TREASURES

There is something in my psyche that makes me enjoy the life of  hunting and foraging, not only for food but for items that I can reuse. As a child on farms our family never had access to garbage disposal services so we had to compost, burn or bury our rubbish. Today I still live on a farm and I don’t have the luxury of wheeling a garbage bin out to the kerbside for collection. Instead as part of the service we pay for via council taxes, our Shire Council provides bins on a site near Glen Aplin where we are allowed to dump household refuse. There is no recycling service for paper, aluminium cans or bottles. Further away near Stanthorpe there is a dump where people can dispose of old household furniture, white goods, car tyres, rusty wire etc. But, to travel that far is seen as a nuisance, so instead of taking these items to the official spot people not only fill the bins but leave any item that they can not fit into the bins lying on the ground nearby. Eberhard says Australian’s are a rebellious lot and won’t heed the voice of authority. I say that the Shire Councillors should consider solving the problem rather than complaining about the untidiness of rate payers. After all – they are elected  to meet the needs of shire residents.

This is a rural area into which many ‘tree change’ people have moved in recent years. During their former urban life they have never had difficulty disposing of their rubbish so they expect the Council to service their needs. Thus instead of shredding and composting garden rubbish, or even burning such piles, loads of shrubbery and even tree branches are thrown into the bins. Everything from kitchen utensils to paint buckets are cluttered beside mattresses and TV consoles until the Council eventually sends out a truck and a team of men to clear the area.

I am a law abiding soul who only deposits what garbage I can not recycle on my own property, but each trip I make to the refuse dump reminds me of the saying, “One man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure.” There are times when I will bring home a greater load than I have taken away. Not for personal use, but to recycle in the garden.

Such treasures include geranium cuttings, insect screen doors and a baby’s bath tub.

Water is a valuable garden resource. These two recycled former 44 gallon fuel drums now stand below the roof of a shed where the runoff rain water can drip down into the first drum. Warning – if you store water in such open containers be aware of the dangers. I check my drums regularly to look for wrigglers – mosquito larvae. A thin film of kerosene applied to the surface of the water will quickly suffocate them. Also, once the level has dropped, birds who have been coming to bath in this water may not be able to fly out. I insert a stick into these drums to allow birds to stand on it while they shake their feathers dry and thus prevent them drowning. Of course, if I was a rich woman I could have another covered rainwater tank placed on this site, but I have grown up ‘making do’ with what was available for me to use. I find these drums exceedingly useful when filling buckets of water to carry to my poultry each evening. Again if I was a rich woman I would have pipes reticulating water to the poultry pens. In this instance I could easily fill one drum, but had no way of flowing excess water to the second drum until I saw the baby’s bath tub thrown away at the refuse dump. Now once one drum has filled, I can place the tub slanted across the top to flow water to the second drum.

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MORE ABOUT MULCHING.

Golden ripple cherry tomatoesTo see a former post called Mulching Matters go to the Organic Gardening category in the November archives. I use several methods of mulching but they are all intended to serve these purposes.

• To stifle weed growth
• To prevent evaporation of moisture
• To keep the ground cool
• To prevent erosion

In that post I showed how I had used clippings from a fallen wisteria vine to mulch an area around self-sown Golden Ripple cherry tomato seedlings. I bought the first packet of seed from the Diggers Garden Club about 1994 and ever since then these tomatoes have volunteered to grow each year in my garden. All the fruit eating birds feast on them and then spread the seed throughout my entire garden. Mostly, I weed them out, but I always leave some plants to bear fruit each summer.

Wisteria mulch

Eight weeks after this green wisteria mulch was laid around the tomato seedlings we could begin harvesting these little cherry tomatoes for salads or for my favourite Lemon & Tomato Marmalade.

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THE VALUE OF SHADE

Recently, when reading Peter Andrew’s book Back From the Brink, it made me take a good look at my upright willow trees and ask myself if I was utilizing them to full advantage. I planted these trees in 1998 at the end of a drainage system to serve three purposes.

• To soak up excess water
• To create a green view  behind our vegetable garden
• To provide a wind break

I quickly became disenchanted with these trees, as they spread their roots out into the area where I had previously planted pumpkins. It was a space where the pumpkins could spread. But, with the willow trees stealing all the moisture from the ground, my pumpkin crops began to fail. We ripped the ground and pulled up the roots, but within 6 months the roots had again colonized the area. The past couple of years this ground has remained bare. The trees were serving their intended purpose, but they had restricted my use of this portion of my garden.

Pruning willow

The willow trees had grown too tall. In August 2008 while they were deciduous, I hired men to reduce the height of the trees by cutting them back with a chainsaw. I used the solid wood for the fires and the twiggy branches for support structures for climbing beans and sweet-peas. When they grew again they had a bushier shape. I have seen trees like these repeatedly cut back to fence height to create a dense hedge. Read the rest of this entry »

MULCHING MATTERS

During the past weekend when we opened our garden at Das Helwig Haus B&B for the Australian Open Garden Scheme, I was frequently asked about my mulching methods. I use several methods of mulching but they are all intended to serve these purposes.

• To stifle weed growth
• To prevent evaporation of moisture
• To keep the ground cool
• To prevent erosion

Most green ground covers serve the same purpose, provided they have sufficient water to encourage their continual growth.

Ivy as a ground cover

I planted this ivy in 1993 to grow over an old tree stump situated in the garden at the rear of the house. This is the western side and after soil and rocks had been moved to build the guest wing of our house this spot looked like a dessert with white dusty soil and raw boulders. I hired Frank and his bobcat to create a rocky upper terrace above this portion of the garden. My priority was then to green my summer view by planting deciduous fruit trees and to cover a couple of old tree stumps with vines. Read the rest of this entry »

ORGANIC SUSTAINABILITY

It takes faith to persevere with the establishment of an organic garden environment. The first year that you establish your plants is bliss as they are going into fresh soil. The next year every pest imaginable seems to have discovered your garden and be gratefully chomping their way through your vegetables. By the third year the predators, like the lady beetles who eat the aphids, will arrive. By the fourth your garden should be coming into balance. You will still see some pests, but if your plants are not stressed they will thrive. To keep a garden thriving not only does it require good soil, it needs thick mulch to keep that soil moist and to allow the earthworms to prosper.  My compost bins have been worked over by generations of compost worms since I introduced them to this garden in 1992. As they convert each bin of waste to compost it is spread out on my gardens. The ground is covered with hay and they continue their work under this layer, aiming to break the hay down and incorporate it into the soil. Thus the hay must be replaced over my gardens each year. One of my flower garden beds is permanently planted with deciduous shrubs. Every year self-sown Californian poppies emerge from the hay mulch to bloom amongst the shrubs. Peter Andrews would like these poppies, which I have seen flowering wild over the hills of California, as they are tap-rooted plants. They will be bringing up nutrients from deep within the soil to finally rot down again as mulch and they will be preventing a build up of salt in the soil.

Californian poppies

These mulched shrubs and Californian poppies are part of the hill forest segment of the farm adding nutrients to the soil. Read the rest of this entry »

SUSTAINABLE GARDENING

I spent some time this week reading a book by a fellow Australian, Peter Andrews. The book is called Back from the Brink and in subtitle How Australia’s landscape can be saved. He writes of the natural geography of Australia, and to my surprise, describes how the rivers previously ran in a series of shallow ponds across high country like arteries feeding the water into capillaries that spread the water down over many terrace like flood plains. With the coming of white settlers the country was quickly changed so that all the rivers now run deeply in eroded channels through the countryside, with tributaries draining water, often salty water, into them.

I am the same age as Peter Andrews, who has worked farms in South Australia and New South Wales, while I have spent much of my life on farms in Queensland. Just as people on the land learn to read cloud formations and understand rainfall patterns, they also learn to read their land. I believe I have these skills, but in reading Peter’s book I came to better understand two things. Salinity and how water moves underground. Peter does not believe in applied irrigation or the way water is stored in many farm dams, but espouses storage of water, moving water, within the ground.

Garden poppies

This morning I photographed these red Flanders poppies in my home garden. Note that they are waist high.

Field poppies

The red Flanders poppies in the field are only knee high. Why is there a difference in growth? Before this post finishes I will explain the reason. Read the rest of this entry »

FOR CARMEN

Carmen was one of three Italian girls who came to WWOOF for me in August. Recently she wrote to ask:

Kookaburra by David Osburg.

AN ABUNDANCE OF POTATOES.

With a bit of luck I can manage to grow several crops of potatoes each year, planting the first seed potatoes in  October with a further planting after Christmas. Potatoes will handle quite rough soil so are a good crop to put into new ground. They are not a deep rooted plant like carrots, which will push down into the soil. Instead, the tubers grow out from the original seed potato. It is necessary to hill them as the plants grow to cover the young tubers. If you keep building up the soil around the stem of the plant they will continue to make fresh tubers in ever increasing layers. This may also be done by creating a support for the soil with rubber tires mounted on rubber tires.  This is a great way of cropping for people with limited gardening space. Using this method it is also possible to grow potatoes in the milder winter climates, providing the tops are covered each night against frost.

Potatoes are well suited to growing in furrows which can be flooded with a garden hose and is the way I prefer to grow mine. To get an early start this year I planted two rows of seed potatoes in October amongst the red Flanders poppies in my Remembrance Field at Das Helwig Haus B&B at Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland.

Potato rows

Three young Koreans came in November to work for me as WWOOFers – Willing Workers on Organic Farms and as the poppies finished flowering they removed them and hilled the potatoes. Read the rest of this entry »