| Bass Coast Post |
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 Dick Wettenhall, centre, with runners up Larry Hills and Morgan Blackthorne DICK Wettenhall has won the annual Wonthaggi-Jeetho West-Gurdies Pumpkin Growing Cup for the second year in a row. It’s the first time in the 13-year history of the championship that a grower has had to present the trophy to himself. This year’s variety was Queensland Blue and it proved a difficult task for most growers in a very dry summer.
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 By Sharon Willcox
IN THE past two years, not only did toilet paper disappear from shops but so did vegetable seedlings, as some people decided to start growing their own food for the first time. Across the country, in small towns and in the inner cities, gardeners shared their surplus produce and seeds through community centres and makeshift boxes on their verges. I was one of many people who took advantage of newly offered gardening courses run by Bass Coast Adult Learning (BCAL) in Wonthaggi. Particularly popular was a course on growing your own vegetables, while some people also studied permaculture and garden design.  Permaculture whizz Rick Coleman shares his secrets of successful home gardening in Bass Coast. By Wendy Christensen
LOCAL nursery and hardware stores have been inundated recently with many people spending their isolation time gardening. But without proper soil preparation or the correct sun to shade ratio, a lot of money can be wasted on seeds and seedlings that were never given the chance to thrive. PICAL can help solve your gardening frustrations with some expert advice and a free introductory horticulture short course beginning in May. New tutor Rick Coleman has over 30 years of permaculture design and teaching experience. Internationally recognised, Rick has worked as an educator and consultant for a range of organisations both locally and overseas, including RMIT, World Vision Australia and Community Aid Abroad (Oxfam). House plants aren’t just décorative; they can also make our homes safer and more comfortable.
 Make compost, not war on weeds, is the advice from veteran gardener Barbara Hallett. Barbara will share her gardening secrets at a session in Wonthaggi this week.
By Catherine Watson WEEDS are not the enemy in Barbara Hallet’s garden. Describing herself as “messy but productive”, she has a relaxed attitude to garden surprises. “Weeds are only what nature plants when you leave a space,” she says. “You can’t fight nature. You can only work with it.” On Wednesday, Mitchell House Harvest Centre in Wonthaggi will host a talk by Barbara on seed saving, gardening and vegetarianism. She will give out seeds from her North Wonthaggi garden and answer gardening questions.  By Linda Gordon
FEELING discouraged in your fruit and veg garden? Troubled by extreme UV, heatwaves, blasts of north wind and hollow-sounding water tanks? Join the club.  By Linda Gordon
DO YOU remember a time when puddles of mucky water, dirt, long, stout sticks and an absence of responsible adults was all you desired in life?  Cartoon by Natasha Williams-Novak By Linda Gordon
FIGS are ingenious and highly successful trees. Did you know that there are 750 known species; more than either the eucalyptus or oaks?  By Linda Gordon
WONTHAGGI’S heathlands are particularly lovely walking in spring, when the plants put on their best in the hope of attracting passing pollinators. I was disappointed last week, then, to see that someone had used the area near the start of a walking track as a dump site for a washing machine and a bed.  By Linda Gordon
WHAT do these good-looking, hard-working local people have in common? Yes, they were all working in the Wonthaggi Community Garden in the sunshine last week. But what may not be obvious to you, or even to them. was that the closer they got to the dirt, the better their chances of dodging depression, rheumatoid arthritis, certain cancers and Crohn’s Disease.  By Linda Gordon
SUDDENLY, it seems, the garden has woken up, or could it be me who’s come out of hibernation.  Not a pink lady in sight. By Catherine Watson
THE extended heat waves of summer and autumn made this year’s apple crop a hit and miss affair, but here in a shady corner of Wonthaggi I had my best-ever apple season. Royal gala and Cox’s orange apple trees that had sulked ever since I planted them more than 10 years ago suddenly decided this was their season and produced bountiful, tasty crops.  Sister Loyala By Linda Gordon
IT’S true gardeners have had an image problem in the past. Decent people, mostly middle aged and older, hopelessly unfashionable: baggy trousers stained at the knees, cardigans over jumpers and shapeless tee shirts, troubling hats or hair blown every which way.  A completed Hügelkultur bed prior to being covered with soil. Photo: Jon Roberts By Linda Gordon
ANOTHER dry cool day, another pile of prunings. It’s inevitable at this time of the gardening year that we want to cut back, tidy up and plan for the warm growing season.  Photo: Frank Coldebella By Linda Gordon
BRUISED and confused by the budget news, I put my head, heart and hands into the garden this week and had a moment of clarity. Yes I’m cash poor but, hang on, I am compost rich!  Fat hen, or melde, which indirectly gave its name to Melbourne. Photo: Rasbak By Linda Gordon
“WEEDS are the ultimate convenience food. They ask of you no money, no search for a parking space at the supermarket, no planting, no watering or any other maintenance whatsoever.”  By Linda Gordon
MY GARDEN shed is an open-plan affair, a very convenient design for getting in and out with bulky things. There are no doors and just one corrugated tin wall.  By Linda Gordon
IF YOU are in the habit of singing to your plants, you’d better make sure you’re in tune. It turns out they can hear you and they are more than somewhat sensitive.  By Linda Gordon
THEY come from the far east, are exotic and easy to ignore. You may not have eaten one since you were a kid when you idly picked the orangey ball off a neighbourhood tree, took a bite and chucked the rest away.  By Linda Gordon
To net or not to net? That is the question. Every fruit season we have the same quandary: the netting is awkward to use but the crop is vulnerable. And there is the scale of the exercise. We have about 40 fruit and nut trees in our medium sized garden: 11 apples and two crab apples, three apricots, a fig, pomegranate, persimmon, two plums, one cherry, three peach, two nectarines ... and so on.  By Linda Gordon
“We’re just a bunch of locals who want to plant some trees,” says Phillip Island orchard co-op member Lars Olsen.  Win Kyi at Wonthaggi's community garden By Linda Gordon
IN A former life Win Kyi was a farmer. Like most successful farmers she understood the land and worked with it to produce food. Unlike most farmers she was forced to leave her land and her country behind and join the ranks of Burma’s dispossessed. More than a decade in a refugee camp for displaced people on the Thai Burma border followed.  By Linda Gordon
WELL, look at that. More rain. Driving rain you might call it, straight off Bass Strait via a bitter westerly wind. Nothing for it but to get a fire going and nourish the soul with inspiring words, words that lift one up and speak to the heart of renewal, hope and faith. The new garden seed catalogue!  By Linda Gordon
WHEN the weather is winter with a capital ‘w’ and no mercy, as it is this August day, I think of the indomitable gardening spirit of Aunt Peggy. She grew a garden wherever she lived, from pokey boarding houses in inner Melbourne to rented rural houses on poor land, to the place she finally called home, in the foothills of the Dandenongs.  By Linda Gordon
BASS Coast Shire is lagging behind other municipalities and its more environmentally minded residents when it comes to planting out nature strips. South Dudley’s Helen Searle and Richard Kentwell have been disappointed with the council’s reaction to the fruit and veggies they carefully planted in front of their Station Street home. |
