Dr Richard Stirzaker

The Scientist’s Garden: reflections on food and water

The time has come for a scientific exposé of the backyard fruit and vegetable garden and, from there, to draw the links to the big NRM issues of our time.

Those who grow food in their backyard face, in microcosm, the great dilemmas experienced by farmers all over the world.

Gardening books and TV shows have much in common with most diet and cook books, both in their popularity and their focus on quick fix solutions rather than a deeper understanding.  At one extreme we have an instant ‘makeover’ garden, and at the other we go organic and everything falls into place. This naivety slips over to the more important debate on natural resource management.

Dr Richard Stirzaker is a Principal Research Scientist with CSIRO’s Division of Land and Water, and also a research program leader in the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Irrigation Futures.  He has played a leading role in researching the relationships between plant water use, soil health, crop yields and salinity in Australia and internationally.  Dr Stirzaker is also the inventor of the Full Stop wetting front detector - an ingenious device that assists irrigators to judge when sufficient water has been applied. 

Dr Stirzaker’s fellowship was spent writing the agriculturalist’s version of the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet, grounded in the everyday experiences of the backyard garden and reaching up to the global debate on food security and the ecosystems that must sustain it.

Many of the questions that emerge in backyard gardens have parallels at larger scales in natural resource management.  We are told to plant in well-drained soils, but not told why so many soils do not drain.  It’s best to water deep and infrequently, but how deep is deep, and how do you know?

Fertilise well - how well?  Why does the apricot set no fruit, the onion fail to bulb, the strawberry taste so bland, the cabbage bolt in spring, the pea vine disappear under mildew and the fruit fly appear out of nowhere?  Where does the giant gum tree next door get its water from and where does the salt from the washing machine end up?

It is by participating that we grow to understand how things work. 

The Scientist’s Garden reflects on Dr Stirzaker’s research findings in irrigation, salinity, agroforestry, bio-mimicry, subsistence farming, participative learning, technology transfer and commercialisation.  These themes will be juxtaposed with the everyday conundrums that puzzle all those who grow things in their backyard garden.       

Scientific ideas, like plants in the garden, need to be nurtured and given the space and time to bring forth their fruit.  A garden can reveal much about some of the big issues in environmental science.

More information

Dr Richard Strizaker’s book The Scientist’s Garden will be published soon by CSIRO Publishing.

Publications and Resources

None listed

Citation

Land & Water Australia. 2009. Dr Richard Stirzaker. [Online] (Updated June 25th, 2009)
Available at: http://lwa.gov.au/node/3237 [Accessed Tuesday 12th of March 2013 02:29:40 PM ].