Judith helps some local school kids find cucumbers while they hang on tightly to their bunches of dried snake beans ready for their own vegie patches.

Dear readers,

Welcome to the spring issue of Earth Garden. The spring issue often gets the pulse racing a little faster because we all know the soil's warming up and pretty soon we can plant our favourite food annuals. Nurturing new plants to the point of harvesting tasty, organically-grown foods is like reacquainting ourselves with friends who've been away for part of the year.

By now many readers will have finished rifling through catalogues from specialist seed companies, making lists of seeds to order, buying up packets from the local garden centre, or better still - picking through your own packets of seeds saved from last year's crops.

I'm in the midst of a snake bean obsession at the moment. In fact, maybe I'm becoming a snake bean farmer.

Today I finished preparing and planting a 70 metre row of snake bean seeds along a fenceline covered in 2.4 metre high reo mesh. I've been growing snake beans for a few years now since a neighbour, Seby, gave me a few seeds from snake beans he's grown around here for years. They are absolutely bombproof germinators, vigorous climbers and prolific producers that never fail to reward me with huge crops of delicious beans - some more than 45 cm long before they get dry and woody.

I thought my current crop of snake beans had finally died after delivering me more than 20 kg of beans, but after a quick 'mulch' with aged cow manure, and 'deadheading' the old seeds, a touch of Seasol, and now they're starting to flower again and produce more beans into their fifth month. Amazing. You can read more about snake beans in Keith Smith's column.

A group of school kids came through our garden a few weeks ago to get ideas for the local primary school vegie patch.

They loved picking their own snake beans, munching them straight from the vine, and taking home a fistful of dried beans ready to plant out the little maroon seeds inside. I bet some of those snake beans are already taller than the school kids, and I bet some of those children end up as addicted to growing food as Judith and I are.

When I was nine years old I lived in a small town of around 800 people. School was a little old, wooden, highpitched building set on a big block of land. We had a vegie patch in front of the classroom and I'll never forget my excitement and wonder when carefully helping to tend the vegie garden, ensuring that every row was dead straight (for some reason this was a very important aspect of vegie gardening in the 1960s).
At the end of each row we carefully poked the seed packet onto a little stick and all the kids took turns to weed the patch and inspect the growing plants. I suppose my love of food gardening dates from this vegie patch, and this year I seem to have created my dream vegetable garden - the one I've been daydreaming about for about 40 years.

Good things come to those who wait.

I was reminded of my introduction to vegie gardening by Madeleine Delany's lovely article in this issue of Earth Garden. I bet Maddie's story makes many readers recall their first encounter with food gardening. She also mentions snake beans in her story.

Perhaps a few fond memories of your first vegie patch might rekindle the flames for those who've let their food gardening lapse? Of course, this issue of Earth Garden is crammed with lots of stories on all sorts of topics, but it's certainly a great time of year in most parts of Australia to make time and space to grow a few food plants. I hope your spring is as satisfying as mine!

Happy reading,