December garden -all caught up

And here we are, blogging in real time! Almost – this is being written on December 24th. I’m just scheduling these posts to spread them out a bit.

As I said in my last gardening post, I’ve given up on summer gardening until the trees get bigger. It’s a great deal too hot and the sun is so brutal. These photos were taken at about 8am and they do look nice and shady. But by 10 or 11 the sun is beating down pretty cruelly – which probably would have made for clearer photos, too, but I just couldn’t bear to be out there by then.

As you can see we still have the exposed black plastic, which probably doesn’t help the heat, but honestly I can’t imagine it makes a massive difference – I was out there painting trellises yesterday and I got quite sunburnt even in that dappled shade, in the morning. Since we’re planning to plant some bare rooted trees over winter, we’re leaving the mulch till then, to make it easier to cut a hole in the plastic and plant the trees. Also because we’ve been slowly chipping away at the big, physical jobs and we just haven’t gotten to this one yet.

The grass is dead from a combination of roundup and then finished off by the sun. I’m hoping this means I don’t have to re-poison it. The front lawn has mostly died all by itself but judging by last yer will come back in winter. I might have to sheet mulch the whole backyard to prevent that, if I can manage the time and expense.

I would also like to add that I didn’t move a single thing out of the way for these photos. The yard really does look like a construction yard like this. Partly because of all the random stuff on the back verandah – it needs to go in the shed. Clearing and organising the shed is our next biggest job this summer holidays, but keeps being delayed by hot weather and, you know, Christmas events and all that kind of thing. But I figured since I’m lazy and also because I enjoy seeing other people’s gardens as-is, I wouldn’t bother moving stuff like the random shovel I was using or the hose. My garden is just never going to be a display garden, and I’m fine with that. Not fine enough not to write this disclaimer, but you know. Fine enough. TL;DR yes I know it’s a mess, it’s a garden.

There have been some other changes, though. Here’s the view from just outside the laundry door.

I built up a no-dig/lasagned garden bed up near the shed, there. I was intending to plant corn in it but then gave up on the summer garden. It’s layers of newspaper, cardboard, sheep manure, compost and dirt, and straw. The shadecloth is on it to keep the birds from digging it all up and ideally to help it keep cool enough to moulder down but that’s laughable at this time of year – it’s 36 today and I am considering it a cool day, comparatively.

My current plan for this bed is to plant potatoes in it over winter, since they’re supposed to be good for preparing beds, and I can never have enough potatoes. Then it might become a herb garden. Herbs, especially woody herbs, should withstand the afternoon sun this bed gets. I hope. I also made it a bit big, I think – I can reach across to the centre but only just. So perhaps a rosemary shrub bang in the middle would be good. And I reckon I can cram some flowers in there too – I managed some love-in-a-mist behind the citrus but they did get a bit fried. Otherwise there’s not anywhere else really to put flowers, and I would like some in the yard. S and I both have allergies that make bringing flowers into the house something to be cautious about, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have them outside! It looks like the bed up the back where the avocado is would be a good spot, but that’s misleading. That area is mulched with barkchips over river stones and getting the the actual soil is hard work. But it would be good to have something to consistently attract beneficial insects and birds without always letting my carrots go to seed.

I do wish I had left  a bit more space between it and the shed – I left about a metre which is enough walking/working room. But I wish I’d left enough that I could plant some shrubs or something against the shed. I think it would make it look a bit more integrated with the garden, and less like the new bed is just plonked down there. I might see how I go and perhaps when it’s cooler and the bed has settled more, I might move that side in. Then again, maybe I can’t be bothered. I should have taken some closeups of the bed, perhaps I’ll remember next time. It’s simply metal garden edging dug about 3cm into the ground. Then I used the clay-ish soil to pack it in around the outside, to keep it in place.

Obviously you can also see the trellis in the process of being put up – that’s new. Here is the view of that from the laundry door.

This began as an attempt to salvage some summer gardening. The thought being that a tall trellis would provide shade and also break up the wind which comes mostly from that direction. This was before the resignation of summer gardening plans. However, I am still very glad we did this. For one thing, while it won’t solve the problem of summer gardening, I think it will help extend the season, and also keep the wind off in the other seasons. For another, it will help give some shade to the fruit trees when we put them in. And for a third, it helps break the garden up a bit. It’s astonishing how much it changes how the garden feels – since the space is long, it felt very short. These help give it depth and balance it out. Perhaps eventually a low hedge to screen off the potting area would be good, too, so that when you look down the row it makes you have a nice view with a hint of something beyond – a mystery, what can it be? The bins, is what.

We placed them so that they’d be easy to navigate around, and I am very pleased with how this turned out. Ideally I’d have the back one a bit further from the bed but I didn’t want to compromise that walking route from the laundry to the compost/bins which are behind the shed. They still look pretty raggedy and the trellis is only just tied on with twine because I needed to stain them to give them a bit of a longer life. That’s what I got sunburnt doing yesterday. The good news is, they are now all DONE and we’re hoping to put them up tonight.

The poles are long, treated posts from Bunnings. We had the poles and trellises delivered along with some wood for shelves, since we don’t have a big car. I know there’s a trailer in these photos, but we’re just storing it for S’s dad, we don’t have a car with a tow bar. It means everything takes a bit of planning but that’s ok. We got a post hole digger at the same time and it’s already paid for itself in effort saved.

The posts are cemented in, and we planted some passionfruit. Two Nelly Kellys – one gold one black. We’ll see how they do. I figured they are tough enough for the spot, and a fruit we will eat. They also don’t last forever so that gives us some room for changing things up in seven years or so. Perhaps I could manage an espaliered fruit tree along one of these spots, when there’s more shade? A cherry perhaps? I went old school and got the butcher to order in two massive beef hearts to put under the passionfruit, and they seem to be doing really well so far.

The soil in the lawn is clay, but a very mild clay for Adelaide. If you can keep it moist it’s a lovely loamy soil. I did get it tested through the free Vege-safe testing. We are well within safe levels of everything, although there is quite a lot of iron and zinc along the dripline. Since the only exposed dripline is along the fence where they put all the dead fill soil, I’m not surprised. It was interesting to see how the different contaminants vary by area, it makes me wonder even more what the history of this house and garden is.

Not so long ago this area was all farmland, now I think about it – it wasn’t a residential area until the 50s, when people started building mostly beach shacks here. Here’s the general area in 1935 – a bit north of us where the ‘main’ town is. And a bit south of us, in 1931. Mind you, here is Port Road in ’58, and I’ve seen photos of aerial views from the Showgrounds from that time and half of Mile end is just farmland. So I guess that’s where all the Adelaide jokes come from – 50 years ago it was still a big country town, and the attitude is still kind of there. ANYWAY asides aside. Farmland. I suppose that’s why the soil is pretty good – this was pre-industrial-pesticides so I guess they had to build their soil. The short version is, it’s a relief to know that the soil is safe.

Anyhow here’s the view of the beds from the laundry door – bonus view of all our junk out on the verandah

The beds are all basically abandoned. I’ve left stuff growing for general soil structure reasons and to avoid the beds getting stagnant. Plus, the seeds are feeding birds and that’s quite nice. The sparrows love the silverbeet seeds, and to hide in the tangle, and the pigeons love the seeding brocolli. The mosquitos were quite bad when we moved in but we’ve had almost none this year and I suspect it is due to more bird and bat activity.

The only one with any real action in it is the side bed, with one lonely zucchini.

I planted zucchini, cucumber, watermelon and squash seeds in here and the only ones that came up were the zucchini and watermelon. The watermelon seedling has since carked it in the heat but the zucchini shows promise.

We’ll see. We did fix the outlet on this bed so it drains properly now. I’ll try to remember to take a photo next time.

I didn’t take good closeups of the citrus trees but here is the lemon and it’s resident potatoes

Just about died off, I should harvest them. The potatoes that is, not the lemons. You can see the lemon is looking much happier now.

The bay tree continues to love life. I mulched it with gravel because the pigeons were dust bathing in its pot and had almost dug up the roots.

You may also have noticed extra shadecloth shrouds up the back. They are hiding some new trees – a Bowen mango

And a red Tamarillo

Which I’m hoping will act as a bit of a nursery tree to the avo, and also be delicious. This tree has been the source of three arguments with S, they all went like this ‘what’s a tamarillo?’ ‘It’s a tree. Remember I had one at the last house and eventually it leant over and died?’ ‘Yes but what do they taste like?’ ‘They taste like… a fruit. Like themselves.’ ‘Do they taste like tomatoes?’ ‘No, they’re related, but they taste pretty different. They taste like… they’re tart? And sweet?’

They taste like themselves. Which is to say, delicious. Hopefully S agrees with me when we get fruit on them.

The avo itself is still going but I’m finding it hard to keep enough water up to it, it’s doing ok but is slightly limp.

It’s hard because the bark chips over river stones provide great mulch but also mean it needs a really REALLY long soaking for the water to get to the soil. And in the process a lot of the water is wasted to evaporation. My current plan is to set up a little line of drippers along the trees at the back and side fence, perhaps I can even bury them into the barkchips a bit. It’s a bit hard to run a permanent irrigation pipe anywhere along the yard, because the only tap is isolated in the middle of the stone paving, which is cemented in. So my plan is to do a set up that can be plugged right in to the garden hose. Since all the tropical trees up the back, and all the citrus down the side, have the same watering needs, I hope that will do the job nicely.

And that’s the December garden! Not a lot growing but still plenty of planning. Although it’s looking messier and less organised than ever, I can see my plans for the space slowly coming into reality. In late January I’m going to pull out the seeding plants and maybe use them directly as mulch, maybe compost them. Then once the sun cools off a bit I’ll be ready to start planting in the wicking beds again!

Here’s an updated schematic of what’s in the garden now (plus the planned-for fruit trees in between the garden beds).

Plans for this winter include more brassicas, more greens, and to get two stone fruit trees into the space between beds. Current candidates are a nectarine and an apricot, although we’re still debating white or yellow fleshed nectarine. I maintain we have room for more trees in the future, so we have more chances for other things. But I want to take that slowly and not get ahead of myself in terms of needing to do everything at once – I want those two stone fruit but then that’s it until everything is more established. As it is I’m going to have to be vigilant with the pruning to keep the avocado and mango to size, as well as the trees in the garden bed area – the plan is to train them to vase shape so they provide some shade in summer but aren’t too in the way of things. Which I haven’t done before so it’s a learning curve. Well, if I’m ‘lucky’ the gum tree roots will stunt everything and they won’t get too big!

I’d also dearly like to start on planting things in the front yard, where I want to get rid of the grass and mulch, and then plant essentially a native cottage garden (with some lavender too). But I also very much do NOT want to set myself up for failure by biting off more than I can chew, so I guess we’ll just wait and see!

ETA I nipped out there in the 38 degree heat to take some updated photos. We put the trellises up and, miracle of miracles, managed to clear out and organise the shed and put all the rubbish back into it so the verandah is clear.

I’m so pleased with how the trellises look – obviously they look fancier without the shadecloth but it’s still so burny I’m afraid to take it off. Even though Passionfruit can probably handle it. We planted both vines on the east side of the trellis, for shade. But the one closest to the bed is already twining over to the other side so we probably could have planted them so they were both on the ‘inside’ of the path the trellis makes.

I’m so proud of the cleared out verandah that I took a photo of that, too. The plant stand was found in hard rubbish – I think it’ll be sheltered enough to actually grow some summer herbs. I have some basil I can plant out and might get a small harvest from, and then I can start my seeds again with brassicas, to get an early start on the autumn planting.

Garden in August and October

My last garden post got us up to the end of June. So here we go racing through the months. Here’s what it looked like at the start of August.

Most of my garden photos are taken while I’m waiting for the beds to fill. I think this was the first time in about a month I had to top them up. I spent the first five minutes of that checking for weeds and pulling them, and then I had nothing else to do but take photos. That’s how low maintenance this system is! It helps, of course, that I bought soil in that managed to be mostly weed seed free so I have had very little in the way of weeds in the garden beds. A true luxury.

Here is a not very good photo of the citrus trees down the fence.

Lemon in the middle, mandarin on the right, closest to the house (hidden by the other plants) and orange on the left. I am planning to eventually remove all of the other plants but I hadn’t the heart to this year – the little honey eaters just love those canna lillies and there’s so little else growing in the garden, I couldn’t give them up yet. I did get rid of the agapanthas, I hope successfully.

Here’s a close look at the lemon. You can see she struggled a bit with the cold

As soon as the soil warmed up her leaves turned green again and she’s shooting like bill-o so I am reasonably sure it was just too cold there, since she wasn’t established yet.

Behind are potatoes. I didn’t have anywhere much to put them so I thought I’d try above ground. I can report that they grew very well, although I haven’t harvested yet. The bags are probably good to harvest, they died off pretty quick because they got hot and dry. The mesh ones are only just starting to die back now, at the end of December. I will definitely be doing the mesh circle method again.

And here is the poor avocado

Struggling. Not sure if you can see it from here but it was already putting out new leaf shoots, so I wasn’t too worried. I did give it a much better shade structure, including a hat:

Under which is appears to have weathered summer very well. I did buy some stronger shadecloth to put over the top but it doesn’t appear to need it so I’ve left it.

I don’t appear to have photos of the legume bed but here is the front bed, still churning out the greens. Cos lettuce threatening to go to seed if we don’t eat it quick enough, with more seedlings ready underneath. I put the potted baby spinach in the ground after a while, where it flourished and grew up.

Silverbeet and beetroot.

Gailan (what a champion of  a vegetable) and more lettuces underneath

And about as much bok choy as we could handle

We ate so so many stir fries in August, with the greens barely cooked. My favourite way to do it is to blanch them and then just lightly toss them in garlic and ginger. Serve with shittake mushrooms – we have a big packet of dried ones I am working my way through. If you want you can mix a spoonfull of potato flour with water and then cover them with it in a wok, to give it a glossy, creamy coating. YUM. Also we added them, blanched, to just about everything. In Chinese cooking this is called ‘breaking the rawness’ and it is a very good way to get rid of the sulfuric taste of brassicas without losing the tenderness, as well as to make sure you don’t have limp bok choy in things.

Speaking of brassicas, the back bed started to come into its own in August

As soon as it got properly cold they shot up, and by August there was no stopping them.

I did get a little bit of cabbage moth on the cabbages, but so few that I was just able to rub them off and it was fine.

However, even though the soil was cold (and they were loving it), the aspect of this bed means it gets full sun from about 11am till whenever it is the sun sets. And that afternoon sun is HOT. So even as the sprouting broccoli was setting heads, it was already flowering.

No dramas. The flowers are still totally edible, and they weren’t grainy and seeding. It just meant I had to check on them often and we did eat a lot of broccoli. Not a hardship. It was so tender and lovely and we had it in everything, blanched as I said and then stirred through with butter as a side, in various fritters and bakes, everything. So good.

We also ate the leaves! I planted Tuscan kale but the seeds I had were from a friend. I suspect they got cross pollinated because what I thought was kale – with the ripply leaves, and the little sign I put next to it saying ‘kale’ sprouted as broccoli! So we ate that too. However, I think the leaves of the broccoli plants were more tender, myself. I think next year I might just plant a whole bed of broccoli and we’ll eat the lot of it. Of course, that probably accelerated the flowering, so next time I will stagger plantings.

Here’s what the beds looked like a month later, in October

Brocpocalypse. They’re taking over! I also took about a million pictures of them because I find the flowers so beautiful, despite being so utilitarian.

And the bees LOVED them which I was happy to encourage. We were still eating them at this stage although the ones in that last photo above would have been too woody. The ones on the morning-sun side of the bed were more edible, still

You can see that the wood is starting to grey after a winter’s weathering.

Here’s the Avo. Its leaves fell off all in one week and then the sprouts took over

It also put up a bunch of flower buds, which I rubbed off

And the pea bed

The other side was looking sadder

You can see I planted lettuce seedlings around the edges but they essentially went straight to seed.

The front bed is bolting, too

Let’s not forget, I took these photos on the 2nd of October. It’s still early spring here. But just too too hot. And windy! I put that bamboo screen up to protect the silverbeet, which was getting blown over. A week later I put up[ shade over all of the beds but it’s still a losing battle, given the combo of the sun and the wind. Even with the wicking beds, I couldn’t plant new seedlings. They would shrivel up within a day. The established plants can still get enough water, but they get the beating sun too.

Here’s the front bed all shaded over, two weeks after the previous photos, in late October.

If I do shade cloth next year, though, I’m going to have to make it more structured. There’s so much wind that these hoops get pushed back and forth and the plants exposed.

I didn’t harvest a single carrot, beetroot or parsnip. They were getting close to big enough and then in about a week they bolted. In fact I know it was in a week, because I went to Bali in mid october and when I came back… poof! That’s ok. The bees and other insects loved the flowers, too. While I was in Bali, the peas did this:

Yikes! Like I said before, I got one risotto’s worth of harvest out of this. And they were delicious. I think if i’d harvested them a week before I would have gotten a bit more.

And the back bed did this:

And without the shadecloth it looked like this:

I pulled out most of them a

I left some brassicas to be shade and also because the bees were still loving them – and now the birds are loving the seeds. I may as well tell you right now that the tomatoes etc were NOT a success. It is just too hot. As of November, I have given up gardening in the beds until it gets a bit less burny. I think that until the trees grow, it’s going to be a losing battle getting anything out of the beds between, say, late October and Early Feb. I might be able to extend the season with shadecloth and other structures, but I’m going to consider it like a snowy winter, just too extreme for growing. That’s ok, it gives me more time to sew and go to the beach, and to plan and execute other household tasks. Including getting more trees in, but that’s a story for next time.

Speaking of trees, though, here’s two weeks of new growth on the avo

And one plant is loving the  harsh sun: the bay tree in a pot

Garden in April and June

There’s  not much sewing happening around these parts at the moment, I’m using my break to catch up on house and garden stuff, and electronic chores, which includes catching up on blog posts! I’m considering making a side blog for house/garden stuff, but the thought of having TWO places to neglect is a little overwhelming. Does anyone have any preferences? I’m not sure who exactly my audience is these days. Perhaps I’ll just continue to use this as a general dumping ground for whatever I feel like putting out into the word on any given day, and leave it up to the reader to opt out of any posts that don’t interest them.

My last post talked about building the wicking beds. Here’s what they looked like in early April, when the sheep manure had rotted in enough to enable planting out.

The bird nets went on because as soon as I planted things, the backyard was immediately overrun with pigeons. I initially just laid the netting over the top while I got the materials to build hoops, and I looked out the window one morning to see a pigeon very carefully treading it down so it could reach the seedlings. Argh! After the autumn I found I didn’t have much trouble with birds, so the nets came off. I think it was probably a bit of a food gap for them.

I’d expended all my gardening energy on the beds rather than on starting seeds, so I planted mostly seedlings I bought from the local farmer’s market in the front bed (the one closest to the house, the left bed in the above photo). I had managed to start a few brassica seedlings though, and I planted them out probably a bit early because I couldn’t wait to get started! They went in the back bed (on the right in this photo) and the side bed (at the back of the photo) had broadbean, sugar snap and snowpea seeds direct sewn into it.

Here’s the front bed, with my boughten bok choy and lettuce seedlings. I also direct sewed into this bed – carrots and beetroot and parsnip up the back, and various greens at the front. The pvc tube you see sticking out at the back is an in-bed worm farm. The idea being you put worms in the bed and then feed them through the pipe with the lid on, so that nothing else can get to the food scraps. I haven’t used it much because they were sluggish over winter and as it got warmer there were plenty of plant roots sans their tops, that needed chewing up. I have periodically checked on them and topped them up a little, though.

I was biting off a bit more than I was sure I could chew, at this point. I had initially intended to start with one or two beds and work my way up, but since it made so much economic sense to buy all the beds at once, that’s what I did. I planted them all out because… well because I got excited. But also because, being wicking beds, the maintenance was fairly easy going. In winter I found I could leave them for weeks at a time with no great consequences. And it’s much better to have things growing in terms of soil health and weed cover, as well as to keep the water wicking and prevent it getting stagnant in the reservoirs.

The other factor was the almost total absence of any kind of insect life in the backyard. There were relatively few plants there when we arrived, but I also suspect the previous owners sprayed the crap out of the place. There are just almost no bugs. That meant not much pollination and it also meant that the first bugs to arrive were pests, with no predators. Planting things that may end up going to seed was pretty much a good thing at this point. I’m happy to report that although there’s still not a huge amount of insect life, a year in there are plenty of bees (at least when there are flowers for them), and many fewer mosquitos. There’s also plenty of species of birds and even bats.

Anywho. Here’s the back bed in June

Chock full of brassicas. There was cauliflower, kale, two kinds of sprouting broccilli (purple and green), two kinds of cabbage (purple and green).

And the front bed

Bok choy on the left, lettuce on the right. Baby spinach in a pot set into the soil up the back, scattered seeds of mixed asian greens coming up everwhere.

And broad beans in the side bed

You can just see the snow peas just coming up on the perimeter of the trellis. This bed did not do very well, though (spoiler alert?). The peas took a long time to establish and then, I think, got rust. The bed was quite damp, I think because of the drainage issue I mentioned in my last post where we didn’t angle the outlet down. Also I think not having established plants meant it stayed quite damp – in future I will always try to have at least some lettuce seedlings or something to make sure the water is circulating. Especially in this bed – the other two get a lot of evaporation because they are oriented so the wind blows all the way down them, whereas this one is side on to the wind and so although it still is a factor, it’s much less extreme.

Also the jute trellis was not secure enough, especially with the high winds we get. I eventually added in wire mesh and that helped but I think a lot of the damage was done by that point. I got a meagre crop from this bed but that’s ok, I was essentially considering it a cover crop. And it did make for one very delicious risotto. I think next year I wouldn’t bother planting pea seeds until May, since that’s when they started to actually grow.

Also in May we bought and planted a Reed avocado.

That’s the shade structure we gave it – more spoiler alerts, it was totally inadequate, especially since it (along with most of the garden) gets the very strong afternoon sun + salt in the wind. The strawbale is for warmth and seems to have worked quite well for that.

At the same time we bought a Eureka lemon, seedless Valencia orange and Imperial mandarin, which we planted down by the east facing fence and which I neglected to take a photo of in May, so you’ll have to imagine it. The idea is to semi-hedge them so they stay smallish, since the fruit grows on the outside branches anyway. That way they’ll be manageable and I can keep them below fence height to keep them protected from our strong winds.

This is what the poor Avocado looked like in July

But on the plus side it didn’t seem to get wet feet in spite of reasonably heavy rain – we had a dry winter and spring overall but with several weeks that were very very damp.

Here are the July peas, still showing promise

These minature fruit trees in wine barrels were left by the previous owners. They had a big dog and these pots were wrapped in hardware cloth so I suspect it was their way of having any garden at all. However, it was essentially impossible to keep them wet enough, even in winter. They just get too much sun, the whole backyard is not a good spot for pots except for in the shelter of the verandah, and the wine barrels are to heavy and too falling apart to move.

I got this one pear and a couple of tiny but delicious peaches. They also did a glorious show of mini autumn red leaves. I planted the nasturtiums in an effort to mulch them. This summer I’ve just left them with no water and I think they are all but dead. It’s a shame but I’ve nowhere in the ground to put them right now, and the pots are just not a practical thing in this garden, right now.

Here’s the back bed of brassicas in July, showing promise

But the true star of July was the front bed, with the mixed greens – you can see the bok choy is a bit nibbled by I’m not sure what. The humans still ate it, though. There was enough to share.

This bed produced, and produced, and produced. The lushest, easiest lettuces and the most succulent bok and pak choy. It just kept on going, growing more greens than even we could eat!

I am absolutely using this bed in the same way next year, it had the perfect aspect for delicate winter greens. What a luxury to always be able to pick a variety of lettuce for an impromptu salad!

There’s the beetroot and parsnips in a row, with silverbeet behind.

More silverbeet, possibly my favourite vegetable:

And sculptural lettuces by the handful

As you can tell, I feel very poetic about this bed of greens!

Monetarily, considering how pricey greens are and how apt to go manky in the bottom of the fridge, I’d estimate this bed neatly paid for all the seeds and seedlings I bought. I haven’t made a dent in the cost of the beds themselves, but you know, I don’t expect to. Honestly this bed gave me a thing I can’t buy – fresh, delicious, healthy greens available any time of the day or night. And I relished it.