AN ABUNDANCE OF PERSIMMONS

This photo of persimmons hanging ripe on our tree at Das Helwig Haus B&B was taken in the autumn of 2006 when Maude, a French girl, was here for six weeks as a Wwoofer. She is shown cuddling Patches, the black and white feral female cat who arrived at our home in 2005 and adopted us.

Maude, Patches and persimmons

Since then Patches has featured in many of my photographs. Since then the tree has grown and the Satin Bower Birds have multiplied, so that it is no longer possible to allow the persimmons to remain hanging on the tree until the end of May. Read the rest of this entry »

AN ABUNDANCE OF TOMATOES 2

I wrote an earlier post about what I did with an abundance of red tomatoes, one of the summer crops grown by the farmers of the Granite Belt, who generously give me boxes of ripe fruit. I also commented that I usually only grow cherry tomatoes in my organic garden. About fifteen years ago I purchased a packet of golden ripple cherry tomato seed from the Diggers Seed Club and since then I’ve never needed to purchase more seed, nor do I save the seed. Every autumn at Das Helwig Haus B&B, about a month before the frosts arrive, a flock of Satin Bower birds return from the rain forests to overwinter in our garden. They are a fruit eating bird and quickly turn their attention to the fruits of my garden, clearing any remaining figs, picking at the half ripe persimmons and enjoying the cherry tomatoes. The fertile seed of the tomatoes pass through the bird and is deposited throughout the garden. Thus it is that these tomatoes have now become one of my most prevalent weeds. They are easily recognized and transplanted or pulled if found in inappropriate positions. This particular tomato has a tendency to climb or ramble, and would be useful grown in hanging baskets on patios. The photo below shows how one tomato bush has rambled over the tops of roses and up the trellis of the gazebo railing.

Cherry tomato bush in the rose garden.

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WE ENTER THE HERB GARDEN

“Why do you call this your herb garden?

I am always asked this question as we walk down the slope between borders of marigolds and camomile daisies. It is true that this lower terrace at the rear of the house has never been designed as a formal potager. The style of such a traditional garden is usually symmetrical and surrounded by neatly trimmed box hedges. They often contain a fountain, bird bath or sundial in the centre.

The reason that this area at the rear of Das Helwig Haus B&B became our herb garden is its proximity to our kitchen. Rather than keeping a bunch of herbs in a glass on my kitchen table, I prefer to go into the garden to gather fresh sprigs as needed.

Garden path between marigolds and camomile.

I grow the German camomile (matricaria recutita) as an annual plant like the marigolds as it self-seeds and germinates thickly each year in August. The flowers are plucked when fully open, dried and stored. Later they can be steeped in hot water to provide a soothing bed-time tea to encourage a restful sleep.

We pass beside the feijoa trees under which I have planted seed of jam melons as they will need space to run out their vines.  Borage always self-seeds in this area too. It was the ancient Romans who first floated borage flowers in cups of wine. I pick a few dainty blue flowers and hand them to my garden visitors, remarking that I freeze the flowers in ice blocks to later float in a jug of water. The leaves of this herb are cucumber flavoured.

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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. Read the rest of this entry »

ENTER THE VEGETABLE GARDEN

Once we cross the covered walkway that links our guest apartments to the northern wing of Das Helwig Haus B&B we enter the vegetable garden. On our right the rhubarb and acanthus grow gigantic leaves and the kiwi fruit vines entirely cover the lattice along the apartment veranda. This is the south western part of our garden and as such is exposed to the worst of our winter winds. All the permanently planted trees and shrubs in this region are deciduous and in the winter months the area becomes rather desolate.

Rhubarb

Winter is our busy season with guests who come to the Granite Belt to taste the wines, follow the food trail and cuddle up before a fire at night. Thus it suits me that the garden is dormant. I try to have the grape vines, quince, persimmon, cherry, mulberry, apricot and nectarine trees pruned by the end of August.

There are some years when spring is slow arriving on the Granite Belt with frosts continuing on into October. In fact, frosts have been recorded in every month of the year. Because of the cold winters the garden does not yield much produce in spring until the soil warms.

While we were holidaying in Germany during the spring of 1990 my sister-in-law, Minna Helwig, told me that we would be having a barbe kue on Samstag and I had thought she was telling me that she planned a barbecue on Saturday. Imagine my surprise therefore when she picked the first red stalks of rhubarb from her garden, discarded the poisonous leaves, and gave me the stems to wash and slice. Meanwhile Minna used fresh yeast to make the sweet bread base of a Kuchen. The rhubarb was spread across the base, sprinkled liberally with sugar, and after the dough had risen to double the original height, placed in the oven to bake. Served with generous amounts of pouring cream, this is the traditional way the first rhubarb of the season is presented to families in the village of Wolferborn and throughout other regions of Hesse.

Rhubarb clump

We continued our around the world trip to visit Margaret, a friend who lives near New Liskeard in northern Ontario, Canada. I was amazed by the size of her rhubarb clump. Obviously established years previously it seemed to require no special attention, would die back into the earth under a heavy cover of snow each year, but then burst forth in the spring to create a remarkably thick cluster of plants. I was to see many more such clumps on other farms in northern Ontario and the attitude seemed to be that rhubarb was little better than a weed. There weren’t enough ways to utilise all that rhubarb and it was frequently ignored.

My tour groups are equally astounded by the size of my rhubarb clump.

“What do you do with it all,” I’m asked.

“Each weekend I’ll ask our guests if they would like to take a bunch home with them, but very seldom will they take me up on my offer. They would rather buy my Rhubarb Relish, which is especially tasty on cold roast lamb.” During the next fifteen minutes as we wend our way through my productive back yard I’ll be advertising our jams, jellies, chutneys and pickles, which they’ll have the opportunity to buy before they board the bus. “The rhubarb must be picked until April.”

Fay's jams and jellies

Because our rhubarb is well watered and shaded from the afternoon sun by the structure of the self-contained apartments it doesn’t suffer any stress and tends to remain green in colour, not the ruby red I would prefer. As a result, if cooked alone, it is rather an unattractive khaki green colour. When I stew my rhubarb I add either strawberries or raspberries. These share their colour and flavour, thus creating a tasty and attractive compote.

“And this fern – what is it?”

“That’s the asparagus. If you look near the base,” I scoop away some soil with my bare hand, “You can see fresh spears. We only pick the stronger shoots during the first couple of months. Then we let it make fern. This is important as the fern allows the roots to receive nutrients during the summer months. Then when the winter frosts come, it dies down and we clear away dead foliage. It is an ongoing cycle. If properly looked after an asparagus bed will last a lifetime.”

“And what are these bushes?” My attention is drawn to bushy clumps on the left side of the path.”

“Red and white currants. We use them to make jellies.”

Harvesting white currants

During 1995 I planted the upper terrace at the rear of Das Helwig Haus with red and white currants. These now bear a prolific crop each spring and must be hand stripped from the bushes and converted to currant jelly. Little did I think when I began planting this huge garden to offset our home, what a rod I was creating for my own back? No matter how busy I am with other matters, by the end of October Eberhard will be drawing my attention to the asparagus needing to be picked, the rhubarb running to flower, the strawberries attracting birds and the currants hanging ripe and ready for plucking.

Fruiting strawberry plants edge the paths and draw gasps of awe from the visitors. Don Burke, of the Burkes Backyard TV program, was amazed at the healthy growth of our strawberry plants when he visited the garden in 1997. I explained to Don that each year I covered them in hay during August then set fire to the hay, allowing the fire to also burn away all the leaves of the strawberry plants. This destroyed the leaves and any disease. The ash added nutrient and the perennial plants were triggered to all shoot new leaves together, flower together and fruit together.