’m not sure if I’m doing it wrong, or if a veggie patch is more of a long-term, low-yield investment than the instant returns we initially envisaged.

I’ve also heard it’s good for you, but I never bought that idea.

Listening to all the gardening men in the family complain incessantly about their backs and their knees made it difficult to believe in gardening as a physical panacea.

This was not, however, particularly comforting when I had to spend a day laying on the floor after a particularly vigorous weeding session.

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If I’m being brutally honest, I can only list a few benefits I’ve gotten from gardening.

An increased interest in what’s going on outside – what the weather’s doing, what kinds of birds and bugs are about, what’s growing well and why.

Something to think and talk about that’s not politics, celebrity culture, sport, gossip or self-improvement (I love thinking and talking about all of these things, but it’s nice to branch out).

A reason to potter about outside instead of scrolling on the sofa.

A steady supply of gifts for loved ones – here, take a couple of tomatoes, no really, take more, for the love of God please take more.

An odd little sense of satisfaction when something grows well. Not much beats the smile of a kid when you give them a fresh strawberry.

Now, does anyone want some cucumbers?

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$5,000? You’re having a lend. Cost of seeds. Borrow a spade if you don’t own one.

the good thing about having a garden patch at home is the taste of the fruit and veg. The thing missing from farms is the taste. everything tastes so bland.

Sounds like words form the playbook of the WEF.

With the internet and ai and bit of dedication anyone can do gardening and produce crops years round if you put your mind and consistent time to it.

Once you are set up it’s 5-10 mins a day of caring for the garden.

Imagine what you could have done with your time if you hadn’t wasted it on trying to promote a WEF agenda.

Immortal Australia5:49 pm 12 Jan 25

Still want to get rid of cucumbers?
Happy to take some of your hands.

All of the benefits you listed are why I love gardening, as well as the beautiful flowers I grow that brighten my days even through winter. Experimenting to see what grows best, when and why, watching butterflies, ladybugs and birds as well as just looking at the colour. I do it for fun and beauty, not for boring vegies which are more about work than enjoyment.

A big benefit – biting into a tomato that tastes like a tomato, rather than the red sack of water you get from the supermarkets.

memory whitewashes it, but it is hardships, annoyances and disasters, if not too overwhelming, which leave the warmest feelings about the past, especially when shared

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