The Bush Backyard

Hiatus

2011-09-14T20:46:00.000+10:00

I'm afraid gardening time is a little hard to come by lately, and it's even harder to find time to write about it. So I'm putting this blog on hold.

But I will be posting recipes and gardening hints on the Warrandyte Community Garden site instead.

And if you're on Facebook, you can find us there on the Bush Backyard page.

Water, water, everywhere

2011-07-25T11:56:00.000+10:00

Most of us in south eastern Australia have spent the last few years focused on retaining and re-using every last drop of water.

Now, we have a different problem. What to do with it all?

Gardens created in the last decade or so are showing themselves in a new light: rivulets running down driveways, swamps which were once dry beds, soggy bits and overflowing drains and burgeoning weeds.

Drainage, I admit, is not the most romantic of gardening concepts. But fine weather or foul, it can make or break any garden.

So here are a few helpful resources if you, like me, find yourself slogging through the muck where once you were lugging precious buckets of shower water:
Drainage basics
Paving and textures for small backyard areas
Raised garden beds
Build a rain garden

Yes, a decent drainage plan and system can be hard work, or expensive, or both. But it is, literally, the underpinning of a good garden structure. Most importantly, working with the way the water wants to run can help you plan your garden around nature, instead of against it.

And if all else fails, there are always...

Owl nights

2011-06-12T12:10:00.000+10:00

We hear an awful lot from the local owls on these dark rainy nights. Tawny frogmouths lurk in the branches. Moreporks call across the valley. The odd Barn Owl flashes through the car headlights.
But nothing like these orphan Tawny owls, rescued by a British wildlife hospital, looking for all the world like something out of a children's book (more info and even cuter photos in The Daily Mail)

Autumn colours

2011-04-30T13:54:00.000+10:00

We like a spot of autumn colour here in the Bush Backyard, and I don't just mean the changing leaves.

Something about the time of year draws the eye, and the mind, to the colours of autumn - berries, rosehips, drying grasses, the red tips of new grevillea shoots, sedum, rhubarb and russet apples, late bottle-brushes, rocks and tree trunks bared by the fall of leaves.

Even in the vegetable patch, the beetroot and rainbow chard are coming along nicely, as are the red oakleaf lettuces.

The frenzy of summer growth is over, but there's still plenty to do.

So best not sit about a moment longer...

Green tomatoes

2011-04-09T15:26:00.002+10:00

Right now, it's time to harvest everything that's left of the summer tomatoes, basil and eggplants and settle in for a frenzy of bottling and freezing and pesto-making.

Don't know about your place, but around here, after that odd summer, we have plenty of green tomatoes still on the vine as the plants give up the ghost beneath them.

This year, for sauce tomatoes, I tried the variety called First Class and it really is. I just planted one, as a trial, and it has been cropping heavily for months. But next summer, I'll put a few in pots and ought to have enough fruit for several batches of sauce and sugo.

Unfortunately, the bloody millipedes keep getting to the fruit before me so I've been harvesting them green and ripening them inside.

You can do the same for any late season tomatoes, which have trouble ripening in the cooler weather and become more susceptible to ravening beasts. You can pick them when they are a decent size and sit them somewhere warm - perhaps on a window sill. They'll slowly turn red and delicious.

Or you can use them green. Australians tend not to do this much, but of course it's very common in the US, especially in the South.

I tried this recipe for green tomato chutney from Cuisine:

You need

1kg green tomatoes, chopped
500g brown onions, chopped
200g apples, peeled, cored and chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tbsp fresh ginger, chopped
1 tbsp sea salt
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
2 tsp yellow mustard seeds
1 tsp ground white pepper
3 cloves
2 bay leaves
1 tsp chilli flakes
1/2 cinnamon stick
300ml cider vinegar
225g brown sugar

What to do
Place tomatoes, onion, apples, garlic, ginger, salt, spices and half the vinegar in a heavy-based saucepan (or, even better, your Nana's old preserving pan - but that might just be me). Bring to the boil and simmer, stirring, for one hour. Add remaining vinegar and the sugar and simmer for 90 minutes or until thick. Stir regularly to prevent catching. Spoon hot chutney into sterilised jars and cover with airtight lids for one month before serving.

This makes about 1kg - four or five jars depending on their size.

I found my batch grew a little too thick early on - indeed, in danger of catching. So I added a splash or two of water. That will depend on how juicy your tomatoes are, but there's not that much moisture in green tomatoes. I also added a slosh of verjuice since everything's better with verjuice.

Sterilising jars
Wash jars and lids in hot soapy water and rinse. As you get closer to needing them, scald the jars and lids in a large saucepan of water and dry on a rack. Make sure the jar is still hot when filled - you can keep them warm and dry in a low oven if you like. Once the lid is on firmly, turn the jar upside down for two minutes, then set it back upright and leave until cool.

Bitter experience leads me to remind you to label it and add the date. We have a jar of pinkish something in the cupboard and I don't even know if it's sweet or savoury.

I use recycled jars but buy replacement metal lids from Green Living Australia, so I know they are clean and will seal well - they have a little pushdown button in the middle of the lid so you can tell if the seal is right.

Another hint: don't think too hard about the book or film Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe while you're chopping them up, or you might cry. Just saying.

I forgot completely about waiting a month before eating it and hoed in straightaway. Not much of a one for reading instructions. It was mighty fine - which was lucky, really, since I'd never actually tried green tomato chutney before. But I'm sure the flavour deepens if you wait a little. So the next jar should be even better.

I started young, obviously

2011-04-08T14:37:00.000+10:00

Nothing is secret when you equip a 75-year old father with a digital slide scanner.

I still remember the feel of that lovely spade in my hand. And I love that shirt.

I may be helping in the garden here, or just causing trouble. But it could be during my career as a trainee sewerage man - they became my idols when the pipes were put in to replace the nightsoil man and his weekly pan collection. Oh, the excitement. I spent all my days either watching the drainage men, or digging a very large hole, just like they did. And what good training it's turned out to be.

Ironic, really, that I now live in a house without sewerage connected.

Planting time in the kitchen garden

2011-03-14T17:28:00.000+11:00

Loving this rain.
So do the damn Portuguese millipedes, though, and it's Thermopylae out there in the veggie patch each morning: one seedling to 3000 millipedes. Nothing kills them except Baysol and it's really too risky with wildlife and pets around. So I swear a lot instead and jump up and down on them. Not very Buddhist, I know. Not even very Spartan.
But with the summer harvest nearly all disposed of - in freezers and jars and fondly-remembered meals - now it's time to get the garden back in some kind of order after a silly summer of head-high weeds and feral fruits.
So what to do next?

With the weather a little cooler, you can get out there and dig over the patch, yank out any summer plants that are really only hanging on by a thread, and cut back things like summer raspberries and artichokes. Clear up rotting mulch and compost it properly - the slaters and millipedes are just a little too fond of it and don't discriminate between mulch and small lettuces. It's a good time to compost - give a little back to the soil after a hard summer, especially where the rain might have carried off the nutrients with the topsoil. Chuck a bit of lime about, if it needs it.

I've put in rainbow chard (silver beet, except it isn't silver) and Tuscan kale. The beetroot seeds I sowed a few weeks ago have come up nicely.
You can plant spinach around now, peas if you don't get any frost, and even broad beans. Lettuce can go in and it won't bolt straightaway as it has over summer. Carrots, cabbages and broccoli should get going (sooner the better). If you let coriander, rocket and parsley self-seed, they will start to sprout everywhere shortly.
I had a ton of garlic last year (that's a slight exaggeration) and now's the time to get some more into the ground. Well worth it.
We're still harvesting beans, tomatoes, eggplants and potatoes, and when they're finished (which won't be long) I'll get the next season ready: broccolini, I think. Another round of beetroot and lettuces. A million onions (I never grow enough).

Never ends.
But isn't it fun?

Jackie Brown is in the house

2011-02-19T18:26:00.000+11:00

The chook house, that is.

New arrival is settling in rather slowly. She's a few weeks off laying yet.

You are supposed to introduce a new chook by putting her in a cage in the run so her new best friends can get used to the situation without feeling threatened. We put Jackie Brown in the tractor inside the run and when I checked five minutes later she had wriggled underneath and was running around her new home. She then took up her perch on top of the tractor and there was hell to pay the next day when we removed it.

Jackie Brown, with Joan Collins at rear -

Everyone very happy sitting on top of the tractor

The next trick with new chooks is, theoretically, to place them gently onto the roost at night once the pecking order is established, so you don't disturb anyone else.

Well, we now have a pecking order of one, and a new chook who prefers to roost on the chookhouse roof. This means I have to get up on the stepladder and drag the wretched thing down, with much protesting, and piff her in the chookhouse so I can lock them up for the night.

At least it's better than introducing two cats, a few years ago, who hated each other on sight, underwent dramatic personality changes and attacked each other at every opportunity - for six years.

Ear, ear

2011-01-20T21:37:00.000+11:00

You wouldn't think that the ear is one of the more vulnerable areas of the gardener's body, but I'm thinking I might have to wear ear muffs from now on.
One ear still bears the scar of having the back of the lobe ripped off by an old rose bush I was transplanting (I did indeed look like I'd been through the Wars of the Roses).
Now the other ear looks like it has some kind of revolting medieval plague due - I think - to a spider bite.
It seems to be spider heaven at present, which is unfortunate since I live with arachnophobe, and I am constantly walking face first into intricate webs that are about as strong as Spiderman's and often still inhabited.
The other night I felt something bang me in the side of the head as I floundered around in the web like a hobbit. Next thing you know: a brand new condition in medical history known as Bubonic Ear.
Not pretty.

Tropical paradise

2010-12-04T14:32:00.000+11:00

Ten years of drought and suddenly Melbourne is a tropical wonderland. Kangaroo paws that had looked like couch grass for three years stand erect and bloom profusely. Poas wave in the sky above my head. Everything's exploding. Don't remember seeing so much green since I lived in New Zealand. It seems, sometimes, like a different country to the scorched brown earth we're used to.
It buckets down. Floods. Then the sun comes out hot and strong. Then it buckets again.
It's not all good news. The onions hate it. They have got far too much water and have grown thick necks, like rugby front rowers. Not a good look in an onion. The early summer blossoms are regularly pounded into the ground by torrential downpours, just as everything looks lovely.
The snails love it, but they are more than outweighed by the frogs pobblebonking through the evenings. The weeds love it, but we can't complain about green growth when it's what we've wanted for years.
And we - well, we just can't get used to it.

... and back again

2010-10-17T12:36:00.000+11:00

A few weeks ago I wrote:
One minute I was hiding the citrus pots from frost. The next, I'm out in the garden in a t-shirt, watering the bloody things.

But yesterday I had to run outside IN THE SNOW (and in pyjamas and gum boots) and drag the citrus pots back under the eaves. We've never had actual snow here before. Not much but enough to feel special

Then there was hail. There was torrential rain.

The spring blossom took a pounding so I fear for this year's crops of pears and cherries. The new acres of mulch are nicely watered in. I can't finish the whipper-snipping, because I'll just make grass pesto.

So that's why we don't plant tomatoes until after Cup Day. That, and because my Uncle Phil always said so. And he was right.

Spring, spring, spring

2010-09-25T16:03:00.002+10:00

Oh, the farmyard is busy
In a regular tizzy
And the obvious reason
Is because of the season.
Ma Nature's lyrical
in her yearly miracle -
spring, spring, spring.

Tragic as it is that I remember the words to every song in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, they are appropriate. One minute I was hiding the citrus pots from frost. The next, I'm out in the garden in a t-shirt, watering the bloody things.

Spring's busting out all around - we have our first bluebells, freesias, sheets of forget-me-nots, Mexican orange blossom, actual orange blossom, banksia roses, cherry and apricot blossom, and late wattles. The first pale red leaves are emerging on the maple tree (formerly known as a stick). The first rose buds.

We also, of course, have had our first aphids, first blowfly, no doubt the first snakes stirring, and the first locusts are hatching up north.

Then there is the start of bushfire clearing season, and the thigh-high weeds which - at least momentarily - make one long for the good old days when rain didn't ever fall.

It's kinda daunting from this end. But at least it's warm.

Winter? Dull? Where?

2010-08-15T17:30:00.006+10:00

It's a myth that winter is a tedious time in the garden.
OK, you aren't out sunning yourselves on the grass, eating tomatoes warm off the vine, or surrounded by fragrant rose petals, but it doesn't have to be a time of boredom and gloom.

First, if you have deciduous trees, you get to see the structure of your garden: the architecture of the treetops; the bark and buds and sky beyond.

Then there are the many flowers - some subtle, like hellebores, some party animals such as narcissus - that take the opportunity to shine when the sun's behind the clouds and you really need a spot of brightness.

If your garden's feeling a bit dull, take a walk around the neighbourhood and see what's in flower so you can plan for next year and the years ahead. This is what I found in bloom this morning on my walk.

In my garden:
White hardenbergia
Daffodils, Earlicheer jonquils, and miniature daffs
Hellebores (Soft pinks, greens and cream)
Grevilleas (red)
Wattle
Hyacinths (blue and pink)
Muscari (grape hyacinths in a deep blue)
Maleleuca
Correa (white, cream and pinky green)
Light mauve miniature (Algerian) iris
Euphorbia
Borage
That bright yellow daisy thing whose name I can never remember
Emu bushes (red and yellow)
Swan River pea.
I also had some lovely red beetroot and rainbow chard in the veggie patch, along with bright yellow flowers on the rapini (but only because I forgot to pick it). And cymbidium orchids in various stages of spiking or fading.

There are things that are more or less always in flower. Here, that includes:
Penstemons (red)
Rosemary
Westringia (purple is year-round, white not quite so)
Daisies of various sorts
Dark purple bearded iris

In other people's gardens I saw:
Purple hardenbergia
Violets galore (mine aren't out yet)
Kangaroo paws in various shades of red
Native hibiscus
Camellia (mostly in nasty pinks, but also some nice ones)
Early flowering cherries
Flowering quince
That horrible South African purple pea thing
And lots of magnolias only a week or so away from opening.

See? Virtually spring already.

On yellow

2010-07-11T16:55:00.002+10:00

We think of yellow as a summer colour, but in fact around here it's the colour of winter.
Lucky, that, because in the dead of winter we all need the hope (will spring really come again?) and splash of warmth that yellow brings.
Again, we think of many yellow flowers as emblems of spring - the wattle along the roadside, the daffodils in an old farm yard, sheets of jonquils in the orchard. But in fact they all tend to make an appearance in winter, just when we need them, along with yellow and creamy daisies and irises, grevilleas, wintersweet (though mine died over summer so it's more brown than yellow), correas and even my new favourite yellow emu bush.
So too the lemon tree hangs heavy with fruit just when you need the hot lemon and honey drinks to get you through a winter cold.
Isn't nature clever?

Sod

2010-06-22T17:07:00.002+10:00

After several weeks' delay I finally turned the first sod in my new allotment in the community garden down by the river.
And what a joy it was.
Drive in the fork and gorgeous loamy stone-free soils simply lifts up and turns over. Just like it should. I nearly cried with relief.
Every spadeful I turn here in the bush backyard is a hard-fought battle with hard or sticky clay, splinters of shale, and crap from the house construction forty years ago.
In the new patch, however, it's well-loved soil in a raised bed, far from eucalyptus roots and safe from rabbits.
So I divided the rhubarb in my backyard and took three new crowns along to plant in the allotment, plus broadbeans and onions to sow. Needless to say, when I got there, I found that the clump of rhubarb already in the corner of the patch needs dividing as well. I think I'll have to start a rhubarb farm.
I'll leave much of the rest of the patch fallow for the winter until there's no danger of frost, and then plant some spuds. I don't know what's been planted there previously so it may need a rest.
It really feels like luxury to have so much room and so few soil hassles.
The community garden is very well set up, too, as I suppose they all are. It's a growing (pardon the pun) movement, but of course allotment growing is a traditional post-war past-time in Britain, where people have such small yards.
Our community garden has water tanks and a glasshouse (though it doesn't seem to be in use at present), a shed with a great range of communal tools, a gazebo and cubby house for a bit of relaxation, and even a barbecue for working bees.
If you have spare seeds, you add them to the seed exchange box and share them around - I tried out some different sorts of onions to mix with those I'd brought along. There are also collective herb and fruit plantings around about, and a gorgeous compost system which made me deeply jealous.
So if you have trouble growing food in your backyard, or would like the experience of communal growing, a community garden is a great option. They are dotted all over the place, but especially in the cities.

Other things to plant or sow during June include:
- Asparagus
- Garlic
- Silver beet or rainbow chard
- Cabbage
- Leeks
- Lettuce.
It's also time to prune roses, cut back perennials (be brave!) and move or plant any deciduous trees or shrubs such as bare-root fruit trees and roses - more roses.

Hiatus

2010-06-11T09:36:00.001+10:00

No time for gardening for the last few weeks, let alone blogging about it.
Normal transmission resumes next week.

On purple

2010-05-08T17:54:00.006+10:00

Not long after we moved into our house, and well after a great deal of garden planning had taken place, I was shocked to learn that my partner hates purple flowers.
How is that possible?
I don't know, but then since I can't bear a great many pink flowers I guess I have to concede the point, especially given that irises, lavender, rosemary, violets and pansies are exempted from the ban. And some purples are really too harsh - metallic, somehow, like that nasty little hebe I pulled out this afternoon.
But it came to light after I had planted the indigenous climber Hardenbergia all along the driveway. (I didn't own up, but luckily the rabbits ate them all and destroyed the evidence.)
Rather more disturbing was the fact that all my life I have wanted a Tibouchina, and was thrilled to find not one but two here when we bought the house.
"They'll have to come out," I was told, in no uncertain terms.

Well, three years later they're still there, hanging on, and instead of trying not to be noticed keep putting on a fabulous show and spreading deep purple petals all over the place, and attracting far too much attention to their purpleness.
No flying under the radar for a Tibouchina. And why would you? Flaunt it, I say.
But for new planting, things can get a little touch and go. After all, the line between blue and purple in the flower world is very fine sometimes. I am occasionally heard to claim: "But it's blue! Honest."
An indigo salvia is, apparently, on the wrong side of the borderline. On the other hand, it turns out bulbs of any kind are also exempt, which is lucky, as I have a weakness for crocuses.

I love a deep purple (iris, say) near bright red (penstemon or salvia, perhaps), or mixed in with a sunshine yellow.
Monty Don claims in The Sensuous Garden that purple "allows other colours to show through more powerfully". Sometimes. On the other hand, in Peaceful Gardens, Stephanie Donaldson recommends a mixture of blue, purple, white and pink to create a relaxing, soothing palette.
I often find the purples in indigenous plants (besides the odd emu bush) to be a rich, deep bluey-purple, or a soft mauve (Westringia), which work beautifully with the blue-grey of the eucalypts in a bush backyard.
The Westringia seems to go unnoticed by the Purple Planting Monitor.
For now.

On white

2010-04-25T16:46:00.005+10:00

I plant a lot of white: plants with white flowers; plants with silver foliage. Why?

- Light coloured foliage can give a sense of depth to your view of a garden
- It is easy on the eye and cooling, especially on hot summer days
- It helps blend flowers and foliage colour that almost, but not quite, go together, such as different reds, crimsons and scarlets; or purple and blue
- It works well as a contrast with dominant colours such as a deep red
- It can spotlight dark corners or shaded spots under trees
- Plants with silver or grey foliage tend to cope well with summer heat and dry conditions
- White works beautifully in the evenings
- In its own right, white is a glorious thing.

(Above: Japanese windflowers - Anemone x hybrida - in a dark spot under a rock bank)

In The Sensuous Garden, Monty Don points out that most white flowers are not actually very close to pure white at all. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of trying to choose a white paint from a colour card will understand this.

"I'll just paint it white," you think. "Simple." Oh no. No, no, no. There are whole colour cards in your paint shop of different shades of white; some yellow, some verging towards blue or pink; some warm; some cool; some cream, ivory, chalk, almost yellow.

(Above: White valerian mixing with red penstemon and English lavender)

Plants are the same, and of course when it comes to white flowers you are also dealing with something that is, let's face it, almost entirely green with white dots (and even those dots might be dotted with yellow or splashed with red). Convulvulus cneorum, otherwise known as rabbit's dessert around here, is both a lovely soft silver foliage with sharp white flowers, but more often you will find the lovely white flowers set against a deep green - for example on a Cistus ladaniferus (Rock Rose), on which you also get a deep red splodge.

You will have heard and seen photos, no doubt, of Vita Sackville-West's White Garden at Sissinghurst, with its white, cream, silver and grey plants. It wasn't the first single palette garden, but it is certainly one of the most famous, and it spawned a generation of copycats (fair enough, too), though this has made some gardeners wary of using much white.

But don't be afraid. Splash a bit around, like eau de cologne, and enjoy the light.

Worst case scenario planning

2010-04-02T10:22:00.006+11:00

Just realised something: after months spent clearing leaf litter and debris in a vain attempt to become fire ready, I had completely gone off gardening. (Don't worry, it's just a phase.)

The bush backyard had become a chore, almost an enemy to be conquered, and as one can never really be fire ready, it seemed we had been defeated.

So I surrendered, somewhere in late January, and have barely lifted a finger since.

That said, summer isn't the best time for gardening in these parts, anyway, because the ground is like concrete and the days are simply too hot to do much. You can't plant anything, all you do is keep things alive. It's a bit like winter is for gardeners in the northern hemisphere, or the wet season in the tropics (although in the tropics, I gather, most of your effort goes into preventing plants from growing too much or where they aren't wanted).
Here there's just lots of watering in the early mornings and the occasional dabble in the veggie patch of an evening, to keep production ticking along.

A tangential realisation is that much of our gardening media, and many books, are all about worst case scenarios. Doesn't matter whether it's about indigenous plants or edible plants or exotics. You get a description of the plant and then a long list of all the terrible things that can go wrong, and another list of all the things you have to do to it over its lifecycle. As if you don't have a life cycle yourself (some of these authors clearly spend more time in their gardens than any normal person, and forget that most of us have a few hours a week, at most, spare for this sort of shenanigans).

An example: lots of articles or books about summer fruit will basically tell you not to bother trying to grow apricots because they are too hard.
Let's just think about that. When I was a kid, lots of suburban houses had an apricot tree in the backyard. The fruit was so plentiful everyone made jars and jars of jam. We had them in our lunch boxes. Sometimes they were a little bug-spotted or small, but still delicious.

Now you buy a handful of apricots for some exorbitant price once or twice a summer, and make jam from the dried fruit because it would be ridiculously expensive to do otherwise.

How did we get here, from there?

Is it really so hard to grow an apricot tree? Clearly, no. Our parents and grandparents didn't have Dynamic Lifter or Pyrethrum or Seasol. They didn't have new hardy varieties and modern rootstocks. At most they had a few cow pats from time to time and some hideous chemical sprays (but only the serious growers used them). Most of them just let nature take her course.

The main issue with apricots boils down to the fact that they blossom early, so the chance of frost at the critical moment is greater than other summer fruits.

So what?

You read on: it says you have to run out every cold night and swathe your tree in horticultural fleece in winter and net it in summer. You have to spray it with this and sprinkle it with that. You have to prune it and coddle it and hold its hand.
You see these pages of instructions and threats and think at the very least: I'd rather buy a bag of apricots for five bucks once a year. It just sounds too hard.

Well, bollocks.

If you love apricots, grow a bloody tree. It's not that hard. Know that once every few years you might not get a crop because of a badly timed frost. You'll cope. Every other year you'll have a tree full of fruit.

It's the same with everything. Sure, you can fuss about and spend your whole life dead-heading and fertilising and applying this or that.

Or you can just help nature along from time to time. Most plants don't want anything more.

If the birds help themselves just a little too much, the next year you can bung a net over the top. If something starts to dramatically affect its chances of survival or production, then, sure, intervene. (That's when you check back with the article or book for a bit of guidance.) Chuck it a handful of poo or slow-release pellets once in a while. Cut off dead growth if there's any.

And let it live its happy little productive life as best it can.

Who could ask for anything more?

PS On the Italian Food Safari last night, my tomato theory was upheld. They like it dry. It's also better for the flavour as it releases the sugar in the fruit. So there's my scientific evidence: Guy Grossi says so.

I have issues

2010-04-01T17:46:00.004+11:00

I have tomato issues.
I also have tomato theories. They run like this: tomatoes are a bit like fine wine grapes. They like a bit of rough treatment. No molly-coddling.

Tomatoes need regular water and the occasional feed but what they want most is sun.
I don't hold with the school of thought that pours water onto tomato vines. Even less with the greenhouse-bred sort. I know I'm not alone in this.
I reckon tomatoes like it dry. It toughens up the plants and gives body and flavour to the fruit.

Many of the diseases and pests to which tomatoes fall prey can be triggered by too much water, or indeed too much fertiliser, which leads to a great many leaves and plants like Jack's beanstalk, but fewer fruiting flowers.
And anyway, I'm too lazy and there isn't enough water to keep them moist.

So then we get these sudden downpours. Not just one, but several. It's a shock to humans, since we aren't used to seeing that much water falling from the sky at once anymore, but it's more of a shock to the tomatoes.

Going from dry to sodden can have all sorts of effects:

Skin splits
Fruit taste diminishes
Split fruits attract fruit fly and all sorts of nasty things
Mouldy fruit
Fungal infections.

That's what's happened here, anyhow.
Too much rain is worse than not enough. The water somehow makes the tomatoes watery. I have no scientific evidence for this whatsoever, besides my tastebuds. But there you go.

While we can't do much about the downpours, besides harvest as much of the water as possible for later use, we can:

Remove fruit with split skins or any kind of damage and give them to the chooks
Harvest any ripening fruit and let them redden on a kitchen windowsill inside, especially if you expect a storm
Spray with garlic & pyrethrum if fruit fly or other nasties are about
Remove any dead or dying branches, and also any leaves or shoots tangled up in the centre of the plant, to let air circulate
Use a fungicide if you must but harvest a good supply first
Re-tie the stems so none are sagging.

Given that it's well and truly autumn, if your tomatoes have finished setting new fruit, you can actually pull out the plants and hang them up (upside down) somewhere dry to let the fruit ripen of its own accord.

By the way, at 7.30 on SBS's Italian Food Safari tonight (1/4), Maeve O'Meara gets stuck into tomato day with an Italian family and it's all about tomatoes. As it should be.

Taste

2010-03-06T21:33:00.002+11:00

I have a theory (not my own, needless to say) that the best veggie patch simply contains the things you eat the most, and some things that just taste a million times better when homegrown.
I would never buy silver beet, for example, unless I was desperate to bake a spanakopita. But home grown silver beet - or rainbow chard - is like a different creature altogether.
So when planning your edible garden, you can grade things in terms of how many times a week you and your household eat them. I like Sarah Raven's idea of having three grades (daily, weekly and occasional consumption) and then you plan your percentage of space and plantings around those ratios, especially for the annuals. Most of your space and attention goes to the food you eat most often.
Of course there are some plants (rhubarb and globe artichokes, for example) that take up a consistent amount of space but they do pay their way. Perennial herbs are the same.
So at this time of year we spend most of our time and water on tomatoes, salads and basil because that's what we eat daily. We devote a fair amount of space to eggplants and raspberries, and I've been trying to keep a fair bit of beetroot underway because we can then eat it year round.
All planned. Mostly works, although I haven't been so great at the successive salads sowing.
But why O why then do I get sucked into trying the odd new thing?
I had the best of intentions with the Warrigal greens. Perennial spinach has got to be a good thing, and then it seems to be bush tucker both here and in NZ, indeed it's often called New Zealand spinach, so it seemed like a good idea. I should have known when the Kiwi told me she'd never heard of it. But I read all about it in a few places, got some seeds, it came up reliably and I was sure I was onto a good thing.
Nobody told me it tastes like soap.
Disgusting stuff. Don't bother growing it.
Finally (too late) I read the sad truth in Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion, the new Bible of the Kitchen Garden. Stephanie can barely muster enough words to bother encouraging people to grow it.
Then I had read about pepinos. Those Gardening Australia blokes are always going on about them, so I was a bit curious, and one promised they taste like rock melon. Sounds gorgeous, right? So I saw a plant at the Kevin Heinz Centre sale and thought it would be a fine investment. Lavished months of care and water on it. Harvested my first one yesterday.
Tastes like cucumber.
I hate cucumber.
So I look it up (too late - see a theme developing here?) in the Bible of home fruit growing, Susan Lyle's Discovering Fruit and Nuts and discovered, you'll be astonished to learn, that they taste like cucumber. Sweet cucumber, but cucumber, nevertheless.
Morals of the story?
Grow what you like to eat.
Experimentation sucks.
Check with a woman first.

Autumn/summer/autumn

2010-02-20T14:54:00.004+11:00

Pretty warm today and back on bushfire alert because it just feels like one of those afternoons.
The lettuce seedlings are lying down flat and, frankly, who can blame them? They needed an afternoon sprinkle as well as a morning splash.
But on the other hand, I have my first Autumn Crocus (Sternbergia lutea) of the season, and a lovely thing it is, too.

I'm hoping that the passionfruit will finally set some fruit - it has tried, and we've had a million of those spectacular flowers, but the tiny fruits keep poaching on the vine on hot days. With the cooler nights, we might just be in luck.

A Belladonna lily has popped up twenty feet away from where I was expecting it to appear.
Gardening is often so wonderfully random.

So close

2010-02-17T21:40:00.003+11:00

It's so close to autumn I can feel it. There's moisture in the air of an evening, early morning fog, the odd downpour, lovely sunshine and cool nights. What could be better? All that and it's still February.
So we have the gorgeous autumnal feel plus the summer harvest.
I've noticed how this year, as the garden becomes more productive, and I get better at managing it, that the bounty has led into cooking things I wouldn't normally bother with. Babaganouj, for example. Usually just buy it. It's a thousand times better fresh. Same with pesto.
Not only do I make these things - I feel like making them, feel like engaging, feel like experimenting and creating more than the usual staples.
So I have a weekend coming up of jam making and pesto preparation. I have my dozens of jars. I have my fresh new lids in a range of sizes and colours from Green Living. I have more basil than anyone could ever wish for.
But I also have plenty of garden jobs to do.

February garden tasks:
- Summer prune and feed for roses so they come back into bloom in autumn
- Move and/or divide bearded irises to encourage flowers next season
- Spray gardenias for scale (Pest Oil or white oil)
- Spray grevilleas to deal with caterpillar plague (garlic and pyrethrum or Dipel if it's very serious)
- Keep down the weeds that spring up after the rainshowers
- Fend off those bloody rabbits again
- Keep watering even if it seems to have cooled down - there are weeks of no rain and quite drying winds
- Order spring bulbs (this takes hours - of brochure gazing and day dreaming)
- Sort out bulbs dug up last year and get ready to replant
- Plan new planting and get in early with the plant purchases so they have plenty of time to get established
- Try new assault on the Portuguese millipedes (wit's end nearly reached)
- Prick out the self-seeding coriander.

I've also sown more lettuce and beetroot in the propagator, along with some of the winter tomatoes from Burke's Backyard magazine - all the way from Siberia and worth a try.

Harvesting:
- Pears
- Tomatoes
- Eggplants
- Basil
- Autumn raspberries
- Rhubarb (there is always rhubarb)
- Rocket
- Lettuce.

Harvest recipes and family traditions

2010-01-31T08:45:00.006+11:00

Got a glut? How fabulous.
You might be surprised to know how many vegetables, beside the usual suspects, can be frozen: tomatoes, for example, can just be thrown straight into the freezer. They'll never grace a salad again but are fine for cooking - even cherry tomatoes.

Same with passionfruit. And onions, although slice them first. Eggplants, zucchini, etc, should be sauteed lightly then cooled before freezing. Leafy vegetables need to be blanched in boiling water or preferably steamed, then cooled.

But this year I have gone a bit mad on the bottling, for the first time. It's a family tradition, in a way, but I'd never done it myself. So I started with...

Beetroot
My great-aunt Myrtle kept us all supplied with home-grown, home-bottled beetroot for years and it beat all hell out of the canned stuff.
I just recently inherited her recipe books and I can see from her notes that one year she made 39 jars.
I made about six. But my next batch of beetroot is still growing so it ain't over yet.
First, remove the tops (you can cook these like spinach, with olive oil, lemon and garlic), wash the beetroot, but try not to damage the skin. Leave the little roots - if you cut them off at this point, it will bleed colour out.
Then boil the beetroot. Mine are smallish and take about 45 minutes. Drain and let them cool enough to handle.
For the next bit, I suggest you don some rubber gloves or you'll look like an alien for hours later.
Take the skin off each beetroot with your fingers - it'll just squeeze off. Then you just put them into the jars, in whatever configuration you like: chunks, whole if they are baby beets, or slices if you want to pretend they are Golden Circle. Chop off the tops and roots unless you like them for aesthetic reasons.

Top the jars up with whatever quantity you need of the following mixture:
- Half a cup water
- Third cup red wine or sherry vinegar
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- Half teaspoon of salt
- A few grinds of pepper.

Gorgeous.

Raspberry Jam
I remember traipsing all over the place as a kid, collecting blackberries in our buckets, in great neighbourhood gangs, and my mum stirring up huge quantities of jam over the stove.
It's a bit sad you can't collect blackberries now in case they've been sprayed. It was nasty work but fun in a way. I'm thinking I might invest in some non-invasive blackberries next season.
I have to admit my first batch of jam was cheating because it wasn't with my own produce. My raspberry plants haven't fruited yet and even if they had they wouldn't last uneaten long enough to be made into jam.
(I was inspired by my aunt's efforts, sampled at Christmas. I won't go into my entire family tree, but this is Marls, a different aunt - just as great in spirit but not technically a "great-aunt". And a professional home economist.)
Anyway, I used frozen raspberries, as she had, because they are a great deal cheaper. You can get them at supermarkets but since then I've noticed plenty of farmgate producers offer them, and that's probably nicer fruit.
You can do it in the microwave or on the stove. I used the microwave but frankly it was pretty slow. Depends on your machine.

This is what I did:
- 500 grams raspberries
- 500 grams sugar (I used jam setting sugar)
- Juice of one lime

Chuck it all in a heavy microwave-proof jug and stir. Bung it on High for two minutes then stir again. Keep doing that until it sets.

Mine was pretty slow, so next time I'll just do it the old-fashioned way, stirring it at a rapid boil in a saucepan on the stove.

How do you know it's set?
Put a saucer in the freezer and after a few goes (I should think at least 8 minutes) put a teaspoon of jam on the saucer. Tip the saucer and give it a little push with your finger. If it wrinkles, it's set. (Lick saucer.)

That's it. Splosh into jars through your groovy jar funnel (see below) or spoon it in and get jam everywhere. Your choice.

Traditional tomato sauce
Auntie Myrt also made a mean tomato sauce. The odd bottle would fizz when you opened it, from fermentation, but apart from that it was inspired.
So this year my cousin Al and I decided to reinstitute the tradition.
Al once asked Myrt what her secret was: she answered, "SauceSetta from Coles", with which profound disappointment we have lived for years. But her old recipe books tell a different story.
So this is the recipe we used (slightly adapted from good old Cookery the Australian Way) and it turns out to be almost exactly the same as Myrt's (hers included apples, which may be why it turned into cider).
But, to our utter astonishment, it's bloody sensational.

- 5 kilo ripe tomatoes
- 1 clove garlic
- 6 pimento (allspice)
- 2 teaspoons mustard seeds
- 12 cloves
- Eighth teaspoon cayenne pepper
- Two and a half cups red wine vinegar
- 2 tablespoons salt
- One and a half cups sugar

Wash the tomatoes, cut in half, take out core thingy at the top. Cook them with the garlic and spices until they are pulp, stirring frequently.
The book says to strain it through a colander but we decided life was too short and Bamixed the hell out of it. (That did mean we had to fish out the pimentos later, though.)
Add the other ingredients and cook, stirring frequently for 90 minutes. Ours took about an extra 20 minutes. You know when it's right when you put a dob on a plate and it doesn't all separate into liquid or fruit solids.
Funnel it into sterilised bottles, and Bob's your uncle. Which indeed he is, in both our cases.

Pesto
I can see myself making a year's supply of pesto over the next few weeks. Happily, it's very easy. This is sort of Stephanie Alexander's recipe from Kitchen Garden Companion, but it's pretty standard. You can also make it with rocket, or with coriander and cashews - rather than pine nuts - though I don't hold with that bollocks.

- 1 cup basil (cram as much into that cup as you can)
- 80 grams good Parmesan, grated
- Half a cup good extra virgin olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic
- Quarter cup pine nuts.
- Salt (also good)

Stick everything but the cheese (new band name?) into the blender and push that button until it's all smooth. You might need to stick a spatula into it a few times. Of course, you will take your finger off the Pulse button first, won't you?
Add the cheese and pulse just a little moment longer.
Done.

When it's in the jar, push it down carefully so there are no air pockets and cover it with a layer of olive oil.
Keep it in the fridge. We top up the layer of oil if we use any, but frankly it gets used pretty fast around here.

Jars, bottles and lids
You can recycle old jam jars or pasta sauce jars or anything, but the research says you need to get clean lids, especially if you're making something that needs to last for months.
You can order lids from Green Living Australia (and all sorts of other contraptions too.) I got a packet from my favourite nursery, Bulleen Art & Garden.
You can also get quite good jars from The Reject Shop at half the price ($2 or $3 depending on size) you'll find them in homewares stores.
Of course any Op Shop will have a million jars too. That's where I finally found enough bottles for the sauce. These also had to have new rubber sealing rings (from Mitre10).

Preparing jars and bottles
All jars and bottles, even if they look clean, need to be washed again (chuck 'em through the dishwasher) and sterilised before you put anything in them. For many things, this is simple.
Boil up a stockpot full of water and stick the jars and lids in it, then leave them to drain dry before you put jam or anything else in them.

Gear
Now, I have a theory: if something's worth doing, it's worth having accessories. Lots of accessories. A good-sized freezer is a start.

For any sort of preserving you will need a big stock pot with a heavy base. We used Aunty Myrt's pot for the tomato sauce, mostly for sentimental reasons, but agreed a big preserving pan for the bottle-boiling would have been a great deal easier.

A batter jug also makes life easier, but a mixing bowl is OK if you have a decent funnel. But I love my batter jug and use it for everything. Except batter.

My jam-making aunt showed me with great glee a jar funnel she had picked up somewhere: a stainless steel funnel with a wide spout that fits into the jar lid so stuff doesn't go everywhere. A beautiful thing. I scoured the world for one and finally found it on sale (about $10) in David Jones.

Jam will start to set when it hits 105 degrees Celsius. So a candy thermometer (about $8) can help.

I also found after the first round of jar scalding in boiling water that I needed a bit of help, so I bought a pair of tongs with silicon grabbers (whatever the technical term is) which made life so much easier. You'll also want nearby a few clean tea towels for helping manage the hot jars and lids.

Of course there is no end to the other accessories one could get, or you can improvise if you don't have a gear fetish, but these are the basics.

Excellent advice and more recipes are available on my new favourite site: Nonsuch Kitchen Gardens.

Good luck and buon appetito!

Things I learned this summer (so far)

2010-01-24T20:26:00.002+11:00

1. If you live on a block full of gum trees you will never ever be "fire ready".
2. It's a myth that possums won't climb any wire that wobbles: they will if there are ripening pears on the other side.
3. Chooks don't like it when it's 44 degrees.
4. Seedlings with daggy old labels from some old family grower bear four times as many eggplants as those with groovy branding.
5. You have to plant three times as many peas as you think you'd ever need or you only get a dozen at once.
6. No matter how tough you think your favourite loppers are, when faced with a 40-year-old rambling rose you may be better off walking to the shed and getting your pruning saw (this is much faster than finding spare parts for your favourite lopper).
7. Never buy a cheap line trimmer.
8. In fact, if you have a bush backyard, don't even bother with a line trimmer. Spend more money on a bladed brush cutter.
9. (See 7, above) Don't throw out your receipts.
10. Don't get too excited when the Council erects signs announcing fire prevention works along your road - erecting the sign is the only tangible thing that will happen
11. Chain saws rock.
12. Bushfire fuel reduction is best started in winter, so you don't spend every precious spring and early summer weekend missing out on proper gardening.
13. Blue-tongues look pretty damn scary in the twilight.
14. Just keep feeding citrus. They eat more than you.
15. Pindone works.

Gardening in pyjamas

2010-01-10T17:04:00.003+11:00

38 degrees yesterday. 31 today. 41 tomorrow.
So it's out early with the buckets of leftover shower and kitchen water, plus a little squirt from the tank. (I fear I may have been a bit profligate with the tank water early in the summer.)
The seedlings are suffering: lettuce, chard, beetroot. The citrus are sulking. The tomatoes and eggplants are growing five inches a day.
Like everyone else in Melbourne and half of Victoria, I spend an inordinate amount of time in the early mornings lugging buckets about and dribbling water rather meanly onto priority plants.
For me, food is the priority, followed by relatively new plantings that might need a very occasional helping hand, and a couple of young grevilleas that got inundated by caterpillars and all their new growth chewed. Everything else just has to cope - or not. They mostly cope, because I just don't buy or plant anything that has high water needs.
It's far too hot for gardening the rest of the day, so the early morning is also the best time for trimming, spraying, and of course harvesting. Evening is the time for deadheading, vaguely staring at things and pottering.
This morning I brought in the last of the tree onions. I just love how they are known as Egyptian Walking Onions. I have visions of little onions walking like Egyptians all over the veggie patch, singing happily to themselves.
But I'm not letting them walk - that is, normally they would bend over so the tiny bulblets on the ends of the stems touch the ground and plant themselves. I've put the bulblets in a string bag for planting later in the year as I have to rotate them to another part of the patch.
The early morning watering and pottering means I am always to be seen gardening in pyjamas and things (plus hat and sunnies on weekends). It's a good look. Luckily nobody can see me. At least, only the odd local walking their dog along the river. The other week one of them surprised me - he'd lost his dog and shouted out to me to ask if I'd seen it. I was in the chook house in my dressing gown at the time.
At present I'm reading Monty Don's gorgeous Ivington Diaries, his journal of several years of building and maintaining a beautiful and productive English country garden. His entries for January and February involve frost, rain, floods and snow and not being able to get out into the garden in the daytime. Mine involve bushfire fuel raking and the scent of lavender and hot tomatoes. Last entry I read, he was pricking out rocket seedlings in the potting shed early one morning. I just chuck a handful of rocket seeds on the ground and off they go.
It's a world away from here - on every possible level.
But on the other hand, we're both gardening in our pyjamas.

Weeding really can get you down

2010-01-06T18:31:00.003+11:00

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
seem to me all the uses of this world.
Fie on't! O fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in Nature
possess it merely.

~ Hamlet

Writing about gardens

2009-12-20T06:57:00.003+11:00

There's a reason Sissinghurst is one of the most famous gardens in the world. Yes, it's gorgeous and romantic and clever, but originally its fame was due to the woman who made it and the fact that for two decades last century she was the most celebrated gardening columnist in the UK.
Vita Sackville-West defined the art of the garden column for us and although she has many wonderful peers she was - and remains - one of the best writers about gardens and, more importantly, gardening.
You wouldn't think it's that hard to do, would you?
But good garden writing has to offer many things: clear word pictures; a strong and trusted, and hopefully entertaining, voice; expertise that comes from gardening, not just from books; and above all it is technical writing which can be devilishly tricky, especially if you don't realise that's what you're doing.
A dash of style doesn't go astray either.
Vita's writing is all of these and more, and people adored her columns in The Observer - even people who had no interest in gardening:

...The hedge is made of 'American Pillar', a rose which, together with 'Dorothy Perkins', should be forever abolished from our gardens. I know this attack on two popular roses will infuriate many people, but if one writes gardening articles one must have the courage of one's opinion. I hate, hate, hate 'American Pillar' and her sweetly pink companion 'Perkins'. What would I have planted instead? Well, there is 'Goldfinch', an old rambler, very vigorous, very sweet-scented, and when I say sweet-scented I mean it, for I do try to tell the exact truth in these articles and not mislead anybody. 'Goldfinch' is a darling, she is my pet, my treasure; a mass of scrambled eggs.

Vita, of course, was at heart a poet and writer and probably turns in her grave at the thought that her columns, rather than her huge body of creative work, is the writing for which she is remembered.

Local stars
Edna Walling, though not in the same camp as Vita (well, actually they were, but that's another story), was similarly revered for her wonderful, cranky columns which changed the way that many Australians thought about their gardens, and the bush:

A garden should, I always feel, be just a little too big to keep the whole cultivated, then it has the chance to go a little wild in spots, and make some pictures for you.

Edna is, if you like, the patron saint of the bush backyard.
At the same time, Bill Molyneux was writing about indigenous plants in lucid, passionate books that made us see the Australian landscape and its flora through new eyes, and his influence is evident in many contemporary writers about Australian plants, such as Diana Snape.
That's also why Peter Cundall is so adored by Australian gardeners. It's not that his prose has the poetry and dash of Vita's, because it doesn't; but he has a clear and dear voice and connects with both readers and viewers. We trust him and he is also not a bad technical writer (although I have read a passage of his on crop rotation many times and still can't make head nor tail of it):

I'm being terribly cruel to my tomatoes again. They are receiving just enough water to keep them alive... it's the best way I know to get them to produce early crops

That's even why Don Burke, love him or hate him, is so very popular. He has a distinct voice and, if you set aside his strange habit of advising companies on the wrong side of environmental debates, a reputation as trustworthy and knowledgeable. He may be many things but he's not boring.
But I have to say that many of their colleagues could blister paint with the dryness of their writing.
Several newspaper and magazine columnists make my eyes glaze over, lose focus, and move quickly onto the book review pages. A couple (we won't mention any names - Denise Gadd and Jim Fogarty) send my eyes rolling into the back of my head: I groan, and am incapable of even turning the page for a few minutes. It can't be that boring, surely?

In search of style
The issue rests in the idea that anyone can write. Of course that's true. Everyone can - to a point. But not everyone can write brilliantly. Even half-brilliantly. Even vaguely interestingly.
Not everyone who can garden can write about gardening.
Charisma can't be faked.
And charisma is what we need.
I know most of us don't spend too much time actually reading the words in our gardening books, unless we need to urgently find a cure for something. We're too busy drooling over the pictures.
Hands up those who have ever actually read a chapter by Hobhouse or Verey. I rest my case.
But the recent explosion of gardening book publishing has led to too many people who may be fine gardeners or affable enough on the telly being given advances and transformed into rock stars, when they should instead be given a copy of Vita's gardening column anthology and told to come back in a few years. I expect the same is true of cooking books.
In the new Australian book department, there are some honorable mentions: I actually read Jenna Reed Burns' Australian Gardens for a Changing Climate, while drooling, which tells us that the words must be meaningful and engaging, because the photographs are wonderfully distracting.
I do like Meredith Kirton's books, especially Dig. Marvellous production values, well thought-out, and her text is clear and snappy. There's not that much voice coming through, but you do feel her benevolent presence.
Michael McCoy is possibly the best popular garden writer in Australia right now. He never fails to amuse, whether in short columns or in books, and he has a lovely feel to him, if you know what I mean.
I adore Monty Don. He may be the love-child of Vita Sackville West and Beth Chatto. But don't let your mind linger on that thought too long. Get your grubby little green fingers on a copy of The Sensual Garden, or make someone give you Extraordinary Gardens for Christmas. That man can write. Even his TV shows are thoughtful and articulate.
(Which reminds me - why do those people on Gardening Australia speak to us all as if we were five? Have they done research that indicates we are all morons? Even John Patrick, a well-read and erudite writer and speaker, acts as if we were are all in some remedial class for people who've been wearing their gardening hats too tightly. And a few of them write in the same lifeless tone as well. I have ceased to read anything Jerry Coleby-Williams writes. I do hope it's paying John Patrick's mortgage, but I'd much rather read his really rather good books.)

Writers on gardening
It is salutatory that some of the best writing about gardens is by people other than garden writers: Germaine Greer, for example. Try to get your hands on The Virago Book of Women Gardeners (I have an illustrated edition, which is perhaps a mistake - if I want to actually read, I revert to my paperback, otherwise that drooling daydreaming thing happens).
Or perhaps The Nature of Gardens, edited by Peter Timms, with contributions from writers such as Carmel Bird, Marion Halligan and Belinda Probert. Carmel Bird points out this show-stopper from Maeterlinck, which proves my point completely:

Among the plants that has ceased to defend themselves, the most striking case is that of the Lettuce.

Timms also writes cultural histories of gardens and nature that prove that writing about gardens doesn't have to be dull as dirt.

Harvesting...

2009-12-02T21:04:00.002+11:00

Morello cherries before the currawongs get them
Baby beets
Lettuce
Leeks
Artichokes
Basil

Just finishing:
Rainbow chard
Broad beans

Fruiting:
Pears
Lime
Lemon
Red grapefruit
Olives

Coming along nicely:
Peas
Eggplant
Tomatoes
Passionfruit

Nearly there:
Garlic
Tree onions

In flower:
Eucalypts
Jacobean lilies
Tiger lilies
Cistus
Borage (endlessly and everywhere, but luckily the chooks go mad for it)
Penstemon
Kangaroo paws
Valerian
Day lilies

Booming:
Correas of all kinds
Grevillea Royal Mantle
Swan River pea
Poas
Lavenders

Fried:
Roses

Progress

2009-11-08T19:39:00.005+11:00

Before (the veggie patch)

After

What's the best mulch?

2009-10-30T12:12:00.003+11:00

Good question.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, with the new guidelines on bushfire fuel load reduction.
Use gravel, the Victorian Government advises.
Thanks for that.
Gravel is a great mulch for level areas that are already planted. Absolutely. And it doesn't burn in a bushfire. Gravel and pebbles have also been very fashionable for several years (too fashionable, one might argue).
But for the 98% of us (number picked at random but I reckon it's certainly the vast majority) of us on sloping blocks or with developing planting, gravel is no use at all.
You can apply it to a slope all you like, but it won't be there after the next decent rain. It'll be in your drains or your garden beds or wherever you most wish it wasn't. It's also a pain in the butt to try to plant into gravel-mulched areas.
I don't know how to solve the problem of having combustible mulch near your house if you're in a fire-prone community.
We simply have to mulch, and often those plants that do need mulching, such as fruit and veg, are relatively close to the house.
Mulch keeps moisture in the soil and keeps it cooler on hot days and warmer in winter, hopefully replenishes nutrients, and reduces weeds, which also makes sure your plants aren't competing for water and nutrients. It also makes it a great deal easier to remove any weeds that do pop up (and they will).
Groundcover plants are probably the best idea, though not as instant as a layer of bark. They will burn - any foliage can burn - and they will require water from the soil, but they will always have a higher moisture content than dead woodchips and therefore must be a better option. Just don't choose plants with highly inflammable oils (part of the problem with eucalypts and pines).
If you have enormous water tanks, it might be possible to wet down combustible mulch on extreme fire danger days - certainly that should be part of your fire plan if your property is in danger and you are there to hose it down. That was the local CFA advice last season (prior to February).
As far as I know, there is no other fire-resistant mulch.
But fire fuel issues aside, what is the best mulch?

I can tell you what's not.
Plastic matting is not. It adds nothing to the soil and probably in fact damages it. And it's ugly. If you must use sheeting of some kind, invest in proper weedmatting.
I'm not keen on all that bright red recycled rubber, though it may have its place on roundabouts and shopping centre carpark edges. But it's not organic, and it's not helping feed the plants. It's recycling, which is better than nothing, but is designed only for weed prevention, not for plant support.
And after all, gardening is primarily about supporting your plants to do their best.
Anything that is taken from unsustainable forest practices should be out. Most purchased mulch is pine, but you need to be very careful buying anything like red gum or other eucalypt mulches. Ask the supplier - where do they come from? It's a pretty ridiculous concept to destroy native forests in one area so that plants in another place can be pampered.
But generally, bought mulches are by-products of milling plantation timbers or recycling green waste.
I'm not that keen on those blocks of coconut husks - they do suppress weeds but seem to keep water out of the soil. I used a few for the first year but the beds stayed very dry, even after good rain. The following winter I dug it all in, and can report that it does break up clay nicely, so not a complete waste. And very cheap.

DIY
You can make your own mulch, of course, with the help of your feathered friends. If you have chooks, leave the straw and manure to rest in a pile for a few months and it can go on your veggies and garden beds. You have to be a bit more careful with barn straw, if you have horses or cattle, as seeds in any manure can become weeds in a garden pretty quickly.
You can use grass cuttings and garden trimmings, though I would let lawn clippings die off in a pile somewhere before layering them on. They do get a bit slimy, so mix them through with other compost materials, such as dry leaves.
You can collect mulch, too, especially leaf litter from bushy areas of your block, which is great for indigenous plants. Leaf litter is certainly a lot safer in heaps around your shrubs where you can damp it down than scattered in the dry grass on a hot windy day. Rake it up, use what you need as mulch, and get rid of the rest of it before high summer - either in the compost (where it will take longer than other matter to rot down) or in your green waste so it can be re-used by others.
If you make compost, it's up there among the best mulches, although most of us can't generate enough to cover great swathes of ground.

For the veggies
Lots of people, including the good folk on the ABC's Gardening Australia, recommend sugar cane waste.
I don't. I used it a great deal in the first few seasons I was here, mostly because it's cheap, but it seemed to create an impermeable layer on top of the soil which actually prevented water from reaching plant roots. It might be good for breaking up heavy soils, but there are also different views on whether or not it adds nutrient content.
For veggie patches I much prefer pea straw. In fact, I love pea straw. I also love mushroom mulch. I could eat it. It just smells gorgeous and feels rich. It's gardener's chocolate. But I have to say it's more a compost than mulch. The only drawbacks with pea straw are that you do get a lovely random crop of peas, but just think of them as a wonderfully nourishing green manure and dig them in. Pea straw will also blow away in exposed areas. On the other hand, you will see it featuring in lots of local bird nests, which is kinda nice.
When making new veggie beds, start with a layer of cardboard or thick newspapers, and lay an inch or three of compost and then pea straw over the top.
I collect bags of oak leaves in autumn for the roses, but otherwise they seem to quite like the pea straw too.

Bulking up
For general planting areas, you need something more solid than pea straw: something that will look after itself, not rot down too fast, and preferably look good. That's why most people go for timber chips or bark.
Choose carefully, though. Some of it is quite recently milled pine, which is still too raw for your garden beds. It may even contain toxins that can cause serious damage.
It needs to look as if it's been laying about in a pile for a good few months before you put it anywhere near your precious charges.
Most bark and chip mulches actually leach nitrogen from the soil as they break down, so make sure you throw around some blood and bone (or pellets made especially for native plants) to compensate.
Most bark or fine chip mulches need to be replenished every couple of years.

On an angle
Most of my block, like many bush backyards, is sloping. It's possibly more dramatic an angle than other places, and I have done quite a bit of planting on the slopes. That's very common.
So how do you mulch on a bank?
On one relatively gentle slope I recycled carpet underlay and cardboard boxes and held them down with rocks. Then I plastered it with Eltham Mulch. Onion weed came through it this year but not much else.
I've used the Eltham mulch on even steeper slopes, sometimes almost vertical, and it just stays there. Never moves. I just chuck it down the hill (sometimes a tarp-full at a time) and it rolls down into place and does not move.
I love Eltham mulch even more than I love pea straw. It is dark pulverised bark mixed with thin strips of pale wood (pine, mostly) and it is especially made for mulching banks.
Now, I know it comes from Adelaide, and it's probably only called Eltham mulch because the Eltham Soil Shop gets it in especially, as it's perfect for the steep gardens around our way. Elsewhere, it's probably called Upwey mulch or Macedon mulch. It's fabulous.

How thick should mulch be?
The opinion on thickness of mulch has changed a bit over the years - experts used to recommend 10 centimetres (which is a bloody lot of mulch). Now it seems like most recommend about 5 to 7 centimetres. Any thicker than that and you risk preventing water from getting to the root zone.
A rule of thumb is the bulkier the mulch, the thicker you spread it. Fine mulches like compost and lawn clippings can be 3 centimetres.

Wherever you are, shop around for the right mulch for your block and don't be afraid to ask the suppliers what it's made of and where it comes from.

October tasks

2009-10-04T11:44:00.002+11:00

For everyone (well, temperate Australia & NZ)
Sow or plant:
- broccoli
- climbing beans
- cabbage
- carrot
- citrus
- lettuce
- passionfruit
- peas
- potato.
Get indigenous plants in the ground while there's rain about and the soil is getting warmer.
Feed citrus and other fruit trees and watch for pests.
Mulch, mulch, mulch.
Weed, weed, weed.
Feed, feed, feed.
Manure leafy vegetables.

In this bush backyard
Clearing, clearing, clearing.
And more clearing.
Though I'm not one of those people in fire-prone areas who is bulldozing around the house, since I quite like trees and animals, it's amazing how much crap accumulates in the bush backyard. Dead branches, dead saplings, old blackberry canes, ivy everywhere. It's all got to go.
I don't plant tomatoes and eggplants until Cup weekend, because my Uncle Phil said so. Even though the seedlings are about already and looking tempting. I'm not going to bother growing from seed this year: when Sweet Bite seedlings are $2 each for a good strong tube, why bother? Nor am I going to bother with Grosse Lisse or any other whoppers this year. We love the smaller fruit and they are quicker to ripen, which means we are more likely to eat them than the birds.
This year I have blossom on the Buerre Bosc and the William pears at the same time, which is the point of having both for cross-pollination. So I'll need to keep an eye on the pears and the cherry and net them this year.
I'll also sow or plant:
- basil (in the propagator)
- Tuscan kale (again, after rabbit massacre)
- peas
- scarlet runner beans, this year, having seen my father-in-laws impressive crop over summer that fed dozens of people for days on end.
We also plan to make a huge batch of rocket pesto from the current crop and replace it elsewhere.
My veggie patch isn't quite big enough for everything I want to grow. The bush areas of the block, on the other hand, still need years of work. But you get that.

Sprung

2009-10-04T08:58:00.002+11:00

I'm ridiculously pleased with my irises this year. Dutch and Bearded have both done very well, the small Algerians less so but still performed. There are two problems: they are all purple; they are slightly different purples. So at present, with both Dutch (mid blue/purple) and Bearded (dark imperial purple) out, it's a bit of a clash. I'll need to move them out of each other's sight before next year. And get some whites and yellows to mix it up a bit.
The big story is that the olive tree is sprouting new growth all over and that's just about the best news I've had all year.
The bare ground where we took out an enormous privet and slashed blackberries and then pulled out nightshade for hours is now carpeted in forget-me-nots. Of course, those are a weed here too, but I am choosing to forget that. It's delightful. Next year I'll put blue and white bluebells through there as well (non-invasive ones, of course).
The other main growing activity in the garden at present is confined to weeds and rabbits. Both are thriving.
That's not entirely true. Some bits of the veggie patch are doing quite nicely; that is, those plants not yet eaten by enterprising rabbits Warren and his wife Nora and the dozens of other Warrens and Noras.
Warren's quite keen on broccolini and, of all things, leeks. Nora prefers raspberries - the canes, not the flowers. I think Nora may be a little stressed, too, as she's been eating the valerian and hopefully is now down in the burrow having a snooze. Nobody likes beetroot or rocket, which is a mercy, but they finish off with a salad and a few mouthfuls of my precious burgundy Scabiosa. I could not for the life of me figure out how they got in, but then watched them race, Houdini-like, through the fence and realised there was the tiniest hole in the wire. And they were sending Warren Junior through the teensy squares in the willow pickets to feast - hopefully he's now eaten so much Scabiosa he can't fit through any more.
Now it's war.
Again.
Apart from that I don't have time to actually sow or grow. This year all our effort is going into bushfire load clearing. It was whipper-snipper yesterday and chain saw today.
O, how I love power tools. And the smell of two-stroke in the morning.

Gardener's back

2009-09-06T20:51:00.002+10:00

Oh my aching back.
And feet. And legs.
It's mountain goat territory here (well, mountain rabbits) so clearing the banks of dead scrub and blackberry canes before the bushfire season has to be one of the least glamorous and most exhausting jobs ever.
But damn! It looks good now.
What could be more satisfying than a head-high pile of crap waiting for the next green waste drop-off day? (I could burn it, but I like the idea of it all being chewed into mulch and spread across some other garden somewhere.) Not everyone can get such enormous enjoyment from a huge pile of sticks - it's a pleasure confined to those with bush backyards, house framers, and firewood merchants.
All that excitement even without the chainsaw. Next time I'll rev up the Beast as well. I tell you, the fun never stops around here.
I'm still ignoring the annual weeds near the house. I figure it's better to let them get big enough to pull out without bending down too far. But before they run to seed. O, the delicate balance of nature - or rather, perverting the course of nature.
In the veggie patch, the raspberries are sending up runners everywhere. I fear I may have introduced a virulent pest to the Yarra Valley region. Just shows you how easily the buggers can get away from you.
This evening we cooked up the last few big leeks from last spring - I left a few in the ground months ago, because I quite like the flowers, and the stems spilt and multiplied into smaller leeks. I had no idea they'd do that. So now I've transplanted those (they are about a finger's width) and at the same time put in more tiny seedlings so I should have an almost continuous supply.
For once, I planted the seedlings the way you're supposed to, digging in plenty of compost and then making a thin trench with the edge of the spade and just laying the leeks in there, leaning against the side. Then you water them in. Maybe a tiny sprinkle of soil to cover the roots.
It doesn't matter if they keep leaning, apparently, as they will right themselves.
We'll see.
A very satisfying weekend, enjoying the results of my own labours: leek and potato soup, salad, fresh herbs in scrambled eggs (courtesy of the chooks) and finally rhubarb.
Not to mention those huge piles of sticks.

Garden diary dates

2009-08-29T13:21:00.007+10:00

Cruden Farm, Dame Elisabeth's lovely country garden (albeit now in the suburbs of Frankston) is open tomorrow, August 30. While the Walling walled garden will be bare, the lake will be ringed with hundreds, maybe thousands, of daffodils, and the camellias and magnolias (I fondly recall this gorgeous M. stellata) will be in full bloom.
Anyway I love seeing the bones of an old garden in winter. Serious gardeners will spend time admiring the leaf mould composting bins, if nothing else, and 100 years notwithstanding the National Treasure herself is usually on hand to sign books and answer questions.
Bless 'er. And her gardeners.

Coming up in my area:
Managing a bush block for biodiversity and bushfire management
This field day will involve site visits to a small number of properties to discuss the tools and techniques for bushland management. The tour will cover bushland ecology, basic plant identification (indigenous and exotic), identifying and addressing land management issues; managing fuel loads, protecting and enhancing habitat, revegetation, and funding and assistance available to landholders.
Date: Saturday 17 October
Time: 10am-3pm
Cost: Free
Facilitator: Tanya White
Meeting point: Dunmoochin (location confirmed on booking)
Bookings: Georgia Ramsey, Environment and Strategic Planning, on 9433 3210 (Nillumbik Council)

Growing organic fruit and vegetables in Nillumbik
Presented by Sustainable Gardening Australia (SGA)
Come along and learn about growing your own food under Nillumbik conditions. The workshop will cover ways to deal with gardening issues particular to Nillumbik, such as Nillumbik soils, possums and shading. Find out which vegetables grow well in our area and learn about effective irrigation strategies.
Date: Saturday
3 October
Time: 10am-12noon
Cost: free
Venue: Edendale Farm, Gastons Road, Eltham (Melway 22 A1)
Bookings: Georgia Ramsey, Environment and Strategic Planning, on 9433 3210

Edendale is well worth a visit anyway, if only for its splendid chooks and feijoa hedge.

I'll also be heading for the Australian Plants Expo: Sustainable Gardening with Australian Native Plants.
Saturday 10 October 9 am - 5 pm
Sunday 11 October 9 am - 4 pm
Templestowe College, Cypress Avenue, Templestowe (Melways 33 D7)
(Adults $4, children free)
See the program and activities (to be published soon, we are promised) on the SGAP Vic site.

[Later] I found some photos of Cruden Farm in late winter, from my visit there in 2007 or so.

Blossom in the home paddock

The house from the old walled garden originally designed by Edna Walling.

Lakeside daffodils by the armsful.

Is it still winter?

2009-08-23T08:32:00.003+10:00

Apologies for the hiatus: I came down with the dreaded swine flu and haven't even looked at the garden for weeks.
That means I'm way behind with my spring preparations, but today is the day. I'll be starting all those things I really ought to have done weeks ago. If you've already done all this, like a normal gardener, the list won't be much use, but here's what one should do in July/early August in a cold-to-Mediterranean climate:
- Prune roses
- Weed, weed, weed, especially the annuals before they set seed
- Cut back the raspberries (again - I am only guessing that's the right thing to do, since here are no instructions on what to do with raspberries that accidentally fruit in winter)
- Mulch while the soil's damp
- Get the backlog of new plants into the ground so they have a chance to establish before it gets too warm and dry: I have a few more ground-covering Grevillea Poorinda Royal Mantles, and a whole stack of things I've propagated from cuttings to fill holes, such as pineapple sage and wormwood.
- Stick some garlic cloves in the ground for next year's supply (so easy and SO satisfying)
- Install another water tank.

The must-do things I really can't do now because I've missed my chance, are:
- Move or plant any deciduous shrubs or trees
- Spray nectarines with Bordeaux or a copper-based fungicide before bud burst.

My genuine late August jobs include:
- Fertilise bulbs (to provide nutrient stores for next year)
- Dig over and fertilise/compost/lime (depending on what's going in next) the veggie patch
- Patching the new "lawn" over which visitors repeatedly drove heavy cars the other day, just when it was looking like it might actually become grass
- Spread fresh pea straw onto the veggie patch.

I'm not going to bother with growing tomatoes or eggplants from seed this year, but I will clean out the propagating kit for basil and lettuce.

(Image from Organic Gardening 101 group on facebook)
I'm also going to attempt to move the passionfruit vine to a patch with greater levels of sunshine as it hasn't set fruit at all in its current spot. It may not survive, but I think it's worth a go. I'll plant an old-fashioned jasmine to climb up the deck where the passionfruit is now.

Then there's a vast amount of work to do in bushfire preparation, clearing dead scrub and crap accumulated over the decades just below the banks around our buildings and lying like piles of kindling. I started clearing the old blackberries canes and junk before I got sick, and discovered gorgeous and enormous rocks lying under knots of ivy, open spaces that were revealed as views from the house by just an hour or two with the machete, and even an old rambling rose that had been hidden for years. It's a voyage of discovery.

And while I'm out with the chainsaw, that monster hebe has got to go.

But while I wasn't watching, the rhubarb's gone crazy, the broccolini has burst into flower (not good - makes it woody) as has the kale, the rocket has as always taken off, broad beans have come up nicely, my artichokes are looking majestic, and the beetroot and rainbow chard are doing very well. All with no recent help from me whatsoever.

I could put it down to my superior planning and preparation, but I think it's just nature taking its course. Which should be, after all, the whole point of the exercise.

World gone mad

2009-08-09T15:49:00.002+10:00

The warmest winter for a million years. Looking forward to the driest summer.
The world's gone mad.
At present the wattle's out all along the river, and in the garden we have jonquils and daffodils and magnolias. The broad beans are coming along, kale and rainbow chard doing nicely, broccolini just heading, rhubarb gone nuts and the raspberries looking lovely.
One of these things is not like the others.
Yes, I said raspberries.
What are they doing setting fruit in the middle of winter? You may well ask. I don't know.
How are any of us supposed to forecast even the most obvious growing questions in conditions we've never experienced?

Compost

2009-07-12T21:58:00.002+10:00

You know you're obsessed when you read a line like this:
"Compost. It's the most beautiful word in the English language."*
... and you think that's a reasonable thing to say.
I've always been too half-hearted about the compost for my own good. Never turned it or fussed over it because life just seemed too short.
Mind you, I have always admired a good compost heap - I was dead impressed by those at Cruden Farm, and I feel sure Dame Elisabeth wouldn't mind me saying they are amongst her finest achievements.
But I seemed to have turned the corner. I now have three heaps on the go: one nearly cooked, one just started, and one purely of muck from the chook house. I have a black bin for the first stages, and two open bins made of light wooden pallets wired together.
I have even found myself worrying about the ratio of dry to soggy, and turning the heaps over from time to time. I think it's the chooks that helped me over the heap hump. Having an ongoing supply of pooey straw really does make a difference to a person's life.
And if you think that's a reasonable thing to say, you're on the edge yourself.

*Gardening Australia magazine.

Around the world in 80 ugly gardens

2009-05-31T16:46:00.003+10:00

While stomping around suburban Sydney the other week, I saw a fantastic front yard - a gorgeous old house, too - made up entirely of hundreds of poas on a slope. Brilliant. And you wouldn't really need to lift a finger, or maybe give it a haircut with a trimmer once a year.
I saw people growing fruit and vegetables in their front yards, some that overflowed out onto the nature strip, and others that were jungly and interesting and great places to explore if you were four years old.
There were a few lovingly tended squares of lawn with roses (nothing wrong with that) and needless to say several of the red cordyline and gravel factory styles.
But I did wonder why so many people have such godforsaken, ugly gardens.
I've never seen so many noseless garden gnomes in my life. Clearly Botany is also the concreting capital of Sydney, as so many front yards featured old, cracked paving and straight-jackets of cement around every plant.
It takes just as much effort to neglect a nice garden as it does a patch of buffalo grass border by a eight-inch strip of dirt in which a straggly oleander falls over a moth-eaten pelargonium or maybe some pathetic begonias (aka snail bait). Or nothing.
Why? Why? Why?
It might take a lot more work to maintain a veggie patch or renovate an old bush backyard, but it's a hell of a lot more fun.
And even if you don't want to do any work, plant a grevillea or a banksia or an olive tree, a correa or two, and a few tubs of erigeron or day lillies or well, anything. Mulch.
And then ignore them.
They'll still look better in five years time than what you have now.
Please.
Do it for passers-by, if not yourself and your kids.

Walking and watching

2009-05-30T17:02:00.003+10:00

I've taken to walking. A lot. Well, it feels like a lot.
And what I realised when walking in Sydney last week, is that gardening helps you see the world differently - in more detail.
I sit on the train every morning on my way into the city. Instead of a blur of fences and houses and green bits, which is all I used to see, I notice when the silky oak is in bloom or that the bulbs come up later in the inner city than out in the eastern ranges. Or that the lovely mudbrick house just after Eltham station could do with a bit more sun on its veggie patch.
In Sydney, where I walked through normal suburban streets, I noticed how very lovely the grevilleas are at present, happy in the sandy soil near Botany Bay and with that slightly more even temperature. The coastal banksias were in bloom - mind you, they seem to be eternally in flower - and the gymea lilies were shooting. Even the rata hedge out the front of my family's house still had a few red flowers.
I lived in Sydney for quite a few years and I must admit that at this time of year, although I appreciated those couple of extra degrees in temperature, I did miss having a proper autumn. I love the crisp mornings, and the soft sunshine, all perfect for gardening; and of course the colours.
So this week, back in Melbourne, I've left the train at Jolimont and walked through the good old Fitzroy Gardens - one of my traditional kicking-up-leaves destinations. My apologies to the blokes with the leaf blowers who would rather keep autumn in check. It's just not possible for me to walk by a gutter full of oak leaves without having a flurry.
Then this morning, I walked in Currawong Forest Park, where I was perversely pleased to see that their stinging nettle infestation is way worse than mine.
Which reminds me, I must get out there.

Get out there

2009-04-26T18:12:00.006+10:00

Yes, it's cold. It's wet. But it's a great time for planting and fertilising: the soil's still warm, there's rain falling - for once - and plants have plenty of time to dig themselves in before spring and summer.
Today I've put in:
Two red flaxes (replacements of summer tragedies)
Two dryandra (ditto)
Columbines to test if they are really rabbit-proof - I should know by morning
A pomegranate tree
Salvia Okata gold
Several society garlic
More correas, kunzeas, Swan River peas and a small grevillea that might be a mistake as it turns out to need moist soil.
All of the above were bought for almost nothing at the Molesworth Annual Sale ladies stall or the sale at the good old Kevin Hinze Gardening Centre in Doncaster.
I've divided the acanthus, moved hellebores, and rescued the daylillies, white evening primrose and Shasta daisies that have been eaten to the ground (again).
And I completely forgot to put in the pile of bulbs still sitting by the front door so I'd best get onto them next weekend. I did manage to pot up some jonquils and tulips. And I stood about looking for a spot to plant the quince tree, which had seemed like a good idea at the time. It might have to go in the country garden instead.
It was cold and muddy and dripping rain and so much fun. So get out there.

Fertiliser machines

2009-04-05T17:00:00.006+10:00

The chooks have arrived.
They have been greatly anticipated, with the chook run construction taking place spasmodically over several months.
All I had to start with was my Uncle Phil's homemade galvanised iron tin, in which we used to carry the chook food down to his henhouse when I was little. I inherited it. He had great chooks - about a million Leghorns, or so it seemed. He used to let us gather the eggs in the mornings.
Anyway, I'm not sure he'd approve of my handywork but it seems to be standing up so far.
We bought a ready-made fox-proof chook house (timber and aviary wire, with colourbond roof). We have no fences, plenty of foxes, and people walk their dogs off the leash along the road and beside the river and anywhere they like on our block. So a bit of a run is critical, and they will have to be in a tractor to free range (not that it's particularly free).
There was a great deal of agonising about how to make a run without digging postholes, as the areas of flat ground are limited and mostly carved out of rock. In the end, the answer found me. There were a whole stack of timber poles by the side of the road for the council's inorganic rubbish collection (one of my favourite times of year). I threw a couple in the car and then just had to buy some wire and a few nice solid boards for a kind of kick board along the bottom.
We decided on a spot up against the wall of a building(my office, once a potter's gallery and studio), offering shelter under the eaves and from the wind.

Building the chook run
So, the poles are attached under the eaves in a sort of lean-to, and dug into the ground just a few inches. The chook wire is then stretched tight across these and attached in a range of unique and possibly sculptural (in other words, dodgy) ways and means to the building, which is mudbrick and it's therefore impossible to actually fix anything to it.
Then over that wire I stretched a less taut layer of finer wire I had laying about. It will flap and bend if anyone tries to climb it, which is often enough to put off foxes and cats.
On top of the wire went the kickboards, attached to the poles, for extra security.
That wire also stretches outwards about two feet, so no-one can dig under it. And on top of that is a line of cement bricks (hollow ones, you know the sort) which I filled with potting mixes and which now feature a range of seedlings: borage, nasturtium and Flanders poppies. So if a fox manages to dig under the two feet of wire, he'll get a brick on his head.
What a palaver.

Chook accessories
Then of course you need feeders, straw, pellets, scratch and grit. All before you've even sighted a chook.
No chook house would be complete without two corrugated iron chooks on sticks and a baroque Italian concrete fish, which I've had for years and is one half of a bird bath - the other half sadly broken by an over-enthusiastic Jack Russell who shall remain nameless. It may be just a little OTT. We don't do minimalist here.
Then you need to spend hours happily researching breeds and needs. We were going to get rare breeds especially chosen on aesthetic as much as productive grounds, but in the end we just went for the closest, the Research Poultry Farm: two point of lay hens, crossed between New Hampshire Red and Rhode Island Red; so nice dark feathers, not too big and should be prolific layers.
They were initially named Cluck Norris and Feather Locklear, which I thought hilarious, but Her Indoors has decided they look more like Red and Ginger, which is, after all, easier to say.
I jokingly opened the flap of the nesting box this morning and lo and behold! An egg.
We weren't expecting any egg action for weeks.
Not bad going.
Of course they are already producing poo at a great rate too, which will save on the Dynamic Lifter bills.
At this rate I estimate they'll pay for themselves in twelve years.

Autumn tasks

2009-03-27T16:17:00.004+11:00

Suddenly everything's green. Including things you wish weren't.
Over the next few weeks in my bush backyard I'll be:

Clearing and cutting
Dead scrub and blackberries so they don't become next summer's bushfire fuel.
New weeds (some kind of solanum) that have popped up where the old blackberry canes were, on the riverbank.
Heat-frizzled leaves and old growth from shrubs now that the danger has passed - and before the frosts start.
Annual weeds that have popped up, even in the thick mulch.
Borage seedlings all over the veggie patch.

Planting and sowing
More globe artichokes and white windflowers.
Replacements for a few things that did not survive the heat wave: white echinacea, gaura, Banksia Golden Candles, a couple of grevilleas, some extra Erica longifolia.
New blue salvias (Azurea).
Broad beans, beetroot, garlic and rocket (the slaters have eaten all the beetroot seedlings so far).

(Today I've put in lettuce, broccolini and Tuscan kale.)

Declaring war on slaters and Portuguese millipedes
I don't know how, but I am feeling murderous.

Eating
An awful lot of eggplants, zucchini and tomatoes.
I've had another good season of Sweet Bite tomatoes, but the Grosse Lisse and Mexican Midgets (very sour) grown from seed have been disappointing, while Mama's Delight is only now setting fruit. But I guess it hasn't been a normal year.
I'm delighted to be able to report that the much-mollycoddled olive tree has pulled through yet again, and a few plants I thought I'd lost to the heat and drought have come back with a sudden vengeance, including daylillies and the Magnolia Little Gem although it may end up two feet shorter than it was in December.

And I'll be throwing lime, manure and compost around in the veggie patch, and mulching madly.

Writers for Wildlife

2009-03-19T09:47:00.000+11:00

This weekend I'll be reading/speaking at a benefit for our furry and feathered friends who have survived the bushfires.
Writers for Wildlife
Abbotsford Convent
Sunday, March 22
1.30pm.

The right tool for the job

2009-03-15T18:21:00.002+11:00

A confession: I love English garden books and magazines.
Yes, I know that's impractical. Even if I lived in Britain I'd never own an Elizabethan tower with a moat and orchard; or even a Georgian manor with a walled kitchen garden.
It's all garden porn: I know that, but I can't help revelling in it - lush greens, fabulous colour combinations,vast acreages where slaters and rabbits instantly perish before taking a nibble, and spent blooms miraculously turn themselves into gorgeous moist compost overnight - and I'm always a sucker for a row of cabbages or a Miss Jekyll border. It's not real, for me, obviously. It's a little like reading superhero comics.
"If only I could fly."
"If only I could have a field of snowdrops or Flanders poppies."
More to the point: "If only I had a dozen Victorian hand-blown cloches". Because my secret guilt is not even the garden photos but the classified ads up the back of Country Living or The English Garden.
I don't mean "WSF seeks similar with GSOH and strong pruning arm for moonlit deadheading excursions".
Not at all.
It's the ads for bamboo cloches, traditional seed catalogues, bird scarers that look like real barn owls, dove cotes,Victorian conservatories, log trolleys, summer houses, cold frames, bronze sun dials (and for that matter wild Scottish boar or Irish trout, delivered to your door).
And tools.
I love tools - the more obscure the better. I can get lost in Bunnings for hours - any hardware store will do, but preferably as large a range as possible.
One never realises how much one truly needs a small hand mattock, say, until it's there, on special, just next to the check out. It does mean that the simplest trip to the store for a bag of Dynamic Lifter can turn out to be very time-consuming and often expensive. But fascinating and profoundly thrilling - even if you do nothing more than fiddle with things and wonder how they work.
I have plenty of tools at my place in the country (where I sit, writing this) but many are purely for the sake of historical interest: old shears, scythes, a Dutch hoe, shovels, even my Uncle Phil's old beehive smoker. I don't use them - although it turns out that an old bricklayer's mitre is perfect for scraping pine needles out of guttering. (I've looked everywhere for a new Dutch hoe, as they come highly recommended in the aforementioned English garden magazines, but they don't seem to be about, so the antique one may be in for some refurbishing.)
Everyone has their favourites, but here's my list of essential tools for the bush backyard:
Mattock
Spade
Garden fork
Bush saw
Hoe
Long handled pruners
Pruning saw
Secateurs
Whipper snipper or preferably brush cutter
Mallet (for driving endless numbers of stakes)
Knife
Wire cutters
Pliers
Tarp (for lugging mulch up slopes and a thousand other things)
Trug (ditto)
Rakes (leaf and gravel)
Gloves (leather - lots)
Spray pack with extension rod
Wheelbarrow
Lots of twine, wire, rabbit bags, stakes, etc.

(Ideally you'd have a ute, too, but I get by with a trailer kindly loaned by father and brother.)

I love my chainsaw. I haven't had it long, but it makes me feel wonderfully Davy Crockett. Now the weather has cooled, I'm going to go crazy with it - blame it on the bushfire load reduction zeitgeist.
The whipper snipper or brush cutter is essential. I used to mow the half-acre in the country with it, and always felt very Tolstoyan, scything my way through the long grass, but now a nice man with a slasher comes twice a year so I only have to tidy up. It's tricky slashing at home, because of the slope of the land, and you have to time the cutting after the native grasses have set seed but before the highest bushfire risk.
I have my secateurs in my pocket whenever I'm in the garden, for deadheading, trimming. I don't use hand tools much, but do have a little hand spade for planting out seedlings and even bulbs - usually it just bounces off the clay and I have to bring in heavy artillery. Like the mattock.
I recently bought a cordless hedge trimmer - not for hedges, it's not that kind of garden, but for trimming things like the wormwood. It didn't cost much, but the battery does go flat rather quickly compared to, say, a cordless drill, and only trims light twigs. The monster hebe, for example, is way beyond it, but I suspect that hebe's days are numbered and I'll be taking to it with the chainsaw in the next few weeks.
I don't always buy the best tools. They do cost a lot, so it's a hard decision. But my core advice is to buy the most solid and best balanced you can afford, in a size that fits you, and they will do for a good few years at least.
You can buy great second-hand tools at garage sales, good country charity auctions (Molesworth over Easter, for example), estate auctions, markets, or any trash and treasure. I have two wheelbarrows - one cost $20, one was bartered.
You never need anything fancy. My soil would die laughing if I approached it with a dibber or a patented bulb planter, and a currawong would have a field day with a bamboo cloche.
That's really why I love those English magazines. They are hilarious.

Earth, wind and fire (and water)

2009-02-15T09:02:00.005+11:00

As the sun finally dawns a gloomy yellow instead of pink or ominous red for the first time in a week, I am taking stock of the garden.
Mine's looking pretty sad but so is every other garden. I was unexpectedly away for a few weeks and my noble parents tried to keep it all alive through a ridiculous heatwave, but if you're not here to sprinkle around the spare shower water on a hot evening there's only so much the plants can survive. Then the day after we got back it was in the mid-40s and stayed that way for days. And then all hell broke loose, but that's another story.
In this bush backyard, mercifully unscathed by fire, there's an assessment underway: what coped with the dry and the heatwaves, what thrived, what faltered? And what lessons can we learn from that for future garden planning?

Here we lost:
Gaura (6)
Windflowers (6)
Erica longifolia (2)
Grevillea Bronze Rambler
Grevilleas (3)
Banksia 'Golden Candles' (2)
Kennedia 'Running Postman' (2)
Correa Alba prostrate (though it had also been chewed by Warren)
Hebe (2)
Snow in Summer (2)
Red and white Valerian
Dill, lemon verbena, sage and thymes.
I had also recently transplanted some daylilies and four roses that haven't survived the shock and then the summer. I even lost a few succulents, which is pretty hard to do.
To add insult to injury, some unidentified creature had jumped the fence into the veggie patch and chewed the rhubarb down to stumps.

On the critical list are:
The olive tree (as if we haven't been through enough already)
The Monster Hebe
Flaxes red and otherwise (4)
Sea holly (2)
Grevillea White Wings
Daylilies (yellow)
Looks like quite a bit when you list it like that but it actually doesn't seem quite as bad as I first thought.
They are all replaceable, some more easily than others, some I didn't even like much - and some may just have to be replaced with other more appropriate plants. Which brings me to...

Thriving:
Citrus
Grevillea Poorinda something or other (I know that doesn't narrow it down much, but sadly the label blew away last weekend - it's one of the prostrate monsters)
Grevillea rosemarinifolia
Cistus
Lavender
Olive
Rosemary
(No surprises there, I guess.)
The veggie patch was a mess and there won't be much of a summer harvest except for tomatoes, but that's all transient anyway. Herbs can easily be replaced. The fruit trees managed to scrape through - just.
Like many others, the small Magnolia 'Little Gem' is scorched beyond belief but I think it'll pull through. The same goes for kangaroo paws, Marguerite daisies, roses galore and hellebores. They all look like crap right now but they still have sap running through their wee veins. Even bearded iris, sedges, dianella, poa and agapanthus are fried around our neck of the woods.

So what next?
First some more clean-up. The big hot winds last weekend made a mockery of my gutter clearing efforts, so it's up the ladder again and all hands to the rakes. The gums have been stripping so they look spectacular but the bark is lying in long strips everywhere (and look suspiciously like snakes in the moonlight - and tinder in the daylight).
I'm considering gravel where once was grass, but not too much.
Dead-heading may take a while, but the consensus is we shouldn't cut back anything too much, even though it looks awful, until March: there is still the possibility of more hot weather so we don't want to expose new growth to it. Grin and bear the brown leaves.

Audit and purge
There are clear lessons in the lists above about what is worth planting in these conditions, and over which plants we should draw a kindly veil. A quick look around your neighbourhood will provide similar feedback.
Once the air temperature cools down, we'll be replacing old with new:
Gaura
Windflowers
Erica longifolia
Grevilleas
Red Valerian
Banksia 'Golden Candles'
Daylilies
They're all worth another go.
I'll try to identify more specifically that unlabelled prostrate Grevillea*, because it's going gangbusters.
So the lesson is to plant many more of those, and indeed more of everything that's been thriving.
I refuse to have one of those backyard blitz white gravel, mondo and yucca gardens. I have made my peace with euphorbias and sedum over the past few months and am even allowing some of the indigenous cordyline to remain in spots where it doesn't offend me too much. I have allowed a few succulents to creep in here and there.
But there is a limit. White gravel, mondo and yucca is the new version of buffalo grass and pelargoniums if you ask me and I will not have it.

Water tanks
The casualty list would be much much longer if I hadn't had the tank installed this year. It's only small but it's got us through. I'll be ordering another one every year until we run out of downpipes and ground.

Shade
We've been planning a pergola, and it's become a priority both to help shade the house and veggie patch late on summer afternoons, as well as providing some shelter for people and creatures.
I've also had the brillian idea (patent pending) of making wide tubes of shadecloth, just like the usual rabbit protection bags, except taller, to slip over three stakes when days of 40 degrees are predicted. They can come in various sizes and would also be good for frost protection. I'm a genius. I'm going to make a fortune. Or not, as the case may be.

Fire-retardant plants
While there are some flames that cannot be turned, and no plant is truly fire-proof, but some will not burn as fast as others. Specifically, we don't want to plant anything that's like to just explode in the radiant heat or help spread the flames (some eucalypts and pines are among the worst). It's no coincidence that you see lines of agapanthus along the home paddock fences in the country - something succulent can sometimes be enough to slow a lazy grassfire.
In her classic Gardening Through the Year, Margaret Barrett lists the following (sourced originally from APSG):
Eucalyptus maculata (spotted gum)
Eucalyptus gummifera
E. bauerana
Angophora costata
Acacia cyanophylla
A. dealbata
A. pravissima
Banksia marginata
Hakea salicifolia
Grevillea rosemarinifolia

Mulch
Mulch early, mulch often - and if it's a fire warning day, wet it down well. The ground is so baked at the moment that water penetration is minimal, so more effort needs to go into adding compost, manure and more organic matter and nutrients to help the plants under stress now, and lay a better foundation for next summer.
Best get to it, then.

[Later: I remembered. It's Grevillea Poorinda Royal Mantle, of course.]

Burning up

2009-02-15T08:22:00.005+11:00

Gardening and plant management is a matter of plant, creature and even human survival in Victoria right now, with hottest temperatures, driest months and most horrific bushfires breaking all sorts of records - as if records somehow help you feel better about it all.
It hasn't rained for weeks, or at least that's how it feels, and the ground is dry - the bush is dry - and we've also had the searing winds that helped destroy so many houses and lives and of course gardens over the past week.
Gardens can be replaced after a while, of course, but imagine the heartbreak of having to do so after a fire.
There's a house in Flowerdale I've driven past many times that is an extraordinary splash of colour along the roadside, especially in summer. I fear that garden and house - maybe even the dedicated gardeners themselves - are now gone.
The bush, with a little help to control opportunistic invaders, replaces itself quite fast. I lived in the Royal National Park south of Sydney when bushfire destroyed 80% of the bush a few years ago. It may have not recovered quite as it was, and thousands of animals died, but the plant life did come back amazingly fast. Some of our indigenous plants, of course, are built specifically to regenerate after fire.
But gardens can only be rebuilt by gardeners, and it would be perfectly understandable if even those who have been a little singed rather than completely burnt-out were too traumatised or grief-struck to even think about it for months.
In the aftermath of the fires people are asking (well, it may just be the tabloid media) whether people should live in these areas at all, whether the bush backyard itself is a sensible way to live.
Of course I'm biased. But I don't even think it's a question worth asking. Some people in many cultures all over the world will always want to or have to live out of the city. We just do. We live with the risks (not just fire risks) and we still love it. There are places, like Castella, that do seem a little freaky to me, surrounded by tall timber and very isolated. But beautiful.
People need to be surrounded by beauty and that's universal and timeless. Many people love being surrounded by the beauty of the natural world. Many people make a living (precarious though it may be) in balance with the natural world. It will not change and should be viewed as a positive and natural impulse, not some dangerous and wrong-headed pursuit.
No one would have argued against the existence of Marysville, for example, with its lolly shop and antique furniture and guest houses with wide wooden verandas surrounded by rhododendrons and hydrangeas and mountain Ash. (All gone.) Nor would they rail against farmers eking out a living on the rolling grasslands near Yea or around Glenburn, or people who have lived for generations on small blocks in the tall timber of Toolangi, or grown grapes in the Yarra Valley. So why argue against the bush backyard?
I understand that in extreme circumstances people feel the need for extreme reactions, and many have very good reason for being angry.
But we do have to adapt - again - and the structures around us have to adapt even more to try to ensure it's as safe as it can be, and to balance the needs of the natural world with those of its human residents.
We have a wildfire planning overlay on the property here, which comes with some guidelines as to building and vegetation management. We also have an environmental overlay, with stricter vegetation controls. (Mind you, I don't see anyone from the Council or State Parks managing the blackberries and thistles along the river bank here - we pay for all that.)
I would like to be able to remove a few dead trees and cut the native grasses after they've seeded, to reduce fire load, and am happy to install possum boxes and bat boxes by the dozen to compensate for the tree removal. But I'm also happy to go through a considered process to do so, rather than bulldozing anything within reach of the house as some people are proclaiming. After all, we live in the bush - if you don't like leaf litter, move to Carlton.
While inner-city life (in, say, Paris in winter) held a distinct appeal about 4pm last Saturday before the wind change, I toughened up pretty fast. I'd rather be here facing these risks every summer than anywhere else.

No words

2009-02-11T06:11:00.000+11:00

The hiatus on this blog has been due to the illness and then death of my lovely, talented, loving, fiercely intelligent, gorgeous mother-in-law.
We were in New Zealand with the family for a few weeks and arrived back in Melbourne to a heatwave followed by an inferno.
So far we are safe although I confess my bushfire preparation this year has been half-hearted, and I've been forced to reconsider our fire plan, which is to stay and defend.
Having been through it before, in Bundeena, I felt confident I could save the house if required, but I now know I couldn't have.
Not this fire.
It moved faster and more fiercely than anyone has ever seen, so everything you thought you knew about fires, and houses, and yourself, is cast into doubt.
I don't know what would have happened to us if the wind hadn't changed - as it is, it has pushed the other edge of what is now one enormous fire towards my other place, my spiritual home, in the country near Yarck.
They are on high alert there now, with spot fires in the area.
There's nothing I can do but wait and act like I'm interested in work and the rest of the world while sick to the stomach and exhausted from checking the fire info services in the middle of the night.
And so many others are so - so - much worse off.
We are all affected somehow, everyone is waiting for news of people or places they love, and those who are not affected now will be, I'm sure in the coming days or weeks or months as we learn to live with it all.
But as Julia says, it's beyond words, so I'll shut up.
(Cross-posted on Ocean Without End)

Harvest

2008-12-23T14:52:00.004+11:00

The tomatoes have gone crazy.
And so it begins.
You know how in all those gardening guru books - or indeed gourmet guru books - they tell you that home-grown fruit and vegetables taste better than anything you can buy?
Doesn't matter how many times you hear that or read it, nothing prepares you for the flavour of your very first home-grown tomato.
Or the next four hundred, for that matter.

And I can't even begin to describe the taste of my first season's raspberries.
Last year - the first summer here - I did very well with Sweet Bite cherry tomatoes, lettuce, basil, and those lovely small Lebanese eggplants. Silver beet and rocket came out of nowhere (I didn't sow it) and lasted through the hottest summer for decades.
Not so good with beans and the peas were hopeless.
Over the cooler months, I had a lovely long run with broccolette, and I accidentally grew a terribly impressive cauliflower. I bought a mixed punnet of brassicas (won't fall for that again) and for several months I peered closely at the stem of the largest plant waiting for Brussels sprouts to appear. They never did, but I know brassicas can take a while so I was patient. Then one day I was chasing a white cabbage moth and separated the leaves on top and nestled in there, to my enormous surprise, was a perfect white cauliflower.
Harvest is terribly exciting. Will the novelty ever wear off? O, the pride - verging on conceit - the wonder of it. O, the heartbreak when it fails miserably.
Digging up onions and garlic, or breaking off rhubarb stalks, I stare at them, utterly amazed that they look just like the real thing. In fact I can stand for immeasurable hours gazing at the vegetable patch, or even someone else's, like the marvellous potager at Heronswood.

Last night I ate the last of my broad beans and a few raspberries and was ridiculously happy about the whole thing.

PS The big news, though, is that the olive tree looks like it will recover. I admit to checking it every hour last weekend, and I swear it has a new leaf this morning.

The Olive Tree

2008-12-07T08:21:00.005+11:00

A couple of months ago I transplanted an olive tree. I had to. It's about six feet tall and has been that high since we bought the house six years ago, but it's had five years of neglect while the house was in other hands. When we finally moved in last March, the olive was half-covered in ivy and was growing, spindly and grey, in the shade, almost sideways due to the pressure of the world's largest hebe. It did fruit last season: sadly, four olives do not a tapenade make.

So I dug it out, brought it up the hill to a specially created mound near the kitchen garden, straightened it up, staked carefully to try to keep it upright, trimmed just a little, manured and mulched, and stood about staring adoringly.
Then we had an unseasonal hot spell, followed by gale force winds, storms and even hail, and since then things have looked grim. The poor thing started to look ever more silver (as they do under stress - silver being the first step on a possible road to brown and then dead). Then the curled-up brown leaves started appearing. Condition critical.
But we are fighting back, that olive tree and me. I've cut back the light growth that looked as if it was dying back, and it's had two weeks of molly-coddling (seaweed fertiliser, extra soil around the base to counteract the wind, more manure and mulch, plenty of water whenever the law allows). I've even taken to stroking it and whispering encouraging sweet nothings, and planted another olive nearby partly as company and partly as insurance.
It's looking a little better. Condition now stable but still serious. I can't tell you how I know, I just know.
If it ever throws out a new bud I'll notice immediately and then it'll be party time.
Not one for half-measures, I'm now convinced I ought to take up olive growing. Not full-time - yet - but one day and part-time. A few acres in the country, a couple of hundred trees, friends around to help pick, as I have done for others; my own oil and olives year-round.
(The fantasy is spurred on by reading Mort Rosenblum's Olive and spending a couple of years living on Waiheke Island, home to many of NZ's great olive growers and where there is even an annual olive festival.)
As if I haven't got enough going on already.

Warren and Kevin

2008-12-05T08:06:00.002+11:00

The cry rings out regularly at our place:
What bastard ate my …

As in:
What bastard ate my raspberries?
What bastard ate my brand new daylilies?
What bastard got over the kitchen garden fence and ate my new and precious burgundy Scabiousa and white Achillea and half of the surviving dwarf nectarine?

Usually the answer is clear. It’s Warren.
Warren is any or all of the rabbits that lurk down the back. Other people have fairies at the bottom of their garden. I have Warren.
So almost every day, it’s “Warren, get the hell out of there!”
I don’t poison Warrens, I just shout a lot.

Then there’s Kevin, the collective name given to every possum in the place, ringtail or brushtail (it’s either Big Kev or Little Kev). They were named, may I just say, before the Kevin Ascendancy in Australia. Kevin may be guilty of ravaging the lemon tree last year, and since we’ve removed a whole lot of feral cherry plums we can probably expect more damage from hungry Kevins this summer.

Someone – possibly Kevin, or possibly cockatoos that have underestimated their own weight – has also been breaking shoots and branches off the roses in one garden bed. Not eating them, just snapping off the spindly growth – or, in one case, the entire top off a standard David Austin.

To stop the behaviour, you have to understand it, and that’s inexplicable. My current theory is that Creatures Unknown are landing awkwardly after leaping from nearby eucalypts, so I’ve run a light, one metre brush fence behind the bed to see if it helps protect them.

But the raspberry thieves were a mystery. These are inside the kitchen garden fence, and netted since the moment they flowered. And yet several of the higher fruit – my first ever raspberries – are half eaten, clearly pecked through the net, while some of the lower fruit have been picked quite cleanly.

So I crept out this morning to see a magpie sitting on the fence poking his long beak through the net.

Clearly my netting technique needs adjustment, and I now know not to plant anything too delicious next to the fence.
I may have to resort to a scarecrow.

As for Warren, there’s not much to be done. I can’t fence the whole block as it would cost more than the car. People have suggested various measures (coffee grounds, blood and bone) but nothing works except a fence. So the veggies and fruit trees are fenced but I’m buggered if I’m going to live with wire everywhere.

I have now conceded defeat and put up temporary wire fences in some areas - these are dead ugly but we just have to live with it for a season or so. Single specimens such as grevillea or westringia are bagged, which also protects them from frost. Once things grow bigger they seem beyond Warren’s terms of reference, although this does not apply to daylilies. Warren is partial to red daylilies. He hasn’t even nibbled on the yellow ones.

Happily, the kitten is a sworn enemy of Warren and even though he’s only a year old, seems to take his Lord of the Jungle duties very seriously. We quite often find bits of Warren scattered about, for which the kitten is applauded – except for the time we found Warren’s guts on the laundry floor. One wonders where the rest of Warren has gone. And then one decides not to ponder that matter too deeply.

I’m really rather Darwinian about this beast versus beast battle. The kitten wears a bell to alert birds of his presence and is locked up at night to protect Kevin. So far he seems to be only successful at catching Warren, although not fast enough for my liking.

And for my part, while an AK47 would be much more satisfying, shouting at Warren at least makes me feel better.

Crying over onions

2008-11-23T11:05:00.002+11:00

I gloated too soon about the onions. The red Spanish onions have onion white rot - or at least some do.
That's a real pain, as it can take 15 years for the soil to recover, and in the meantime you can't plant onions in the infected area again.
After much research, I was stricken with the dreaded Gardener's Panic and dug up a garlic bulb to see if it, too, was infected. But it was fine, except for the tiny detail that it had been dug up way too early. It was small if perfectly formed, and it does look like garlic, so I'm acting like it's my first-born. Which, in a way, it is.
My onions, of which I was so proud, have also got fat necks. Unlike rugby players, onions are not supposed to have fat necks, I now discover, and the list of things I might have done wrong to bring about this disaster is a litany of sins:
- Plant too late
- Not enough water at critical times
- Too much wind.

Of course, as they are red onions this isn't such a tragedy , as they aren't made for keeping. If they were brown onions destined for storage, it would be tricky as the fat necks apparently consign them to some unspecified doom.
As it is, the onions taste fine, fat necks or otherwise.

Live and learn.

Old dog, new tricks

2008-11-23T11:02:00.003+11:00

Things I have learned this winter and spring:

• There is no such thing as a rabbit-proof plant*, with the possible exception of bearded iris**.
• Slaters like beer, just like snails, and die happy. Sadly, they also like seedlings.
• Very small kittens can take on very large rabbits and win.
• If you buy a bunch of spring onions at the supermarket, even if they’ve been in the fridge for a while, and stick the leftover ones in the garden, they will just keep growing.
• Parsley, even when not moved as seedlings, can go from baby leaves to bolt in about a week. Who wants to molly-coddle their parsley? (On the other hand, I do have a self-sown one flourishing in the driveway gravel – gardening is so random sometimes.) And ringtail possums love it.
• Raspberries will flower in the first year.
• Pear trees will not (and not much in the following year, for that matter, but I do have one centimetre-long Buerre Boscs so far this season). Cross-pollinators don’t always flower at the same time, but it somehow worked anyway.
• Roses are actually tough as old boots.
• Broccoli can be too – but when being eaten, not growing.
• Never think “Those cherries are coming along nicely - I’ll put the bird netting on at the weekend”. Your tree will be stripped by then.
• Sugar cane mulch actually stops water getting through to the soil.

Pleasant surprises
• All the alliums seem ridiculously happy in my veggie patch: red onions, garlic, leeks, chives, garlic chives, ornamentals – all booming.
• Broad beans are going nuts, in spite of being badly mauled by slaters.
• Broccolini, as opposed to broccoli, grows like the clappers and tastes sublime, though it can be very hard to find in the first place.
• The rhubarb inherited from my dear late great-uncle (who could grow anything) divided into three crowns and thrives in his honour.
• Waving poppy seed heads around in the air one year creates poppy heaven the next (only I think they might be opium, so too many more and it’ll look like Afghanistan).

And I know it shouldn’t really be a surprise, but you’ve never tasted food as good as food you’ve grown and picked just before you eat it.

* Allegedly rabbit-proof plants include rosemary, grevillea, lavender, correa, borage, comfrey and succulents of all sorts. I’m a witness to the fact that rabbits will eat any or all of these, even when there is plenty of other green stuff around. Correas are simply pudding.
** Irises, however, are not sheep-proof, as I have learned to my cost in my country garden, but that may not concern too many gardeners.

(Cross-post from Ocean Without End.)

PS I also learned the hard way how profoundly grevilleas detest fertiliser.

The Red Wheelbarrow

2008-11-22T15:26:00.002+11:00

I've bought a red wheelbarrow. $15 at a garage sale.
I already have one ($20 at a country auction), but you really ought to have a red one, because...

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white chickens.

- William Carlos Williams

Current reading (well, leafing randomly, actually)

2008-11-19T07:45:00.000+11:00

Australian Gardens for a Changing Climate, Jenna Reed Burns (Penguin, 2008)
The Ornamental Vegetable Garden, Diana Anthony (Warwick House, 1999)
Cottage Gardens, Toby Musgrave (Penguin, 2004)
Jackie French's Chook Book (Aird Books, 1993) - there's some very serious chook research underway at our place at present.

Wildlife adventures

2008-11-18T17:54:00.000+11:00

Home sick today and just as well.
Not one, not two, but three striated pardalotes took it into their tiny brains to explore our roof cavity - they have been nesting under the eaves for weeks - and fell out a small hole in the ceiling and onto the dining room table.
One landed on the cat's head and was in Tom Kitten's mouth before I knew it. The astonished cat reacted on instinct and then had no idea what to do.
All three flew to freedom, with a little help. Even the chap clasped in the cat's jaws.
Then I spent half an hour watching an echidna potter around the backyard, happily going about its ant-eating business.
Pricked out the seedlings at the weekend: Mexican Midget and Grosse Lisse tomatoes, Long Purple eggplants, and millions of sweet basil. Sown in my funky new propagator. Now all in peat pots - I'll put them into the ground in a couple of weeks when I know they'll be more likely to withstand the inevitable slater onslaught.

The beginning

2008-11-18T16:40:00.000+11:00

We bought the place - love at first sight - several years ago.
We lived in a different city at that time, in the Royal National Park south of Sydney, then moved to New Zealand for a few years, to Waiheke Island. We always seem to live in beautiful places, though this is the best of all.
It's a cluster of three 1960s mudbrick buildings on the banks of the Yarra, which look out over the river to Warrandyte State Park.
We finally moved in last year. The house had been rented out, by then, for five years. The banks were over-run with blackberries and ivy, the original garden beds thick with weeds and dead roses and bare patches, rabbits and foxes had the run of the place - three years of drought were thick on the ground.

This is the story of rebuilding a garden in the bush. Hopefully it will have a happy ending.