Is it still winter?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.