The organic vegetable garden available to our guests free of charge.
The idea came from the need to give the guests something that could help them feel fully involved in the country life, allowing them to materially benefit from it.
On the other hand, I didn’t want this to become too much of a commitment for ourselves or for our guests.
Everyone told me how much hard work a vegetable garden is, but the mere thought of collecting fresh produce without using chemical substances and being able to offer it to our guests convinced me that the vegetable garden was the way to go.
Enrico found some old boxes in the farming business warehouses, once used to store potatoes, and, after having filled them with earth and peat, he created the raised garden beds.
There are ten of them, they are hardwood rectangles, very resistant even to water, and they are about a metre and a half high.
The height makes the garden particularly efficient and comfortable.
First of all, it helps protect the plants from harmful insects and from the seeds of weeds, because both have a harder time reaching the height of the garden beds.
This makes it possible for us to protect the plants against parasites without using chemical products, and this makes the garden one hundred percent organic.
The raised beds also make it possible to carry out a lot of usually hard work in a more comfortable standing position.
So hoeing, removing weeds, and collecting vegetables become tasks that can be carried out without straining, and in practice the fatigue normally associated with taking care of a vegetable garden is completely annihilated, becoming, instead, a pleasant pastime.
Finally, the fact that the boxes are exposed to the warmth of the sun on all four sides brings the productive season forward by several weeks. So we produce vegetables for our guests from the beginning of spring to late October.
The organic vegetable garden has brought us great satisfaction. Still, this is nothing compared to the pleasure we see in children’s eyes when, accompanied by their mothers, they are surprised to taste a ripe tomato, freshly picked from the plant.