AUTUMN QUINCES

Readers of my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine will be familiar with my good friend Claudia from Thunderbolt Farm. Claudia knew it was my plan to fly to Hong Kong, leaving tomorrow Sunday, for a two week break. Claudia had said, “I’ll drop down before you leave and bring you quinces.” She was as good as her word, but came late on Friday evening, yesterday. When confronted with all these quinces I knew I would have to act today or they would probably spoil before I arrived home again.

Ripe Quinces

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AUTUMN GARDENING

If you look up my previous article called MY AUTUMN GARDEN 3 listed under Self-sufficiency which I wrote two years ago you will be able to see how I’m still utilizing these recycled items.

Recycled tank

This recycled rain water tank, which had rusted, is still serving the purpose of a raised garden bed, although the metal is continuing to rust. I must think about the need to replace it within the next year. This  raised garden bed is close to the veranda and has a shady persimmon tree at the rear to give shelter from the strong afternoon sun. Thus I have found it an ideal place to grow silverbeet during the summer months. Frosts are now due and once they arrive the persimmon tree will shed its leaves and this garden will then benefit from more warm sunshine during the winter months.

A NEW YEAR BEGINS

January 2012 has started warmly without any worthwhile rain to cool the air, so the Family have been kept busy irrigating and weeding their vegetable crops. It was also the week when the ducks and geese had to be trained to walk to the dam to forage and swim. Shortly after Christmas three geese and four mature Muscovy female ducks were added to the waterfowl flock. Firstly I showed the boys how to escort the three geese to the dam and then returned for the ducks. The young ducklings were fat and lazy never having been outside the safety of their pen for exercise and needed frequent spelling, while they panted for breath. That evening the boys were required to enter the water behind the ducks and geese to show them the way out and then home. After two days of this all these waterfowl were accustomed to the routine and I could leave the boys to manage them morning and evening. The young ducklings quickly became stronger due to the daily exercise.

Geese and ducks

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MID SUMMER SOLSTICE

We have now passed the mid summer solstice which means that from this moment forward our summer days will offer less hours of sunlight, but here on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland we are only just entering the growing phase of our summer. In Australia December is officially the first month of summer, following the spring months of September, October and November. However, due to our altitude we can continue with winter frosts well into October, which means that I seldom plant any frost tender plants before that month.

Prior to leaving for a holiday in Hong Kong in October I planted the first vegetables and because we did not get a late frost we are now picking yellow butter beans, zucchini, cucumbers and cherry tomatoes.

Strawberries

We have also been harvesting strawberries from this bed on the lower terrace of our rear garden since the beginning of November.

By the time I returned from holiday I was able to transplant other seedling plants.

This year we are growing a huge vegetable garden. Why do I now need a huge garden? Who will do all the work? Who will eat all the vegetables or undertake the processing and preserving?

My life is undergoing a change that I believe is an answer to prayer in that it will allow me to live a lifestyle that I enjoy in my own home for many more years.

So today I am sharing with my readers our solution to the problems associated with growing older. Read the rest of this entry »

THE SUMMER BEGINS

I devoted the Spring months to writing posts concerning our Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies which reached their peak for 11th November.  During the past week poppy seed has been harvested, the dry poppy plants were slashed, the field was spread with feedlot manure as an organic fertilizer and then cultivated. Today we are enjoying rain to soak the soil of the field and later this month we will plant it with vegetable crops. I will show photos of these steps and further progress in a later post. Today I will put up a post about rosellas. This bushy plant can only be grown here during our warmer months and the fruit is much prized for jam making. I presently have about 20 rosella plants in our rear garden which I set out during November.  I took a two week break during October and went to visit with a son and his family in Hong Kong, where the it was then the autumn season. This family live in a highrise apartment at Kowloon.

Kowloon apartment block

This was not the first time I had stayed here and looked down from high above onto a community vegetable garden. I had requested entry to the garden on a previous visit, but been turned away. It was a private garden for Kowloon residents I was told.

Kowloon community garden

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AN ABUNDANCE OF SAP 2

In my last post I told my readers how I had discovered SAP – Super Absorbent Polymer, or as it is more commonly known Water Absorbent Crystals which, when water is added, form a gel to retain moisture in the soil in dry periods or to prevent compaction of soil in boggy conditions.  It is true to my nature that when I discover something useful I like to share my good fortune. Thus I obtained a tonne of this product, packaged it into 100g boxes and now take it to markets each weekend where I also promote my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine.

The purpose of these An Abundance of SAP posts is to tell my readers, especially gardeners and farmers, how I have used SAP in my garden. In my first post I included a photo showing how I had planted out Iris roots in the spring.

Planting Iris

This morning on a cool and rainy autumn day I have photographed these flourishing iris plants to show how well they have grown. We experienced a wonderful mild spring with regular rainfall and then floods in January. After the floods we suffered seven cruel weeks of hot dry days.  My petrol powered pump had been immersed in flood water and during the heatwave which followed the flood and I could not irrigate my garden.

Flooded farm dam

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AN ABUNDANCE OF SAP

My readers know that I am SAP – as Self-sufficient As Possible. I have also discovered a product, which I have now been using in my organic garden for three years, that is also called SAP – Super Absorbent Polymer. During March I am going to introduce my readers to this product.

The soil of the Granite Belt is decomposed granite. It is granular like sand and porous. The vegetable farmers are obliged to irrigate their fields every third day. I have struggled with this thirsty soil for over 18 years trying to change the texture by incorporating humus to retain moisture and covering with  mulches to prevent evaporation. While these methods work, they require constant maintenance as this decomposed granite is hungry soil which rapidly breaks down the added nutrients. They then form a powder like texture, which acting in the manner of talcum powder prevents water penetration. When we get steady sprinkling rain for a day before a down pour this light topping will gradually become wet and act as a sponge, but if we get storm rain on dry ground the water will only run off. The question in my mind became, “How can I keep my soil moist without watering it every day?”

I am a seeker of knowledge, so I researched the shelves of the hardware stores that stocked garden products. My first discovery was Searles Water Crystals.

Water crystals

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AN ABUNDANCE OF SUNLIGHT

Australia is a land of droughts and flooding rains – a land of extremes. A land that gives abundantly of sunlight or rain, but seldom is the weather moderate. It is a harsh land that refused to be tamed by European settlers. The indigenous people did alter it over many centuries from rain forest to open forest with their use of fire, but that evolution was probably accidental caused by burning off country for hunting purposes. They lived with the land never attempting any form agriculture. It has always been a matter of interest to me that every third year several different tribal groups came from all points of the compass to gather at the Bunya Mountains at this time of year to harvest the nuts of the Bunya Pine cones. The town of Jondaryan took its name from Aboriginal words meaning the last big waterhole on the trek to the mountains. I attended the Yamsion primary school which apparently was sited on a good place for digging yam roots and my parents built a home on Black’s Camp Hill. Because of a fear of spirits in the mountains the tribal people descended down as far as this hill to sleep each night.

The early settlers tried to transplant the ways of Europe onto this continent. It, of course, ignored them and continued to bring the floods and droughts as in previous time. They tried to tame the land with fences, roads, railways and placed dams on the river, all to no avail as they could not change the climate. The land is not separate from its climate. Rather the oceans that send currents swirling around our shores, causing condensation to form and precipitation to fall are all linked in a chaotic pattern that modern man and his computer models are dimly beginning to understand.

Therefore, I believe it is essential that Australians learn to live with their land because they can not change the vagaries of the climate. One way we can do this is to utilize our abundance of sunlight to generate solar power.

Flooded farm dam

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AFTER THE FLOODS 3

It was with shock and dread that most north Queenslanders watched cyclone Yasi bear down on the State, but also for those well removed from the location there was a sense of awe at the magnitude of this particular cyclone. Everyone had days of warning to prepare and Government and volunteer organizations swung into action. It was not only that Yasi could be one of the strongest cyclone to hit Queensland since 1918, but it was a monstrous size. Cyclone Larry that struck Innisvail in 2006 was a strong cyclone, but not a wide one. Queenslanders are accustomed to cyclones but this cyclone had the potential to wreck havoc and take lives like never before seen. Read the rest of this entry »

AFTER THE FLOODS 2

It appears that much of the media and perhaps the general public will only remember the dreadful tragedy, which overtook some people like those drowned in Toowoomba and Grantham, as part of  the seasonal floods that encompassed much of Queensland.

Flooding of the nature that affects Brisbane about three times in a century is something for which people can prepare. The unexpected nature of the deluge which hit Toowoomba and flash flooded the Lockyer Valley had never previously occurred. There was no history of such an event. There was no warning. There was no time to flee.

I wrote to a correspondent in the USA a week after the deluge.

I am sick to my guts with the way the media have portrayed the floods as a result of Climate Change. Senator Brown of Tasmania, and leader of the Greens Party, called for instant implementation of high taxes on the coal miners, who he claimed had caused these floods by creating global warming. There are plenty of the media who want to follow this line too, about this flood being unnatural and punishment from God. In Australia the Greens are laughingly called the Watermelon Party by people who say they are green on the outside and red for communist on the inside.

I’m tired of hearing the media talking up the great mateship of the Australian people. True, in fine sunny weather, 10-12,000 people across Brisbane rallied on Saturday and Sunday, armed with brooms, mops and shovels. They worked to clean up the mess in the homes of the traumatized victims. But, these were the same people who could be seen on TV throwing out items that only needed to be washed – items like plastic chairs.

I wanted to kick the sacred cow! Even more so, when the Queensland Premier started spouting words like, “We are Queenslanders!” She seemed to be indicating that people of this State were somehow stronger and more capable than other Australians. Most Australians are generous people who prove that when times are tough, the tough get going.  Australians give generously of their time and money whenever there is a disaster in the world wide community, or to help any person in need in their street. Read the rest of this entry »