Rusty Berther from the Scared Weird Little Guys opens up his Yarraville Garden for the ABC Gardening Australia program. 70430 Picture: DAMJAN JANEVSKI
By Charlene Gatt
FOR Yarraville funny man Rusty Berther, gardening is serious business.
Especially if you’re talking marrows.
Fresh from finishing up a 20-year tenure as one half of the popular comedy duo Scared Weird Little Guys, Mr Berther last year helped form the Yarraville Marrow Growers Association.
“After 20 years with the Scared Weird Little Guys, it was like ‘what now?’
“We thought, all the wives have their book club, so we could compare the size of our marrows.
“I had to rub the male flowers and female flowers together to start pollination. It’s nowhere near as messy as it sounds.”
For around six months, 12 men tended to their patches before staging a barbecue and weigh-off, using a seven-year-old standing on the scales as their guide.
In a hotly contested competition, Mr Berther came second by one centimetre. The winning marrow was 60cm long and weighed in at 3.2 kilograms.
Mr Berther has always had an interest in gardening and has his own vegie patch of tomatoes, peas and beans.
This year, Mr Berther is hoping to have gained the winning edge after Jane Edmanson from the ABC’s Gardening Australia came out and helped him prepare the soil for this year’s harvest for a segment.
“The pressure’s on me now,” he laughed.
But Mr Berther is keeping tight-lipped about any tips he received while filming the segment.
“I don’t want to give all the secrets away,” he said.
Mr Berther is also busy preparing for an upcoming documentary, where he will run a marathon in Antarctica.
Mr Berther has completed the last two Melbourne Marathons, completing the 42.2km race in under four hours.
“I’m calling this my early mid-life crisis,” he said.
