How to get creative with growing food, even in the cooler months

He says that not long ago a woman dropping off her son at the oval that sits next to his trial bed called out to him over the cyclone wire fence. “She said that she had been looking at the garden for weeks but just had to confirm, is that taro? ‘It looks like my garden in Papua New Guinea’.”

While taro is grown as a root vegetable in many tropical countries, Williams says that like many tropical edibles, it also cuts a dashing presence.

But that’s not to say that every edible that thrives in the tropics will look good through Melbourne’s cool winters, especially if there is frost. Some of the foods Williams grows need to be treated as annuals rather than perennials. Even easy-to-grow taro will start to look tatty when the temperature dips.

It’s during summer that these plants are lush and languorous. “People look at babaco (a papaya relative from Ecuador) and say, ‘my god, that’s not a Melbourne plant’. But so much of the city has got sheltered spots where it can grow,” Williams says.

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Ginger (native to monsoon forests in Asia and long farmed in Queensland) comes across as just as unlikely. But don’t be fooled. As well as providing the Collingwood Children’s Farm with 150 edible ginger plants to cultivate this summer, Williams is currently harvesting the rhizomes of the ginger plants growing in polystyrene trays in a Burnley polytunnel.

As for sweet potatoes, Williams says that in the warmer months they hug the ground so thickly that they double as a weed suppressant. Best grown from cuttings taken around this time of year, Williams recommends putting 30 to 40 centimetre-long stems in a glass of water on the windowsill just for the thrill of watching roots develop within two days. Alternatively put them directly in pots that should be kept in a warm, sunny spot indoors and planted out once the weather warms up in spring.

Now is also the time to think about propagating choko, a vigorous vine that, if positioned well, will provide you with almost instant shade next summer. While this Mexican climber got a bad rap after its prolific fruits became a 1930s depression-era staple, the tide is now turning. When Williams recently gave the Collingwood Children’s Farm Burnley-grown chokos to sell, they were snapped up fast.

To grow a new vine, simply plant a whole fruit into a pot and keep it indoors through winter. The seeds will germinate inside the fruit, which will then sprout and can be planted in a well-drained sunny spot once the weather warms up in spring. That’s where I am going to start with broadening the plants in my plot.

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