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Previous months in Central Victoria, Australia
With Liz Ingham
2003
April
Confessions of a Weekend Hippy
Introduction
These are the true confessions of a weekend hippy. On weekdays
I inhabit a windowless office in Melbourne, typing someone else's
words into the Gates-Box. Then each Friday afternoon, I stow my
suit, take a deep breath and turn my gaze towards Clydesdale. And
I don't come back until I've been an Earth-loving, vegie-growing,
wildlife-watching greenie for two full days.
Clydesdale is 25kms south of Castlemaine in central Victoria. We
bought a property to save the 20 acres of box forest on it, because
after ten years of forest campaigning, it was easier than fighting
for it. The forest came with a house and a dam, and one thing led
to another, so now there's a large vegie garden and nascent orchard.
It's an interesting project, as I can only tend and water the garden
once a week. Think about it. This is north of the Divide, where
it only rains on special occasions and the sun is king of all it
can see. Even if it's 40 degrees for days on end, I can't nip down
and splash some water around, and there's no electricity connection
for an automatic watering system.
We're on a ridge-top, so there's no soil. None. Just shale and
clay. We've had to build above ground beds and create metres and
metres of compost.
Need more impediments to traditional gardening? Well, we really
are in a forest, and I'm not willing to harm a single tree, so the
garden beds are but built right on top of the hungry roots of some
particularly fine grey box.
To make things more fun, I want the garden to work so that as often
as possible I can ride my bicycle from Castlemaine Station carrying
nothing but a change of clothes and a the odd packet of seeds, and
eat well all weekend.
Now there probably aren't many of you out there facing the exact
same conditions in your gardens, after all, you're not mad. But
this project demonstrates the flexibility of organic gardening,
and that low-tech solutions can be designed for any conditions.
There have to be other weekend hippies out there, maybe those with
community garden patches they visit on weekends, or busy jobs and
a big back yard.
I'm not writing this column as an expert, just working through
new ideas out loud.
How We Did It
We built the garden in late winter like Esther Deans would have
done it. No-dig gardens are the latest hip happening groovy thing,
you know. Digging is out, layers are in, earthworms are the New
Black. Gotta keep up with the trends. We bought a dozen bales of
straw, got stable manure and cow poo from neighbouring farms, and
made enough compost to put in a decent layer of the good stuff.
Actually our compost method really works. We mix huge bags of sawdust
from a recycled timber place with vats of fruit and veg scraps from
an organic shop, the odd dusting of blood & bone and more meadow
muffins gathered by neighbouring urchins. It gets so hot in there,
you can't touch it. We keep two piles going at once in a classic
three-bay system.
Trevor built the raised garden beds from old wood left around the
place by the previous owners. We have plenty of room inside an old
dog enclosure, with high wallaby-proof mesh walls, so "phase
1" included five large garden beds (one each for asparagus,
spuds, bean/peas, tomato family and mixed veg) and eight fruit trees.
Five of the trees are inside the enclosure, and three are in a sort
of Gulag Archipelago of wire circles outside the boundary. Around
the house, two large unfenced garden beds were eaten to the ground
by "swampie" the resident black wallaby when the previous
owners and their dogs moved out. Curiously, swampie didn't eat the
pumpkin or zucchini leaves, so I dug in a heap of manure and planted
six varieties of heritage zucchinis.
Summer Lessons
My biggest lesson for the year was losing half the spring garden
the week before Christmas, just when I was about to spend my annual
leave watching the tomatoes ripen. It took me a few weeks to figure
out what happened, or at least to accept it.
I turned over the dead bean-patch and conducted a forensic examination.
It was matted with tree roots, and the layers had hardly decomposed.
The tree roots had filled the garden bed so thoroughly, water had
stopped soaking in, and ran off the surface instead. I should have
known, after all, fine roots were invading the bottom of the compost
heaps if we left them for more than a week. I'd seen it, but had
not learned from it, with the result that every garden bed was hopelessly
invaded.
I dug over the worst areas and put down thick wads of newspaper
as a temporary root barrier, but I left the tomatoes, and just kept
piling on side-dressings of compost for them to grow new roots into.
Looking back on it, I should have faced facts and dug up the lot.
It would have been less work in the long run, and the capsicums
I replanted in the renovated beds are roaring along, whereas their
cousins the tomatoes are always wilted and horrible, dangling a
few tiny fruit when I arrive each week.
The other lesson was shade. In my weird garden, where mildew is
something you read about in books and a full day's sun is the norm,
some plants need full or partial shade to last a hot week without
water. I bought old white sheets from the op-shop that were thin
enough to let in filtered light, and used clothes pegs to stick
them to the fence, or to arches made of old fencing mesh. The sheets
also give some shelter from the hot dry wind, and reduce transpiration.
I now have about 4 metres of garden that stays completely shaded,
where I grow lettuce and other delicate stuff. Otherwise, seedlings
get shaded until they can cope on their own.
Early April 2003 instalment
It's a lovely time in the garden. The bite has gone out of the
sun, but there's still plenty of warmth out there. It might even
rain one day. And there's plenty to eat.
I'm really glad I re-dug and lined three of the garden beds. Seeds
sown in January have been a real boon. I'm eating lots of new beans,
snow-peas, bok choi, spring onions, lettuce, rocket and herbs. The
new brassicas look sure to be ready before the cold weather sets
in, and last Spring's broccoli, planted under a young apricot tree,
has been pumping out side shoots since December. They've turned
into waist-high bushes and four plants gave a decent serve of Broccolini
each week all summer. The spring-sown zucchini are on their last
scrawling legs, but I planted a follow-up crop under their broad
leaves in January, half of which survived and is starting to fruit.
Later on I'll write about the varieties I planted, and how they
fared.
Most of what I'm eating comes from the shaded area. When I first
set it up, I imagined I was just shading new seedlings until they
were established, or until the autumn break arrived. I'm still putting
off removing the covers, and think the area will now stay shaded
until Winter. I even grew snow-peas over the arch that holds up
the shade cloth (sheets), planning to let them create living shade
as they grew, but peas grown outside the shaded area shriveled and
died, while the shaded peas are giving a luscious crop that squeak
as you gather them. And you can't argue with that. So each week
when I leave I pull the sheet over their little fronds, which bend
and twist but nonetheless put out new flowers.
I'm also taking advantage of the shaded conditions to direct-seed
Chinese vegetables, spinach and beetroot that I'd otherwise have
to raise in Melbourne for transplanting.
I'm very excited about my Brussels Sprouts, which are looking very
healthy with big round leaves, from seeds sown on New Year's Day.
Brussels Sprouts are my secret passion. Mmmmm. In fact, I'm in love
with brassicas in general at the moment, what with bok choi, choi
sum, rocket, broccoli and the rest of the gang set to provide most
of my winter vitamins. Kohl Rabi is the most beautiful brassica,
and I've got to admit I put in half a dozen just for looks. The
pastel mauve leaves with their pale green ribs are just sensational.
I also put in half a dozen Romanesco Broccoli just for the "wow"
value. They are pretty wasteful, as you only get one meal from each
plant, and no side shoots, but what a looker, eh, with those bright
lime swirling turrets.
I'm going to leave the tomatoes alone until after Easter, then
give them a decent burial. They're still trying to produce a crop,
poor things. In the mean-time, I'm buying up boxes of organic tomatoes
to bottle for winter.
Well, that's it for my first column. Next time I'll fill you in
on my cold weather plans, including a makeshift greenhouse, tree
root blocking fabric trials, green manure crops and new garden beds.
Last updated
12 May, 2003
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