WE WALK AMONGST VEGETABLES
When pegging out our house extension in 1993 for the guest wing of Das Helwig Haus B&B, Eberhard realised that the northern veranda would abut against the rockery garden. As the house was positioned on a slope falling away to the south, the ground for the extension would have to be excavated to the sixty-centimetre depth demanded by the Stanthorpe Council. A bulldozer was hired to clear the site and push rocks and subsoil to form a hill on the south-western side of this site. The weather was hot and the pile of decomposed granite, which forms the whitish subsoil of the Granite Belt, produced a barren moonscape. The glare reflected off this site and into the kitchen and living room was horrific.
“As soon as we can, I must plant a fast growing leafy tree against the back veranda to shade our kitchen,” I said.
“Make it a deciduous tree,” Eberhard advised. “Once the new wing goes in it’ll block the sunlight from the north. During winter months we’ll need light!”
Sweet-corn beside the persimmon tree December 2004.
Now the gooseberry bushes, quince, persimmon and fig trees are well established and by December are lush with green foliage.”
This area where I’m leading our garden visitors is the service area for our home. A huge concrete rainwater tank was constructed on site and a hole was blasted out of the rocky ground beside it to admit the bio-cycle tank, which handles all the gray water from our guest accommodation before it is recycled on to shrubs.
Frank Musumeci brought his bobcat to build rock retaining walls and level off the pile of subsoil to create a broad terrace. I watched mesmerised as he wheeled the machine to and fro, selecting large rocks from within the earth and delicately dropping them into place, forming a semi-circle of boulders. Finally, he leveled off the fill to form a platform. Later we spread topsoil over this area, which is the sunny high ground carrying the currant and gooseberry bushes, the asparagus and rhubarb.
When we moved here to Glen Aplin I brought three things with me. A bucket of soil from my previous compost bin, thick with red wrigglers – a compost worm; two tomato plants and seed of Tagetes the French marigold.” With my foot I scuff a border of these little freckle-faced orange marigolds. “I planted the tomatoes, which as I had anticipated, didn’t thrive. I pulled them up and sure enough there were nodules on the roots indicating the presence of nematodes. These are a small eel like worm, commonly found in sandy soil. Since then I’ve never had a problem with nematodes because I’ve planted the Tagetes throughout the garden especially around tomatoes and grape vines, both of which are particularly sensitive to nematodes.”
“Is that the only way you can get rid of them?” a visitor will ask, keen to hear more about my theories on organic gardening.
“Anything you can do to enrich your soil will assist. One of the quickest ways is to sweeten the soil by pouring molasses diluted in water over your garden beds. I’ve enriched my soils by adding lots of compost. I’ve bought in feedlot manure and mushroom compost and created my own compost from all the garden refuse. That’s where the red wrigglers come in useful. They break down the humus very quickly in my compost bins and then when I put out the compost they also get spread around the garden. Now you can go anywhere in the garden and shift the hay mulch and you’ll find them close to the surface in the damp soil.”
We walk down the slope to the vegetable garden. My trailing visitors spot a cluster of self-sown lupins, larkspurs, feverfew, Californian poppies and violas fronting the grape vines.
Pink Hartwegi lupin
“Flowers in your vegetable garden?”
“Yes, they are excellent for pest control, but the seed for these must have been added to the soil with my compost. Did you know that grasshoppers are poisoned if they eat the leaves of larkspurs?”
They will shake their heads.
“In addition I plant lots of marigold, calendulas and nasturtiums amongst my vegetables. You may have heard it said that you shouldn’t grow nasturtiums, that they attract insects to your garden.
Nasturtions flowering.
I believe that if the insects are in your garden they’ll be attracted to the nasturtiums. That way maybe they’ll leave the other plants alone.”
“Does organic gardening work?”
“With mixed success. The first year here was bliss as we had no pests. The second year every pest imaginable discovered the garden. The third year the predators began to appear and by about the fourth year everything started to come into balance.”
“What do you mean by balance?”
“Look around you. This is a healthy garden. If a garden has good drainage, sufficient water and adequate sunlight it can withstand the onslaught of a few bugs. There will always be aphids on the roses early in the season before the lady-beetles become active. If some plant doesn’t thrive, I just get rid of it.”
We walk past the recently planted sweet corn, carrots, beetroot, potatoes, beans and cucumbers. “Note the way I’ve got cucumbers growing under the sweet corn. By covering the soil with the vines, I prevent weeds germinating under the corn.”
“ What do you do with all these vegetables?”
“The potatoes and carrots are dug or pulled and stored in our commercial cold room. They keep for months. I pickle the beets and the cucumbers. I boil the sweet corn and cut it off the cob, then freeze it. The beans are picked, scalded and frozen.”
“How do you find the time?”
Once more my answer is WWOOF – Willing Workers on Oganic Farms.
Korean girls shucking sweetcorn in January 2006
One year I was asked, “How do you cook the fat hen?”
I wondered if the questioner was joking? No, she had spotted a weed of that name in my garden?
I answered her seriously. “Pioneering families boiled and ate it like cabbage, but I’ve never tried it.”
“Follow me,” I call. “We will enter the herb garden“.
Fat-hen weed beside chives and lemon balm.
