OUR GLEN APLIN HOME

Our 14 hectare (32 acre) farm is situated at 113 Mt. Stirling Road, Glen Aplin, Queensland, Australia. Glen is a Scottish word for a valley and the first Government surveyor who came through this region was a Scottish born man with the surname of Aplin, who named this pretty valley after himself. It became a valley of small land owners growing stone fruits or vegetables and grazing a few head of cattle. Within the past 20-30 years tourist enterprises like wineries, restaurants and guest accommodation have brought changes to the region.

Our home, Das Helwig Haus B&B, is situated in the forested area at the centre of this photograph, which was taken from the Felsberg Winery on the eastern ridge of the valley.

Valley view

To give you a greater appreciation of where we live, below is a view taken with a telescopic lens. Try to place that road, directly above the cluster of trees. The roofs of our buildings are barely visible behind the forest of eucalyptus trees.

Das Helwig Haus B&B

Over beside the road, you can just see the golden wildflowers above our entrance drive way.

Entrance wildflowers

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THE HEN HOUSE

Throughout most of my life I have lived on farms where the previous owners had constructed  poultry pens. These were rough structures with some form of shed cover, like a rusty iron tank split in half to form a roof, and a wire netting run where hens could forage during the day. Due to the prevalence of foxes in country regions poultry must be securely penned at night.

This year I needed to use the existing poultry pens for my growing flock of geese which led me to the decision to create a new enclosure, but where? As my readers know I’m always looking for ways to recycle materials and my projects usually serve more than one purpose.

When we purchased this farm 17 years ago it already had an igloo garden shed frame. I bought a plastic cover to go over this igloo frame, with thoughts of having a hot house in the winter. Although I have a beautiful garden, I’m not good with pot plants. Even my seed raising beds are established directly in soil out in the larger garden. This shed sat idle, within my garden begging to be put to use.

Igloo garden shed

When my infant granddaughters came to live with us, the idea occurred to me that I should convert this igloo into a hen house where the little girls could feed the ‘chooks’ and gather the eggs. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

THE REMEMBRANCE FIELD

Most visitors to my garden understand the significance of the red Flanders poppies growing in the Remembrance Field and the edging hedge of the herb rosemary. Rosemary is the token worn on ANZAC Day and the red poppy is worn on 11th November the date the Armistice Treaty was signed at Versailles to end World War One.

“But, what is the significance of the blue cornflowers?” they ask.

Cornflowers and poppies

My answer is of particular interest to the residents of Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, because the planting of blue cornflowers represents our remembrance of the crew, doctors and nurses of the Centaur an Australian Hospital ship sunk off our coast by a Japanese submarine. 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 WATER

In My Spring Garden 7 post I explained what I had learned from reading Back from the Brink by Peter Andrews about how water sinks in soil to the clay or rock level below the surface of the ground. There the salt in the water, being heavier than fresh water, makes the bottom layer of underground water saltier than the water above it. I learned that even fresh rainwater contains salt at 60 parts per million, but after this salt becomes concentrated below the surface the ground water will be at least 5 times saltier by the time it reaches our dams and rivers. I also showed Peter’s preferred farming plan of dividing land into three complementary segments of hilltop forest, agricultural land and flood plain.

In My Spring Garden 8 post I illustrated with flood and drought photographs how we have endeavoured to control and manage flood flows across our land in front of Das Helwig Haus B&B to avoid soil erosion.

This post will be about how to retain more water in streams and dams to how to reduce evaporation.  Peter writes: Even in a pristine landscape, water running into a lake would probably have contained 150 to 200 parts per million of salt. Then, once it was sitting in the lake, the water would start to evaporate. Throughout much of Australia, water evaporates at the rate of around 2.5metres a year – more than the depth of most of our naturally formed lakes.

The book cover

The views of Peter Andrews are controversial because they are opposite to many Australian farming practices of the past two centuries. They are also contrary to the views of Landcare organizations and the purists who do not like to see the introduction of Northern Hemisphere deciduous trees into the Australian landscape. Read the rest of this entry »

CONTROLLING WATER FLOW

Our farm at Glen Aplin is blessed with both a river frontage and an area which was a swampy flood plain when we bought the property in 1992. That swampy area had an eroded gully, was over grown with tussock grass and thistles, and also dotted with deep holes.  It was infested with blackberry brambles, riddled with rabbit warrens and I hardly ventured to enter the area for fear of snakes. When I saw my little Jack Russell Terrier dog fall into one of the steep sided holes filled with water and that he couldn’t get out without assistance, I decided something must be done. Eberhard, is almost pedantic about tidiness, so the sight of this wild area affronted him and neither of us thought it gave a pleasant outlook for our Das Helwig Haus B&B guests.

With the assistance of neighbours we burned off the tussock grass and brambles. We employed a contractor with a grader to level the region, filling in all the holes, but still leaving the eroded gully. Then we went to the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and paid for a water engineer to design two dams with a connecting water course and an overflow towards the river. In 1996 contractors were hired to undertake this work. No sooner were the earthworks completed and before they could move their machinery off our land a week of steady summer rain filled our dams and river to overflowing. To illustrate what happened I will used photographs taken in 2008.

Flood entry

The Stanthorpe Shire Council built three of these culverts which channel flood water under Mt. Stirling Road and into our first dam. Read the rest of this entry »

DISASTROUS FROST

The sun rises now about 5.30am and I didn’t stir from my bed until 6.30am so I never witnessed the white sheet of frost that others say they saw this morning. Frost is always one of the big problems faced by gardeners who live in areas where sub-zero temperatures are experienced. Here in the cool mountain climate of the Granite Belt we can usually expect our winter frosts to begin by the end of April and finish by mid-September, but great variability is shown when comparing the seasons of different years. In 2008 we had our first frost on 30th March and our last frost in mid-August.

My photos will tell the story.

Hang down your head frosted poppy and cry.

It is a well known fact that many plants only become susceptible to frost damage as they begin to bloom and their hormones change from growth to flowering. Although all the Flanders poppies blooming in the field this morning were cut by the frost, and several leaves will show burnt tips, the field will quickly recover, as the poppies are a weed of the wheat fields of Europe and like all weeds are hardier than most garden flowering plants. They germinate in the freezing cold weather of winter and begin blooming by mid-spring. Read the rest of this entry »

SALAD DAYS

In this cool mountain climate of the Granite Belt of southern Queensland frosts sometimes continue to torment gardeners into the second month of Spring, which they have done this year. Thus, I’ve had to wait patiently before planting the seed of many of my summer vegetable crops like sweet-corn, melons and cucumbers.

When we open our garden at Das Helwig Haus B&B on 7/8th November this year for the Australian Open Garden Scheme we will have something special to show our garden visitors. I began planning these raised garden beds in February as a way of recycling three round sheets of a rusty corrugated iron, rain water tank. Now look at the result!

Loose leaf lettuce

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SPRING FLOWERING SHRUBS

When I began the establishment the garden surrounding our home Das Helwig Haus B&B it was made up almost entirely of annuals for the first few years. Annuals are spectacularly colourful, but create an immense amount of work. Ground must be prepared, seedlings grown or purchased and then planted out. In the following months they require nurturing before finally they repay you with a riot of colour and perfume. Although considerably more expensive to establish, trees and shrubs are only planted once and as they grow add structure to gardens. I chose to plant a number of trees and shrubs – some for their foliage and others to give flowers. Underneath the trees or around the shrubs I planted an understory of bulbs or ground covers, only leaving a few areas, like borders for the annual positioning of seedlings.

Spanish bluebells under the Pussy Willow tree.

The Spanish bluebells are the last of my winter into spring flowering bulbs. Read the rest of this entry »