SERIES 36 | Episode 12
Sophie visits a smallholding at The Range, on Kaurna Country, SA.
It is run by avid seed-saver and herbalist Keitha Thuy Young, who says the only thing that gives her more joy than plants, is sharing those plants with other people!
She’s also passionate about creating healthy food systems.
Their half-acre property started out as a market garden with her partner cultivating vegetables for local restaurants, but when the pandemic closed most restaurants, they turned instead to growing culturally significant seeds, diverse vegetables and medicinal herbs.
Since they increased the diversity of plants, she has found they are rarely affected by pests or diseases. While Keitha loves growing food plants, she says it’s the flowers that bring her joy, and more and more of the garden is being devoted to them.
She loves plants with a story or history behind them and sees her seed-saving as “bringing the culture back into agriculture”.
She’s explored this through her own cultural heritage, which is half Scottish and half Vietnamese. As a result, she grows South-East Asian vegetables such as bitter melon, snake beak, perilla, artemisia and amaranth, as well as potatoes, yarrow, poppies and tansy.
Keitha is also interested in the diversity behind corn and beans and has a huge variety in a stunning variety of colours, including beans descended from a seed found in a Mexican cave and dated as 1500 years old. It still germinated.
When choosing seeds to save, she is looking at features such as disease resistance and heat tolerance, but also flavour, colour, beauty and harvesting time. She shares these via a seed club online.
Her interest in healing herbs came from her own health journey after being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease while pregnant. She became sick very quickly and had her whole large intestine removed. In that sterile environment of being in hospital for so long she says she dreamt about flowers and gardens and vowed to raise her child among flowers.
Featured Plants BITTER MELONMomordica charantia cv. *SNAKE BEANVigna unguiculata cv.TÍA TÔPerilla frutescens cv.SWEET ANNIEArtemisia annuaAMARANTHAmaranthus cv. *CORN ‘SUNFIRE’Zea mays cv.CORN ‘HOPI BLUE’Zea mays cv.BEAN ‘LAVENDER’Phaseolus vulgaris cv.BEAN ‘FORT PORTAL JADE’Phaseolus vulgaris cv.1500-YEAR-OLD CAVE BEANPhaseolus vulgaris cv.
* Check before planting: this may be an environmental weed in your area
Filmed at The Range, | Kaurna Country, SA.
