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CLIMATIC DIFFERENCE

My garden is different to most Queensland gardens due to the altitude of the Granite Belt. Most Queensland gardens are located in tropical or subtropical climates, but the Granite Belt of Queensland is the only region of this State with a temperate climate. The majority of the gardens in Queensland only know two seasons, the ‘WET’ and the ‘DRY’ whereas here on the Granite Belt we have four distinct seasons as in the Northern Hemisphere.

Usually our winters are dry so we seldom get snow and for the same reason we frequently experience more winter frosts than Victoria. Brisbane and Melbourne are the capital cities of Queensland and Victoria. Coastal Brisbane has a subtropical climate but the altitude of Das Helwig Haus (about 850metres above sea level) and our position on the western side of the Great Dividing Range create our much cooler climate.

State capital cities

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TEA FOR TWO, OR MORE

As a child I was only allowed to drink milk or water until the age of twelve, with a soft drink as a special treat during an occasional visit to town. My parents drank Bushell’s tea with their meals.

Nowadays there are multiple drink choices available for adults and children alike. One has only to walk into a supermarket to see rows of bottles and cans stacked high containing cordials, fruit juices and carbonated drinks. At the dairy counter there will be different sized containers of milk, in plastic or cardboard, offering a variety of flavours.

Move to the racks of tea and coffee and you will have a choice of roast coffee beans from all over the world. You can buy beans or ground coffee, some of it decaf. Usually in the same aisle it is possible to select dried teas in surgical dressings, as one of my friends once described the sachets commonly called tea bags. You will be confronted with brands and varieties from many countries.

It was on a trip to the USA in 1981 that I first encountered the powdered concoctions mixed with water which the local people called iced tea. Later, when I visited my German in-laws in 1990 I was offered a choice of herbal teas with the evening meal. These were always served as a hot tea.

In 1992 we moved to the Granite Belt to establish Das Helwig Haus B&B. Amongst our first visitors were Meg and Peter Stevenson with their children Darren and Belinda. During an excursion they discovered a herb farm and returned with several pots for my garden. One of these little plants grew into a Lemon Verbena bush.

Lemon verbena

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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 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 »

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 »

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 »

FIRST SPRING FLOWERS

When I established the garden surrounding our home Das Helwig Haus B&B it was to ensure that there was something of interest in the garden at all times of the year for our visiting guests. My secondary desire was to be able to walk out into the garden at all seasons with a basket and secateurs to enable me to bring cut flowers into the house. My third goal was achieved thanks to the cool mountain climate of the Granite Belt which enabled me to grow northern Hemisphere flowers, seldom seen in Queensland gardens. It was only in later years that we began opening our garden in November, as we will do again this year for the Australian Open Garden Scheme on 7/8th November, and growing a Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies to bloom for 11th November. This morning I was able to go into my garden and gather the red foliage of an early flowering ornamental plum tree, the yellow flowers of forsythia and sprigs of of pussy willow. I displayed these on the unlit combustion wood stove in our dining room.

Early spring foliage

This has been an unusually warm spring and I no longer need to heat the house. Read the rest of this entry »

PREPARING THE REMEMBRANCE FIELD

The spring months in Australia are September, October and November but it is only here on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland that this otherwise sub-tropical and tropical State actually experiences a real spring. This is due to our altitude in the border highlands near the New South Wales border. Within Queensland our district is famous for the cold winters, but this year the weather was pleasantly mild. It was the warmest winter since 1993.

Also, at the end of August southern Queensland experienced a minor heatwave, giving the region the hottest August days since 1946. Wow! What a way to enter spring. Naturally such a mild winter and then the burst of heat in August has pushed my garden and the Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies into rapid growth.

Rows of Flanders poppy plants

The Remembrance Field was cultivated during the first week of July which germinated the poppy plants. In August I went through the field with a hoe, chipping out rows of poppies to thin them. In the photo above you will see one cornflower plant. In August I transplanted several of these seedlings into to field. They will later provide a scattering of blue flowers amongst the red Flanders poppies. The Latin name of the cornflower is Centaurea cyanus and it was the mythical creature the Centaur who supposedly gave the power of healing to mankind. To Australians the Centaur is also remembered as the name of the hospital ship bringing our wounded soldiers home, which was sunk off Brisbane during the second World War by a Japanese submarine. This year a concerted effort is being made to locate the wreck of the Centaur. Read the rest of this entry »

THE RED STEER

Late yesterday afternoon the red steer was released into our dry grass land. The red steer is an Australian colloquial expression for fire. Just as cattle could slowly eat out grass land, a fire will clear the land quickly. Fire, used wisely, an excellent tool. The Aboriginal people of Australia didn’t have matches to start a fire, but they possessed the skill of rubbing two sticks rapidly together until the wood heated and began to smoke. Then a little dry grass was added  to smolder and burst into flame. The original inhabitants of Australia were nomadic people who never established permanent homes or cultivated the land. Instead they hunted for food. The men would regularly burn small areas of grass land when it was dry enough to burn. The heat would draw up moisture from the soil and green grass shoots would sprout. Meanwhile the women would follow after the men to find any scorched lizards or other small animals they could use for food. After a week or so when the country had greened the men would return to hunt and spear wallabies or kangaroos grazing on the fresh green grass. The eucalyptus trees evolved the ability to adapt to fire and will quickly recover from any burning of bark or leaves. Other Australian plant species need smoke to cause them to open their seed pods, enabling the seed to drop into the rich ash a day later. Fire is a natural part of the Australian ecology.

A cold fire

The definition of a cold fire is one that crawls along the ground. A hot fire races up the bark of a tree and sometimes ignites the eucalyptus leaves and then roars through the tree tops. Such wild bush fires are now common in Australia. Read the rest of this entry »