GARDENING |
Snippets of wisdom mixed with some fresh ideas. Contributions welcome. Email your thoughts, advice and gardening ideas to basscoastpost@gmail.com.
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DIARY
Let us know what's coming up.
Let us know what's coming up.
News from the Wonthaggi Harvest Centre
Wonthaggi Harvest Centre
Giant horse radishes and more
By Joan Woods
May 6, 2017
A MASSIVE horse radish measuring 40 centimetres around the girth was dug up at the end of last winter at the Wonthaggi Harvest Centre. We had forgotten we had planted it.
We welcome the April showers after the dry summer. They allowed us to plant another crop of runner beans, broad beans and garlic, carrots and parsnips and a second trial of celeriac.
In the public beds there is also a large range of seedlings appearing. Our stalwart Win Kyi also has one watermelon seedling in a new bed that it is thought will be warm enough to keep this seedling growing until the warmer weather of spring when we hope it will set flowers.
New members Tan, Maree and Elizabeth have joined to make friends and are finding the garden a happy experience.
The harvest centre, behind the Wonthaggi Neighbourhood House in Murray Street, is open 10am-noon on Wednesdays. Volunteers are most welcome.
By Joan Woods
May 6, 2017
A MASSIVE horse radish measuring 40 centimetres around the girth was dug up at the end of last winter at the Wonthaggi Harvest Centre. We had forgotten we had planted it.
We welcome the April showers after the dry summer. They allowed us to plant another crop of runner beans, broad beans and garlic, carrots and parsnips and a second trial of celeriac.
In the public beds there is also a large range of seedlings appearing. Our stalwart Win Kyi also has one watermelon seedling in a new bed that it is thought will be warm enough to keep this seedling growing until the warmer weather of spring when we hope it will set flowers.
New members Tan, Maree and Elizabeth have joined to make friends and are finding the garden a happy experience.
The harvest centre, behind the Wonthaggi Neighbourhood House in Murray Street, is open 10am-noon on Wednesdays. Volunteers are most welcome.
The winter lull
By Joan Woods
June 11, 2016
WITH wintery blasts of wind and rain, the garden has gone into slow tempo with just a few vegies and herbs being picked. Numbers of volunteers are still holding well and we wish all of them a happy and pleasant winter both in the garden and in their daily lives.
Anyone who wishes to volunteer, please come to the garden behind Mitchell Community house any Wednesday starting at 10 am and finishing at 12 noon or later depending on who is attending. As there is a heater in the meeting room, members can take a warm and welcome break.
The strawberry patch, which didn't perform well last year, is being revitalized with compost, fertiliser and much hard work. New strawberry runners are greatly desired as our plants are now older than desirable.
Lunch is a time for sharing cooking styles. Last week one of our Burmese volunteers cooked us pumpkin soup using a fish stock and chilli, and a stir fry with vegetables from the garden. Such excursions into cooking are happy and interesting.
At the moment all our public beds are taken. A waiting list will be started should there be further requests.
The harvest centre, behind the Wonthaggi Neighbourhood House in Murray Street, is open 10am-noon on Wednesdays. Volunteers are most welcome.
By Joan Woods
June 11, 2016
WITH wintery blasts of wind and rain, the garden has gone into slow tempo with just a few vegies and herbs being picked. Numbers of volunteers are still holding well and we wish all of them a happy and pleasant winter both in the garden and in their daily lives.
Anyone who wishes to volunteer, please come to the garden behind Mitchell Community house any Wednesday starting at 10 am and finishing at 12 noon or later depending on who is attending. As there is a heater in the meeting room, members can take a warm and welcome break.
The strawberry patch, which didn't perform well last year, is being revitalized with compost, fertiliser and much hard work. New strawberry runners are greatly desired as our plants are now older than desirable.
Lunch is a time for sharing cooking styles. Last week one of our Burmese volunteers cooked us pumpkin soup using a fish stock and chilli, and a stir fry with vegetables from the garden. Such excursions into cooking are happy and interesting.
At the moment all our public beds are taken. A waiting list will be started should there be further requests.
The harvest centre, behind the Wonthaggi Neighbourhood House in Murray Street, is open 10am-noon on Wednesdays. Volunteers are most welcome.
All hands to the hoes
By Joan Woods
April 2, 2016
THE bountiful summer harvest at the Wonthaggi Harvest Centre has drawn to a close. In autumn with approaching winter, we are replanting beds with staples such as broccoli, lettuce, garlic, cauliflower, beans, peas and spuds.
Members of the Mens’ Shed are replacing handles on garden tools in readiness for the heavier soils of winter. Work still proceeds on digging out kikuyu, sifting out the roots from earth spoil and reusing the remaining soil. For this arduous work we are happy to have an all-male team of Richard, Win Gee, Gary, Ah Clay and Kevin. Good work men!
Altogether, we are happy with the number of volunteers who arrive to work with us for longer or shorter periods.
Last spring we visited a reconstructed forest at Mardan and this year hope to make a visit in the local area to where people are working on their own patch. We also visit community gardens whereever they are situated in Gippsland.
Just a reminder about the produce swap which is held on the first Saturday morning of each month in the Mens’ Shed at 9.30am. It’s the place to pick up seeds, plants, and produce of all kinds depending on the season.
A small number of rental beds are available for $15 a year.
By Joan Woods
April 2, 2016
THE bountiful summer harvest at the Wonthaggi Harvest Centre has drawn to a close. In autumn with approaching winter, we are replanting beds with staples such as broccoli, lettuce, garlic, cauliflower, beans, peas and spuds.
Members of the Mens’ Shed are replacing handles on garden tools in readiness for the heavier soils of winter. Work still proceeds on digging out kikuyu, sifting out the roots from earth spoil and reusing the remaining soil. For this arduous work we are happy to have an all-male team of Richard, Win Gee, Gary, Ah Clay and Kevin. Good work men!
Altogether, we are happy with the number of volunteers who arrive to work with us for longer or shorter periods.
Last spring we visited a reconstructed forest at Mardan and this year hope to make a visit in the local area to where people are working on their own patch. We also visit community gardens whereever they are situated in Gippsland.
Just a reminder about the produce swap which is held on the first Saturday morning of each month in the Mens’ Shed at 9.30am. It’s the place to pick up seeds, plants, and produce of all kinds depending on the season.
A small number of rental beds are available for $15 a year.
A touch of the sun
A magnificent display of sunflowers at the Wonthaggi Community Garden dwarfs Win Kyi, Thei Mu and Tonia Luther.
By Linda Gordon
February 6, 2016
THERE is nothing like a sunflower to put the world to rights. And despite the harsh, dry season there's a lovely crop at the Wonthaggi Community Garden, in White Road.
Regular volunteer Win Kyi planted the seeds in late spring. He watered the young seedlings and gave their roots plenty of support but was sparing with the available tank water. Then up they grew!
Win Kyi hopes to plant a long sunflower border running the length of the garden next spring. He said everyone passing by the garden should be able to enjoy them.
Win Kyi, with his wife Thei Mu and their children, have plots to grow vegetables, as well as volunteering their time and expertise every week, at the Wonthaggi garden and the Harvest Centre, at the Wonthaggi Neighbourhood House.
Drop in at the Wonthaggi Community Garden from 10am on Thursdays to talk to the volunteers and see what's growing. The Harvest Centre volunteers meet from 10 am on Wednesdays.
February 6, 2016
THERE is nothing like a sunflower to put the world to rights. And despite the harsh, dry season there's a lovely crop at the Wonthaggi Community Garden, in White Road.
Regular volunteer Win Kyi planted the seeds in late spring. He watered the young seedlings and gave their roots plenty of support but was sparing with the available tank water. Then up they grew!
Win Kyi hopes to plant a long sunflower border running the length of the garden next spring. He said everyone passing by the garden should be able to enjoy them.
Win Kyi, with his wife Thei Mu and their children, have plots to grow vegetables, as well as volunteering their time and expertise every week, at the Wonthaggi garden and the Harvest Centre, at the Wonthaggi Neighbourhood House.
Drop in at the Wonthaggi Community Garden from 10am on Thursdays to talk to the volunteers and see what's growing. The Harvest Centre volunteers meet from 10 am on Wednesdays.
Feeling swamped by a bumper crop of apples, but wish you had some feijoas? Head for the produce swap at the Wonthaggi Harvest Centre.
Harvest Centre notes
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By Joan Woods
May 9, 2015 LEMONS, potatoes, spinach, rhubarb, eggs, apples, oranges and feijoas, all freshly picked that morning, were there for the swapping at last month's produce swap at the Wonthaggi Harvest Centre. Work continues at the centre every Wednesday morning between 10am and noon. New members of the team include Thei Mu, Mue Hsay, Ah Klay, Win Kyi and Paw She Wa (Karen immigrants from Burma) and Gary, who also spends time working at Mitchell House. All six are valued for their knowledge, especially of different vegetables not usually grown in home gardens in Australia. |
Wonthaggi Harvest Centre
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We are now planting brassicas and broad beans, and plans are being made to shift fruit trees and bring in a back hoe to get rid of the kikuyu grass that needs constant removal from edges of vegetable beds.
Richard plans to increase the bed space available by creating new beds between the fruit trees. It is a constant job finding new homes for plants which have been donated or bought. All our team work hard to keep the garden viable, healthy and productive.
Richard plans to increase the bed space available by creating new beds between the fruit trees. It is a constant job finding new homes for plants which have been donated or bought. All our team work hard to keep the garden viable, healthy and productive.
The produce swap is held every second Saturday of the month at 9.30am. The Wonthaggi Harvest Centre is behind the Goods Shed in Murray Street. Park in the Big W or Woolworths car parks.
*****
Just mucking about tops the list of Linda Gordon’s gardening pleasures.
A heady brew
By Linda Gordon
November 29, 2014
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?
I do. And it wasn’t in my long-ago childhood. It was last Thursday, at the community garden, in Wonthaggi, before anyone else had arrived.
My job during this year has been to monitor the weed tea. This involves using a long stick for vigorous mixing of smelly water and invasive weeds, marinating in a barrel and two rubbish bins, in full sun.
I also get to add water to the containers, and throw the pungent, decayed weeds into the nearby compost bays, where they add compost-activating microbes aplenty.
It’s the dream job. Right?
Well, it’s not for everyone but it does propel me back in time to a childscape of freedom and those simple pleasures to do with watery games in dirty places.
There is definitely a link between gardening’s muckier jobs and childhood’s mud pies.
In any case, the weed tea has been an absolute highlight of my gardening year; not only fun to make but really effective in helping to break down big heaps of garden waste.
There were many other highlights in this gardening year. Remember the lemons? And the buckets and buckets of broad beans, the armfuls of leafy greens (including kale, of course), turnips, leeks, the crunchy broccoli sprouts and a cascade of sweet peas that scented the air for weeks.
I met community gardeners from all over south Gippsland and got to know a few local ones a little better. Special mention of enthusiastic newcomers to Wonthaggi, who arrived to help in the garden in early spring, from refugee and displaced persons camps on the Thai Burma border.
Only one lowlight to report – gardener’s back – a condition so common it barely rates a mention. You can spot us at the swimming pool, spluttering up and down in the slow, slow lane, trying to “strengthen our cores” for the next weeding onslaught.
If you decide to have a go at brewing up your own weed tea over the summer holidays, please do what sensible people do and wear gloves and an old tea shirt. This marvellous, whiffy liquor has a way of lingering about your person.
November 29, 2014
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?
I do. And it wasn’t in my long-ago childhood. It was last Thursday, at the community garden, in Wonthaggi, before anyone else had arrived.
My job during this year has been to monitor the weed tea. This involves using a long stick for vigorous mixing of smelly water and invasive weeds, marinating in a barrel and two rubbish bins, in full sun.
I also get to add water to the containers, and throw the pungent, decayed weeds into the nearby compost bays, where they add compost-activating microbes aplenty.
It’s the dream job. Right?
Well, it’s not for everyone but it does propel me back in time to a childscape of freedom and those simple pleasures to do with watery games in dirty places.
There is definitely a link between gardening’s muckier jobs and childhood’s mud pies.
In any case, the weed tea has been an absolute highlight of my gardening year; not only fun to make but really effective in helping to break down big heaps of garden waste.
There were many other highlights in this gardening year. Remember the lemons? And the buckets and buckets of broad beans, the armfuls of leafy greens (including kale, of course), turnips, leeks, the crunchy broccoli sprouts and a cascade of sweet peas that scented the air for weeks.
I met community gardeners from all over south Gippsland and got to know a few local ones a little better. Special mention of enthusiastic newcomers to Wonthaggi, who arrived to help in the garden in early spring, from refugee and displaced persons camps on the Thai Burma border.
Only one lowlight to report – gardener’s back – a condition so common it barely rates a mention. You can spot us at the swimming pool, spluttering up and down in the slow, slow lane, trying to “strengthen our cores” for the next weeding onslaught.
If you decide to have a go at brewing up your own weed tea over the summer holidays, please do what sensible people do and wear gloves and an old tea shirt. This marvellous, whiffy liquor has a way of lingering about your person.
Sex and death and the whole damn fig
Cartoon by Natasha Williams-Novak
By Linda Gordon
October 25, 2014
FIGS are ingenious and highly successful trees.
Did you know that there are 750 known species; more than either the eucalyptus or oaks?
“Extraordinarily - indeed it all starts to seem miraculous – each kind of fig has its own species of symbiotic wasp. Each wasp co-evolved with the fig it pollinates. “
These remarkable fig facts and much, much more are revealed in The Secret Life of Trees, How They Live and Why They Matter by zoologist, philosopher and writer Colin Tudge.
If you read this detailed book (you’ll need to set aside some time), it’s quite possible you will never again walk past a tree without feeling something like awe, reverence and deep gratitude.
Back to the fantastic fig. “There is nothing quite like a human being. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, like a fig”, says Tudge.
The fruit of the fig is actually a fleshy cup, or “syconia”, almost completely sealed at the top and containing hundreds of inward flowers. Female fig wasps slip through the tiny hole at the top of the cup intent on colonizing and procreation. Each time she does this she creates a new generation of wasps, and is known as a ‘foundress’. The fruit is both womb and tomb for the female wasp. “After she has laid her eggs, she dies. The fruit becomes her sepulchre.”
It is nicely operatic but gets better. The wasp’s eggs hatch, feed on the flower seeds, pupate and emerge as adults.
Most of the new brood are females. “The males are wingless. They emerge before the females, chewing their way out of their respective seeds. Then they chew their way into seeds containing females, and mate with them while the females are still inside.”
Then the male wasps die. Birth, death, decay, sex ... all this primeval action inside a bit of fruit!
Finally, “The newly-emerged females, already with sperm on board, now fossick around inside the syconium (fruit), picking up pollen from the male flowers ... then they fly off to found a new generation in a new syconium. These young females are laden with pollen and so they fertilize the flowers of the next syconium.”
Fig wasps can fly enormous distances, in some parts carried with the wind hundreds of kilometres from their starting point. Figs and their wasps enjoy a “wonderful mutualism”. And this intimate relationship is tens of millions of years old.
It’s a complicated story and I have hardly done it justice. But one thing’s for sure; the two baby fig trees, newly planted in our version of the Garden of Eden in Wonthaggi, are in for some interesting times.
October 25, 2014
FIGS are ingenious and highly successful trees.
Did you know that there are 750 known species; more than either the eucalyptus or oaks?
“Extraordinarily - indeed it all starts to seem miraculous – each kind of fig has its own species of symbiotic wasp. Each wasp co-evolved with the fig it pollinates. “
These remarkable fig facts and much, much more are revealed in The Secret Life of Trees, How They Live and Why They Matter by zoologist, philosopher and writer Colin Tudge.
If you read this detailed book (you’ll need to set aside some time), it’s quite possible you will never again walk past a tree without feeling something like awe, reverence and deep gratitude.
Back to the fantastic fig. “There is nothing quite like a human being. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, like a fig”, says Tudge.
The fruit of the fig is actually a fleshy cup, or “syconia”, almost completely sealed at the top and containing hundreds of inward flowers. Female fig wasps slip through the tiny hole at the top of the cup intent on colonizing and procreation. Each time she does this she creates a new generation of wasps, and is known as a ‘foundress’. The fruit is both womb and tomb for the female wasp. “After she has laid her eggs, she dies. The fruit becomes her sepulchre.”
It is nicely operatic but gets better. The wasp’s eggs hatch, feed on the flower seeds, pupate and emerge as adults.
Most of the new brood are females. “The males are wingless. They emerge before the females, chewing their way out of their respective seeds. Then they chew their way into seeds containing females, and mate with them while the females are still inside.”
Then the male wasps die. Birth, death, decay, sex ... all this primeval action inside a bit of fruit!
Finally, “The newly-emerged females, already with sperm on board, now fossick around inside the syconium (fruit), picking up pollen from the male flowers ... then they fly off to found a new generation in a new syconium. These young females are laden with pollen and so they fertilize the flowers of the next syconium.”
Fig wasps can fly enormous distances, in some parts carried with the wind hundreds of kilometres from their starting point. Figs and their wasps enjoy a “wonderful mutualism”. And this intimate relationship is tens of millions of years old.
It’s a complicated story and I have hardly done it justice. But one thing’s for sure; the two baby fig trees, newly planted in our version of the Garden of Eden in Wonthaggi, are in for some interesting times.
End of the line
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By Linda Gordon
September 20, 2014 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. Staff from the council and Parks Victoria had noted it, too. There was yellow and black tape around the dumped stuff. |
Photo: Linda Gordon
Under Bass Coast Shire Council's tip fees schedule, there is no charge for electronic waste such as televisions and computers, or white goods, which can be recycled.
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What I can’t figure out is why anyone would drive down to the very end of an unmade road, on the outskirts of Wonthaggi, wrestle awkward, heavy things out of a trailer, push them part way into the bush, and then live with the guilt.
The tip is close, convenient, and charges nothing to dump white goods like washing machines, and very little for furniture. In fact, the wooden bed frame wasn’t damaged and could have been left at an op shop.
The council has used increased fines and hidden cameras at dumping hot spots in a more “proactive” approach to illegal dumping of late. Last year a counil officer told ABC local radio this approach had worked but that illegal dumping in the bush was not so much a waste problem as a human behaviour problem.
Well, good luck with that.
It’s an old and intractable problem. Humans leave their traces, their debris and castoffs wherever they go. Sometimes in wilder places, over a long time, it gets absorbed even transformed. This car, for example, which was dumped or driven into Wonthaggi’s mining landscape years and years ago, has been slowly consumed.
It is now where moss grows and bees live, where branches fall to rest and wagtails dart.
So, yes, the natural world can take and repurpose some of our junk but there’s a limit.
The tip is close, convenient, and charges nothing to dump white goods like washing machines, and very little for furniture. In fact, the wooden bed frame wasn’t damaged and could have been left at an op shop.
The council has used increased fines and hidden cameras at dumping hot spots in a more “proactive” approach to illegal dumping of late. Last year a counil officer told ABC local radio this approach had worked but that illegal dumping in the bush was not so much a waste problem as a human behaviour problem.
Well, good luck with that.
It’s an old and intractable problem. Humans leave their traces, their debris and castoffs wherever they go. Sometimes in wilder places, over a long time, it gets absorbed even transformed. This car, for example, which was dumped or driven into Wonthaggi’s mining landscape years and years ago, has been slowly consumed.
It is now where moss grows and bees live, where branches fall to rest and wagtails dart.
So, yes, the natural world can take and repurpose some of our junk but there’s a limit.
Digging the dirt on health and happiness
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By Linda Gordon
September 6, 2014 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. It’s not the dirt as such, but soil bacteria called mycobacterium vaccae, which researchers in the UK and US have linked to positive chemical changes in the body and brain. The tests were first reported in the scientific journals in 2007, and were followed by more tests on mice. Mycobacterium vaccae appears to affect the brain’s serotonin levels in a good way, making us feel contented. Sadly there does not seem to be an over-the- counter tablet at the chemist just yet. The good news is that just being within breathing distance of the bacteria could be enough exposure to get the brain changing. |
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Wonthaggi gardening regulars Marianne and Lorraine said that quite apart from the other benefits of gardening they almost always felt better after “getting their hands in the dirt”.
They recommended getting children into the garden often and allowing them to get dirty.
A report this month on gut bacteria on the ABC’s science program Catalyst demonstrated the importance of “feeding” our healthy bacteria to treat a wide range of diseases and conditions.
You know where I’m going with this. Get outside, find some soil and start digging. Even better, start feeding your own, personal bacteria with the veggies and fruit you grow.
If you need a hand to get started or you’d like a bit of company along the way, you can join community gardens in Bass Coast at Wonthaggi (the Harvest Centre and Wonthaggi Community Centre), Cowes and Coronet Bay. There are also community gardens at Leongatha and Korumburra, Fish Creek, Foster and Yinnar.
They recommended getting children into the garden often and allowing them to get dirty.
A report this month on gut bacteria on the ABC’s science program Catalyst demonstrated the importance of “feeding” our healthy bacteria to treat a wide range of diseases and conditions.
You know where I’m going with this. Get outside, find some soil and start digging. Even better, start feeding your own, personal bacteria with the veggies and fruit you grow.
If you need a hand to get started or you’d like a bit of company along the way, you can join community gardens in Bass Coast at Wonthaggi (the Harvest Centre and Wonthaggi Community Centre), Cowes and Coronet Bay. There are also community gardens at Leongatha and Korumburra, Fish Creek, Foster and Yinnar.
The Wonthaggi Harvest Centre
By Joan Woods
August 16, 2014
WINTER is almost gone but the broccoli and carrots are still producing. We have parsnips, potatoes, leeks and herbs coming along nicely.
With an average of six volunteers each Wednesday morning, we get a lot done and look forward to harvesting the broad beans which have not grown as strongly this year as in past years.
During the last few weeks we have initiated collection of kitchen waste from several local businesses. This collection not only fills up the compost bins, it also reduces waste going to landfill. In a similar vein, we are the happy recipients of rescued soil from which we have sieved grass roots. Altogether in the last two months approximately four cubic metres of waste has been reused within the harvest centre.
The harvest centre is behind the Wonthaggi neighbourhood Centre in Murray Street, near the Woolworths supermarket. We welcome visitors between 10am and noon on Wednesdays.
August 16, 2014
WINTER is almost gone but the broccoli and carrots are still producing. We have parsnips, potatoes, leeks and herbs coming along nicely.
With an average of six volunteers each Wednesday morning, we get a lot done and look forward to harvesting the broad beans which have not grown as strongly this year as in past years.
During the last few weeks we have initiated collection of kitchen waste from several local businesses. This collection not only fills up the compost bins, it also reduces waste going to landfill. In a similar vein, we are the happy recipients of rescued soil from which we have sieved grass roots. Altogether in the last two months approximately four cubic metres of waste has been reused within the harvest centre.
The harvest centre is behind the Wonthaggi neighbourhood Centre in Murray Street, near the Woolworths supermarket. We welcome visitors between 10am and noon on Wednesdays.
The sap is rising
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By Linda Gordon
August 9, 2014 SUDDENLY, it seems, the garden has woken up, or could it be me who’s come out of hibernation. Scarlet flowered broad beans planted at the Wonthaggi Community Garden, dark kale and white petals next to a cauli in another plot, ruby stalks of chard and the always brilliant lemons, lemons and more lemons. All this colour is a jolt to the sleepy senses. Even at home the demure, short-lived cyclamens are peeping red faced through the mulch, and new growth on the pond grasses is a feathery, fluoro green. But it’s hats off to the lemons this winter. We have been surrounded by their warm yellow glow for the best part of three months. We’ve juiced, grated, baked, frozen, gifted, donated, pleaded with passers-by and shipped them off to friends, colleagues and family far and wide. Local op shops have been inundated because, really, who doesn’t know someone with a lemon tree. Old gardening wisdom says you must cut lemons off the stalk (never pull them), when they are a pale yellowy green. You can keep them in a paper bag for some weeks to maximise their juice or store them wrapped in tissue paper in a cool, ventilated space. Never pick them in the wet or keep the skin wet as the fruit rots. |
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Another trick is topping a sterilised bottle of freshly squeezed lemon juice with olive oil, to exclude any air before sealing. Keep the bottle in the fridge and use the oil and lemon juice in salads or cooking.
Lemon juice ice blocks can go straight into your gin and tonic in the balmy evenings to come, and there’s always preserving.
A gardening friend made up two delicious batches of lemon marmalade this year. I can pass on the recipe if anyone is interested.
Lemon juice ice blocks can go straight into your gin and tonic in the balmy evenings to come, and there’s always preserving.
A gardening friend made up two delicious batches of lemon marmalade this year. I can pass on the recipe if anyone is interested.
In the market for good produce
Cameron, at the Bass Coast Market in Wonthaggi, is still seeking locally grown fruit, vegetables and herbs. Unfortunately, there has not been enough good quality, local fresh produce in late winter to support the market stall.
But he has resisted calls to bring in produce from the city in favour of supporting local food growers and gardeners.
Cameron said it was better to dismantle the stall temporarily and wait for the next harvest. He is hoping supplies will pick up again in the warmer months. At the moment there is local garlic (priced at just $2.50 a bulb), and some preserves available.
The market, located at the rear of the Shott Cafe, opposite Aldi, is open from Wednesday to Sunday and is well worth a visit for the retro home wares and clothing, as well as the original art, crafts and furniture.
Cameron, at the Bass Coast Market in Wonthaggi, is still seeking locally grown fruit, vegetables and herbs. Unfortunately, there has not been enough good quality, local fresh produce in late winter to support the market stall.
But he has resisted calls to bring in produce from the city in favour of supporting local food growers and gardeners.
Cameron said it was better to dismantle the stall temporarily and wait for the next harvest. He is hoping supplies will pick up again in the warmer months. At the moment there is local garlic (priced at just $2.50 a bulb), and some preserves available.
The market, located at the rear of the Shott Cafe, opposite Aldi, is open from Wednesday to Sunday and is well worth a visit for the retro home wares and clothing, as well as the original art, crafts and furniture.
She'll be apples
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By Catherine Watson
August 2, 2014 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. |
Not a pink lady in sight.
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I shared the royal galas around but the Cox’s orange apples were so delicious that I ate them all myself.
Cox’s orange was the apple of my childhood, sharp-sweet and tantalising, but I had come to believe my childhood memory was an illusion, until this unexpected season. How interesting the flavour was! How different it tasted from the apples – pink lady, royal gala, fuji, golden delicious, Granny Smith and jazz – that the big two supermarkets have decided are our lot.
Tantalised by the taste, I decided to explore further. On a stinking hot afternoon in late autumn, I called in to Strzelecki Heritage Apples, an orchard and nursery about 10 kilometres from Korumburra, on the Korumburra-Warragul Road.
Margaret and Mark Brammar own the orchard, where they grow about 400 apple varieties, along with some 90 varieties of pears, 90 of plums and a dozen crab apples.
Margaret said everyone always asked her own favourite apples, but it would be a very long list indeed, perhaps starting with Cornish aromatic, Tasman's Pride, Andre Sauvage and golden Harvey.
Most of the apples had been picked by then but she took me to the cool store and gave me a golden Harvey to taste. It looked far from impressive: not much bigger than a golf ball and a drab colour that I now know as russet. It was also tart, sweet, aromatic and complex, like a very expensive riesling.
Margaret said their main aim, apart from making a living from their beautiful smallholding, was to preserve old varieties in danger of disappearing as the supermarkets narrowed their focus to five or six varieties.
"We started with 12 varieties from there and gradually built up. Some we collected. People told us about others. We did it as we could afford it and as time allowed around raising a family."
The golden Harvey dates back to 17th century England but their collection, now one of Australia's biggest, contains varieties ancient and modern from the US, Canada, Russia, Australia, Italy, New Zealand, Japan and many other countries.
The Victorians looked at having fresh apples on the table for as long as they could and a variety of apples for different purposes: dessert (eating), cooking and cider.
The first one to ripen is Vista Bella, which arrives just after Christmas, and McIntosh early in January, right through to Cornish aromatic in April. The last ones are the Lady Williams, which arrive in early winter. "Once we were picking the Lady Williams and there was snow on the ground."
Margaret said every nationality had its own favourites. "The English always talk about the Cox's orange pippin as the best dessert (eating) apple and the Bramley as the ultimate cooking apple."
A true cooking apple breaks down because it's got less sugar and a better flavour. In her view, the Stewart's seedling is perhaps even better than the Bramley.
There's also a growing demand for cider apples. They list 12 varieties, including the mellifluously named improved foxwhelp (listed as "sharp" in the tasting notes) and the Kingston black (“bittersweet"), often considered the most balanced cider variety because of its flavour and complexity, combined with sweetness, acid and tannin.
They're certified to sell interstate, including Western Australia and Tasmania. Until recently, most of their sales were by mail order, but increasingly they're selling at local farmers markets at Inverloch, Koonawarra, Coal Creek and Warragul.
There's no need for a hard sell, Margaret says. They provide free tastings of the fruit in season and the trees sell themselves. It’s true: I ordered a golden Harvey tree on the spot.
Bare-rooted trees are available in July and August. Rarer varieties may have to be ordered for the next season. Email strzapples@skymesh.com.au or phone 5659 5242 for a tree list.
Cox’s orange was the apple of my childhood, sharp-sweet and tantalising, but I had come to believe my childhood memory was an illusion, until this unexpected season. How interesting the flavour was! How different it tasted from the apples – pink lady, royal gala, fuji, golden delicious, Granny Smith and jazz – that the big two supermarkets have decided are our lot.
Tantalised by the taste, I decided to explore further. On a stinking hot afternoon in late autumn, I called in to Strzelecki Heritage Apples, an orchard and nursery about 10 kilometres from Korumburra, on the Korumburra-Warragul Road.
Margaret and Mark Brammar own the orchard, where they grow about 400 apple varieties, along with some 90 varieties of pears, 90 of plums and a dozen crab apples.
Margaret said everyone always asked her own favourite apples, but it would be a very long list indeed, perhaps starting with Cornish aromatic, Tasman's Pride, Andre Sauvage and golden Harvey.
Most of the apples had been picked by then but she took me to the cool store and gave me a golden Harvey to taste. It looked far from impressive: not much bigger than a golf ball and a drab colour that I now know as russet. It was also tart, sweet, aromatic and complex, like a very expensive riesling.
Margaret said their main aim, apart from making a living from their beautiful smallholding, was to preserve old varieties in danger of disappearing as the supermarkets narrowed their focus to five or six varieties.
"We started with 12 varieties from there and gradually built up. Some we collected. People told us about others. We did it as we could afford it and as time allowed around raising a family."
The golden Harvey dates back to 17th century England but their collection, now one of Australia's biggest, contains varieties ancient and modern from the US, Canada, Russia, Australia, Italy, New Zealand, Japan and many other countries.
The Victorians looked at having fresh apples on the table for as long as they could and a variety of apples for different purposes: dessert (eating), cooking and cider.
The first one to ripen is Vista Bella, which arrives just after Christmas, and McIntosh early in January, right through to Cornish aromatic in April. The last ones are the Lady Williams, which arrive in early winter. "Once we were picking the Lady Williams and there was snow on the ground."
Margaret said every nationality had its own favourites. "The English always talk about the Cox's orange pippin as the best dessert (eating) apple and the Bramley as the ultimate cooking apple."
A true cooking apple breaks down because it's got less sugar and a better flavour. In her view, the Stewart's seedling is perhaps even better than the Bramley.
There's also a growing demand for cider apples. They list 12 varieties, including the mellifluously named improved foxwhelp (listed as "sharp" in the tasting notes) and the Kingston black (“bittersweet"), often considered the most balanced cider variety because of its flavour and complexity, combined with sweetness, acid and tannin.
They're certified to sell interstate, including Western Australia and Tasmania. Until recently, most of their sales were by mail order, but increasingly they're selling at local farmers markets at Inverloch, Koonawarra, Coal Creek and Warragul.
There's no need for a hard sell, Margaret says. They provide free tastings of the fruit in season and the trees sell themselves. It’s true: I ordered a golden Harvey tree on the spot.
Bare-rooted trees are available in July and August. Rarer varieties may have to be ordered for the next season. Email strzapples@skymesh.com.au or phone 5659 5242 for a tree list.
Lessons in life and composting
Sister Loyala
By Linda Gordon
July 19, 2014
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.
Yet strangely, in a world hungry for novelty and heroes from anywhere, comes a gardener in a funny hat and a cardigan to captivate an international audience.
Sister Loyola Galvin, 90-something, is the sprightly star of a documentary called Gardening with Soul, from New Zealand filmmaker Jess Feast.
The reviews have been good, and me and my gardening mates will definitely be among the audience at this week’s Wonthaggi screenings. (We will take our hats off.)
Sister Loyola is no ordinary gardener despite her tell-tale lack of fashion sense. She is a nun who has devoted her long adult life to service, and the garden.
As she tells it, her garden reminds her constantly that life is evolving. Gardens can teach us forbearance in the face of the inevitable, she believes.
Spirituality does grow in gardens. Think of the Findhorn spiritual community in north east Scotland, on the shores of the Moray Firth. It is now a foundation, has a college, is recognised by the UN, and houses hundreds of residents and visitors in an ecovillage. But gardening remains the community’s heart and soul.
There, about 50 years ago, three spiritually attuned non-gardeners obeyed the call and started a food garden in a caravan park on barren ground.
Myth, faith, compost, the impact of the Gulf Stream? Who knows. But within a short time people came to marvel at Findhorn’s gardens, with their giant cabbages and incredible fecundity.
Findhorn’s pioneers said they simply listened to and took instruction from the plant world, starting with the peas.
Sister Loyola would understand, I feel sure.
What I am looking forward to witnessing is Sister Loyola’s clear sighted embrace of life. And, of course, her composting technique.
Gardening with Soul is showing in Wonthaggi until July 30. See Wonthaggi Cinema for times.
Books about the Findhorn Garden story are available from the West Gippsland Regional Library or visit Findhorn Foundation.
July 19, 2014
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.
Yet strangely, in a world hungry for novelty and heroes from anywhere, comes a gardener in a funny hat and a cardigan to captivate an international audience.
Sister Loyola Galvin, 90-something, is the sprightly star of a documentary called Gardening with Soul, from New Zealand filmmaker Jess Feast.
The reviews have been good, and me and my gardening mates will definitely be among the audience at this week’s Wonthaggi screenings. (We will take our hats off.)
Sister Loyola is no ordinary gardener despite her tell-tale lack of fashion sense. She is a nun who has devoted her long adult life to service, and the garden.
As she tells it, her garden reminds her constantly that life is evolving. Gardens can teach us forbearance in the face of the inevitable, she believes.
Spirituality does grow in gardens. Think of the Findhorn spiritual community in north east Scotland, on the shores of the Moray Firth. It is now a foundation, has a college, is recognised by the UN, and houses hundreds of residents and visitors in an ecovillage. But gardening remains the community’s heart and soul.
There, about 50 years ago, three spiritually attuned non-gardeners obeyed the call and started a food garden in a caravan park on barren ground.
Myth, faith, compost, the impact of the Gulf Stream? Who knows. But within a short time people came to marvel at Findhorn’s gardens, with their giant cabbages and incredible fecundity.
Findhorn’s pioneers said they simply listened to and took instruction from the plant world, starting with the peas.
Sister Loyola would understand, I feel sure.
What I am looking forward to witnessing is Sister Loyola’s clear sighted embrace of life. And, of course, her composting technique.
Gardening with Soul is showing in Wonthaggi until July 30. See Wonthaggi Cinema for times.
Books about the Findhorn Garden story are available from the West Gippsland Regional Library or visit Findhorn Foundation.
Happy hugelkultur
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By Linda Gordon
June 19, 2014 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. The result of all that good effort is sitting right there, blocking the driveway. |
A completed Hügelkultur bed prior to being covered with soil. Photo: Jon Roberts
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No worries. I am going to solve a few problems with that pile and pass on a tried and tested method for doing the same at your place.
It is called hugelkultur, from the German for mound, and is a quick and easy way to use logs, branches and twigs to create a raised growing bed that improves your soil and retains moisture.
Queensland farmer Ted Nichols noted that undisturbed woodland contains an abundance of fallen logs and branches.
“A log that has rested on the ground for a few years is usually covered in moss, lichens and fungi. The longer they’ve been lying there, the more life they sustain. As they slowly rot down, they return nutrients to the soil.”
He says the rotting wood acts like a sponge and stays damp in the soil.
“I kick myself when I think of the tonnes of wood I’ve burned over the years. Not only was I wasting valuable nutrients by sending them up in smoke, I was also unnecessarily adding a fair amount of pollution and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”
I’m quoting Ted because after first reading about his experiments with hugelkultur in 2010, I tried it in my garden, on a small scale, and found it worked well. A bit more research revealed it is a traditional European technique used in permaculture gardening.
First I have to figure out where I can fit this extra bed so that it gets northerly sun, as I would like to grow more vegetables next spring and summer.
Then I’ll follow farmer Ted’s method:
****************
It is called hugelkultur, from the German for mound, and is a quick and easy way to use logs, branches and twigs to create a raised growing bed that improves your soil and retains moisture.
Queensland farmer Ted Nichols noted that undisturbed woodland contains an abundance of fallen logs and branches.
“A log that has rested on the ground for a few years is usually covered in moss, lichens and fungi. The longer they’ve been lying there, the more life they sustain. As they slowly rot down, they return nutrients to the soil.”
He says the rotting wood acts like a sponge and stays damp in the soil.
“I kick myself when I think of the tonnes of wood I’ve burned over the years. Not only was I wasting valuable nutrients by sending them up in smoke, I was also unnecessarily adding a fair amount of pollution and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”
I’m quoting Ted because after first reading about his experiments with hugelkultur in 2010, I tried it in my garden, on a small scale, and found it worked well. A bit more research revealed it is a traditional European technique used in permaculture gardening.
First I have to figure out where I can fit this extra bed so that it gets northerly sun, as I would like to grow more vegetables next spring and summer.
Then I’ll follow farmer Ted’s method:
- A hugelkultur bed can go on earth, gravel or other surface, even concrete, at a distance from the house.
- A mix of rotting and fresh woody offcuts breaks down quickly but newly cut matter is fine.
- Dig a trench of at least 30cm and retain the soil, if any.
- Place the largest logs on the bottom of the trench, stamp on them, then add smaller branches and twigs, packing them down until your mound is between 30 and 90cms high. It is recommended that you add mulch and kitchen scraps, grass clippings and leaves as you go, to add extra nitrogen to the carbon-rich wood pile.
- Cover the pile with soil and mulch. Water the pile well and leave it for a few weeks to settle. If you have lime, sprinkle a little to counter acidity from the rotting wood.
- The experts recommend planting a green manure crop first and digging this in before planting up for warm season crops. Green manure seeds are available in a premix pack and can be used on any beds you may want to rehabilitate before the spring.
****************
Autumn gold
Photo: Frank Coldebella
By Linda Gordon
May 17, 2014
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!
At last count I have up to six heaps, bins and bays in my life, plus a worm farm. While I can generate this good stuff I’m laughing.
And it’s autumn and the gold is falling like rain. Leaves of every shape and hue keep arriving and all we need do is gather them up and add them to the pile. Unbelievable, and it’s not taxed.
Composting, as I have discovered, can ease your troubles. It is the equivalent of savings in the bank because the more you create the better off you are.
Who knows – in a greener future you might even be able to trade high-grade compost for goods and services.
What I have come to understand is that, if you can enrich your plants with your own compost – generated in your garden from discards and off cuts, you’re a wealth creator.
I would like everyone to have at least one, preferably two or more, compost heaps or bins to muck about with.
The physical activity of composting can be like a nice, big filing job in the open air, once you get into the swing.
That pile of grass clippings goes there, those vegetable scraps go in here, the tough ex-tomato plants get chopped and chucked there ... layer upon layer until you’ve had enough.
If that sounds unscientific, it is. Luckily there’s lots and lots of information about composting available online and elsewhere, especially about getting the right ratios of nitrogen (green) to carbon (brown) for best results.
I recommend you look at some of this but don’t delay. There’s gold in them there heaps.
*****************
May 17, 2014
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!
At last count I have up to six heaps, bins and bays in my life, plus a worm farm. While I can generate this good stuff I’m laughing.
And it’s autumn and the gold is falling like rain. Leaves of every shape and hue keep arriving and all we need do is gather them up and add them to the pile. Unbelievable, and it’s not taxed.
Composting, as I have discovered, can ease your troubles. It is the equivalent of savings in the bank because the more you create the better off you are.
Who knows – in a greener future you might even be able to trade high-grade compost for goods and services.
What I have come to understand is that, if you can enrich your plants with your own compost – generated in your garden from discards and off cuts, you’re a wealth creator.
I would like everyone to have at least one, preferably two or more, compost heaps or bins to muck about with.
The physical activity of composting can be like a nice, big filing job in the open air, once you get into the swing.
That pile of grass clippings goes there, those vegetable scraps go in here, the tough ex-tomato plants get chopped and chucked there ... layer upon layer until you’ve had enough.
If that sounds unscientific, it is. Luckily there’s lots and lots of information about composting available online and elsewhere, especially about getting the right ratios of nitrogen (green) to carbon (brown) for best results.
I recommend you look at some of this but don’t delay. There’s gold in them there heaps.
*****************
We’re surrounded by some of the tastiest and most nutritious plants around and we call
them weeds.
them weeds.
Easy pickings
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By Linda Gordon
May 3, 2014 “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.” So say the authors of the Weed Forager’s Handbook, two enterprising gleaners and permaculturalists, who reveal that their town, our proud capital Melbourne, was named for a man who was named after weeds. The Melbournes of Derbyshire and Cambridge, including our Lord Melbourne, were once known as the Melde-Bournes; melde being the Anglo-Saxon word for the common weed we know as fat hen. Apparently, the two counties, or bournes, were huge producers of melde (Chenopodium album), grown for food and fodder. There is deep human history attached to weeds. What we now call weeds, and declare war on, were our ancestors’ most nutritious food and lifesaving medicines. While you may not want to eat all the weeds that the handbook’s authors recommend as edibles, or try curing your ailments with them, learning a little of these plants’ provenance makes for fascinating reading. I am grateful to discover that my old autumn foe onionweed is, in fact, my friend. Also known as angled onion or three cornered leek: “When used raw, the whole plant, including bulbs and flowers, excels as a spring onion substitute. It has a mellow, sweet, onion-garlic flavour as good as any cultivated Allium.” Best not to cook your onionweed as it becomes fibrous. Simply cut it off in handfuls just above the ground, wash well and add to the salad bowl or cheese platter. Foraging experts go looking for it near waterways and grow it in a shady spot in the garden, making sure it does not spread far and wide. Nettles get the rock star treatment. They are “one of the most nutritious and versatile greens available: high in powerful antioxidants, and bountiful in protein – up to 40 per cent by dry weight”. They also contain masses of calcium. One of the most interesting recipes included in the handbook is for nettle gnocchi, using three cups of tightly packed nettle leaves with the usual gnocchi ingredients, then served with a garlic and herb sauce. |
Fat hen, or melde, which indirectly gave its name to Melbourne. Photo: Rasbak
Stinging nettles are high in antioxidants and protein
Onionweed, or three-cornered leek. Photo: Meneerke Bloem
The Weed Forager’s Handbook, a guide to edible and medicinal weeds in Australia by Adam Grubb and Annie Raser-Rowland is published by Hyland House, Melbourne. Adam Grubb is the co-founder of Permablitz, which has a South Gippsland group. Visit veryediblegardens.com to find out more about their work.
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Weedy frittata would be perfect on those days when you can’t shop for fresh food and the snails have eaten the spinach. Take four cupfuls of common weeds such as fat hen, nettles, dandelion, green amaranth, mallow or sow thistle – which go well with eggs – and follow the usual method. The bulb of the onion weed can be substituted for garlic if you’re having a lean week.
Each of the recommended top 20 edible weeds are photographed and carefully described for ease of recognition and there are plenty of cautionary notes and tips for safe consumption.
It’s great to know that the so-called deadly nightshade, which always worried me when small children were nearby, is more properly called blackberry nightshade, has edible berries when fully ripe and was introduced to Australia for food during the goldrush.
And oxalis, that incredible invader, can be used like a herb to flavour omelettes and vegetable stews.
In the handbook’s introduction, Costa Georgiadis, a dedicated weed ingester, writes: “Weeds are the mongrel street fighters that come along and re-establish life where there is only death and desolation. They are the true pioneers of soil building, bringing life and tolerating the torment that our technology and development inflicts.”
We can respect these nutritious battlers and take some sweet revenge by eating them, too.
Each of the recommended top 20 edible weeds are photographed and carefully described for ease of recognition and there are plenty of cautionary notes and tips for safe consumption.
It’s great to know that the so-called deadly nightshade, which always worried me when small children were nearby, is more properly called blackberry nightshade, has edible berries when fully ripe and was introduced to Australia for food during the goldrush.
And oxalis, that incredible invader, can be used like a herb to flavour omelettes and vegetable stews.
In the handbook’s introduction, Costa Georgiadis, a dedicated weed ingester, writes: “Weeds are the mongrel street fighters that come along and re-establish life where there is only death and desolation. They are the true pioneers of soil building, bringing life and tolerating the torment that our technology and development inflicts.”
We can respect these nutritious battlers and take some sweet revenge by eating them, too.
That's a bloomin' lot of shows
Colin Ormerod, left, at last year’s garden show.
By Linda Gordon
April 19, 2014
AFTER 20 years of organising Wonthaggi's annual Easter garden show, Colin and Sheila Ormerod would like their Easters to be a little more relaxed.
Both agreed in the lead up to last year's show that they were ready to pass the baton. It's high time, they say, for some other enthusiastic gardeners to organise and oversee the show.
Colin said the show had been a labour of love for almost 20 years. That's a lot of Easters spent putting up trestles and rounding up exhibits.
If you visit the show at the Wonthaggi Workmen's Club on Saturday or Sunday you'll spot Colin and Sheila looking cool and calm amid the hundreds of artfully organised exhibits.
They may be a little weary but the event is always as fresh as a daisy.
Visit to admire the dazzling blooms, fruit and vegetable displays and the eye catching potted plants. And while entrants take the competition seriously it's fun for the layperson to try and figure out why one specimen tops another, when to the untrained eye they are so similar.
* * * * *
April 19, 2014
AFTER 20 years of organising Wonthaggi's annual Easter garden show, Colin and Sheila Ormerod would like their Easters to be a little more relaxed.
Both agreed in the lead up to last year's show that they were ready to pass the baton. It's high time, they say, for some other enthusiastic gardeners to organise and oversee the show.
Colin said the show had been a labour of love for almost 20 years. That's a lot of Easters spent putting up trestles and rounding up exhibits.
If you visit the show at the Wonthaggi Workmen's Club on Saturday or Sunday you'll spot Colin and Sheila looking cool and calm amid the hundreds of artfully organised exhibits.
They may be a little weary but the event is always as fresh as a daisy.
Visit to admire the dazzling blooms, fruit and vegetable displays and the eye catching potted plants. And while entrants take the competition seriously it's fun for the layperson to try and figure out why one specimen tops another, when to the untrained eye they are so similar.
* * * * *
Using repurposed and recycled stuff is an established garden design aesthetic.
One part potash, two parts imagination
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By Linda Gordon
April 5, 2014 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. It can have an appealing ready-to-work feel about it with tools to hand and a clear bench or, as it does now, it can reflect my landfill guilt syndrome, and be a jumble of objects that might just come in handy. I still think there is a thick line between hoarding and recycling in my case. But it’s probably time to tackle a few projects that can gobble up some objects and find a new home out of doors. Using repurposed and recycled stuff is an established garden design aesthetic. Gardens featuring revamped shipping containers win awards. But no need to be grandiose. Let’s start small with the sagging director’s chairs that came into the shed from a hard rubbish collection. Most people have one of these taking up space. The canvas chair backs are frayed and useless. Simply cut them away and then saw off their wooden supports to use as short garden stakes. You now have a stool with arms or a backless chair. It can go straight onto the back porch to continue a useful life. Be careful to place it against a supporting wall, though, as it can be a slightly confusing piece of furniture. Next the corroded, unstable metal barbecue; this will find new life as the base of a bird bath until it collapses with a final wobble. |
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I’m on a roll here. The leftover short bits of guttering mesh will keep the blackbirds and cabbage moths off the broccoli seedlings, a biscuit tin gets planted up with sweet peas, and a rusty metal disc, from something, is now a post-industrial bee and butterfly drinking dish.
What a relief to use things that take up space.
This holds true for your fresh produce, too.
Those roaming pumpkin vines with tendrils and young leaves can be used while waiting for the fruit to mature.
Pick the excess young shoots with leaves and flowers attached. Then steam or stir fry them, or cook them in coconut milk. They are best cooked and eaten when fresh picked.
I haven’t tried this yet, but I’m told zucchinis can be treated in the same way and may help prevent the dreaded glut.
COMMENTS
April 5, 2014
Interesting to hear about using the pumpkin tendrils, which has the double purpose of pruning the plant to encourage the pumpkins to grow bigger. Asian societies also value the tendrils and foliage of pea plants.
Catherine, Wonthaggi
What a relief to use things that take up space.
This holds true for your fresh produce, too.
Those roaming pumpkin vines with tendrils and young leaves can be used while waiting for the fruit to mature.
Pick the excess young shoots with leaves and flowers attached. Then steam or stir fry them, or cook them in coconut milk. They are best cooked and eaten when fresh picked.
I haven’t tried this yet, but I’m told zucchinis can be treated in the same way and may help prevent the dreaded glut.
COMMENTS
April 5, 2014
Interesting to hear about using the pumpkin tendrils, which has the double purpose of pruning the plant to encourage the pumpkins to grow bigger. Asian societies also value the tendrils and foliage of pea plants.
Catherine, Wonthaggi
That’s one smart tomato
A tomato does its own thing.
By Linda Gordon
March 22, 2014
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.
Researchers at universities in Europe and the US have been testing plants’ hearing, using recordings of a caterpillar chomping leaves and the sound of water running through a pipe.
A chemical ecologist at the University of Missouri noted that the sound of a bug chomping a leaf set off a defensive, chemical reaction in the untouched plant that was “hearing” the sound.
At the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology in Italy, researchers discovered plants would seek out a buried pipe, through which water was flowing, even if the outside of the pipe was bone dry. Conclusion: plants could hear the water flowing in the pipe.
Some plant neurobiologists are pretty excited about recent discoveries, which point to plants behaving as if they had a “brain”, while others see plants’ sophisticated interactions with their environment as clever ways to compensate for being rooted to the spot.
Either way, it’s a wonderful notion for a gardener to entertain: my garden plants are much smarter and more independent and resourceful than I could have imagined.
Armed with this information, I conducted a small-scale experiment in my Wonthaggi backyard, over summer.
I let a clutch of self-sown, tall tomatoes have their way. No support, no fuss, do what you like, chaps.
For organisms rooted to the ground, they sure moved. Up and over a trellis they happened across that was resting against the fence, up an apricot tree and two sturdy amaranth stalks, around the feijoa and, cleverly, they buddied up with a baby blood orange, getting plenty of water through February.
Where I would once have looked at this lot and thought I’d been a neglectful gardener, I now look with awe and respect at the tomatoes’ determination to use everything in their environment to ensure they thrive.
It’s comforting to know that if we all disappear from our gardens tomorrow (or in the not-too-distant future), the plants will not only survive but they will be around to teach the next lot.
If you would like to know more about plant neurobiology research, check out Michael Pollan’s article, The Intelligent Plant: A radical way of understanding flora, which appeared in The New Yorker, of December 23-30, 2013.
March 22, 2014
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.
Researchers at universities in Europe and the US have been testing plants’ hearing, using recordings of a caterpillar chomping leaves and the sound of water running through a pipe.
A chemical ecologist at the University of Missouri noted that the sound of a bug chomping a leaf set off a defensive, chemical reaction in the untouched plant that was “hearing” the sound.
At the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology in Italy, researchers discovered plants would seek out a buried pipe, through which water was flowing, even if the outside of the pipe was bone dry. Conclusion: plants could hear the water flowing in the pipe.
Some plant neurobiologists are pretty excited about recent discoveries, which point to plants behaving as if they had a “brain”, while others see plants’ sophisticated interactions with their environment as clever ways to compensate for being rooted to the spot.
Either way, it’s a wonderful notion for a gardener to entertain: my garden plants are much smarter and more independent and resourceful than I could have imagined.
Armed with this information, I conducted a small-scale experiment in my Wonthaggi backyard, over summer.
I let a clutch of self-sown, tall tomatoes have their way. No support, no fuss, do what you like, chaps.
For organisms rooted to the ground, they sure moved. Up and over a trellis they happened across that was resting against the fence, up an apricot tree and two sturdy amaranth stalks, around the feijoa and, cleverly, they buddied up with a baby blood orange, getting plenty of water through February.
Where I would once have looked at this lot and thought I’d been a neglectful gardener, I now look with awe and respect at the tomatoes’ determination to use everything in their environment to ensure they thrive.
It’s comforting to know that if we all disappear from our gardens tomorrow (or in the not-too-distant future), the plants will not only survive but they will be around to teach the next lot.
If you would like to know more about plant neurobiology research, check out Michael Pollan’s article, The Intelligent Plant: A radical way of understanding flora, which appeared in The New Yorker, of December 23-30, 2013.
The fruits of their labours
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By Linda Gordon
March 8, 2014 First and foremost obtain a harvest. So goes one of the foundation principles of the permaculture approach to food gardens. Volunteers at Wonthaggi’s Community Garden decided to take that good sense principle one step further, last month. They got a bountiful harvest and immediately set about increasing their capacity for growing food crops in the cooler months ahead. It was a simple enough recipe; a plan of the desired beds, a delivery of 20 or so bales of straw, a big heap of compost, wheelbarrows, shovels and five willing workers. The new straw bale plot at the garden in White Road measures about 4.5 metres by 4.5 metres and includes stakes for climbers, four growing beds and walking paths in between. Construction took about two hours and the plot was ready for planting. Ever optimistic, the volunteers decided to wait for cooler weather and a drop of rain before putting in a lovely mix of vegetables. |
Volunteers inspect the harvest.
Community garden volunteers are ramping up production after a good summer harvest.
The new straw bale plot is ready for planting when the rain comes.
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A combination of more volunteers, a new local produce outlet at the Bass Coast Market in Murray Street, Wonthaggi, and a determination to get as much space as possible under cultivation spurred the group on.
Sharing and swapping the harvest is one of the joys of community gardening. Put simply, it’s a generous, trusting, sensible arrangement where everyone gives and gains.
Wonthaggi ‘s Harvest Centre, located with the Men’s Shed behind Mitchell House, hosts a produce and seed swap this morning, as they do once a month.
You can also visit the volunteers to check out the straw bale plot at the Wonthaggi Community Garden at 239 White Road, in the Bass Coast Adult Education Centre grounds, on Thursday mornings from 10am, and some Tuesdays.
Linda Gordon was one of those willing workers as secretary and a volunteer coordinator at the Wonthaggi Community Garden.
Sharing and swapping the harvest is one of the joys of community gardening. Put simply, it’s a generous, trusting, sensible arrangement where everyone gives and gains.
Wonthaggi ‘s Harvest Centre, located with the Men’s Shed behind Mitchell House, hosts a produce and seed swap this morning, as they do once a month.
You can also visit the volunteers to check out the straw bale plot at the Wonthaggi Community Garden at 239 White Road, in the Bass Coast Adult Education Centre grounds, on Thursday mornings from 10am, and some Tuesdays.
Linda Gordon was one of those willing workers as secretary and a volunteer coordinator at the Wonthaggi Community Garden.
Your garden queries
March 8, 2014
Potato poser
Hi Linda
I love your column. Down to earth (no pun intended), practical and interesting. Thanks for your advice on my broccoli woes. I will trot off to get some seedling today and give it another go.
I would like your thoughts on the best way to grow potatoes to get the best results. I have a limited amount of space left but wonder what the benefits of growing in tyres are. They would be practical to me insofar as the space I have. I could have three stacks – one for sweet potatoes, one for chats (which we use most of the time) and one for ordinary potatoes, or perhaps desirees if they grow here.
I don’t understand how they grow. Do the potatoes grow in the tube part and do the shoots come through the soil in the middle? Why do people put tyre on tyre. Is this just to make the shoots grow longer or do they plant more potatoes in each tyre as the stack gets higher? Also, how do you know when to harvest them – if they grow in tyre upon tyre do you have to harvest the bottom tyre first so you have to move all the tyres to get to the bottom? I seems complicated to me but I’m interested to know the ins and outs.
Shelley Applebee, Inverloch
Linda replies:
Dear Shelley and all keen vegetable growers
I will have to come clean and admit my knowledge of growing vegetables, indeed gardening, is of the observational, trial-and-error, read-a-lot-and-work-alongside-other-gardeners variety. So no expert advice, I'm afraid.
I don't have a failure-free method for growing potatoes and have never tried tyres. I did read they can leach chemicals into your food crops.
When I plant potatoes I get certified seed varieties and put them in well composted soil in a trench and then cover them up. If you are growing for rwo or three people, you don't need lots of space.
Thankfully the West Gippsland Regional Library has some excellent books and magazines on growing your own in home gardens. The benefit of browsing the shelves and borrowing a swag of books from any one of their branches is you get a wealth of ideas and inspiration for growing all sorts of food crops, and other plants. And there will be step-by-step guides and beautiful pictures to whet your appetite.
Your questions are always welcome, of course. My thanks to Catherine for her response to the broccoli woes ... and yet I had a modest but delicious crop this summer. A few final words from me on this topic: always grow broccoli at some time of the year for its sensational taste straight out of your garden.
Potato poser
Hi Linda
I love your column. Down to earth (no pun intended), practical and interesting. Thanks for your advice on my broccoli woes. I will trot off to get some seedling today and give it another go.
I would like your thoughts on the best way to grow potatoes to get the best results. I have a limited amount of space left but wonder what the benefits of growing in tyres are. They would be practical to me insofar as the space I have. I could have three stacks – one for sweet potatoes, one for chats (which we use most of the time) and one for ordinary potatoes, or perhaps desirees if they grow here.
I don’t understand how they grow. Do the potatoes grow in the tube part and do the shoots come through the soil in the middle? Why do people put tyre on tyre. Is this just to make the shoots grow longer or do they plant more potatoes in each tyre as the stack gets higher? Also, how do you know when to harvest them – if they grow in tyre upon tyre do you have to harvest the bottom tyre first so you have to move all the tyres to get to the bottom? I seems complicated to me but I’m interested to know the ins and outs.
Shelley Applebee, Inverloch
Linda replies:
Dear Shelley and all keen vegetable growers
I will have to come clean and admit my knowledge of growing vegetables, indeed gardening, is of the observational, trial-and-error, read-a-lot-and-work-alongside-other-gardeners variety. So no expert advice, I'm afraid.
I don't have a failure-free method for growing potatoes and have never tried tyres. I did read they can leach chemicals into your food crops.
When I plant potatoes I get certified seed varieties and put them in well composted soil in a trench and then cover them up. If you are growing for rwo or three people, you don't need lots of space.
Thankfully the West Gippsland Regional Library has some excellent books and magazines on growing your own in home gardens. The benefit of browsing the shelves and borrowing a swag of books from any one of their branches is you get a wealth of ideas and inspiration for growing all sorts of food crops, and other plants. And there will be step-by-step guides and beautiful pictures to whet your appetite.
Your questions are always welcome, of course. My thanks to Catherine for her response to the broccoli woes ... and yet I had a modest but delicious crop this summer. A few final words from me on this topic: always grow broccoli at some time of the year for its sensational taste straight out of your garden.
February 28, 2014
Broccoli blues
Hi Linda,
March last year I moved to our new house and my husband set about making me raised garden beds for vegies. I seem to be successful in most things so far except broccoli. My tomato bushes are laden with fruit, green at the moment, although I have already picked three before the birds got them first.
Recently I noticed a few holes in my broccoli leaves so the following weekend I sprayed them but, to my horror, within four days they looked skeletons of what they were. The spray worked and all the caterpillars died and no further damage was done to the leaves but two weeks later the broccoli plant just does not look like anything I would pay money for let alone eatIn my absolute disgust, I pulled them all out.
Do you know what caused them to look like this? Was it the spray? Did the caterpillars eat too much goodness out of the leaves for the fruit part to mature properly? They look like they are too old and going to seed but they never looked young and enticing to eat.
I declared I would never grow broccoli again but am I being too quick to admit failure? Is there a simple solution to my broccoli woes?
I look forward to your comments.
Shelley Applebeee, Inverloch
Hi Shelley
Linda has passed your query on to me as I have specialised knowledge because I once worked with a woman whose husband grew broccoli for a living. My workmate, Jeanette, told me her husband wouldn’t eat broccoli, or let his children eat it, because he knew how many times it had to be drenched in pesticides to get it to market looking clean and green. Of all the vegetables he grew, broccoli was the most pest- and disease-prone and hence the most sprayed.
I suspect aphids have got your broccoli and if it wasn’t the aphids it was the white butterfly caterpillars.
Yes, you are being too quick to admit failure. My advice is not even to try to grow broccoli, or indeed any brassica, in summer, and certainly don’t buy it in summer. Instead, grow it in winter when there are no aphids or caterpillas. If you put some seedlings in about now, that's perfect. They’ll grow through winter – our winters are mild enough – with the added benefit that they won’t bolt to seed.
My old neighbour Jim used to sow his cabbage and cauliflower seeds on January 15 – the day was as important to him as Christmas Day or the Melbourne Cup – so that by the time they came up, the white butterfly was almost finished. He also kept the water he washed his dishes in and tipped it over the seedlings to dislodge any bugs. That was as far as he went in the pesticide department. “If you’re gunna spray them, you might as well buy them,” was his mantra.
Onward, and happy growing.
Catherine Watson
Broccoli blues
Hi Linda,
March last year I moved to our new house and my husband set about making me raised garden beds for vegies. I seem to be successful in most things so far except broccoli. My tomato bushes are laden with fruit, green at the moment, although I have already picked three before the birds got them first.
Recently I noticed a few holes in my broccoli leaves so the following weekend I sprayed them but, to my horror, within four days they looked skeletons of what they were. The spray worked and all the caterpillars died and no further damage was done to the leaves but two weeks later the broccoli plant just does not look like anything I would pay money for let alone eatIn my absolute disgust, I pulled them all out.
Do you know what caused them to look like this? Was it the spray? Did the caterpillars eat too much goodness out of the leaves for the fruit part to mature properly? They look like they are too old and going to seed but they never looked young and enticing to eat.
I declared I would never grow broccoli again but am I being too quick to admit failure? Is there a simple solution to my broccoli woes?
I look forward to your comments.
Shelley Applebeee, Inverloch
Hi Shelley
Linda has passed your query on to me as I have specialised knowledge because I once worked with a woman whose husband grew broccoli for a living. My workmate, Jeanette, told me her husband wouldn’t eat broccoli, or let his children eat it, because he knew how many times it had to be drenched in pesticides to get it to market looking clean and green. Of all the vegetables he grew, broccoli was the most pest- and disease-prone and hence the most sprayed.
I suspect aphids have got your broccoli and if it wasn’t the aphids it was the white butterfly caterpillars.
Yes, you are being too quick to admit failure. My advice is not even to try to grow broccoli, or indeed any brassica, in summer, and certainly don’t buy it in summer. Instead, grow it in winter when there are no aphids or caterpillas. If you put some seedlings in about now, that's perfect. They’ll grow through winter – our winters are mild enough – with the added benefit that they won’t bolt to seed.
My old neighbour Jim used to sow his cabbage and cauliflower seeds on January 15 – the day was as important to him as Christmas Day or the Melbourne Cup – so that by the time they came up, the white butterfly was almost finished. He also kept the water he washed his dishes in and tipped it over the seedlings to dislodge any bugs. That was as far as he went in the pesticide department. “If you’re gunna spray them, you might as well buy them,” was his mantra.
Onward, and happy growing.
Catherine Watson
February 15, 2014
Dead tomato flowers
Dear Linda
I have attached a photo of a dead tomato flower, (Costuluto di Marmande) I don't think it is blossom rot as I can see the stem has been neatly chewed before the flower dies. Always in the same spot, just below the first 'kink' where we usually break the fruit off to retain some stem with the fruit. Can you or your readers advise what it may be? Many thanks to you, Linda, for your enjoyable gardening stories.
Vilya Congreave, Wonthaggi
Linda replies:
Thanks so much for your interest in the garden column, Vilya. I really wish I knew what I was talking about but I have to admit your google is as good as mine on the chewed tomato leaf.
It doesn't look like a disease and your plant looks healthy. Doing a bit of research I came across some stunning illustrations of diseased plants (dpi.nsw.gov.au), drawn by botanical artist Margaret Senior. But that's not helping with your inquiry.
I found a grasshopper in the house the other day. Could they be about and chewing your tomato plants?
February 11, 2014
Sexing marijuana plants
Dear Linda
Is it possible to sex marijuana plants while they are still young? Thank you.
Name withheld by request, Wonthaggi
Dead tomato flowers
Dear Linda
I have attached a photo of a dead tomato flower, (Costuluto di Marmande) I don't think it is blossom rot as I can see the stem has been neatly chewed before the flower dies. Always in the same spot, just below the first 'kink' where we usually break the fruit off to retain some stem with the fruit. Can you or your readers advise what it may be? Many thanks to you, Linda, for your enjoyable gardening stories.
Vilya Congreave, Wonthaggi
Linda replies:
Thanks so much for your interest in the garden column, Vilya. I really wish I knew what I was talking about but I have to admit your google is as good as mine on the chewed tomato leaf.
It doesn't look like a disease and your plant looks healthy. Doing a bit of research I came across some stunning illustrations of diseased plants (dpi.nsw.gov.au), drawn by botanical artist Margaret Senior. But that's not helping with your inquiry.
I found a grasshopper in the house the other day. Could they be about and chewing your tomato plants?
February 11, 2014
Sexing marijuana plants
Dear Linda
Is it possible to sex marijuana plants while they are still young? Thank you.
Name withheld by request, Wonthaggi
Linda replies:
This is an interesting one. Assuming you're well over 18, you may have come across a journal called High Times. A quick google tells me this venerable publication, first published in the US in 1974, is still going strong and has a section online that allows readers to ask the cultivation editor arcane and not so arcane questions about marijuana growing. My internet just chugs along when there are lots of photos and graphic design so I am going to leave this one with you. However I would like to take this opportunity to pass on some information about getting the most out of your seeds, soils and seedlings. And, name withheld, I reckon you'll find this useful no matter what you're planting.
Wise gardener Esther Deans, who gave us the no-dig garden, among other innovative practices, used a form of dowsing to test the life force of her soil, seeds and plants. It might sound a bit new-agey to you but she vouched for it, calling it an ancient and tested technique.
You need to make a basic pendulum – the ever-practical Deans used a spring-type clothes peg tied to a length of cotton – which you use to test for positive, negative or neutral responses.
Test the soil before planting by taking a clod of earth in one hand and suspending the pendulum over it. If it hangs motionless over the clod, the soil has no life force. It needs humus. Negative soil is indicated when the pendulum swings from side to side telling us the soil needs to be rested and a new fertile garden bed created on top of it. If the pendulum gyrates with a circular motion you have a nutrient-rich soil ready for planting, Deans says.
Similarly, a clockwise rotation above your plants or seeds indicates they are positive and charged with life. But if the pendulum oscillates from side to side, the plant or seeds are negative and will not be as productive or vigorous as the positives.
To sum up, if the seed is fertile and falls on fertile soil it produces a top plant.
This is an interesting one. Assuming you're well over 18, you may have come across a journal called High Times. A quick google tells me this venerable publication, first published in the US in 1974, is still going strong and has a section online that allows readers to ask the cultivation editor arcane and not so arcane questions about marijuana growing. My internet just chugs along when there are lots of photos and graphic design so I am going to leave this one with you. However I would like to take this opportunity to pass on some information about getting the most out of your seeds, soils and seedlings. And, name withheld, I reckon you'll find this useful no matter what you're planting.
Wise gardener Esther Deans, who gave us the no-dig garden, among other innovative practices, used a form of dowsing to test the life force of her soil, seeds and plants. It might sound a bit new-agey to you but she vouched for it, calling it an ancient and tested technique.
You need to make a basic pendulum – the ever-practical Deans used a spring-type clothes peg tied to a length of cotton – which you use to test for positive, negative or neutral responses.
Test the soil before planting by taking a clod of earth in one hand and suspending the pendulum over it. If it hangs motionless over the clod, the soil has no life force. It needs humus. Negative soil is indicated when the pendulum swings from side to side telling us the soil needs to be rested and a new fertile garden bed created on top of it. If the pendulum gyrates with a circular motion you have a nutrient-rich soil ready for planting, Deans says.
Similarly, a clockwise rotation above your plants or seeds indicates they are positive and charged with life. But if the pendulum oscillates from side to side, the plant or seeds are negative and will not be as productive or vigorous as the positives.
To sum up, if the seed is fertile and falls on fertile soil it produces a top plant.
The heat is on
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By Linda Gordon
February 8, 2014 FEELING discouraged in your fruit and veg garden? Troubled by extreme UV, heatwaves, blasts of north wind and hollow-sounding water tanks? Well, join the club. Truly, if I can’t get the garden jobs done before morning tea I’m as desiccated as the lettuce in the north-facing vegie bed. It could be worse. We live down south, not in sunny Mildura, and for that I’m thankful. There is also gratitude due to this hot weather for what it teaches us gardeners about growing edibles, and other plants, in challenging conditions. We need techniques that are preventative and remedial. I’ve been asking local gardeners what they do to save their precious food crops and I’m happy to pass on a few of their tips. Lorraine, who has a well-ordered, small and bountiful yard, has been using polystyrene boxes for delicates such as lettuces. Her tender plants, grown in the boxes, have done much better and provided better eating than the ground-grown equivalents. It’s not just being able to move the plants into some shade but also that once you’ve committed to the box, you tend to keep a close eye on things like drying soil, she says. |
Strategically places melaleuca offcuts provide welcome shade in fruit trees.
The hardy amaranth shelters a couple of tomatoes.
Op shop net curtains shade the golden delicious.
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Of course there are lots of ways to create shade: net curtains for draping, hessian for loose wrapping (didn’t work very well on Terry’s apples), shade cloth on frames and stakes, trees, layers of mulch, etc.
An alternative is a pile of leafy prunings or tree trimmings; easy, instant shade makers. This is one of my preferred methods as I can target plants in danger of scorching and leave those that can manage.
You can dig the twig or woody end into the soil quite close to the vulnerable plant or make a rough shelter over a whole bed with these. It also protects the soil and keeps a bit of moisture in the mulch.
A neighbour has put up a beach umbrella over his most precious vegetables. This looks summery and cheerful but a strong gust of wind could ruin the effect.
What we plant, where, is the bigger picture.
Before next summer, another gardener I spoke to is going to try perennial vegetables like warrigal greens, perpetual spinach (or beet), sorrel for salads and rhubarb for fruit and jam. Her theory is they will be stronger, more established, and better able to cope with whatever comes along.
Still, we cannot live on perpetual silver beet alone.
A t the Wonthaggi Community Garden self-sown amaranth is throwing some lovely shade where it is most needed on summer favourites like basil and tomatoes. It comes up everywhere (could be a pest, I guess), but what a trouper. It’s the tall red-leafed variety with a dramatic scarlet tuft, which is chockfull of edible grain (seeds).
I also broadcast mustard seed in a couple of beds to act as nurse and shade plants and weed preventers. It has worked well and seems to confuse the white cabbage moths as well.
More good news about managing gardens in hotter conditions comes from plants themselves.
According to research in the relatively new field of plant neurobiology, humans can learn from the highly skilled, adaptive behaviour of the planet’s flora.
Michael Pollan (author of The Botany of Desire and The Omivore’s Dilemma) has surveyed new and somewhat controversial research into plant behaviour that could change the way we garden forever. But more on that in another column ...
In the meantime, how about sharing your tried and tested (and more experimental) hot-weather gardening techniques so we can keep growing through summer on the Bass Coast?
COMMENTS
An alternative is a pile of leafy prunings or tree trimmings; easy, instant shade makers. This is one of my preferred methods as I can target plants in danger of scorching and leave those that can manage.
You can dig the twig or woody end into the soil quite close to the vulnerable plant or make a rough shelter over a whole bed with these. It also protects the soil and keeps a bit of moisture in the mulch.
A neighbour has put up a beach umbrella over his most precious vegetables. This looks summery and cheerful but a strong gust of wind could ruin the effect.
What we plant, where, is the bigger picture.
Before next summer, another gardener I spoke to is going to try perennial vegetables like warrigal greens, perpetual spinach (or beet), sorrel for salads and rhubarb for fruit and jam. Her theory is they will be stronger, more established, and better able to cope with whatever comes along.
Still, we cannot live on perpetual silver beet alone.
A t the Wonthaggi Community Garden self-sown amaranth is throwing some lovely shade where it is most needed on summer favourites like basil and tomatoes. It comes up everywhere (could be a pest, I guess), but what a trouper. It’s the tall red-leafed variety with a dramatic scarlet tuft, which is chockfull of edible grain (seeds).
I also broadcast mustard seed in a couple of beds to act as nurse and shade plants and weed preventers. It has worked well and seems to confuse the white cabbage moths as well.
More good news about managing gardens in hotter conditions comes from plants themselves.
According to research in the relatively new field of plant neurobiology, humans can learn from the highly skilled, adaptive behaviour of the planet’s flora.
Michael Pollan (author of The Botany of Desire and The Omivore’s Dilemma) has surveyed new and somewhat controversial research into plant behaviour that could change the way we garden forever. But more on that in another column ...
In the meantime, how about sharing your tried and tested (and more experimental) hot-weather gardening techniques so we can keep growing through summer on the Bass Coast?
COMMENTS
February 14, 2014
Your examples for heat management were greatly appreciated. The only ideas I can contribute are growing dense rows of sunflowers, corn or amaranth, particularly to shade crops from the late afternoon heat, which seems to be extending well into the late afternoons. We also have several poles strategically placed around the vegie patch to hold up triangular shade cloths, similar to those extending pergolas or verandahs. As they move in the wind, I have found them to be excellent bird deterrents.
Vilya Congreave, Wonthaggi
February 8, 2014
I use bracken - readily available and a nice long stem - to shelter sensitive plants on scorchers, although it probably won't suit tidy gardeners.
Catherine, Wonthaggi
Your examples for heat management were greatly appreciated. The only ideas I can contribute are growing dense rows of sunflowers, corn or amaranth, particularly to shade crops from the late afternoon heat, which seems to be extending well into the late afternoons. We also have several poles strategically placed around the vegie patch to hold up triangular shade cloths, similar to those extending pergolas or verandahs. As they move in the wind, I have found them to be excellent bird deterrents.
Vilya Congreave, Wonthaggi
February 8, 2014
I use bracken - readily available and a nice long stem - to shelter sensitive plants on scorchers, although it probably won't suit tidy gardeners.
Catherine, Wonthaggi
Rethinking the loquat
By Linda Gordon
December 13, 2013
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.
The fruit starts a bit sweet in the mouth but has a slightly tart finish; possibly a more grown-up taste experience.
Like the quince, and the persimmon before it, the mostly overlooked loquat is due for a makeover. Why? Because they taste good, are easy to grow, ubiquitious almost, and you can get plenty of free fruit right now.
According to ABC television gardener Millie Ross, the loquat is "a small to medium evergreen tree that will grow almost anywhere". It has a naturally formal canopy on a single straight stem with attractive tessallated bark. They can self seed but are happy to be cut back hard, or grown in a pot.
There is also a single-seeded variety that offers lots more fruit flesh and a really good flavour, but is harder to find.
Here's what I did with the lovely big bag I was given last week: gave some away to loquat appreciaters, ate a handful fresh, and made a pie and crumble filling.
Loquat pie or crumble
6 cups of loquats, seeded, peeled and coarsley chopped
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup raw sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
Stew the loquats in a covered pot with water and sugar until the liquid is reduced and the loquats are tender but not brown. Add all the remaining ingredients and allow to cool covered. Now fill a plain unsweetened pie crust, made in the usual way, with the cooked loquats. Keep some pastry for a lattice pie top and bake. Or make a crumble using your preferred mixture, , top the cool fruit and bake.
The warmed, prepared fruit poured over vanilla ice cream makes a delicious syrupy treat. I reckon loquats would also make a good spicy chutney to serve with curry.
December 13, 2013
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.
The fruit starts a bit sweet in the mouth but has a slightly tart finish; possibly a more grown-up taste experience.
Like the quince, and the persimmon before it, the mostly overlooked loquat is due for a makeover. Why? Because they taste good, are easy to grow, ubiquitious almost, and you can get plenty of free fruit right now.
According to ABC television gardener Millie Ross, the loquat is "a small to medium evergreen tree that will grow almost anywhere". It has a naturally formal canopy on a single straight stem with attractive tessallated bark. They can self seed but are happy to be cut back hard, or grown in a pot.
There is also a single-seeded variety that offers lots more fruit flesh and a really good flavour, but is harder to find.
Here's what I did with the lovely big bag I was given last week: gave some away to loquat appreciaters, ate a handful fresh, and made a pie and crumble filling.
Loquat pie or crumble
6 cups of loquats, seeded, peeled and coarsley chopped
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup raw sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
Stew the loquats in a covered pot with water and sugar until the liquid is reduced and the loquats are tender but not brown. Add all the remaining ingredients and allow to cool covered. Now fill a plain unsweetened pie crust, made in the usual way, with the cooked loquats. Keep some pastry for a lattice pie top and bake. Or make a crumble using your preferred mixture, , top the cool fruit and bake.
The warmed, prepared fruit poured over vanilla ice cream makes a delicious syrupy treat. I reckon loquats would also make a good spicy chutney to serve with curry.
Growing pains and pleasures
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By Linda Gordon
December 6, 2013 IT’S been a quiet start to the warm season at the Wonthaggi Community Garden. Optimistic early plantings of tomatoes, Asian greens and cucumbers succumbed to the cool, wet conditions. But it was a minor setback as visitors discovered abundant, self-sown seedlings had sprung up to fill the gaps. There was also growth of the human kind, with two new members joining the management committee: we’ve now doubled our admin strength! And the Bass Coast Community Health Service has taken on a co-ordinating role. It’s been interesting to note just how much of community gardening is about people. Volunteers who get together every week know their worth and the garden tasks and the weather dictate the terms. It is a pared back work environment. We have to resist making mountains out of mounds of mulch and compost heaps that don’t always follow the rules. |
Students get a taste for growing things.
Peas and Asian greens are moving at last.
Inquiries:
wonthaggicommunity garden@gmail.com |
Every community garden has its own “vibe”. At Wonthaggi’s it can look a little wild and woolly at times.
But don’t judge a community garden on its appearance alone. Groups such as CSA Moonya, the Bass Coast Adult Ed programs, University of the 3rd Age, Thursday Volunteers, Wonthaggi Secondary College and the Bass Coast Children’s Centre, among others, provide the heart and soul here.
Creative and knowledgeable gardeners leave their mark and deserve mention, too.
If you get a chance drop in and have a look at the U3A plots in the centre of the garden. Their use of colour, interesting plant combinations and heritage varieties are imaginative and productive.
It’s amazing how much you can pack into one small plot. The Certificate in Adult Education Group has provided a lesson in productive gardening for the rest of us.
We would of course like more people to enjoy all the benefits of the garden, and to spread the excess produce around. Some garden spaces could also be seen as a “blank canvas” for enthusiastic local, garden-minded artists and sculptors.
All and any inquiries are welcome.
There will be a little less action over the summer holidays but the Thursday volunteers plan to keep up regular sessions through the summer (Thursdays from 10am-12).
But don’t judge a community garden on its appearance alone. Groups such as CSA Moonya, the Bass Coast Adult Ed programs, University of the 3rd Age, Thursday Volunteers, Wonthaggi Secondary College and the Bass Coast Children’s Centre, among others, provide the heart and soul here.
Creative and knowledgeable gardeners leave their mark and deserve mention, too.
If you get a chance drop in and have a look at the U3A plots in the centre of the garden. Their use of colour, interesting plant combinations and heritage varieties are imaginative and productive.
It’s amazing how much you can pack into one small plot. The Certificate in Adult Education Group has provided a lesson in productive gardening for the rest of us.
We would of course like more people to enjoy all the benefits of the garden, and to spread the excess produce around. Some garden spaces could also be seen as a “blank canvas” for enthusiastic local, garden-minded artists and sculptors.
All and any inquiries are welcome.
There will be a little less action over the summer holidays but the Thursday volunteers plan to keep up regular sessions through the summer (Thursdays from 10am-12).
Man the barricades
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By Linda Gordon
November 22, 2013 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. Then there are the raspberries, grapes and strawberries; not always highly productive but what little we do get is precious. Last year the nets came out but we lost heart after we’d done the peach trees, as we watched the immature fruit falling on impact. Netting trees that have got too tall and spread too wide is not recommended unless you have thought ahead and built net supporting frames around your trees. Even if we protected only the most bird-attracting fruit, we would have to build about 15 frames in our yard. Thirty per cent blockout shade cloth can be used as an alternative, according to state government agricultural notes. This should be tossed on top of the tree and pegged with clothes pegs or tied somehow. Despite the cover up the fruit continues to ripen and it is much more bird-friendly, they reckon. It’s the “tossing” bit that I’m not confident about. Of course, there is the individual paper bag around each ripening fruit method. But when it rains? CDs, plastic bags, fake owls and plastic snakes get a four out of ten on the effectiveness scale. Netting is just fine if you keep your trees under control. That is no higher than your extended arm. |
A too-wide fruiting crab apple, front, and a too-tall apple, rear.
Ripe raspberries soon disappear as the birds descend.
The top pears are beyond netting.
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Urban food gardener John Ditchburn, who has a useful website for the backyard fruit grower (urbanfoodgarden.org), suggests some light summer pruning before netting to cut away any whippy, unruly growth that is not bearing fruit.
He wraps only the fruit-bearing branches of too-tall trees, securing the flapping edges with clothes pegs to keep birds out and netting in place.
So it’s a toss-up, a cut-back, a wrap-around and fingers-crossed approach this season at our place. But please let me, and the reader, know if you have a more sensible, effective method. And could you make it soon: the cockies are circling.
COMMENTS:
November 22, 2013
When it comes to netting, probably the more (people) the merrier. My friend Liz has long poles with tennis balls on the end for netting big trees and gets a few of us in to help, then later rewards us with fresh fruit.
Catherine, Wonthaggi
He wraps only the fruit-bearing branches of too-tall trees, securing the flapping edges with clothes pegs to keep birds out and netting in place.
So it’s a toss-up, a cut-back, a wrap-around and fingers-crossed approach this season at our place. But please let me, and the reader, know if you have a more sensible, effective method. And could you make it soon: the cockies are circling.
COMMENTS:
November 22, 2013
When it comes to netting, probably the more (people) the merrier. My friend Liz has long poles with tennis balls on the end for netting big trees and gets a few of us in to help, then later rewards us with fresh fruit.
Catherine, Wonthaggi
When a group of keen gardeners outgrew their backyards, they started looking further afield.
Orchard co-op thinks big
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By Linda Gordon
November 2, 2013 “We’re just a bunch of locals who want to plant some trees,” says Phillip Island orchard co-op member Lars Olsen. Lars says the idea for the community orchard and garden grew out of a collective desire to expand beyond the confines of the backyard; to grow bigger trees and more extensive crops than is normally possible on a small house block. “We are six locals who are avid gardeners. We do grow in our backyards but you can only do so much in your yard. We wanted to grow fruits and nuts, maybe potatoes or corn.” Westernport Water saw the potential for a worthwhile community partnership and stepped in to offer a one-hectare site at Wimbledon Heights just as the co-op was beginning to think they could not get a suitable site close to a residential area. |
Raring to go: Members of the orchard co-op from left Kate Bennetts, Diana Whittington, Andrea Chiaradia (with Zach and Finn), Lars Olsen, Mikala Peters and Matt Calissi. John Carlson and Karl Dickson are absent.
Join the fun Prospective gardeners wanting to know more about the community orchard can contact Geoff Russell at Westernport Water on 5956 4140. A copy of a volunteer registration pack will also be available at Westernport Water soon. |
Westernport Water’s managing director Murray Jackson said what set the co-op’s project apart from other community gardens was the orchard design, access to class-A recycled water and its ability to grow larger crops on the site.
Local councillors Phil Wright, Kimberley Brown and Andrew Phillips have helped the co-op secure funds for a first shelter belt planting.
Lars Olsen hopes the local community will turn up in numbers for the orchard open day planned for some time this month. The date will be set once the memorandum of understanding between the group and Westernport Water is finalised.
He says it’s been invaluable to the group to get a partnership with an established local entity such as Westernport Water. “They’ve provided the site but also the organisation and helped with communication. As a group of volunteers, you can feel quite isolated.”
Lars has lived on the Island for about eight years. He works for Fisheries Victoria and enjoys getting involved in his community.
Along with the other co-op members he is banking on lots of other like-minded locals seeing the potential of the orchard and garden. He says it’s in a good spot, close to Cowes and right in the middle of Phillip Island.
“We’ll wait and see where the energy takes us. Final decisions aren’t up to us. The thing is not to be too prescriptive. If people come along on the open day with a passion for growing mulberries, we can look at that.”
Local councillors Phil Wright, Kimberley Brown and Andrew Phillips have helped the co-op secure funds for a first shelter belt planting.
Lars Olsen hopes the local community will turn up in numbers for the orchard open day planned for some time this month. The date will be set once the memorandum of understanding between the group and Westernport Water is finalised.
He says it’s been invaluable to the group to get a partnership with an established local entity such as Westernport Water. “They’ve provided the site but also the organisation and helped with communication. As a group of volunteers, you can feel quite isolated.”
Lars has lived on the Island for about eight years. He works for Fisheries Victoria and enjoys getting involved in his community.
Along with the other co-op members he is banking on lots of other like-minded locals seeing the potential of the orchard and garden. He says it’s in a good spot, close to Cowes and right in the middle of Phillip Island.
“We’ll wait and see where the energy takes us. Final decisions aren’t up to us. The thing is not to be too prescriptive. If people come along on the open day with a passion for growing mulberries, we can look at that.”
A splash of colour
November 1, 2013
AFTER plenty of positive feedback about the red and white petunias in the Cowes roundabouts last year, the council will continue the trial plantings this year.
Last November, the native plants were removed and replaced with red and white petunias in a two-year trial of annual planting displays.
The council’s infrastructure director Felicity Sist said the colourful petunias were first planted in response to the community asking for more colour in the roundabouts.
She said the feedback – including to garden staff working on the roundabouts – had been overwhelmingly positiive.
This summer’s display will be white and blue petunias, which are expected to be in full bloom by the Christmas period.
AFTER plenty of positive feedback about the red and white petunias in the Cowes roundabouts last year, the council will continue the trial plantings this year.
Last November, the native plants were removed and replaced with red and white petunias in a two-year trial of annual planting displays.
The council’s infrastructure director Felicity Sist said the colourful petunias were first planted in response to the community asking for more colour in the roundabouts.
She said the feedback – including to garden staff working on the roundabouts – had been overwhelmingly positiive.
This summer’s display will be white and blue petunias, which are expected to be in full bloom by the Christmas period.
See how the others grow
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By Linda Gordon
October 5, 2013 If, like me, you enjoy having a stickybeak at other people's gardens, you're in for a treat later this month when four Korumburra gardens open their gates to all comers. Included in the Open Gardens Korumburra fund-raiser is the Korumburra Hospital garden, which features a sensory sitting space and a large vegetable patch, all created by volunteers. There are also acres of stunning private gardens to see, a sausage sizzle, and you're supporting the local fire brigade and Koringal Women's Service Club. Hospital garden volunteer Neil Coxon says the hospital's vegetable patch supplies fresh food in response to local need. It is also a teaching garden and setting for demonstrations of organic and sustainable food growing. The food garden includes a new shed built using recycled materials. Neil says the sensory garden is a recreational and restful place for hospital visitors and patients, and the whole garden is “a vibrant and exciting space”. And that's a bit rare for a hospital. Korumburra Men's Shed regulars, community volunteers and the Gippsland Southern Health Service worked together to create the garden. The Rodda garden (9 Gordon Street), features English cottage plants and native shrubs laid out with an eye to colour and shape. There's also a herb and organic vegetable garden. |
Volunteers at work in the Korumburra Hospital garden.
Above and below, Kay and Neil Coxon's garden in Whitelaw Road has beautiful shaded paths.
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Spread over two acres, the Coxon garden, 190 Whitelaw Rd, includes a red-themed garden, clematis and pond gardens and framed views through unique plant supports and deciduous trees.
Fruit, berries, chooks and vegetable beds underscore the importance of GYO (grow your own) for the Collyer family garden (46 Bena Road). It features two fern-lined creeks and perennial borders in a framework of Australian native plants.
Open Gardens Korumburra is from 10am-4.30pm on Saturday, October 26. Maps and tickets are on sale at each venue ($15 for four gardens) and the Scouts will provide a sausage sizzle at the Korumburra Hospital Garden. Inquiries: Shirley Cowling on 5657 3350.
Fruit, berries, chooks and vegetable beds underscore the importance of GYO (grow your own) for the Collyer family garden (46 Bena Road). It features two fern-lined creeks and perennial borders in a framework of Australian native plants.
Open Gardens Korumburra is from 10am-4.30pm on Saturday, October 26. Maps and tickets are on sale at each venue ($15 for four gardens) and the Scouts will provide a sausage sizzle at the Korumburra Hospital Garden. Inquiries: Shirley Cowling on 5657 3350.
Land of plenty, in the right hands
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By Linda Gordon
September 14, 2013 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. And now, miraculously, Win Kyi and her family live in Wonthaggi. Her story lacks vital details, I know. But language is a barrier and too many questions that call up the difficult journey from there to here can be intrusive, upsetting. |
Win Kyi at Wonthaggi's community garden
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What is understood is that Win Kyi is very good at growing food, and that I am learning from her at Wonthaggi's community garden. She tells me that not just the showy heart of the cauliflower can be eaten but also the abundant, nutritious leaves, and I see the waste through her eyes.
Our shared garden plots have never looked healthier or produced more winter crops. We have harvested baskets of cauliflowers, cabbages, broccoli, radishes – red and white, kale, silver beet, coriander, carrots and lettuce.
Our shared garden plots have never looked healthier or produced more winter crops. We have harvested baskets of cauliflowers, cabbages, broccoli, radishes – red and white, kale, silver beet, coriander, carrots and lettuce.
Wonthaggi community garden volunteers Mar Tin, Win Kyi and Lorraine.
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It is a group effort but Win Kyi’s work ethic and confidence have influenced us all. Every week, through the winter, we have divvied up enough produce at the end of the morning’s work for four or five gardeners to go home with ingredients for soups and salads.
Last week in a persistent drizzle we cleared the last of the broccoli and cabbages to make way for spring planting. Already on the list to go in the soil are snow peas, pak choi, chillies, capsicum and an experiment with early cucumbers. Meanwhile Win Kyi is learning English in class and with the help of a volunteer tutor. Each time we get together at the Wonthaggi Community Garden she has questions about the names of plants, which parts we eat and when and how we grow them. It’s a boon having a farmer among us; one with such a talent for gardening and determination to grow. |
A fertile imagination
By Linda Gordon
August 23, 2013
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!
In lovely black and white, (no elaborate, full-colour garden porn on display here), with writing that sparks a dull brain, the annual catalogue is the antidote to what ails you.
Here’s how it begins: “There’s an almost overwhelming volume of information pertaining to gardening and horticulture these days, which can make it easy to lose touch with the simple truth that each and every garden begins with love.”
Important note to self, do not get carried away when ordering this year.
It continues: “I gratefully acknowledge the delight and wonder of the beautiful, simple experience of sowing a hard ball of seemingly lifeless matter into the earth and, with due care, watching a plant take recognisable form, eventually providing my body with delicious, natural nutrition.”
It’s hard to resist. And then there’s the transporting descriptions and names of these irresistible tiny bits, flakes and balls of potential.
For example, the St Pierre Tomato – “a lovely French heirloom producing large, round, deep-red fruit full of rich flavour, even in adverse conditions.” The imagination leaps to a summer morning and the sight and the coppery smell of those plump, sweet fruits ...
Or the Vitamin Green - “organic seed, a quick growing, mild, very juicy, tasty, leafy green. Soft, bright-green leaves with a juicy white mid-rib. Harvest individual leaves from the young stage to maturity. Good for stir fries and steaming.”
But does this amazing, all-purpose beauty really grow in ordinary gardens? Only one way to find out.
What about the herb Elecampane, described as “handsome with large velvety leaves and big, bright yellow flowers somewhat like sunflowers ... the root used to be candied and eaten as sweetmeat”.
And I like the sound of Tokyo Bekana with its “young lettuce-like ruffled foliage ... light green, crisp, sweet and tender, hardy and easy.”
And so it goes. Temptation gets the better of the aspirational gardener again.
Michael Self of Phoenix Seeds, who produces the delightful catalogue and many of the seeds from his home and garden in Tasmania, encourages seed saving and swapping.
Here’s hoping, Michael.
Despite the wild weather we know that spring is due and what better way to welcome the season than to help establish the Phillip Island Community Garden at a working bee on site, on Sunday September 8. There are compost bays to build, apple crate beds to set up, gravel and mulch to spread and a BBQ lunch to enjoy.
Register your interest by September 6 at community.garden@pical.org.au Information about future garden plans and a report from the community garden and kitchen town meeting, held last month at PICAL, is also available.
August 23, 2013
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!
In lovely black and white, (no elaborate, full-colour garden porn on display here), with writing that sparks a dull brain, the annual catalogue is the antidote to what ails you.
Here’s how it begins: “There’s an almost overwhelming volume of information pertaining to gardening and horticulture these days, which can make it easy to lose touch with the simple truth that each and every garden begins with love.”
Important note to self, do not get carried away when ordering this year.
It continues: “I gratefully acknowledge the delight and wonder of the beautiful, simple experience of sowing a hard ball of seemingly lifeless matter into the earth and, with due care, watching a plant take recognisable form, eventually providing my body with delicious, natural nutrition.”
It’s hard to resist. And then there’s the transporting descriptions and names of these irresistible tiny bits, flakes and balls of potential.
For example, the St Pierre Tomato – “a lovely French heirloom producing large, round, deep-red fruit full of rich flavour, even in adverse conditions.” The imagination leaps to a summer morning and the sight and the coppery smell of those plump, sweet fruits ...
Or the Vitamin Green - “organic seed, a quick growing, mild, very juicy, tasty, leafy green. Soft, bright-green leaves with a juicy white mid-rib. Harvest individual leaves from the young stage to maturity. Good for stir fries and steaming.”
But does this amazing, all-purpose beauty really grow in ordinary gardens? Only one way to find out.
What about the herb Elecampane, described as “handsome with large velvety leaves and big, bright yellow flowers somewhat like sunflowers ... the root used to be candied and eaten as sweetmeat”.
And I like the sound of Tokyo Bekana with its “young lettuce-like ruffled foliage ... light green, crisp, sweet and tender, hardy and easy.”
And so it goes. Temptation gets the better of the aspirational gardener again.
Michael Self of Phoenix Seeds, who produces the delightful catalogue and many of the seeds from his home and garden in Tasmania, encourages seed saving and swapping.
Here’s hoping, Michael.
Despite the wild weather we know that spring is due and what better way to welcome the season than to help establish the Phillip Island Community Garden at a working bee on site, on Sunday September 8. There are compost bays to build, apple crate beds to set up, gravel and mulch to spread and a BBQ lunch to enjoy.
Register your interest by September 6 at community.garden@pical.org.au Information about future garden plans and a report from the community garden and kitchen town meeting, held last month at PICAL, is also available.
Stop press:
All hail the nature strip garden
August 16, 2013
ON July 26, the Bass Coast Post reported the case of South Dudley residents Helen Searle and Richard Kentwell, who had planted olive trees and artichokes on their nature strip.
Following two complaints, council officers had given Helen and Richard until the end of August to convince the council to change its current policy, which limits plantings to grass and street trees.
Well, the people have spoken on nature strip gardening and it's clear there's lots of support for it.
Bass Coast CEO Allan Bawden said last week the council would review the existing planting guidelines and investigate possible changes.
"It's clear community views on the matter are changing," he said. "We're putting together a working team to look at the matter from all perspectives."
The review will take in various council departments, including planning, environment, asset management and parks and gardens. Watch this space for updates.
All hail the nature strip garden
August 16, 2013
ON July 26, the Bass Coast Post reported the case of South Dudley residents Helen Searle and Richard Kentwell, who had planted olive trees and artichokes on their nature strip.
Following two complaints, council officers had given Helen and Richard until the end of August to convince the council to change its current policy, which limits plantings to grass and street trees.
Well, the people have spoken on nature strip gardening and it's clear there's lots of support for it.
Bass Coast CEO Allan Bawden said last week the council would review the existing planting guidelines and investigate possible changes.
"It's clear community views on the matter are changing," he said. "We're putting together a working team to look at the matter from all perspectives."
The review will take in various council departments, including planning, environment, asset management and parks and gardens. Watch this space for updates.
Aunt Peggy's winter
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By Linda Gordon
August 10, 2013 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. And she liked to note her feelings about her gardens, her chooks and her life. During the war years, in the early 1940s, she was posted as a rural nurse wherever she was needed. Towards the end of the war, during a particularly harsh winter in central Victoria, she was forced to walk with her young son in his pram to pick up firewood and then wheel it back to their cold, swampy house. |
Vincent van Gogh's The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in winter
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There was fuel and food rationing and she was doing it tough. It was mid-August and she had enough wood for a while. She notes in her journal, “It is very heavy wood but oh it is good and goes a very long way”.
August 10th
"There is a little breath of spring, almost as if it is cautiously putting one foot into winter to see if the coast is clear, even though I know it is going to pour and freeze. Yet there is something spellbinding about this first waft of blossom.
"There is a white blossom tree here just inside the fence, thank heavens. The neighbour says, 'Oh that’s just a seedling cherry plum, the birds drop the stones. What a curse!' And she gives the tree a malevolent look. Why is it a curse? I had a lovely dream of a garden entirely planted by birds. What could be lovelier?
"It isn’t out yet but it is letting me know it won’t be long and I thanked heaven for birds and went out on the road and picked up a shovelful of nourishment for it thoughtfully provided by the baker’s horse. I made a mulch of it but kept it away from the trunk."
August 25th
"The bird planted tree is out in all its glory. It is most exquisite like delicate white lace. The shape of the tree is unbelievably beautiful: one side gracefully dipping almost to the ground, nowhere thick or ungainly (possibly because of its “sour fruit” no interest has been taken in it), and no devastating pruning hand at work.
"Yesterday the sky was blue and I took half an hour off to look at it from a chair. It seemed to me lovely. Today the sky is grey and I have yet to see a more exquisite thing, delicate, light, each softly rounded flower outlined against this grey background. I only realised today that white is unbelievably beautiful against grey."
August 29th
"The white blossom tree is still gently moving about just enough to draw attention to herself. She is sheltered and her petals have not begun to fall. I would write a poem about her if I could."
August 10th
"There is a little breath of spring, almost as if it is cautiously putting one foot into winter to see if the coast is clear, even though I know it is going to pour and freeze. Yet there is something spellbinding about this first waft of blossom.
"There is a white blossom tree here just inside the fence, thank heavens. The neighbour says, 'Oh that’s just a seedling cherry plum, the birds drop the stones. What a curse!' And she gives the tree a malevolent look. Why is it a curse? I had a lovely dream of a garden entirely planted by birds. What could be lovelier?
"It isn’t out yet but it is letting me know it won’t be long and I thanked heaven for birds and went out on the road and picked up a shovelful of nourishment for it thoughtfully provided by the baker’s horse. I made a mulch of it but kept it away from the trunk."
August 25th
"The bird planted tree is out in all its glory. It is most exquisite like delicate white lace. The shape of the tree is unbelievably beautiful: one side gracefully dipping almost to the ground, nowhere thick or ungainly (possibly because of its “sour fruit” no interest has been taken in it), and no devastating pruning hand at work.
"Yesterday the sky was blue and I took half an hour off to look at it from a chair. It seemed to me lovely. Today the sky is grey and I have yet to see a more exquisite thing, delicate, light, each softly rounded flower outlined against this grey background. I only realised today that white is unbelievably beautiful against grey."
August 29th
"The white blossom tree is still gently moving about just enough to draw attention to herself. She is sheltered and her petals have not begun to fall. I would write a poem about her if I could."
Nature strips consist of grass and native trees, according to council regulations. But why shouldn’t we use them to grow food?
Just as nature intended
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By Linda Gordon
July 26, 2013 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. Following two complaints about the olive trees and globe artichokes on their nature strip, council officers have given Helen and Richard until the end of August to convince the council to change its current policy, which limits plantings to grass and street trees. Helen says gardens are at risk of being destroyed if the community doesn’t speak up. “Now the issue’s before the councillors and shire workers, it’s a fantastic opportunity to develop progressive guidelines that encourage and support nature strip gardening.” She points out that many other councils, including the cities of Yarra, Moreland, Sydney and Canterbury (NSW), have established guidelines that allow residents to apply for permits to plant vegetables, herbs, flowers and fruit trees in addition to natives. Some even include raised garden beds. |
Artichokes and olives are natural companions.
Hail the artichoke
HELEN Searle and Richard Kentwell have created a Mediterranean feel to their nature strip planting with a row of stately olive trees and silvery green globe artichokes. These food plants are hardy, natural companions: think artichoke hearts in olive oil. Food grower and producer, chef and writer Maggie Beer recommends home gardeners grow globe artichokes. “When they’re picked fresh, the produce is incomparable to anything you could possibly buy. Even if your thumb is the palest shade of green, you will succeed with artichokes, thanks to their less-than-fussy growing requirements.” The globe artichoke (Cynara scolymus) is a perennial thistle with large edible flower buds. Its wild cousin (Cynara Cardunculus) is classed as a weed in some areas. Globe artichokes contain a range of health-giving vitamins and minerals and plenty of fibre. They are thought to help lower cholesterol and stimulate the liver. |
“If you’re interested in this topic please take the time to write to Bass Coast Shire councillors and express your views, hopefully as soon as possible.”
Helen isn’t sure why people have complained about the plants but thinks it could be partly due to the changed look of the street following recent road sealing and kerb and channel work.
There’s minimal foot and car traffic in the street but Helen and Richard took great care to maintain a grass buffer between the plantings and the footpath and to regularly sweep any loose mulch off the path. In fact they’re delighted with the positive comments they get from people passing by. “It starts a conversation. The positive community impact is huge.”
They’re not alone in seeing benefits in growing fresh food on nature strips. To make their case to the council, they quote from a letter high-profile landscape architect and verge planting expert Costa Georgiadis wrote to the City of Frankston about his own neighbourhood’s ‘On the Verge’ planting project:
“Probably the most important aspect ... has been the community building. Residents of one end of the street are meeting other residents they never knew existed when tending or even just walking past the garden.
“So the advantages of nature strips producing food include decreasing food miles, less pollution from mowing, sharing produce with neighbours, fresh nutritious food, enhanced food security and community building.”
When it comes to nature strips, residents have all the responsibility and very little say. While they have to maintain the nature strip outside their properties, a Bass Coast local law specifies that they must not remove or plant vegetation other than grass on the road reserve without a permit.
Many councils, although not Bass Coast, even prohibit parking on a nature strip and fine transgressors.
Property owners can apply for a road occupation permit to plant on the nature strip fronting their property. The fee is $100 to assess the request and the application must be accompanied by a landscape plan of the proposed planting, taking into consideration several issues.
The council’s infrastructure director, Felicity Sist, said the nature strip was part of the road reserve, and the council had to provide safe passage for traffic, including pedestrian traffic, and protect the assets in, under and over the land.
She said planting and landscaping could damage or restrict access to underground services such as electricity, gas, telecoms and water or stormwater drains, kerbing and channelling and stormwater pits.
Unauthorised trees could also obstruct visibility for drivers while garden beds could obstruct pedestrians. Non-indigenous species such as agapanthus could also affect the natural environment.
There was also the expense to the council of maintaining, removing or reinstating plantings and garden beds if the property owner no longer maintained them.
Contact your ward councillor if you want to have your say on this issue.
Helen isn’t sure why people have complained about the plants but thinks it could be partly due to the changed look of the street following recent road sealing and kerb and channel work.
There’s minimal foot and car traffic in the street but Helen and Richard took great care to maintain a grass buffer between the plantings and the footpath and to regularly sweep any loose mulch off the path. In fact they’re delighted with the positive comments they get from people passing by. “It starts a conversation. The positive community impact is huge.”
They’re not alone in seeing benefits in growing fresh food on nature strips. To make their case to the council, they quote from a letter high-profile landscape architect and verge planting expert Costa Georgiadis wrote to the City of Frankston about his own neighbourhood’s ‘On the Verge’ planting project:
“Probably the most important aspect ... has been the community building. Residents of one end of the street are meeting other residents they never knew existed when tending or even just walking past the garden.
“So the advantages of nature strips producing food include decreasing food miles, less pollution from mowing, sharing produce with neighbours, fresh nutritious food, enhanced food security and community building.”
When it comes to nature strips, residents have all the responsibility and very little say. While they have to maintain the nature strip outside their properties, a Bass Coast local law specifies that they must not remove or plant vegetation other than grass on the road reserve without a permit.
Many councils, although not Bass Coast, even prohibit parking on a nature strip and fine transgressors.
Property owners can apply for a road occupation permit to plant on the nature strip fronting their property. The fee is $100 to assess the request and the application must be accompanied by a landscape plan of the proposed planting, taking into consideration several issues.
The council’s infrastructure director, Felicity Sist, said the nature strip was part of the road reserve, and the council had to provide safe passage for traffic, including pedestrian traffic, and protect the assets in, under and over the land.
She said planting and landscaping could damage or restrict access to underground services such as electricity, gas, telecoms and water or stormwater drains, kerbing and channelling and stormwater pits.
Unauthorised trees could also obstruct visibility for drivers while garden beds could obstruct pedestrians. Non-indigenous species such as agapanthus could also affect the natural environment.
There was also the expense to the council of maintaining, removing or reinstating plantings and garden beds if the property owner no longer maintained them.
Contact your ward councillor if you want to have your say on this issue.
The olive and artichoke garden is at risk.
COMMENTS
August 4, 2013
Being a fan of climbing beans, I got up early to get this pedestrian-free photo of a bean plot in central Beijing. The location was within walking distance of the underground railway. How long would those beans last in Melbourne or Wonthaggi?
I saw other gardens like this in Beijing. Being able to share or have multiple uses for public assets is a sign of a civil society. The more civilised a society, the more things become possible. Beijing is the most civilised society I’ve seen.
Frank Coldebella, Wonthaggi
Being a fan of climbing beans, I got up early to get this pedestrian-free photo of a bean plot in central Beijing. The location was within walking distance of the underground railway. How long would those beans last in Melbourne or Wonthaggi?
I saw other gardens like this in Beijing. Being able to share or have multiple uses for public assets is a sign of a civil society. The more civilised a society, the more things become possible. Beijing is the most civilised society I’ve seen.
Frank Coldebella, Wonthaggi
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July 30, 2013
There will be a fair few of us looking over our shoulders if the council forces Helen Searle and Richard Kentwell to pull out their olive trees and artichokes. On a recent town tour, I counted scores of fruit trees and other unauthorised plants growing on nature strips. Twelve of them were growing on my own nature strip. Neighbourhood fruit trees have a long and noble history in Wonthaggi, as they do in many other cities and shires. Fitzroy, Collingwood and Carlton streets are filled with idiosyncratic gardens that add to the character of the place. As for the potential problem of trees interfering with underground services for gas, water, electricity and telecommunications, I would have thought an olive tree was less of an obstruction than an authorised eucalypt, and artichokes no obstruction at all. When gas contractors recently arrived to put a gas line to my place, I was concerned that an apricot tree on the proposed route might complicate things but they said not. These days they send a king of drilling worm underground. At its worst, it might just drill through a tap root. Catherine, Wonthaggi |
Fitzroy street gardens
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Natural highs a winter tonic
By Linda Gordon
July 14, 2013
ZESTY lemon verbena on the fresh produce shelf, between the beetroot and the coriander, was doing its job at the farm gate shop in Inverloch. It made the customers smile.
And no one should walk past a winter-blooming daphne without bending low and breathing deep.
Picking the flowers off a baby orange tree, passing the jonquils in their glass on the kitchen bench, brushing against the pineapple sage on the way to the compost bin or picking a few violets for their elusive perfume are all brain-stimulating actions.
In mid-winter, when we expect dormancy in the garden and a touch of seasonal sensory deprivation, these hits of fragrance are medicinal. They do give the brain’s biochemistry a charge, and make us feel a little high and happy.
Dr Judyth McLeod, Australian horticulturalist, academic and writer, believes a sense of smell is almost as important as sight for the gardener.
Yet this sense is under-used and overlooked. Dr McLeod reckons we should practise smelling and remembering in nature, to build up our “scent memory”.
July 14, 2013
ZESTY lemon verbena on the fresh produce shelf, between the beetroot and the coriander, was doing its job at the farm gate shop in Inverloch. It made the customers smile.
And no one should walk past a winter-blooming daphne without bending low and breathing deep.
Picking the flowers off a baby orange tree, passing the jonquils in their glass on the kitchen bench, brushing against the pineapple sage on the way to the compost bin or picking a few violets for their elusive perfume are all brain-stimulating actions.
In mid-winter, when we expect dormancy in the garden and a touch of seasonal sensory deprivation, these hits of fragrance are medicinal. They do give the brain’s biochemistry a charge, and make us feel a little high and happy.
Dr Judyth McLeod, Australian horticulturalist, academic and writer, believes a sense of smell is almost as important as sight for the gardener.
Yet this sense is under-used and overlooked. Dr McLeod reckons we should practise smelling and remembering in nature, to build up our “scent memory”.
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This is a little more challenging with native flora. “The scents encountered in the Australian flora are very diverse and exciting. The dominant perfume note is honey, an elusive scent almost impossible to capture,” she writes.
Indigenous to the Bass Coast are the fragrant and aptly named shrubs honey-pots (Acrotriche serrulata), and the tree violet (Hymenanthera dentata), among others. Coastal gardens can be a perfect habitat for scented native plants. There are a stack of good suggestions in The Perfumed Coast (included in Dr Mcleod’s Fragrant Native Gardens, Simon & Schuster, 1994). |
Capturing delicate flower fragrances in oil – a technique known as “enfleurage” – is relatively simple. Saturate neutral oil, such as a vegetable oil, at room temperature with freshly picked fragrant flowers, and replace the flowers every day or two. After two weeks the oil should be full of fragrance and can be used as an essential oil.
Here is Dr McLeod’s gardener’s massage oil, a warming, muscle-relaxing, penetrating blend.
Ingredients
50ml almond, avocado, peach kernel or olive oil (although the olive is a little heavy)
15 drops of your own enfleurage fragrant oil (if available)
10 drops essential oil of lavender
5 drops essential oil of thyme
5 drops essential oil of rosemary
Method
Blend together well before smoothing over hands and skin. Naturally, be aware of any possible sensitivity to the ingredients before using.
COMMENTS
July 14, 2013
Floral likes and dislikes
Linda Gordon mentions daphne and jonquils as particular favourites. I've always disliked the fragrance of daphne, jonquils and jasmine. I thought I was the only one until a discussion began at my workplace, where opinion was equally divided.
Freesias are my favourite, but on one occasion a visitor told me he couldn't come into the house because the smell of freesias made him feel sick.
Are our noses smelling different smells or are our brains reacting to them differently?
Catherine, Wonthaggi
Here is Dr McLeod’s gardener’s massage oil, a warming, muscle-relaxing, penetrating blend.
Ingredients
50ml almond, avocado, peach kernel or olive oil (although the olive is a little heavy)
15 drops of your own enfleurage fragrant oil (if available)
10 drops essential oil of lavender
5 drops essential oil of thyme
5 drops essential oil of rosemary
Method
Blend together well before smoothing over hands and skin. Naturally, be aware of any possible sensitivity to the ingredients before using.
COMMENTS
July 14, 2013
Floral likes and dislikes
Linda Gordon mentions daphne and jonquils as particular favourites. I've always disliked the fragrance of daphne, jonquils and jasmine. I thought I was the only one until a discussion began at my workplace, where opinion was equally divided.
Freesias are my favourite, but on one occasion a visitor told me he couldn't come into the house because the smell of freesias made him feel sick.
Are our noses smelling different smells or are our brains reacting to them differently?
Catherine, Wonthaggi
Hidden treasures
By Catherine Watson
June 23, 2013
I’D written off the feijoas this season, after a very dry autumn, but they have at last begun to fill out and drop, a month or two later than normal.
I always think I’ve got no fruit because it’s the same dark green as the foliage, and it’s only when they drop that you can see them. Once they drop, it may take a few days until they soften and are ready to eat.
Seeing feijoas priced at $14.99 a kilogram in a trendy Melbourne “fruiterer's” recently reminded me of what an under-rated fruit this is. I grew up in the Bay of Plenty of New Zealand where feijoa hedges are common. Back then you never saw feijoas in the shops but everyone had a tree. In late autumn we gorged ourselves on this wonderfully complex sweet, tart, almost tropical fruit, which was much more highly regarded than kiwifruit.
When I came to Australia, I occasionally saw a feijoa tree but the fruit lay rotting underneath. When I asked why, most people said “They’re no good for eating. They’re only good for making jam.”
Well, the one thing the feijoa isn’t good for is making jam. Five minutes after you cut a feijoa, that beautiful creamy flesh turns a rotten-looking brown. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere and I draw mine at brown jam.
Feijoa jelly is a different matter. That’s a rich ruby red. You lose a bit of the flavour through the long boiling but the improvement in colour is worth it. My friend Bob has mastered it. The first feijoas are tarter and so the jelly sets more easily; the later feijoas are sweeter and you might have to add some lemon juice to aid setting.
Some people use feijoas to make chutneys, but you might as well use green apples because none of the flavour survives. My mother used to freeze some of the excess fruit and use it in feijoa crumbles. Again, you had the brown yuck factor but she said it was pretty good if you watched television while you ate it.
About 25 years ago I had a fling with wine-making. Feijoa wine was my first attempt. I did everything wrong, including bottling it before fermenting had finished. I opened the first bottle without great optimism and found that by mistake I had made a most delicious champagne – sorry, sparkling wine – full of flavour, subtle, dry, intoxicating. That was the high point of my wine making. The more I learned, the worse the wines were.
This season, my friend Vilya has been experimenting with drying feijoa slices and has worked out how to balance the tartness/sweetness. When I’ve got too much fruit, I poach peeled and sliced feijoas gently in water, lemon juice and a small amount of sugar (I aim to replicate the sweet-sour of the fruit), which works quite well to retain the creaminess. If you bottle the poached fruit in a warmed screw-top jar while they’re still hot they’ll keep for a year or more.
But the fruit is best eaten fresh. Cut it in half and scoop out the creamy flesh or stand at the tree and bite it in half and squeeze the contents into your mouth.
June 23, 2013
I’D written off the feijoas this season, after a very dry autumn, but they have at last begun to fill out and drop, a month or two later than normal.
I always think I’ve got no fruit because it’s the same dark green as the foliage, and it’s only when they drop that you can see them. Once they drop, it may take a few days until they soften and are ready to eat.
Seeing feijoas priced at $14.99 a kilogram in a trendy Melbourne “fruiterer's” recently reminded me of what an under-rated fruit this is. I grew up in the Bay of Plenty of New Zealand where feijoa hedges are common. Back then you never saw feijoas in the shops but everyone had a tree. In late autumn we gorged ourselves on this wonderfully complex sweet, tart, almost tropical fruit, which was much more highly regarded than kiwifruit.
When I came to Australia, I occasionally saw a feijoa tree but the fruit lay rotting underneath. When I asked why, most people said “They’re no good for eating. They’re only good for making jam.”
Well, the one thing the feijoa isn’t good for is making jam. Five minutes after you cut a feijoa, that beautiful creamy flesh turns a rotten-looking brown. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere and I draw mine at brown jam.
Feijoa jelly is a different matter. That’s a rich ruby red. You lose a bit of the flavour through the long boiling but the improvement in colour is worth it. My friend Bob has mastered it. The first feijoas are tarter and so the jelly sets more easily; the later feijoas are sweeter and you might have to add some lemon juice to aid setting.
Some people use feijoas to make chutneys, but you might as well use green apples because none of the flavour survives. My mother used to freeze some of the excess fruit and use it in feijoa crumbles. Again, you had the brown yuck factor but she said it was pretty good if you watched television while you ate it.
About 25 years ago I had a fling with wine-making. Feijoa wine was my first attempt. I did everything wrong, including bottling it before fermenting had finished. I opened the first bottle without great optimism and found that by mistake I had made a most delicious champagne – sorry, sparkling wine – full of flavour, subtle, dry, intoxicating. That was the high point of my wine making. The more I learned, the worse the wines were.
This season, my friend Vilya has been experimenting with drying feijoa slices and has worked out how to balance the tartness/sweetness. When I’ve got too much fruit, I poach peeled and sliced feijoas gently in water, lemon juice and a small amount of sugar (I aim to replicate the sweet-sour of the fruit), which works quite well to retain the creaminess. If you bottle the poached fruit in a warmed screw-top jar while they’re still hot they’ll keep for a year or more.
But the fruit is best eaten fresh. Cut it in half and scoop out the creamy flesh or stand at the tree and bite it in half and squeeze the contents into your mouth.
Free greens, while you wait
Time to plant the broad beans.
By Linda Gordon
June 15, 2013
IT’S stopped raining so as soon as I finish my desk work I can plant broad beans – an early cropper and a dwarf variety. This will be the last edible plant crop to go into the soil until early spring.
Cool-season edibles take their own sweet time. I have put in broccoli, lots of peas, carrots, cabbage, kale, leeks, rhubarb chard, mizuna, lettuce, shallots, garlic, beetroot, celery and radishes but you’d hardly know it.
While I’m waiting for this lot to grow, I’ve jumped on the foraging bandwagon to get something for the table.
Family visited for lunch last weekend and though I’d got a nice bit of cheese for afters, the newly fledged lettuce was just too scrawny for the platter. Remembering what I’d read about the famous Norwegian, many-Michelin-starred chef who serves only wild, foraged food to his salivating guests, I went scavenging.
Garlic chives, too easy. Nasturtium leaves and flowers, check. Wild rocket – peppery but okay, borage flowers, calendula petals, a few young dandelion leaves, little, curly kale leaves, spidery baby mizuna, a few celery stalks - the smaller, yellow ones, some lavender stems with flowers for garnish and a vase full of parsley in the middle of the table. Help yourself.
It was effortless fun doing the picking and tasting and I realised as I toured the beds how much nourishment lay in wait in the back yard.
Meantime, the broad beans will do best in a heavier soil without too much manure or I’ll get lots of leaf and fewer pods.
Ninety-year-old Tasmanian gardener Marjorie Bligh recommends adding wood ash to the soil to prevent chocolate-spot fungus in broad beans.
She says growing broad beans on a trench of comfrey leaves or decayed bracken (preferably gathered in summer when bracken stalks are high in potash), are other remedies.
Broad beans can be cut off at ground level once they’ve finished producing. Leave the roots in the soil as a source of nitrogen for your heavy-feeding spring and summer crops.
June 15, 2013
IT’S stopped raining so as soon as I finish my desk work I can plant broad beans – an early cropper and a dwarf variety. This will be the last edible plant crop to go into the soil until early spring.
Cool-season edibles take their own sweet time. I have put in broccoli, lots of peas, carrots, cabbage, kale, leeks, rhubarb chard, mizuna, lettuce, shallots, garlic, beetroot, celery and radishes but you’d hardly know it.
While I’m waiting for this lot to grow, I’ve jumped on the foraging bandwagon to get something for the table.
Family visited for lunch last weekend and though I’d got a nice bit of cheese for afters, the newly fledged lettuce was just too scrawny for the platter. Remembering what I’d read about the famous Norwegian, many-Michelin-starred chef who serves only wild, foraged food to his salivating guests, I went scavenging.
Garlic chives, too easy. Nasturtium leaves and flowers, check. Wild rocket – peppery but okay, borage flowers, calendula petals, a few young dandelion leaves, little, curly kale leaves, spidery baby mizuna, a few celery stalks - the smaller, yellow ones, some lavender stems with flowers for garnish and a vase full of parsley in the middle of the table. Help yourself.
It was effortless fun doing the picking and tasting and I realised as I toured the beds how much nourishment lay in wait in the back yard.
Meantime, the broad beans will do best in a heavier soil without too much manure or I’ll get lots of leaf and fewer pods.
Ninety-year-old Tasmanian gardener Marjorie Bligh recommends adding wood ash to the soil to prevent chocolate-spot fungus in broad beans.
She says growing broad beans on a trench of comfrey leaves or decayed bracken (preferably gathered in summer when bracken stalks are high in potash), are other remedies.
Broad beans can be cut off at ground level once they’ve finished producing. Leave the roots in the soil as a source of nitrogen for your heavy-feeding spring and summer crops.
Stepping stone to reconciliation
The perfect setting for a story.
By Linda Gordon
June 1, 2013
WELCOME autumn sunshine and a campfire inside an old iron bath tub warmed guests, young and old, last Tuesday at a gathering in the Wonthaggi Community Garden organised in support of Reconciliation Week and the Learning Stone project.
Children from the Bass Coast Children’s Centre enjoyed an open-air storytelling session while the adults were treated to hot, homemade soup.
Everyone present was invited to contribute their ideas for a suitable learning stone space in the garden precinct. Designs for learning stone sites can include indigenous plants, totems, a rock centrepiece and seats.
June 1, 2013
WELCOME autumn sunshine and a campfire inside an old iron bath tub warmed guests, young and old, last Tuesday at a gathering in the Wonthaggi Community Garden organised in support of Reconciliation Week and the Learning Stone project.
Children from the Bass Coast Children’s Centre enjoyed an open-air storytelling session while the adults were treated to hot, homemade soup.
Everyone present was invited to contribute their ideas for a suitable learning stone space in the garden precinct. Designs for learning stone sites can include indigenous plants, totems, a rock centrepiece and seats.
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South Gippsland’s Koori education support officer with the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, John Murray, has introduced learning stones at 35 Bass Coast and South Gippsland schools, kindergartens, a TAFE and the Coal Creek Heritage Village, in Korumburra.
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Learning stones help promote and celebrate Aboriginality in all its forms, as well as providing a quiet outdoor place for young indigenous people to learn.
It is hoped they will also provide a spark for the campaign for a community-driven, national indigenous curriculum to give all students a chance to learn about Australian Aboriginal history and culture.
Visit Learning Stone for full details.
It is hoped they will also provide a spark for the campaign for a community-driven, national indigenous curriculum to give all students a chance to learn about Australian Aboriginal history and culture.
Visit Learning Stone for full details.
All things bright and beautiful
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For Lita Gill, gardening is all about colour. |
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By Linda Gordon
May 5, 2013 IT WAS tropical flowers’ bold palette of pinks, bright reds, canary yellow and mandarin orange that first captivated a young Lita Gill. Those hot colours, so redolent of her island home in the Philippines, continue to feature in her cooler Wonthaggi garden and play a part in Lita’s annual blitz of the competition at the Easter Garden Show. “We made a nice backyard garden when I first came to Wonthaggi in 1981. I grew dahlias and stocks. “I love the colours. I would see something in a magazine and try and get it. I don’t care what the plant is so long as it’s colourful.” Lita’s garden has now spread to about three acres of flowers, vegetables, fruit trees, a shade house for pot plants, a hot house for her orchids and a dam, north of town. Her commitment to the garden is total. “If I sit and watch television I feel tired. I would much rather be outside.” She recommends preparing the soil with light digging, adding plenty of organic fertiliser and different mulches once plants are in. Watering is also crucial. “We are lucky to have the dam. You don’t want to let the ground get too dry. We get two truckloads of tree pruning type mulch each year as well as using sugar cane mulch and mushroom compost.” This year she submitted more than 80 exhibits in the garden show in categories including floral art, best individual bloom, vegetables and pot plants. In 2012 she entered more than 90 individual exhibits. And every year since her first entry, in 1995, she has scored success upon success. Preparations for the annual show begin more than six months ahead as she mentally selects those plants that will have the most impact come Easter. It takes much planning and time. “Before a show I will be up late getting everything ready. Celery I always pick last and lemons and apples a day before. |
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“For me it is not about winning. It’s lots of fun.”
She uses a few tricks of the trade such as a gentle rub of the leaves with meths followed by milk to give a glossy sheen and careful, unobtrusive staking for a straight, upright stem. And she only uses pure rainwater for these blooms.When she is not primping her orchids and monitoring a wondrous collection of hanging baskets, Lita tends to chooks and a large vegetable and flower garden.
Beds of garlic have just gone in, as have the cabbages. She is still harvesting green beans and her cherry red chillies warm you just looking at them.
Any excess produce is sold at the Wonthaggi Rotary Market or given away.
Next on her to-do list is the orchid show at the town hall in September. She has high hopes for a couple of her beauties.
She uses a few tricks of the trade such as a gentle rub of the leaves with meths followed by milk to give a glossy sheen and careful, unobtrusive staking for a straight, upright stem. And she only uses pure rainwater for these blooms.When she is not primping her orchids and monitoring a wondrous collection of hanging baskets, Lita tends to chooks and a large vegetable and flower garden.
Beds of garlic have just gone in, as have the cabbages. She is still harvesting green beans and her cherry red chillies warm you just looking at them.
Any excess produce is sold at the Wonthaggi Rotary Market or given away.
Next on her to-do list is the orchid show at the town hall in September. She has high hopes for a couple of her beauties.
Inspired gardeners in a class of their own
U3A gardeners find knowledge, cuttings and companionship.
By Linda Gordon
April 6, 2013
WHEN you are keen to start a garden but don’t know the first thing about the local flora, soil or what grows best where, you can make mistakes.
Enthusiastic gardener Helen arrived from the north of England a few years ago and began planting her house-block-size Bass Coast garden with giant-size eucalypts.
“I really had no idea how they grew or that they would grow so tall,” she admits.
Then there is Shaaron, who arrived in Cape Paterson less than a year ago from Western Australia. She is already growing fruit, vegetables and flowers in this unfamiliar landscape.
Luckily they both found their way to the Wonthaggi University of the Third Age (U3A) gardening group, a meeting place for inspired and motivated gardeners.
Helen says that without the group she would have spent a fortune on establishing her garden and possibly made more costly mistakes. “I was able to get so many plants, cuttings and bulbs. Really, this group started my whole garden. You keep on learning from each other. I have so many questions and the members have so much knowledge.”
Shaaron is excited when plants come up in her new garden, especially if a gardening friend has given her the cutting or seed. She also values the social time spent with group members, and the chance to make lasting connections in the community.
Tonia, who came to gardening a bit reluctantly, says weeding is as good as meditation for stress relief. “My sister is the great gardener in our family but it has crept up on me,” she says.
Exercise, fresh air, a chance to be creative and leave the land in better shape than they found it, are all reasons to make a garden, members say.
For Marrianne, it’s growing “nutrient-dense” food for her kitchen. “I can say, ‘This eggplant is from my garden’. It’s a gift and an honour to pick your own herbs and veggies.”
Vic is overjoyed with the birds that come into his Wonthaggi garden. “We have a choir of birds from early morning. And I’m learning about bugs and bees and pollination.”
It’s a lively discussion and you know it will take off again same time, same place next week.
As we head out the door to take photos, Tonia is telling us about the surprising beauty of her garden’s resident praying mantis and blue-tongue lizard.
April 6, 2013
WHEN you are keen to start a garden but don’t know the first thing about the local flora, soil or what grows best where, you can make mistakes.
Enthusiastic gardener Helen arrived from the north of England a few years ago and began planting her house-block-size Bass Coast garden with giant-size eucalypts.
“I really had no idea how they grew or that they would grow so tall,” she admits.
Then there is Shaaron, who arrived in Cape Paterson less than a year ago from Western Australia. She is already growing fruit, vegetables and flowers in this unfamiliar landscape.
Luckily they both found their way to the Wonthaggi University of the Third Age (U3A) gardening group, a meeting place for inspired and motivated gardeners.
Helen says that without the group she would have spent a fortune on establishing her garden and possibly made more costly mistakes. “I was able to get so many plants, cuttings and bulbs. Really, this group started my whole garden. You keep on learning from each other. I have so many questions and the members have so much knowledge.”
Shaaron is excited when plants come up in her new garden, especially if a gardening friend has given her the cutting or seed. She also values the social time spent with group members, and the chance to make lasting connections in the community.
Tonia, who came to gardening a bit reluctantly, says weeding is as good as meditation for stress relief. “My sister is the great gardener in our family but it has crept up on me,” she says.
Exercise, fresh air, a chance to be creative and leave the land in better shape than they found it, are all reasons to make a garden, members say.
For Marrianne, it’s growing “nutrient-dense” food for her kitchen. “I can say, ‘This eggplant is from my garden’. It’s a gift and an honour to pick your own herbs and veggies.”
Vic is overjoyed with the birds that come into his Wonthaggi garden. “We have a choir of birds from early morning. And I’m learning about bugs and bees and pollination.”
It’s a lively discussion and you know it will take off again same time, same place next week.
As we head out the door to take photos, Tonia is telling us about the surprising beauty of her garden’s resident praying mantis and blue-tongue lizard.
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The U3A Gardening Group welcomes new members. Activities include outings and guest speakers. The group also grows veggies and herbs in two plots in the Wonthaggi Community Garden. They meet from 9.30am every Tuesday during term times at the BCAEC campus at 239 White Road, Wonthaggi. Visit u3awonthaggi.org.au for details. Term 2 begins on April 15.
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Wonthaggi U3A gardeners in their communal patch.
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The long and short of leek growing
Judge Barbara Partridge and champion Colin Wilmott.
By Catherine Watson
April 6, 2013
IN THE 1930s, a man who lived where I now live was a big wheel in the Wonthaggi Leek Club and a frequent winner of the annual leek championship.
This is a bigger deal than it might sound now. The Leek Club, introduced to Wonthaggi by the Welsh miners, found fertile ground in Wonthaggi. In 1934, it boasted 44 members, including several women.
My neighbour Jim Bell, who was born in Reed Crescent in 1922, told me that as a boy he watched Mr Pedder – I think that was his name – spend months preparing his championship leeks.
Each year he would transplant his seedlings into a garden bed well manured with chook, cow or horse poo. As was the custom then, the seedlings were planted in a trench. As the leeks grew, the trench was gradually filled in to extend the long white stem, watered, fed and eagerly watched over by Mr Pedder.
About a week before judging, Jim said, the leek championship committee would visit each grower and tag the selected leeks to prevent ring-ins. Ring-ins weren’t the only problem, he reckoned. The growers used to dope the leeks as well!
“Soon as the committee was gone, the old man used to say, ‘Right!’ and he’d get to work. He had this mixture in a bottle and he’d run a wick from the bottle into the crown of the leek. I can’t tell you what was in it but they’d put on a real spurt in the last week.”
I checked this out with Colin Wilmott, the winner of this year’s Wonthaggi Leek Championship, announced at the Wonthaggi Easter Flower and Vegetable Show.
Asked for his special brew, he says he doesn’t have one. He just uses a commercial seaweed or fish fertiliser.
In fact, he says, this year’s winning leek wasn’t a patch on some of his earlier ones. He wins the leek trophy most years and says he would love some competition.
He doesn’t have a special brew but he does have a tip for aspiring rivals: the days of growing leeks in a trench are over. These days he grows them above ground then puts a length of PVC pipe over them to blanch and lengthen the stem.
So hop to it, gardeners. Let’s give Colin a bit of competition at next year's Easter Show.
April 6, 2013
IN THE 1930s, a man who lived where I now live was a big wheel in the Wonthaggi Leek Club and a frequent winner of the annual leek championship.
This is a bigger deal than it might sound now. The Leek Club, introduced to Wonthaggi by the Welsh miners, found fertile ground in Wonthaggi. In 1934, it boasted 44 members, including several women.
My neighbour Jim Bell, who was born in Reed Crescent in 1922, told me that as a boy he watched Mr Pedder – I think that was his name – spend months preparing his championship leeks.
Each year he would transplant his seedlings into a garden bed well manured with chook, cow or horse poo. As was the custom then, the seedlings were planted in a trench. As the leeks grew, the trench was gradually filled in to extend the long white stem, watered, fed and eagerly watched over by Mr Pedder.
About a week before judging, Jim said, the leek championship committee would visit each grower and tag the selected leeks to prevent ring-ins. Ring-ins weren’t the only problem, he reckoned. The growers used to dope the leeks as well!
“Soon as the committee was gone, the old man used to say, ‘Right!’ and he’d get to work. He had this mixture in a bottle and he’d run a wick from the bottle into the crown of the leek. I can’t tell you what was in it but they’d put on a real spurt in the last week.”
I checked this out with Colin Wilmott, the winner of this year’s Wonthaggi Leek Championship, announced at the Wonthaggi Easter Flower and Vegetable Show.
Asked for his special brew, he says he doesn’t have one. He just uses a commercial seaweed or fish fertiliser.
In fact, he says, this year’s winning leek wasn’t a patch on some of his earlier ones. He wins the leek trophy most years and says he would love some competition.
He doesn’t have a special brew but he does have a tip for aspiring rivals: the days of growing leeks in a trench are over. These days he grows them above ground then puts a length of PVC pipe over them to blanch and lengthen the stem.
So hop to it, gardeners. Let’s give Colin a bit of competition at next year's Easter Show.
A taste of the tropics at Easter show
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Show organiser Colin Ormerod and Colin Wilmott of Glen Alvie, who exhibited the first-ever bananas seen at the Wonthaggi Flower and Vegetable Show. |
By LINDA GORDON
March 30, 2013
BANANAS grown in Glen Alvie are on show for the first time this Easter weekend at the annual Wonthaggi Garden Club Flower and Vegetable Show.
March 30, 2013
BANANAS grown in Glen Alvie are on show for the first time this Easter weekend at the annual Wonthaggi Garden Club Flower and Vegetable Show.
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In another first for the show, extra tables were needed for displaying vegetables and fruit. Garden club president and show manager Colin Ormerod said chrysanthemums had made way for bananas, and vegetables were almost as popular as cut flowers this year.
“The fruit and veg has really taken off. It seems people are digging up their flower beds and growing their own produce.” Prize winners Mary Morgan (fruit and vegetables) and Leeta Gill (aggregate show winner and highest number) said the growing conditions in the lead up to the show had been very challenging. “We had that wet early on, then the heat and the dry and storms,” Mary said. Local gardeners triumphed despite the difficult weather, with the show's three judges noted the exceptional quality of the 400 exhibits. Opening the show, Di Fleming said she could only stand back and admire the array of produce, flowers, floral art and photographs on offer. The winners
The Wonthaggi Garden Club Flower and Vegetable Show is on at the Wonthaggi Workmen's Club from 10am-4pm on Saturday and Sunday. |
Mary Morgan
Leeta Gill
Lise Brorsen
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Let one thousand flowers bloom
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Colin and Sheila with Sheila’s prize-winning roses. |
March 23, 2013
COLIN Ormerod always relished the time in the glasshouse just before a flower show. Like the artist before an exhibition opening, he could wholeheartedly enjoy his peerless creations one last time. Soon they would be subject to the judges’ critical gaze and the scrutiny of a curious public.
“I loved being surrounded by them at their absolute peak, plucking a petal here or there.
COLIN Ormerod always relished the time in the glasshouse just before a flower show. Like the artist before an exhibition opening, he could wholeheartedly enjoy his peerless creations one last time. Soon they would be subject to the judges’ critical gaze and the scrutiny of a curious public.
“I loved being surrounded by them at their absolute peak, plucking a petal here or there.
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Colin’s enthusiasm for chrysanthemums, brought with him from Lancashire to Wonthaggi more than 30 years ago, was the basis for a remarkable injection of gardening activity into the town. With his wife Sheila’s support, he and a couple of friends put on the town’s first-ever chrysanthemum exhibition, in 1992, and went on to establish the Wonthaggi Garden Club two years later.
Colin and Sheila have been club office bearers going on 18 years. Every Easter the club puts on the flower and vegetable show, where top-class chrysanthemums feature along with a cornucopia of other flowers, fruits and vegetables. It’s Colin’s job to vet and co-ordinate up to 500 exhibits displayed at the Wonthaggi Workmen’s Club ready for judging before the public opening on Easter Saturday. Colin has been a chrysanthemum fancier since his early 20s but his love of gardening goes back much further to happy days spent with his father in the family’s vegetable and flower allotment. In Britain, the allotments supplemented people’s diet, particularly during and in the aftermath of the Second World War. Colin’s dad, like so many gardeners in the north, also grew flowers. Sheila has finally convinced Colin there is life after chrysanthemums. The couple gave up growing them fairly recently. “I’d been a chrysanthemum widow for a long time,” she says, and laughs. “Now we are doing all sorts of other things together, like volunteering at the State Coal Mine.” Community service is part of life for the Ormerods. In the past, while working full time and raising a family, they put up their hands to help with the Wonthaggi Italian Festa, among other social events and community projects. Getting involved is a way of belonging, Sheila says. Colin also has commitments as a Victorian Chrysanthemum Society member and judge at regional shows, as well as the Royal Melbourne Show. Both of them wish more local people would join the garden club and take part in the annual show, but Colin is not sure whether exhibitions and specialised flower growing appeal as they once did. “Chrysanthemum growers in Great Britain have dropped from 30,000 to about 2000 now.” And yet Wonthaggi’s annual show has a new sponsor, Parklands Wonthaggi, making it more financially viable, and that brings hope. The annual flower and produce show is also a proving ground for trainee judges, with interstate judges travelling to Wonthaggi for the occasion. One of the delights of the annual exhibition at the Wonthaggi Workmen’s Club has been the reviving of the town’s once celebrated Leek Club, which boasted 44 members in 1934, a few of them women. The Wonthaggi Workmen’s now sponsors a prize for the largest leek with a trophy for the best in section. The association with the Workmen’s has been a happy one, Sheila says. “They are very good to us. We get a free room and meals for the judges.” |
Chrysanthemums are much prized in Japan where they stand for longevity and happiness.
Above: Some of Colin's prize blooms over the years.
The Wonthaggi Garden Club Flower and Vegetable Easter Show is open to the public from 12.30pm-5.30pm on Saturday March 30 and 10am-4pm on Sunday March 31. Entries are open to the general public can be lodged with Colin Ormerod until 9pm on Wednesday, March 27. Sections including dahlias, floral art, cut flowers, vegetables, herbs and pot plants. There is also a photographic section. Inquiries: Colin on 5672 2720. 
Colin inspects a bumper crop of tomatoes in his Wonthaggi patch.
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It’s a busy time for Colin and Sheila in the lead-up to the show but Colin still finds time for some serious work in his vegetable garden and raspberry patch, and Sheila has her roses.
“By the way,” Colin says as he inspects a bumper crop of pumpkins, “our children know never to give their mother a bunch of flowers with chrysanthemums in it.”
“By the way,” Colin says as he inspects a bumper crop of pumpkins, “our children know never to give their mother a bunch of flowers with chrysanthemums in it.”
Friends who weed
Ask friends to do their bit.
By Linda Gordon
March 10, 2013
CITY-dwelling family and friends have been saying lately, “You lucky things, another week of perfect summer weather”.
They want our clear blue skies and hot, sunny days to last until the weekend, when they arrive to swim and relax.
But not me and the other local gardeners I talk to. We want rain, a downpour please, and cooler days so we can tackle the tough weeds that are surviving the dry and the heat.
A wander round a garden sees the couch grass brazenly enjoying the late summery conditions and lack of attention.
Thankfully we thought to bag any couch dug up through summer at the Wonthaggi Community Garden. It was left to cook and dry in full sun in big, old plastic bags. Not attractive but an effective use of solar energy.
Leading organic horticulturalist Tim Marshall recommends bagging and baking for tough, persistent weeds such as couch grass and kikuyu.
In his book Weed (ABC Books/Harper Collins, 2010, available in libraries), he includes comprehensive treatments for particular weeds, as well as three simple weeding strategies for successful organic weed control:
That makes good sense. Another handy tip comes from “weedologist” Dave Duncan, who carries packets of seed with him as he weeds. Duncan practices “weed replacement therapy”: pull a weed, plant a seed.
Useful seeds like parsley, pumpkin, rocket or lettuce can be planted as you weed and left to self seed.
Weed includes information on good weeds, how to dig or pull weeds for best results and a layperson’s guide to basic weed biology, and the science and practicalities of organic methods.
It’s amazing to think that a case must still be made for organic growing. About 30 years ago, a wise gardener and kind soul, the late Kevin Heinze, told me in an interview about the prevalence of chemicals in gardening and that poison sprays are not needed in the home garden.
“I have left radio stations after a talkback show quite depressed because all people want to know about is how to kill things. People keep asking me how to get rid of weeds in the garden. If I’ve got too many weeds, I have a barbecue and ask some friends over to help me weed. And if Mum and Dad and the kids spent half an hour weeding there would be no trouble. Weeds are not a major problem.”
Righto visitors from the city, no swimming until you clear out the oxalis!
March 10, 2013
CITY-dwelling family and friends have been saying lately, “You lucky things, another week of perfect summer weather”.
They want our clear blue skies and hot, sunny days to last until the weekend, when they arrive to swim and relax.
But not me and the other local gardeners I talk to. We want rain, a downpour please, and cooler days so we can tackle the tough weeds that are surviving the dry and the heat.
A wander round a garden sees the couch grass brazenly enjoying the late summery conditions and lack of attention.
Thankfully we thought to bag any couch dug up through summer at the Wonthaggi Community Garden. It was left to cook and dry in full sun in big, old plastic bags. Not attractive but an effective use of solar energy.
Leading organic horticulturalist Tim Marshall recommends bagging and baking for tough, persistent weeds such as couch grass and kikuyu.
In his book Weed (ABC Books/Harper Collins, 2010, available in libraries), he includes comprehensive treatments for particular weeds, as well as three simple weeding strategies for successful organic weed control:
- Stop weeds from producing seeds and other propagating parts by deadheading, mowing or grazing (think chooks, goats, guinea pigs).
- Regular and consistent attention beats spasmodic. Marshall recommends regular daily or weekly weeding in short bursts of 10 minutes if that’s all the time you have.
- Work from an edge of least infestation to the problem area. Choose a manageable space and don’t move on until you’ve cleared the site.
That makes good sense. Another handy tip comes from “weedologist” Dave Duncan, who carries packets of seed with him as he weeds. Duncan practices “weed replacement therapy”: pull a weed, plant a seed.
Useful seeds like parsley, pumpkin, rocket or lettuce can be planted as you weed and left to self seed.
Weed includes information on good weeds, how to dig or pull weeds for best results and a layperson’s guide to basic weed biology, and the science and practicalities of organic methods.
It’s amazing to think that a case must still be made for organic growing. About 30 years ago, a wise gardener and kind soul, the late Kevin Heinze, told me in an interview about the prevalence of chemicals in gardening and that poison sprays are not needed in the home garden.
“I have left radio stations after a talkback show quite depressed because all people want to know about is how to kill things. People keep asking me how to get rid of weeds in the garden. If I’ve got too many weeds, I have a barbecue and ask some friends over to help me weed. And if Mum and Dad and the kids spent half an hour weeding there would be no trouble. Weeds are not a major problem.”
Righto visitors from the city, no swimming until you clear out the oxalis!
This story of Frank and Mary Schooneveldt’s 10-hectare property began life as a piece about a garden but ended up being about art and creating a place to share.
Goats and islands to spare
Goat Island Gallery
By Linda Gordon
February 10, 2013
FRANK and Mary Schooneveldt came to the Bass Coast four years ago for a sea change, and to realise a dream.
You wouldn’t use the words retirement project for what they envisioned. Neither of them seems the retiring type. But they did want a new focus for their energy, as the demands of their professional lives gradually decreased.
As of this month Frank is more or less full-time on the property, off the Inverloch-Wonthaggi Road, for the first time.
And while Mary has a list of garden jobs to keep them both occupied for months, they are also committed to spending most of February at the Inverloch Hub gallery space for Frank and fellow Inverloch artist Ian Dahlstrom’s joint exhibition Distractions & Diversions .
This was always a major part of the Schooneveldts’ vision: a studio, gallery, a garden full of sculpture, land to grow in, a setting to inspire.
Goat Island Gallery is something they want to share. They hoped that if they made it we would come.
February 10, 2013
FRANK and Mary Schooneveldt came to the Bass Coast four years ago for a sea change, and to realise a dream.
You wouldn’t use the words retirement project for what they envisioned. Neither of them seems the retiring type. But they did want a new focus for their energy, as the demands of their professional lives gradually decreased.
As of this month Frank is more or less full-time on the property, off the Inverloch-Wonthaggi Road, for the first time.
And while Mary has a list of garden jobs to keep them both occupied for months, they are also committed to spending most of February at the Inverloch Hub gallery space for Frank and fellow Inverloch artist Ian Dahlstrom’s joint exhibition Distractions & Diversions .
This was always a major part of the Schooneveldts’ vision: a studio, gallery, a garden full of sculpture, land to grow in, a setting to inspire.
Goat Island Gallery is something they want to share. They hoped that if they made it we would come.
Mary Schooneveldt and Dulcie
Found Objects, by Frank Schooneveldt
Flotsam, by Frank Schooneveldt
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You may have seen the sign near the multiple letter boxes, at the Boundary Road turnoff about five minutes from Wonthaggi, and wondered about the combination of goat and island.
It comes clear when you arrive and see they have both goats and islands. The goats are in an enclosure near the chook pens and the small islands are a paddock away within about five acres of wetlands. This slice of coastal South Gippsland was just what they were after. Frank says the wetlands in the early morning, the walks, the beaches, Townsends Bluff, all find their way somehow into his art. For Mary it’s more about the weeds. She is, of course, also inspired by what the couple envision for Goat Island Gallery. But the garden calls to her and, she says, it needs “renovation”. “I describe myself as a weeder rather than a gardener.” A stroll around the sculpture walk has Mary pointing out the trouble spots, where native plantings have got out of hand and plants are in the wrong spot. There are olive trees, a small orchard, which provides ample produce for Mary’s preserves, an enclosed vegetable garden, some lovely dahlias and assorted beds, much of it planted and left to grow by previous owners. |
“It’s been a bit of detective work to figure out what we have in the orchard,” she says.
“We uncovered a pathway and a garden seat that we didn’t know were there.”
Since taking over the property they have planted more than 1000 trees, established a serene, light-filled upstairs gallery, to showcase Frank’s vibrant paintings, as well as a downstairs studio where he will tackle big works – maybe sculptures or larger canvasses, he thinks.
“We are just minders of this land,” Frank says. That attitude of custodianship rather than ownership leads to their offering up the gallery, gardens and sculptures for others to share and enjoy.
Mary has also committed herself to the Bass Coast community through work as a volunteer at the Inverloch Visitors Centre, joining the Friends of Inverloch Library and the Wonthaggi U3A (University of the Third Age).
Visitors to the property on the weekend will often find Mary at work in the garden but delighted to down tools and show them around.
She is especially proud of the dahlias this year which came from her aunt’s garden and have found a home on the Bass Coast.
Goat Island Gallery is at 18 Boundary Road, Inverloch.
“We uncovered a pathway and a garden seat that we didn’t know were there.”
Since taking over the property they have planted more than 1000 trees, established a serene, light-filled upstairs gallery, to showcase Frank’s vibrant paintings, as well as a downstairs studio where he will tackle big works – maybe sculptures or larger canvasses, he thinks.
“We are just minders of this land,” Frank says. That attitude of custodianship rather than ownership leads to their offering up the gallery, gardens and sculptures for others to share and enjoy.
Mary has also committed herself to the Bass Coast community through work as a volunteer at the Inverloch Visitors Centre, joining the Friends of Inverloch Library and the Wonthaggi U3A (University of the Third Age).
Visitors to the property on the weekend will often find Mary at work in the garden but delighted to down tools and show them around.
She is especially proud of the dahlias this year which came from her aunt’s garden and have found a home on the Bass Coast.
Goat Island Gallery is at 18 Boundary Road, Inverloch.
Frank Schooneveldt in his studio at Goat Island.
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Distractions & Diversions is at the Inverloch Community Hub in February. Opening hours and more information about Goat Island Gallery, Frank Schooneveldt’s paintings and links to Ian Dahlstrom and other artists’ work are at schooneart.com.
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Wise gardeners learn to simplify and modify so gardening remains a pleasure,
not a burden.
‘Gardener, know thyself’
Sydney Eddison in her Connecticut garden.
January 12, 2012
AT SOME point we must halt. This point was reached about mid-morning in the Wonthaggi Community Garden on a recent Thursday, with the sun toasting our well-hatted heads, and roughing up the pumpkins, fruiting tomatoes and young beans.
We volunteers packed up early and went looking for morning tea. But we agreed it wasn’t just the heat that defeated us, it was also how we felt about the bigger picture, which was looking overwhelming that day.
Yes, like many gardeners, that Thursday’s modest crew of community garden volunteers were women of a certain age, getting to know their limitations.
Thankfully there is a useful guide for those of us wanting to garden, in some way, shape or form, until we drop.
American gardener Sydney Eddison’s Gardening for a Lifetime, How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older (available through the West Gippsland Regional Library Service), has many suggestions; some seem a lot like common sense but most are well worth noting.
Under the heading ‘Gardener, know thyself’ Eddison admits her cultivated acres in the wooded hills of Connecticut were a testament to her desire for perfection. She became “infatuated with a style and scale of gardening suitable only for the relatively young and very energetic”.
With the death of her husband and limited funds for paid helpers, Eddison took a long hard look at her garden, and herself. She had no immediate plan to leave her beloved place. Instead, as she moved into her 80s with a dodgy hip, she took action.
She recommends ruthlessness in dealing with existing plantings. Culling badly behaved perennials that take time and labour to keep their year-long, good looks was a first step. Shrubs can replace perennials very well, and need much less care and attention.
Trusty, yet attractive plants in shady spots where weeds are never as problematic as in sunny beds can save your back and require less water and maintenance thanks to slower growth habits.
Never say no to an offer of help. And don’t underestimate older gardeners or the efforts of children and young adults.
AT SOME point we must halt. This point was reached about mid-morning in the Wonthaggi Community Garden on a recent Thursday, with the sun toasting our well-hatted heads, and roughing up the pumpkins, fruiting tomatoes and young beans.
We volunteers packed up early and went looking for morning tea. But we agreed it wasn’t just the heat that defeated us, it was also how we felt about the bigger picture, which was looking overwhelming that day.
Yes, like many gardeners, that Thursday’s modest crew of community garden volunteers were women of a certain age, getting to know their limitations.
Thankfully there is a useful guide for those of us wanting to garden, in some way, shape or form, until we drop.
American gardener Sydney Eddison’s Gardening for a Lifetime, How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older (available through the West Gippsland Regional Library Service), has many suggestions; some seem a lot like common sense but most are well worth noting.
Under the heading ‘Gardener, know thyself’ Eddison admits her cultivated acres in the wooded hills of Connecticut were a testament to her desire for perfection. She became “infatuated with a style and scale of gardening suitable only for the relatively young and very energetic”.
With the death of her husband and limited funds for paid helpers, Eddison took a long hard look at her garden, and herself. She had no immediate plan to leave her beloved place. Instead, as she moved into her 80s with a dodgy hip, she took action.
She recommends ruthlessness in dealing with existing plantings. Culling badly behaved perennials that take time and labour to keep their year-long, good looks was a first step. Shrubs can replace perennials very well, and need much less care and attention.
Trusty, yet attractive plants in shady spots where weeds are never as problematic as in sunny beds can save your back and require less water and maintenance thanks to slower growth habits.
Never say no to an offer of help. And don’t underestimate older gardeners or the efforts of children and young adults.
For information on Sydney Eddison’s books, visit Timber Press.
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If you do need to find paid help think about getting someone only for the busiest times and the toughest jobs. A diary, a list and some informal networking are invaluable in this, Eddison says.
Containers of all sorts, with easy watering nearby, make beautiful and practical alternatives to larger garden spaces. There is another alternative of course. Join a garden group and help as and when you can. The Wonthaggi Community Garden, White Road, welcomes visitors and helpers of all ages on Thursday mornings from 10am. There are community gardens in Cowes and Inverloch, and plans are on the drawing board for a community garden and farmers’ market as part of the Cape Paterson Ecovillage project. |
A lovingly restored and maintained miner’s cottage and garden have much to tell us
about how the people of Wonthaggi lived, worked and played last century.
Boots ’n’ all
Sweet as: Sweet peas flank the side path.
By Linda Gordon
December 31, 2012
ON A warm Wednesday afternoon recently one of Wonthaggi’s best-tended, prettiest cottage gardens was waiting in the sunshine to be enjoyed.
A good crowd were gathered nearby, eating and socialising: coffees, cakes, gourmet snacks and lots of catch-up. It was a scene the one-time cottage dwellers could never have imagined.
This modest home and garden sits just behind the Wonthaggi State Coal Mine visitors centre and cafe. And while it may not be the main attraction, it is a lovingly restored and maintained site with much to tell us about how people lived, worked and played here last century.
From the front gate and arch, draped with a climbing rose, to the stately dunny by the back fence, the garden is a delightfully nostalgic trip with plenty of reminders about hard work and making do, should we be inclined to get carried away by the romance of the quaint cottage and sweetly scented garden.
Sweet peas, lavenders, fruit trees, all sorts of geraniums and many pretty border plants flank the side entrance to the weatherboard cottage and surround the galvanised water tank and stand.
In the washhouse, on top of the bricked-in washing copper, sits a pair of worn work boots. We can fill in the gaps; perhaps the miner came home on a warm, spring afternoon and left the boots for cleaning before going to check on a troublesome broody hen.
The vegetable garden is expansive and reminds us of how much the family’s welfare depended on good weather and round-the-clock attention.
This backyard is not a recreation and entertainment zone. With no TV to keep people indoors after dinner, there was time for an hour of gardening before bed.
Volunteers now maintain the cottage and its historic surrounds. It was opened to the public three years ago to give visitors to the State Coal Mine another insight into the Wonthaggi miner’s life.
Visitors can wander through parts of the restored cottage and view the outbuildings, including a chook pen (with chooks), dunny, garden shed and washhouse.
There are also composting bays, some plants for sale and information about the restoration work.
December 31, 2012
ON A warm Wednesday afternoon recently one of Wonthaggi’s best-tended, prettiest cottage gardens was waiting in the sunshine to be enjoyed.
A good crowd were gathered nearby, eating and socialising: coffees, cakes, gourmet snacks and lots of catch-up. It was a scene the one-time cottage dwellers could never have imagined.
This modest home and garden sits just behind the Wonthaggi State Coal Mine visitors centre and cafe. And while it may not be the main attraction, it is a lovingly restored and maintained site with much to tell us about how people lived, worked and played here last century.
From the front gate and arch, draped with a climbing rose, to the stately dunny by the back fence, the garden is a delightfully nostalgic trip with plenty of reminders about hard work and making do, should we be inclined to get carried away by the romance of the quaint cottage and sweetly scented garden.
Sweet peas, lavenders, fruit trees, all sorts of geraniums and many pretty border plants flank the side entrance to the weatherboard cottage and surround the galvanised water tank and stand.
In the washhouse, on top of the bricked-in washing copper, sits a pair of worn work boots. We can fill in the gaps; perhaps the miner came home on a warm, spring afternoon and left the boots for cleaning before going to check on a troublesome broody hen.
The vegetable garden is expansive and reminds us of how much the family’s welfare depended on good weather and round-the-clock attention.
This backyard is not a recreation and entertainment zone. With no TV to keep people indoors after dinner, there was time for an hour of gardening before bed.
Volunteers now maintain the cottage and its historic surrounds. It was opened to the public three years ago to give visitors to the State Coal Mine another insight into the Wonthaggi miner’s life.
Visitors can wander through parts of the restored cottage and view the outbuildings, including a chook pen (with chooks), dunny, garden shed and washhouse.
There are also composting bays, some plants for sale and information about the restoration work.
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Place of reflection: The old dunny makes a striking centrepiece. |
The highlight of a recent garden-focussed visit to Sri Lanka for this lucky columnist was
the exotic sight of gardens bursting with vegetables and flowers on railway platforms, everywhere from major city stations to tiny, up-country way stops.
A bloomin' fine line
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By Linda Gordon
December 1, 2012 Growing edible plants in public spaces is still viewed as a novelty in much of Australia. Public growers have to make a case for their efforts, pushing the social capital barrow rather than their wheel barrows. But gardening on public land doesn’t have to be a statement or even a commitment to the greater good, although that is often the result. |
Platforms one and two at Kandy Central Station include a vibrant food and flower garden complete with ponds.
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What would you say, for example, to a stand of sweet corn planted beside a lily pond on platform three at Dandenong railway station? Perhaps deep pink bougainvillea growing in clay pots beneath dozens of hanging baskets on platform two could work?
It would be nice to wait for a train at Flinders Street while watching birds sipping from the pond and orange fish lolling about under the lily pads.
In Sri Lanka this is commonplace. Nothing novel about blooming gardens of vegetables and flowers on railway station platforms there, from busy city and suburban lines to quiet country stops.
It would be nice to wait for a train at Flinders Street while watching birds sipping from the pond and orange fish lolling about under the lily pads.
In Sri Lanka this is commonplace. Nothing novel about blooming gardens of vegetables and flowers on railway station platforms there, from busy city and suburban lines to quiet country stops.
At Haputale station hanging baskets, a well-trimmed hedge and pot plants are just part of the vegetative splendour. Note the red phone box kept on the platform for its heritage appeal although everyone has mobile phones.
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Needless to say, the gardens transform the stations, help relieve commuter stress, and bring beauty and nature into that most mundane activity: the catching of public transport.
Of course the climate is kind to the plants and the pace of travel is often slow, allowing time between trains for the many station staff to potter in their gardens. And, while it sounds quaint and hardly “core business” for transport infrastructure providers, it is so worthwhile for the traveller. |
A few railway stations in Australia have gardens. Funded community projects and guerrilla gardening get them going, and there is a history of country stations (and a few scattered suburban stops) having pot plants and flower beds.
What is startling, by contrast, is the ubiquity and abundance, the pride and pleasure of Sri Lanka’s railway gardens. It’s a different way of viewing public activity on real estate held in common.
Long, long ago, some far-seeing public servant responded to the question, “Why would you plant gardens in the middle of railway stations?” with “Why wouldn’t you?”
What is startling, by contrast, is the ubiquity and abundance, the pride and pleasure of Sri Lanka’s railway gardens. It’s a different way of viewing public activity on real estate held in common.
Long, long ago, some far-seeing public servant responded to the question, “Why would you plant gardens in the middle of railway stations?” with “Why wouldn’t you?”
The space-saver garden
November 9, 2012
It doesn’t take much to grow a garden, provided you’ve got sun and water. This lettuce seedling has found a home in a Wonthaggi garden path. Nearby parsley plants have also seeded and new plants are growing happily in the path.
It doesn’t take much to grow a garden, provided you’ve got sun and water. This lettuce seedling has found a home in a Wonthaggi garden path. Nearby parsley plants have also seeded and new plants are growing happily in the path.
Sweet taste of success
The "Tomato Man", Steve Morant
By Catherine Watson
November 3, 2012
THE ladies are talking fascinators, the punters are talking odds, the best horses in the country are raring to go. It can mean only one thing … time to put in the tomatoes.
Melbourne Cup Day, the first Tuesday in November, is traditionally the day when home gardeners take a calculated punt and plant out their tomato seedlings, trusting that the odds of a late frost are now at least 100-1.
Tomatoes are among the most satisfying vegetables to grow because there’s such a huge difference between the store-bought varieties, selected for their ability to stand up to being dropped on the floor, and the sweet, tart, thin-skinned, flavoursome ones we grow at home.
They’re reasonably easy to grow but there are a few rules that can shorten the odds of a good crop:
Most of the little I know about tomatoes came from Steve Morant, Wonthaggi’s legendary “Tomato Man”, who kept half of Wonthaggi supplied with plants and tomatoes.
Steve had many interests but only one passion: growing tomatoes. He used to sow his seeds in a glasshouse in September and go out twice a day to turn the seedlings to ensure they didn’t grow crooked following the weak winter sun.
He grew only one variety, the Vivian, which he bought for 25 years from a small company called New Gippsland Seeds. His tomatoes grew like bunches of super-sized grapes up plants that were well over two metres high, with stems as thick as broomsticks.
His secrets, which have never been revealed before: a weekly feed with a weak solution of liquid manure. He also removed all the leaves from the base of the plant and all the laterals, which are the shoots that grow between the main stem and the branches.
As he removed the laterals, he used to plant them out to make new plants for the many fans he had attracted over the years.
When New Gippsland Seeds announced in 2005 that it would no longer sell Vivian seeds, Steve visibly wilted and died just a couple of years later. In all fairness to the seed company, he was in his 90th year.
One final warning: even Steve had bad years when all his tomato plants got the blight. In gardening, as in horse racing, there’s no such thing as a sure thing.
November 3, 2012
THE ladies are talking fascinators, the punters are talking odds, the best horses in the country are raring to go. It can mean only one thing … time to put in the tomatoes.
Melbourne Cup Day, the first Tuesday in November, is traditionally the day when home gardeners take a calculated punt and plant out their tomato seedlings, trusting that the odds of a late frost are now at least 100-1.
Tomatoes are among the most satisfying vegetables to grow because there’s such a huge difference between the store-bought varieties, selected for their ability to stand up to being dropped on the floor, and the sweet, tart, thin-skinned, flavoursome ones we grow at home.
They’re reasonably easy to grow but there are a few rules that can shorten the odds of a good crop:
- Rotate your tomatoes to a different spot each year to reduce the chance of disease.
- Most tomato plants require staking. Many grow to two metres or more, so it needs to be a substantial stake. If you’re planting a few, you’ll probably find it easier to plant them against a wall or fence.
- If you’re slack, like me, you’ll find it easier to plant bush varieties, although you won’t get the same range.
- You want them to get the morning sun but don’t plant them where they will cop the fierce late afternoon summer sun. That can kill anything.
- Don’t use too much nitrogen fertiliser. It’s the fruit you’re interested in, not the leaves.
- Water the soil around the plant, not the leaves.
Most of the little I know about tomatoes came from Steve Morant, Wonthaggi’s legendary “Tomato Man”, who kept half of Wonthaggi supplied with plants and tomatoes.
Steve had many interests but only one passion: growing tomatoes. He used to sow his seeds in a glasshouse in September and go out twice a day to turn the seedlings to ensure they didn’t grow crooked following the weak winter sun.
He grew only one variety, the Vivian, which he bought for 25 years from a small company called New Gippsland Seeds. His tomatoes grew like bunches of super-sized grapes up plants that were well over two metres high, with stems as thick as broomsticks.
His secrets, which have never been revealed before: a weekly feed with a weak solution of liquid manure. He also removed all the leaves from the base of the plant and all the laterals, which are the shoots that grow between the main stem and the branches.
As he removed the laterals, he used to plant them out to make new plants for the many fans he had attracted over the years.
When New Gippsland Seeds announced in 2005 that it would no longer sell Vivian seeds, Steve visibly wilted and died just a couple of years later. In all fairness to the seed company, he was in his 90th year.
One final warning: even Steve had bad years when all his tomato plants got the blight. In gardening, as in horse racing, there’s no such thing as a sure thing.
How to pick asparagus
A small patch of heaven
By Catherine Watson
October 21, 2012
IF you’ve ever driven past the asparagus fields around Koo Wee Rup early on a spring morning, you will probably have noticed crews of pickers in coolie hats crouched low over the rows, leaving neat piles of asparagus behind them for the packer to pick up.
What you may not have seen, unless your eyes are better than mine, is the long asparagus knife they use to cut the asparagus below the soil.
It was only one day when I stopped to buy some asparagus from a grower in Dalmore Road that I found the secret to harvesting asparagus, which also happens to be the secret to growing it.
Lou and Vince are two Italian brothers who have been growing asparagus in Koo Wee Rup for as long as most people can remember. In the season they’re run off their feet but that never seems to stop them having a chat with the customers.
Lou explained to me the pattern of picking that the professional growers use once the plant is well established.
When the first spear is of a suitable length, it’s tempting to snap it off. Resist the temptation. You must cut it off below the soil. The reason, Lou explained, is that the desperate plant is then forced to send out more shoots to seek life-giving daylight so it can produce chlorophyll.
That initial spear will be followed by two more. Cut them off below the soil. Those two will be followed by four, and those four will be followed by eight. After that you might get four and then two. That’s your lot for that plant for the year. A single spear will come up and you leave it to “fern out” and store energy for the next season.
At the height of the season, when it’s warm and humid, asparagus can grow two centimetres in an hour. The pickers are there every day. This season hasn’t been a bumper season and they’re picking only every second or third day.
Lou is a man of wide interests but the asparagus fascinates him as much as anything. There are many superstitions surrounding this plant, which has been cultivated for more than 2000 years. Some people believe it’s an aphrodisiac, probably because of all those spears thrusting through the earth. It definitely makes your pee smell funny. Lou tells the story of calling in a plumber the first season after he and Vince took over the asparagus farm. “I think we gotta blocked pipe,” he told the plumber. “There’s a funny smell around the place.”
“Have you boys been eating a lot of asparagus?” the knowing plumber asked. Of course they’d been eating the stuff like crazy. Who wouldn't?
Most of us who have attempted to grow asparagus know we’re not supposed to pick it for several years to allow the plants to gain strength. I remember my father planting some crowns when he was about 50 and wondering casually if he’d be around in five years’ time to pick the first crop. He died about six months before it was due, which I always felt was a cruel twist of fate.
At least it kept my mother in asparagus for almost 30 years, although she used to complain that her own asparagus never tasted as good as the stuff she bought in the shops.
I planted my own asparagus patch about 10 years ago but I’m a haphazard gardener and I never bothered to weed or water or fertilise it. After hearing Lou, I realised I hadn’t even picked it properly. There was never enough for a meal so I tended to snap off the odd spear as I passed by.
This season I decided to try Lou’s way and see if it made any difference. Instead of snapping off the few spears that poked through the grass, I religiously cut them off
below ground, sawing narrowly so as not to cut through any others that might be
about to pop up.
October 21, 2012
IF you’ve ever driven past the asparagus fields around Koo Wee Rup early on a spring morning, you will probably have noticed crews of pickers in coolie hats crouched low over the rows, leaving neat piles of asparagus behind them for the packer to pick up.
What you may not have seen, unless your eyes are better than mine, is the long asparagus knife they use to cut the asparagus below the soil.
It was only one day when I stopped to buy some asparagus from a grower in Dalmore Road that I found the secret to harvesting asparagus, which also happens to be the secret to growing it.
Lou and Vince are two Italian brothers who have been growing asparagus in Koo Wee Rup for as long as most people can remember. In the season they’re run off their feet but that never seems to stop them having a chat with the customers.
Lou explained to me the pattern of picking that the professional growers use once the plant is well established.
When the first spear is of a suitable length, it’s tempting to snap it off. Resist the temptation. You must cut it off below the soil. The reason, Lou explained, is that the desperate plant is then forced to send out more shoots to seek life-giving daylight so it can produce chlorophyll.
That initial spear will be followed by two more. Cut them off below the soil. Those two will be followed by four, and those four will be followed by eight. After that you might get four and then two. That’s your lot for that plant for the year. A single spear will come up and you leave it to “fern out” and store energy for the next season.
At the height of the season, when it’s warm and humid, asparagus can grow two centimetres in an hour. The pickers are there every day. This season hasn’t been a bumper season and they’re picking only every second or third day.
Lou is a man of wide interests but the asparagus fascinates him as much as anything. There are many superstitions surrounding this plant, which has been cultivated for more than 2000 years. Some people believe it’s an aphrodisiac, probably because of all those spears thrusting through the earth. It definitely makes your pee smell funny. Lou tells the story of calling in a plumber the first season after he and Vince took over the asparagus farm. “I think we gotta blocked pipe,” he told the plumber. “There’s a funny smell around the place.”
“Have you boys been eating a lot of asparagus?” the knowing plumber asked. Of course they’d been eating the stuff like crazy. Who wouldn't?
Most of us who have attempted to grow asparagus know we’re not supposed to pick it for several years to allow the plants to gain strength. I remember my father planting some crowns when he was about 50 and wondering casually if he’d be around in five years’ time to pick the first crop. He died about six months before it was due, which I always felt was a cruel twist of fate.
At least it kept my mother in asparagus for almost 30 years, although she used to complain that her own asparagus never tasted as good as the stuff she bought in the shops.
I planted my own asparagus patch about 10 years ago but I’m a haphazard gardener and I never bothered to weed or water or fertilise it. After hearing Lou, I realised I hadn’t even picked it properly. There was never enough for a meal so I tended to snap off the odd spear as I passed by.
This season I decided to try Lou’s way and see if it made any difference. Instead of snapping off the few spears that poked through the grass, I religiously cut them off
below ground, sawing narrowly so as not to cut through any others that might be
about to pop up.
|
Bingo! The difference is amazing.
Today I went out and picked about 10 spears. Not a family feast but certainly enough to put the pot on for, even if I did have to push away a toad who appeared to like the stuff as much as I do. For information about growing asparagus, visit the Australian Asparagus Council website. |
Asparagus-loving toad, Wonthaggi
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The mysterious case of the missing seeds
October 14, 2012
Dear Ms Compost
It is with some trepidation that I write to make this inquiry. May I say from the beginning that I have been an avid gardener almost all my life and while I find it odious to notify you of my expertise in this worthy pastime it may give credit to the validity of my question.
I am a past joint winner of the prestigious annual Reed Crescent pumpkin-growing competition, respected for my prowess in the production of rare fruits and vegetables and have been successfully growing garden produce of the strangest and almost forgotten strains for many seasons.
However during the past few months I have been unable to acquire a supply of seeds of Spanish red onions, a variety that I value dearly for its keeping qualities. I have contacted my normal suppliers and other sources of rare and ancient seeds, both here and interstate, and have been confronted with a very high and very blank wall. It would appear that these seeds have vanished overnight from the face of the earth.
Having said that, I am well aware that certain seeds facing extinction have been sent into space to ensure their protection against future loss, yet I fail to see how the varieties I pursue could be belatedly added to this collection when whatever it is they are travelling in must be whizzing around up there at a great rate of knots.
October 14, 2012
Dear Ms Compost
It is with some trepidation that I write to make this inquiry. May I say from the beginning that I have been an avid gardener almost all my life and while I find it odious to notify you of my expertise in this worthy pastime it may give credit to the validity of my question.
I am a past joint winner of the prestigious annual Reed Crescent pumpkin-growing competition, respected for my prowess in the production of rare fruits and vegetables and have been successfully growing garden produce of the strangest and almost forgotten strains for many seasons.
However during the past few months I have been unable to acquire a supply of seeds of Spanish red onions, a variety that I value dearly for its keeping qualities. I have contacted my normal suppliers and other sources of rare and ancient seeds, both here and interstate, and have been confronted with a very high and very blank wall. It would appear that these seeds have vanished overnight from the face of the earth.
Having said that, I am well aware that certain seeds facing extinction have been sent into space to ensure their protection against future loss, yet I fail to see how the varieties I pursue could be belatedly added to this collection when whatever it is they are travelling in must be whizzing around up there at a great rate of knots.
Could the missing seeds be in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway?
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Do you think these now unobtainable gems may have been brought to the attention of the Millennium Seed Bank at London's Royal Botanic Gardens or the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian Island of Spitsbergen by vested interests where they may be locked away in some deep hole never to see again the light of day?
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Could it be that the big multi-national fresh food people see these varieties in the hands of talented and enthusiastic backyard growers as a threat to their monopoly? Have they cornered the market with the intent of making them unprocurable to the common people, the preservers of all that is good and superior in order to protect their own inferior offerings?
I would be grateful if you could put your renowned investigative skills to work and come up with an answer to this dilemma for I and my few remaining onions are at our wits’ end.
You may well decline to respond to this and understandably so. Why, just last week following my inquiry to a regional nursery I looked in my rear view mirror as I drove off and saw a staff member jotting down what I can only presume was my rego number.
This is open country where we Bass Coasters live so there is no place to hide. And we all know in these parts foreign embassies are light on the ground.
Name and address withheld for obvious reasons
Editor’s note: The Bass Coast Post’s gardening editor, Linda Gordon, is on holiday in Sri Lanka (yes, we know – spring is a very strange time for a gardening editor to take leave) but your question will be forwarded to her by express post. In the meantime, if any of our readers locates a packet of red Spanish onion seeds, or Spanish red onion seeds, please contact us urgently.
I would be grateful if you could put your renowned investigative skills to work and come up with an answer to this dilemma for I and my few remaining onions are at our wits’ end.
You may well decline to respond to this and understandably so. Why, just last week following my inquiry to a regional nursery I looked in my rear view mirror as I drove off and saw a staff member jotting down what I can only presume was my rego number.
This is open country where we Bass Coasters live so there is no place to hide. And we all know in these parts foreign embassies are light on the ground.
Name and address withheld for obvious reasons
Editor’s note: The Bass Coast Post’s gardening editor, Linda Gordon, is on holiday in Sri Lanka (yes, we know – spring is a very strange time for a gardening editor to take leave) but your question will be forwarded to her by express post. In the meantime, if any of our readers locates a packet of red Spanish onion seeds, or Spanish red onion seeds, please contact us urgently.
Roundabout now is time to plant the lettuces
Bass Coast's gardeners take pride in their designs.
By Linda Gordon
September 22, 2012
WONTHAGGI’S roundabouts are looking more like cottage gardens and less like traffic managers with each new planting.
This time we see an interesting mix of bronze-leafed lettuces, primulas and pansies, sweet alyssum plus lots of cheery orange calendulas. Recent plantings included parsley borders and onions.
The shire’s in-house gardening crew work on the designs, decide on plants and maintain the beds.
Bass Coast is not alone, with public authorities and citizens in cities and towns throughout Australia and Europe transforming the humble concrete roundabout with edible and other plantings.
Slap bang in the middle of an unrelentingly busy road in Hackney, in London, a resident has adopted her local roundabout and planted a cottage garden that now produces a commercial crop of lavender.
Online research also revealed a superb example of a wildflower meadow planted with cornflowers, poppies and grasses, as well as schemes to sponsor plantings and adopt roundabouts.
Closer to home, the South Grampians Shire Council donates vegetables grown in a central Hamilton roundabout to the Uniting Church for distribution to disadvantaged families. Hamilton Uniting Church Minister Peter Cook praised the shire’s parks and gardens unit for their creativity and generosity.
Wonthaggi’s roundabouts could support a larger crop of veggies but concerns about litter, debris and pollution mean food plants won’t be harvested for eating.
Infrastructure maintenance manager Jamie Sutherland said the garden crews take pride in the work they do. “We receive many positive comments from the public.” He said most of the lettuces will go to seed by the time they are finished as display plants.
Now, about those golf courses ...
September 22, 2012
WONTHAGGI’S roundabouts are looking more like cottage gardens and less like traffic managers with each new planting.
This time we see an interesting mix of bronze-leafed lettuces, primulas and pansies, sweet alyssum plus lots of cheery orange calendulas. Recent plantings included parsley borders and onions.
The shire’s in-house gardening crew work on the designs, decide on plants and maintain the beds.
Bass Coast is not alone, with public authorities and citizens in cities and towns throughout Australia and Europe transforming the humble concrete roundabout with edible and other plantings.
Slap bang in the middle of an unrelentingly busy road in Hackney, in London, a resident has adopted her local roundabout and planted a cottage garden that now produces a commercial crop of lavender.
Online research also revealed a superb example of a wildflower meadow planted with cornflowers, poppies and grasses, as well as schemes to sponsor plantings and adopt roundabouts.
Closer to home, the South Grampians Shire Council donates vegetables grown in a central Hamilton roundabout to the Uniting Church for distribution to disadvantaged families. Hamilton Uniting Church Minister Peter Cook praised the shire’s parks and gardens unit for their creativity and generosity.
Wonthaggi’s roundabouts could support a larger crop of veggies but concerns about litter, debris and pollution mean food plants won’t be harvested for eating.
Infrastructure maintenance manager Jamie Sutherland said the garden crews take pride in the work they do. “We receive many positive comments from the public.” He said most of the lettuces will go to seed by the time they are finished as display plants.
Now, about those golf courses ...
Kay and Neil Coxon built their garden world in Korumburra bed by bed, stone by stone, tree by tree and plant by plant. Photos by Ponch Hawkes unless indicated.
Hand-crafting a private paradise
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By Linda Gordon
August 26, 2012 YOU turn off the unmade road into a curve of driveway. And with little warning a bright flare of colour catches your eye: a camellia against the grey sky. On the far bank of the first dam a Japanese maple is aglow; leafless, its ruby trunk and limbs look hand-painted. Frogs are calling. A spit of rain flecks the water. Sculptural stones and a carved wooden girl, dipping her toes in the dam, are still points in this rush of sensory information. You’ve slipped away and entered a private garden world. It was this experience that Neil Coxon longed for at the end of each working day; to turn into the curve of the drive, breathe out deeply and let the garden do the rest. Kay and Neil Coxon built their garden world in Korumburra bed by bed, stone by stone, tree by tree and plant by plant. They built the seats and arbours, the arches and sculptural climbing frames. They built their house, and a spacious cubby for their youngest child, the bridges over the creek, dry stone walls throughout and a walkway over the second dam. Sculptures, trellis, paving; there is nothing here that does not carry the mark of their hands. When they arrived, in 1989, the land was bare. The dairy farmer had carved off their 10 acres and moved on. “The land was a bit odd, but we liked it,” Kay says. “There were natural hollows, a seasonal creek and an almost sheer slope, like an amphitheatre.” If Kay is the visionary, with the artist’s eye for colour, light, form and perspective, Neil is the gifted craftsman who can turn a place to sit into a restful – or quirky – beauty spot. Together they make and remake the garden, revelling in work that has them aching towards a beer at the end of the day. Right now they are cutting back with gusto. Mulching and composting, getting beds ready for warmer days. “This hard yakka we’re doing now, come the spring, it’s so worth it,” Neil says. Kay adds, “You don’t always have to work hard. Sometimes you just go out and pick flowers, or wander around.” |
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Yet you get the sense that the labour involved in the care of a garden of this size and complexity is profoundly important to them both.
Neil explains: “Kay was very sick and the garden probably helped save her life.”
About 12 years ago Kay was diagnosed with aggressive cancer. She spent long months indoors, resting and recovering. It was the demands and allure of the garden combined with her steely determination to be well again that pulled her through. Kay won’t dwell on this part of her story. She’s more interested in the question of what it is about the garden that keeps them so involved.
“It’s a challenge to your intellect. I read a lot of gardening books and do research.” These two retired teachers both thrive on the theory and practice of gardening.
Kay is most influenced by the late Christopher Lloyd, an English plantsman and advocate of structured and profuse plantings. Great Dixter, Lloyd’s house and garden in East Sussex, was top of the must-see list when the Coxons went travelling some years ago. “We saw him in his garden. He waved at me,” Kay says.
Neil explains: “Kay was very sick and the garden probably helped save her life.”
About 12 years ago Kay was diagnosed with aggressive cancer. She spent long months indoors, resting and recovering. It was the demands and allure of the garden combined with her steely determination to be well again that pulled her through. Kay won’t dwell on this part of her story. She’s more interested in the question of what it is about the garden that keeps them so involved.
“It’s a challenge to your intellect. I read a lot of gardening books and do research.” These two retired teachers both thrive on the theory and practice of gardening.
Kay is most influenced by the late Christopher Lloyd, an English plantsman and advocate of structured and profuse plantings. Great Dixter, Lloyd’s house and garden in East Sussex, was top of the must-see list when the Coxons went travelling some years ago. “We saw him in his garden. He waved at me,” Kay says.
The hills form a perfect backdrop to Neil and Kay Coxon's garden. Picture: Linda Gordon
The glasshouse is one of Kay's favourite places. Picture: Linda Gordon
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Lloyd’s talent for form and structure in planting is evident throughout Kay and Neil’s garden.
For example your eyes are drawn to a massed planting of hellebores, in subtle greens and the occasional soft pink, not just because they are pretty blooms in winter but also because they contrast so strikingly with the warm brown mulch of deeply layered oak leaves. Kay is a lover of foliage and colour combinations such as grey and yellow. She is developing the plantswoman’s desire for the exotic while continuing to favour the much-loved seasonal forms of deciduous trees. The visual delights of the espaliered apple, clinging to its archway, weeping willows in bud burst by the creek, deep purple crocus, or expertly twined youngberry stalks mean you almost don’t see the sculpture that Kay made from old wood turning forms and bits of scrap metal, some from her late father’s workshop. |
Then there’s the picture-perfect, Country Life backdrop of green hill, rustic gate, a few cattle and Kay’s beloved 29-year-old horse.
The Coxons have opened their garden twice as part of the official Victorian Open Garden scheme.
Despite the extra stress and work of getting the garden “near perfect”, they enjoyed sharing their garden with visitors. But it’s the quiet, private moments that count.
“When we were building a wall, not so long ago, what we really enjoyed about it was pulling up a chair, having a drink and just looking at what progress we’d made,” Neil says.
The Coxons have opened their garden twice as part of the official Victorian Open Garden scheme.
Despite the extra stress and work of getting the garden “near perfect”, they enjoyed sharing their garden with visitors. But it’s the quiet, private moments that count.
“When we were building a wall, not so long ago, what we really enjoyed about it was pulling up a chair, having a drink and just looking at what progress we’d made,” Neil says.
READER'S COMMENT:
Dear Linda
I am really enjoying The Compost. While the community garden cauliflower looked almost too good to eat, I would like to share a recipe for lovely cauliflower soup that your readers might enjoy. Serves 5-6 – just increase or decrease ingredients as required
Ingredients
50 gms butter
1 tablespoon good olive oil
1 medium cauliflower divided into flowerets
1 leek (white part only) washed and finely sliced
2 cloves of garlic finely chopped
1 fennel bulb finely chopped (reserve fronds for garnish)
1 large potato peeled and diced
150 ml white wine (or dry vermouth)
700 ml chicken or vegetable stock
salt, pepper, few fennel seeds ground,
250 ml cream
Method
Cheesy croutons – roll cubes of day-old bread in olive oil and grated parmesan and bake at 160deg on baking paper until browned and crisp.
Barbara’s garden sounds wonderful and her story is truly inspiring. I look forward to your next column
Prue Blackburne
Dear Linda
I am really enjoying The Compost. While the community garden cauliflower looked almost too good to eat, I would like to share a recipe for lovely cauliflower soup that your readers might enjoy. Serves 5-6 – just increase or decrease ingredients as required
Ingredients
50 gms butter
1 tablespoon good olive oil
1 medium cauliflower divided into flowerets
1 leek (white part only) washed and finely sliced
2 cloves of garlic finely chopped
1 fennel bulb finely chopped (reserve fronds for garnish)
1 large potato peeled and diced
150 ml white wine (or dry vermouth)
700 ml chicken or vegetable stock
salt, pepper, few fennel seeds ground,
250 ml cream
Method
- Heat butter and oil and gently sauté leek, garlic and fennel till softened.
- Add potato and cauliflower and toss in butter and oil.
- Add white wine and cook off alcohol. Add stock, salt and pepper to taste and ground fennel.
- Add more stock or water if necessary to make sure vegetables are well covered.
- Cook until vegetables are soft and flavour has developed. Cool and add cream, then blend with hand held mixer.
- Re-heat and serve with garnish of more cream, cheesy croutons (see below) and fennel fronds.
Cheesy croutons – roll cubes of day-old bread in olive oil and grated parmesan and bake at 160deg on baking paper until browned and crisp.
Barbara’s garden sounds wonderful and her story is truly inspiring. I look forward to your next column
Prue Blackburne
The thoughtful gardener
Barbara Hallett likes to work with nature.
By Linda Gordon
August 11, 2012
Wonthaggi gardener Barbara Hallett is experimenting with a capsicum in her glasshouse. She has extended its fruiting season into late July but won’t call it a success just yet.
It is one of several small-scale experiments Barbara likes to have on the go in her garden, behind the house her husband built more than 50 years ago.
Her thoughtful, free-ranging gardening style has transformed the yard from its original unyielding clay pan into a truly productive food garden where nothing, but nothing, is wasted.
She upcycles, reusing low-grade materials such as weeds in new and useful ways, recycles everything the garden produces and chooses multipurpose plants that give more than food.
Here’s an example: Barbara — following her dictum of working with nature rather than against it, lets the dreaded kikuyu grass grow rampant in places during the warm months, harvests it in autumn then dries it and uses it as seed-free mulch. This high-grade material is better than any hay or straw, she says.
It’s not exactly permaculture or any other growing method as such. ’’It’s just my way,’’ she says.
Her way is both systematic and informal. For example, she will carefully stagger plantings in order to have produce throughout the year but is happy to let some plants complete their growth cycle and drop seeds at random.
She is curious about the ways of plants and a self-confessed ‘‘cupboard greenie’’. ‘‘I love being outside. I’m a dabbler in the garden. You’ll find me out here most mornings.’’
She lives from her garden, eating what’s in season and pickling, bottling and freezing the excess. She also attends local produce swap meetings to share her home-grown vegetables.
August 11, 2012
Wonthaggi gardener Barbara Hallett is experimenting with a capsicum in her glasshouse. She has extended its fruiting season into late July but won’t call it a success just yet.
It is one of several small-scale experiments Barbara likes to have on the go in her garden, behind the house her husband built more than 50 years ago.
Her thoughtful, free-ranging gardening style has transformed the yard from its original unyielding clay pan into a truly productive food garden where nothing, but nothing, is wasted.
She upcycles, reusing low-grade materials such as weeds in new and useful ways, recycles everything the garden produces and chooses multipurpose plants that give more than food.
Here’s an example: Barbara — following her dictum of working with nature rather than against it, lets the dreaded kikuyu grass grow rampant in places during the warm months, harvests it in autumn then dries it and uses it as seed-free mulch. This high-grade material is better than any hay or straw, she says.
It’s not exactly permaculture or any other growing method as such. ’’It’s just my way,’’ she says.
Her way is both systematic and informal. For example, she will carefully stagger plantings in order to have produce throughout the year but is happy to let some plants complete their growth cycle and drop seeds at random.
She is curious about the ways of plants and a self-confessed ‘‘cupboard greenie’’. ‘‘I love being outside. I’m a dabbler in the garden. You’ll find me out here most mornings.’’
She lives from her garden, eating what’s in season and pickling, bottling and freezing the excess. She also attends local produce swap meetings to share her home-grown vegetables.
Experimenting is part of the joy
for Barbara.
|
If you think this is something she has picked up lately by following trends, think again. At 74, Barbara has enjoyed almost five decades of organic gardening on her half-acre property in north Wonthaggi.
When she thinks back to her earliest gardening memories it is of her grandmother’s lush garden in Cheshire, England, where flowers and vegetables grew in profusion and little Barbara sat on a step, patiently taking the stalks out of masses of ripe gooseberries. |
The pull of that memory is strong. ‘‘I’ve been thinking about those gooseberries in my grandmother’s garden. I wanted to grow them and searched everywhere round here for some. Then, just recently, I found them.’’
Two new raised beds went in, one for the gooseberry bushes and another for a tamarillo, which she hasn’t tried before.
Barbara has been a pioneer in another sphere as well. She introduced Wonthaggi to Japanese shiatsu massage, in secret at first in case people thought she was a crank.
About 40 years ago, a doctor pronounced her rheumatoid arthritis would see her in a wheelchair within five years. By chance she found a book about the pressure point massage technique at the Wonthaggi newsagency, tried it on herself and never looked back.
Others caught on and she ended up as a trainer with the local football league and with a waiting list of clients for her massage treatments.
She also turned to vegetables and fruits, growing her own chemical-free produce as a way of managing her condition. This season Barbara is growing about 30 vegetable crops within three garden zones. Each zone has a slightly different microclimate. Herbs and fruits complete the picture, with shrubs and low-growing trees softening fence and sight lines.
Using fences, deciduous trees, shed walls and — experimentally — black stones, Barbara creates mini-climates to suit her plants. Her hot mustard, mizuna, Egyptian broad beans, long scarlet radish, perennial leeks, Russian red kale and peas look healthy among the chickweed, which she puts in salads and gives to anyone with chooks.
Her apple trees are rarely pruned. ‘‘I let them find their own height and give the birds the topmost fruit. I find the thicker the tree, the fewer problems with birds.’’ Under the apples she grows garlic and nasturtium for pest and weed control, and good eating.
A potato bed is dug and ready, boysenberries will grace her Christmas table and the lemon tree is a never-ending joy.
But we can’t stay outdoors to wonder at it all as the sun has vanished and the wind is biting. In the kitchen the midday meal: a veggie casserole with crispy potatoes, is already cooking slowly.
If only we could get Barbara to teach more of us how to help ourselves and work with nature. ‘‘You do need to have an inner strength and a bit of radical thinking,‘‘ she says.
A few of those good gardening genes, passed down from her grandmother, wouldn’t go astray either.
Two new raised beds went in, one for the gooseberry bushes and another for a tamarillo, which she hasn’t tried before.
Barbara has been a pioneer in another sphere as well. She introduced Wonthaggi to Japanese shiatsu massage, in secret at first in case people thought she was a crank.
About 40 years ago, a doctor pronounced her rheumatoid arthritis would see her in a wheelchair within five years. By chance she found a book about the pressure point massage technique at the Wonthaggi newsagency, tried it on herself and never looked back.
Others caught on and she ended up as a trainer with the local football league and with a waiting list of clients for her massage treatments.
She also turned to vegetables and fruits, growing her own chemical-free produce as a way of managing her condition. This season Barbara is growing about 30 vegetable crops within three garden zones. Each zone has a slightly different microclimate. Herbs and fruits complete the picture, with shrubs and low-growing trees softening fence and sight lines.
Using fences, deciduous trees, shed walls and — experimentally — black stones, Barbara creates mini-climates to suit her plants. Her hot mustard, mizuna, Egyptian broad beans, long scarlet radish, perennial leeks, Russian red kale and peas look healthy among the chickweed, which she puts in salads and gives to anyone with chooks.
Her apple trees are rarely pruned. ‘‘I let them find their own height and give the birds the topmost fruit. I find the thicker the tree, the fewer problems with birds.’’ Under the apples she grows garlic and nasturtium for pest and weed control, and good eating.
A potato bed is dug and ready, boysenberries will grace her Christmas table and the lemon tree is a never-ending joy.
But we can’t stay outdoors to wonder at it all as the sun has vanished and the wind is biting. In the kitchen the midday meal: a veggie casserole with crispy potatoes, is already cooking slowly.
If only we could get Barbara to teach more of us how to help ourselves and work with nature. ‘‘You do need to have an inner strength and a bit of radical thinking,‘‘ she says.
A few of those good gardening genes, passed down from her grandmother, wouldn’t go astray either.
READER's COMMENTS
Perennial peppers
What a wonderful garden and gardener! I was interested in Barbara's attempts to extend the life of a capsicum. In Collingwood I lived next to a very good gardener from Greece who had capsicums that had been growing for many years. Some of the capsicum plants she left in place, others she used to dig up at the end of the fruiting season and put in a pot in a sheltered spot. If a frost was expected, she would cover them with a plastic bag for the night. Because the root systems were so well developed, her peppers were well advanced at the start of the spring. Melbourne's climate is a little more gentle than ours but I have no doubt it would be possible down here.
Catherine, Wonthaggi
Perennial peppers
What a wonderful garden and gardener! I was interested in Barbara's attempts to extend the life of a capsicum. In Collingwood I lived next to a very good gardener from Greece who had capsicums that had been growing for many years. Some of the capsicum plants she left in place, others she used to dig up at the end of the fruiting season and put in a pot in a sheltered spot. If a frost was expected, she would cover them with a plastic bag for the night. Because the root systems were so well developed, her peppers were well advanced at the start of the spring. Melbourne's climate is a little more gentle than ours but I have no doubt it would be possible down here.
Catherine, Wonthaggi
Local food movement taking off
August 19, 2012 - Hi Linda. Just found your Compost post - nice work.
Have you seen these footprint flicks youtube http://www.sgaonline.org.au/?page_id=4786 links on all things related to sustainable gardening.
Also I found this on ABC Gippsland about the swap meet at Bairnsdale Neighbourhood House http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/08/16/3569151.htm?WT.svl=transcripts
Maybe its evidence of a local food movement taking off with its roots deeply in the community. Keep up the good work.
Luke
August 19, 2012 - Hi Linda. Just found your Compost post - nice work.
Have you seen these footprint flicks youtube http://www.sgaonline.org.au/?page_id=4786 links on all things related to sustainable gardening.
Also I found this on ABC Gippsland about the swap meet at Bairnsdale Neighbourhood House http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/08/16/3569151.htm?WT.svl=transcripts
Maybe its evidence of a local food movement taking off with its roots deeply in the community. Keep up the good work.
Luke
Consider the awesome cauli
By Linda Gordon
August 3, 2012
THE school kids created something of great beauty in their patch at the community garden this season.
Its pearly, stippled surface was like fresh ricotta; its form round and solid as a child’s head. You wanted to touch it, the way you want to touch perfectly formed, textured things.
This cauliflower was awe-inspiring. Something about its shape, colour and the way it rested in its circle of grey-green leaves made “Wow!”’ the appropriate response.
Something similar happens as you leave the coast, heading north into the hills around Korumburra. There are wows! all over the place.
Note to Vic Roads: We need a road safety sign for this part of the world. Something like, “‘Awe-inspiring undulations next 20km. And if there’s dew on the pasture with sunlight at play, look out!”.
So awe strikes us as nature goes about its business.
In the garden we might try for a bit more awe and beauty by letting curves in and allowing plants of many kinds the space they need to flourish and fulfil their cycle.
Meanwhile the students – and all who saw it – showed due respect to the astounding cauli when its creamy curls burst out of the veggie box this winter.
It was photographed, picked and auctioned off like a work of art to raise money for the Wonthaggi Secondary College.
Produce swap dates
Wonthaggi’s produce swap is held on the second Saturday of the month. The next swap will be on August 11 from 10am. You will find the swappers gathered inside the Men’s Shed at the Harvest Centre, behind Mitchell House. You can enter the Harvest Centre through the Big W car park. Please bring any excess home-grown produce to swap and share. (See The Compost, July postings for more information about Wonthaggi’s regular produce swap.)
August 3, 2012
THE school kids created something of great beauty in their patch at the community garden this season.
Its pearly, stippled surface was like fresh ricotta; its form round and solid as a child’s head. You wanted to touch it, the way you want to touch perfectly formed, textured things.
This cauliflower was awe-inspiring. Something about its shape, colour and the way it rested in its circle of grey-green leaves made “Wow!”’ the appropriate response.
Something similar happens as you leave the coast, heading north into the hills around Korumburra. There are wows! all over the place.
Note to Vic Roads: We need a road safety sign for this part of the world. Something like, “‘Awe-inspiring undulations next 20km. And if there’s dew on the pasture with sunlight at play, look out!”.
So awe strikes us as nature goes about its business.
In the garden we might try for a bit more awe and beauty by letting curves in and allowing plants of many kinds the space they need to flourish and fulfil their cycle.
Meanwhile the students – and all who saw it – showed due respect to the astounding cauli when its creamy curls burst out of the veggie box this winter.
It was photographed, picked and auctioned off like a work of art to raise money for the Wonthaggi Secondary College.
Produce swap dates
Wonthaggi’s produce swap is held on the second Saturday of the month. The next swap will be on August 11 from 10am. You will find the swappers gathered inside the Men’s Shed at the Harvest Centre, behind Mitchell House. You can enter the Harvest Centre through the Big W car park. Please bring any excess home-grown produce to swap and share. (See The Compost, July postings for more information about Wonthaggi’s regular produce swap.)
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Full and plenty: Bass Coast gardeners shared a rich harvest at a recent produce swap. |
Swap and grow rich
Making preserves with Alison Chapman
By Linda Gordon
PRODUCE swapping works a bit like this: you’ve got excess turnips, I’ve got too much pumpkin. We swap home-grown produce, no money changes hands, and yet we’re both enriched.
Add to that a chance to get together with friendly locals over a cup of tea and you’ve got a typical Bass Coast produce swap meet.
Earlier this month, a group of 10 produce swappers gathered at the Wonthaggi Men’s Shed and Harvest Centre, beside the walking track, near Safeway.
The gathering had a warm, over-the-back-fence feel about it, with chat about how things were growing, the wet, and gardening advice if you needed it.
Attendees could choose to swap or buy (with a gold coin donation) the last of the season’s granny smith apples, pickles and chutneys, warrigal greens, a variety of seeds, cress, fennel seedlings, turnips, pumpkin, chard, chillies, silverbeet and more.
Swap organiser and Inverloch gardener Bronwyn Dahlstrom brought along watercress, fennel seedlings, land cress and warrigal greens.
She organised a preserve-making demonstration with Alison Chapman at a recent swap, to inspire participants to find creative ways to use excess produce at home.
Mary and Frank Schooneveldt brought a basket of sweet, good-eating granny smiths from their orchard and gallery near Inverloch.
Mary said she enjoyed the swaps and looked forward to seeing and trying what others brought from their gardens and kitchens.
Regulars were joined by two newcomers to Bass Coast, Alison Banford and Diane Douch. Alison said they would definitely be at the next swap. “We love the small community feel of the place.” She said the produce swap embodied the neighbourliness that was sometimes difficult to find in the city and suburbs.
Watch this space for the date of the next Wonthaggi produce swap.
PRODUCE swapping works a bit like this: you’ve got excess turnips, I’ve got too much pumpkin. We swap home-grown produce, no money changes hands, and yet we’re both enriched.
Add to that a chance to get together with friendly locals over a cup of tea and you’ve got a typical Bass Coast produce swap meet.
Earlier this month, a group of 10 produce swappers gathered at the Wonthaggi Men’s Shed and Harvest Centre, beside the walking track, near Safeway.
The gathering had a warm, over-the-back-fence feel about it, with chat about how things were growing, the wet, and gardening advice if you needed it.
Attendees could choose to swap or buy (with a gold coin donation) the last of the season’s granny smith apples, pickles and chutneys, warrigal greens, a variety of seeds, cress, fennel seedlings, turnips, pumpkin, chard, chillies, silverbeet and more.
Swap organiser and Inverloch gardener Bronwyn Dahlstrom brought along watercress, fennel seedlings, land cress and warrigal greens.
She organised a preserve-making demonstration with Alison Chapman at a recent swap, to inspire participants to find creative ways to use excess produce at home.
Mary and Frank Schooneveldt brought a basket of sweet, good-eating granny smiths from their orchard and gallery near Inverloch.
Mary said she enjoyed the swaps and looked forward to seeing and trying what others brought from their gardens and kitchens.
Regulars were joined by two newcomers to Bass Coast, Alison Banford and Diane Douch. Alison said they would definitely be at the next swap. “We love the small community feel of the place.” She said the produce swap embodied the neighbourliness that was sometimes difficult to find in the city and suburbs.
Watch this space for the date of the next Wonthaggi produce swap.
Plant, dig, write, pass it on
Geoff Cawcutt
By Linda Gordon
July 14 2012
SIXTY-one years ago to the day, my late father, Geoff, spent a Saturday morning at his office to finish an audit, came home, got changed and planted seeds of lupins, love-in-the-mist, Canterbury bells, mignonette, wall flowers and phlox.
It was before my time so how do I know this? He noted it in his diary for Saturday July 14, 1951.
His garden was a patch of grass bordered by planting beds behind a rented ground-floor flat, in a solid terrace house in south London.
It was also his “other work”, his safety valve and a way to beat the homesick blues. Posted to London for a three-year stretch, he and my mother were alone and a very long way from home.
Throughout July of that year, with food still rationed and London shabby and war-scarred, my Dad got into the garden whenever he could. Staying out until after 10 at night, when it finally got dark, planting, digging, sneezing from the rye grass, his eyes red and nose dripping.
July 14 2012
SIXTY-one years ago to the day, my late father, Geoff, spent a Saturday morning at his office to finish an audit, came home, got changed and planted seeds of lupins, love-in-the-mist, Canterbury bells, mignonette, wall flowers and phlox.
It was before my time so how do I know this? He noted it in his diary for Saturday July 14, 1951.
His garden was a patch of grass bordered by planting beds behind a rented ground-floor flat, in a solid terrace house in south London.
It was also his “other work”, his safety valve and a way to beat the homesick blues. Posted to London for a three-year stretch, he and my mother were alone and a very long way from home.
Throughout July of that year, with food still rationed and London shabby and war-scarred, my Dad got into the garden whenever he could. Staying out until after 10 at night, when it finally got dark, planting, digging, sneezing from the rye grass, his eyes red and nose dripping.
London terrace garden, 1950s.
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I am grateful for his journal where he carefully noted the seeds and the cuttings from neighbours that he chose to plant. There’s a lot more in it about the office, visits to English family members, sightseeing, pubs and race meetings, the cricket, and a novelty called television.
But he was seriously gardening as well. |
This year I decided to keep a garden journal too. Not with my eyes on the future but to remind myself of what I liked and what grew well in my garden.
This journal includes photos and anything I spot in books and magazines that I might modify and try. it’s where I list all the jobs to be done and plants to seek out. Mine is an exercise book but you could use your computer if you prefer.
I am not as conscientious as my father but he would approve, I‘m sure. And thanks to his journal, with its graceful fountain pen strokes of blue ink on yellow paper, next spring I‘m taking up flowers in a big way.
This journal includes photos and anything I spot in books and magazines that I might modify and try. it’s where I list all the jobs to be done and plants to seek out. Mine is an exercise book but you could use your computer if you prefer.
I am not as conscientious as my father but he would approve, I‘m sure. And thanks to his journal, with its graceful fountain pen strokes of blue ink on yellow paper, next spring I‘m taking up flowers in a big way.
Amy's dilemma
By Linda Gordon
July 10, 2012
TODAY I received a touching note from reader Amy Lowell, of Wonthaggi:
Today I cut down my best feijoa tree. This was a tree in its prime, about 10 years old and bearing 20-30 kilograms of beautiful fruit over several months each autumn-winter. But my circumstances had changed and it was in the wrong place, taking all the goodness out of my vegetable patch. I kept putting off the job and when I finally cut it down I felt I had betrayed it.
Is it ever ethical to cut down a tree in its prime simply because it’s inconvenient or – even worse – because you’ve changed your mind? Is there a suitable prayer to utter at such moments?
We feel your pain, Amy. Feijoas are such good workers in the garden. And yours was a Trojan. However, you have to be practical when it comes to available space for plants.
You and your 10-year-old feijoa have known many happy days. Be glad you planted it, gave it room to grow, flourish and provide. You can plant another one in a better spot.
Try reusing parts of the old tree as mulch or for a "habitat hedge" (see The Compost, July 7), so its generous spirit keeps on giving.
As to the ethics of the matter, it’s complicated. Your tree was preventing other plants from flourishing; edible plants that you may well need. Not many of us relish cutting down a lovely and productive tree.
We learn an important lesson from Amy’s dilemma. Think twice, and then again, about where you place trees in smaller productive gardens.
And if you do have to wield the axe to make way for vegies remember the wise words of gardening elder Marjorie Bligh:
"When planning your garden don’t make the paths narrow
Or later you’ll find there’s no room for the barrow."
Not a prayer, Amy, but comforting common sense.
July 10, 2012
TODAY I received a touching note from reader Amy Lowell, of Wonthaggi:
Today I cut down my best feijoa tree. This was a tree in its prime, about 10 years old and bearing 20-30 kilograms of beautiful fruit over several months each autumn-winter. But my circumstances had changed and it was in the wrong place, taking all the goodness out of my vegetable patch. I kept putting off the job and when I finally cut it down I felt I had betrayed it.
Is it ever ethical to cut down a tree in its prime simply because it’s inconvenient or – even worse – because you’ve changed your mind? Is there a suitable prayer to utter at such moments?
We feel your pain, Amy. Feijoas are such good workers in the garden. And yours was a Trojan. However, you have to be practical when it comes to available space for plants.
You and your 10-year-old feijoa have known many happy days. Be glad you planted it, gave it room to grow, flourish and provide. You can plant another one in a better spot.
Try reusing parts of the old tree as mulch or for a "habitat hedge" (see The Compost, July 7), so its generous spirit keeps on giving.
As to the ethics of the matter, it’s complicated. Your tree was preventing other plants from flourishing; edible plants that you may well need. Not many of us relish cutting down a lovely and productive tree.
We learn an important lesson from Amy’s dilemma. Think twice, and then again, about where you place trees in smaller productive gardens.
And if you do have to wield the axe to make way for vegies remember the wise words of gardening elder Marjorie Bligh:
"When planning your garden don’t make the paths narrow
Or later you’ll find there’s no room for the barrow."
Not a prayer, Amy, but comforting common sense.
Skinny wheelbarrows
Oh how I wish I had received Marjorie Bligh's advise ('Amy's Dilemma', July 10) before I completed closing off my rather overlarge poultry run.
The great error was not so much path width but considering the width of the entry gate to the width of the wheel barrow. So every fortnight when I cleaned out the chook houses the valuable compost rakings were laboriously carried by the bucketful and deposited in the too-fat barrow that awaited on the other side of the fence. Then, glory be, I discovered skinny wheelbarrows.
Bob Middleton, Loch
Oh how I wish I had received Marjorie Bligh's advise ('Amy's Dilemma', July 10) before I completed closing off my rather overlarge poultry run.
The great error was not so much path width but considering the width of the entry gate to the width of the wheel barrow. So every fortnight when I cleaned out the chook houses the valuable compost rakings were laboriously carried by the bucketful and deposited in the too-fat barrow that awaited on the other side of the fence. Then, glory be, I discovered skinny wheelbarrows.
Bob Middleton, Loch
Handy hedges save a trip to the tip
A sheltered spot for tender seedlings.
By Linda Gordon
July 7 2012
THE more we prune the more we wonder, what the hell am I going to do with this lot? Prunings mount up: twigs, sticks, small tree trunks, long leafy, tough and unwieldy. But still we prune.
Next time you’re feeling overwhelmed in this way, try building a “habitat hedge”. It’s simple and saves a trip to the tip.
Tidy the prunings into roughly equal lengths and trim off any really awkward bits. You can strip some leafy twigs too but it’s not essential.
Next get a bundle of garden stakes. These can be sturdy, straight tree prunings or ordinary stakes of wood or bamboo.
Decide where you would like to build a low habitat fence or hedge. For example you might want to make a stout trellis for climbing sweet peas or create an L-shaped, sheltered spot for annuals or tender seedlings.
Place two stakes in the ground opposite each other with a gap of about 20 centimetres between them. Move along about 40 centimetres and push in another two in the same way.
Make your hedge as short or long as your needs require. You can enclose a bed or a compost heap, or the whole garden.
Then begin laying the prunings between the stakes, one piece at a time, alternating the leafy head and trunk or bare ends; topping and tailing, I guess.
Keep going, checking your progress and trimming any bits that stick out too much. It’s a bit like basket making but in a straight line.
Continue pushing down and adding more prunings until you are satisfied with the height or you have used up your material.
You should end up with a rustic hedge that can support and protect, break down slowly and feed your soil and provide a nice bit of habitat for small, wild creatures.
It’s satisfying to reuse your garden waste in practical ways but take care; it’s a bit addictive.
July 7 2012
THE more we prune the more we wonder, what the hell am I going to do with this lot? Prunings mount up: twigs, sticks, small tree trunks, long leafy, tough and unwieldy. But still we prune.
Next time you’re feeling overwhelmed in this way, try building a “habitat hedge”. It’s simple and saves a trip to the tip.
Tidy the prunings into roughly equal lengths and trim off any really awkward bits. You can strip some leafy twigs too but it’s not essential.
Next get a bundle of garden stakes. These can be sturdy, straight tree prunings or ordinary stakes of wood or bamboo.
Decide where you would like to build a low habitat fence or hedge. For example you might want to make a stout trellis for climbing sweet peas or create an L-shaped, sheltered spot for annuals or tender seedlings.
Place two stakes in the ground opposite each other with a gap of about 20 centimetres between them. Move along about 40 centimetres and push in another two in the same way.
Make your hedge as short or long as your needs require. You can enclose a bed or a compost heap, or the whole garden.
Then begin laying the prunings between the stakes, one piece at a time, alternating the leafy head and trunk or bare ends; topping and tailing, I guess.
Keep going, checking your progress and trimming any bits that stick out too much. It’s a bit like basket making but in a straight line.
Continue pushing down and adding more prunings until you are satisfied with the height or you have used up your material.
You should end up with a rustic hedge that can support and protect, break down slowly and feed your soil and provide a nice bit of habitat for small, wild creatures.
It’s satisfying to reuse your garden waste in practical ways but take care; it’s a bit addictive.