Seeds, New Growth, and I Found Worms!!! :)

Yesterday was the warmest day we’d had in a while. Dawn was a spectacular red sky followed by a crisp morning and a sunny, balmy afternoon, perfect for gardening. I’d also had some seeds delivered, quite exciting (I know, I’m such a geek) because I’d been looking for deciduous fruit tree ideas and an amazing alternative to my beloved Custard Apple turned up on eBay, of all places. Intrigued, I’d done a little research and decided to take a chance on this “American Pawpaw”  Asimina Triloba. The planting notes said that the seeds needed to be planted in a deep pot because they develop a very deep taproot – which I didn’t have on hand – so I got a little creative with the pots I did have and some toilet roll inners 🙂 

I also had some Surinam (Brazilian) Cherry seeds from the same seller. These were also meant to be planted immediately, so they went in, three to a pot. Remember my dirtpile sandwich from my last blog post? That’s where the eventual shrub will go. Surinam Cherry is a tart, sweet-sour translucently red fruit that grows on a dense, glossy-leaved shrub very similar to our native eugenias (Lilypilly). It’s a handsome shrub that I’ve grown in two other gardens before, very prolific and makes awesome jams and marinades, although as it’s very attractive to birds I believe it should not be grown where it will become a weed in rainforest areas.

Next was another dirtpile sandwich next to the first.

Not sure what I will plant there yet, it will have to be something shrubby or deciduous, as it’s a main winter sun path. The awesome thing that happened while I was making it was that I found worm activity under my green slime grass piles 🙂 well ONE worm, and I wasn’t game to dig more in case I killed some….very exciting stuff tho, considering how lacking in organic matter this poor garden has been. 

 

Another lovely high point of the day was finding some of my nasturtium seeds coming up, despite it being winter here. Nasturtiums are connected to some of the best memories of my childhood, they are compost accelerators, an amazing groundcover, and even better, they are edible 🙂

This weekend I’ll be planting Catmint, Pineapple Sage, and my other red Dragonfruit cutting. More on these amazing plants in my next post 🙂

 

Happy Gardening!!

 

 

 

 

Green Slime and Dirt Pile Sandwiches.

A lovely squall of rain drove me inside this afternoon so I thought I’d share what I was up to today in the Riverworks garden.

I’ve mentioned before that this garden has absolutely zero organic matter in the soil, and we’re on a shoestring budget so I’ve been looking for free mulch, and have had the good fortune to have three local mowing contractors bringing me grass clippings. Unfortunately, I’ve also had to have time off because my body needed it, so some of the grass clipping mounds have turned to the ubiquitous and dreaded Green Slime…

so, between the Soylent Green and “Mt Gambier” the 13 tonne dirt mound, I thought I’d try an experiment. Out the front, right next to the small mound that marks the deceased shrub full of borers that i removed two weeks ago, I’d marked a spot where i want to plant a Brazilian Cherry according to where the winter sun can warm the house.  

I barrowed in five trips of slimy grass cuttings to lay on top of the small pile of dirt I left there three weeks ago, broke them up, and then sifted on top a handful of blood-and-bone per square foot. On top of that, I laid seven barrows of the clay soil from my (Mt Gambier) dirtpile. Another three barrows of stinky, slimy clippings dusted with blood-and-bone went on top of that, with the larger chunks being broken down by hand to handful-sized wads. 

Three more barrow loads made one last thinner layer of dirt.

 

 

 

I intend to do more dirt pile sandwiches just like this, hoping that in the absence of comfrey (until my plants get a chance to take off) or other significant amounts of compost accelerators I can still get some worm activity happening.

I also planted thirty nasturtium seeds in a small part of the fenceline hoping for some groundcover and colour, because nasturtiums are not only edible but are also compost accelerators and companion plants for fruit trees. and just because I love them, as they’re attached to some of the best memories from my childhood. 

another afternoon rainsquall watered in both my seeds and my garden. i love how Nature works with me 🙂

Planting The Apple Tree, Moving Mulch, and Strange Things You Find In A Garden.

It’s like this. Once we had confirmation that this house was actually going to happen, my OH’s parents went out and bought him a Pink Lady apple tree. (Actually, I’m the gardener, but it was his birthday 🙂 so they bought me a tree to plant for him)  It was expensive – actually I’m horrified at just how expensive garden plants are here in SA but that’s a topic for another post.

Anyway, so two weeks before we could even move in we I had a very nice Pink Lady apple tree in it’s plastic gro-bag. Then we moved in, and the tree sat at the in-laws house for a month before we had the chance to bring it home. I’d spent that month tracking the winter sun and deciding where i was going to plant evergreens and deciduous trees, so i had a fair idea of where i wanted to put it – then i realised that Pink Lady is late to drop it’s leaves, so I had to decide all over again. And adding to the complications are my plans for a small training track in the back yard, and the fact that this garden has literally no topsoil and the back yard gardens are in some places a foot below the level of the lawn. why? I have no. idea. whatsoever.

So I finally decided on a spot that would work for the apple tree and I. The next complication was that although I have a huge mound of soil, I had no wheelbarrow, and believe me, moving thirteen tons of dirt with only the greenwaste bin was not going to be an option. Gardening with Fibromyalgia is hard enough, without taking on impossible tasks just for the hell of it!

Ebay to the rescue – I found a cute little 1960’s vintage “ladies” barrow in excellent condition for $25 – perfect. The seller even dropped it off at the OH’s work for me 🙂 

So I’ve got soil, grass clippings, blood-and-bone, a bag of cheap potting mix, my trusty wheelbarrow and the time, all set to plant, yes? Wrong. I was floored for a week by some unexpected cycling of my body. Great. The poor apple tree had now been forlornly waiting for three months for me to get it in the ground, and the leaves were turning lovely shades of Autumnal tones…

Yesterday I finally bit the bullet and started hacking back the massive English lavender that was growing over the corner I wanted.

Digging around yielded me both some half-decent soil and a WTF moment – in the corner near the fence I found a bit of chaff bag sticking up,  which I pulled back to reveal two buried plastic shopping bags full of unidentifiable organic matter and a squashed plastic bottle. At first I had a cold shudder thinking I’d found a body – that’s what happens when you watch too much Dexter 🙂 I also found the first worms i’d seen so far in this garden, happily turning whatever was in those bags to compost. The bags themselves went into the rubbish and the organic matter inside them onto my rough compost heap – I’m still not sure what was in them but seeing the worms were pretty happy I’m hoping it wasn’t something too toxic. 

Must get a chemical test done for the soil. Especially as my Cockalier Jet loves to “help” me in the garden.

I heaped up the good dirt for the apple tree, mixed it with the bag of potting mix and some blood-and-bone, and then started carting in no less than eight barrowloads of dirt to backfill around the mound I’d just created. Add three barrowloads of grass clippings and a few generous handfuls of blood-and bone and the Pink Lady was finally in, and being watered in.

a timely little rainstorm last night finished off my job nicely 🙂

 

 

 

 

“A garden is a thing of beauty and a job forever.” – Richard Briers

so the next day’s job was to finish moving the besa-blocks and see what was actually there in terms of soil. as i mentioned in the previous post, one very large garden in the back yard is six inches below the surface of the lawn – i’m still scratching my head as to how that happened as there’s not heaped-up beds anywhere else.

once they were moved i raked it out and left it – not sure yet whether i’ll be re-planting there at this point, between the pump track i want and the lack of winter sun in that spot. if anything, it’ll be deciduous fruit canes or perhaps a Pecan tree.

next job was out the front to plant Chinese chives seed on the garden side of the front path and mulch down with my grass clippings.

mowing the lawn with my vintage barrel mower was fun – i’d let the lawn get too long and it was a pain. i think i need wider bars 🙂

the next job i’d like to tackle – apart from cutting down these two 3m melaleucas and turning them into next-year’s firewood – is the cooch grass that’s growing between the backyard pavers. some are hopelessly cracked because the previous owner dug a garden bed next to them and later drove up over the top and parked a fourby there. so i’ll be replacing some and sorting that out, and in the meantime i’ll experiment with Borax as a weed killer to save my aching back – i spent two days chipping the grass our by hand and it’s a long, slow process, i tell you!

now i’m sitting here writing, watching the rain thru the window while the delicious smell of slowcooker pea-and-ham soup fills the house. life is very good, indeed.

“A garden is the best alternative therapy.” – Germaine Greer

i’ve begun the long, slow process of turning this garden in to a food forest. there’s a lot to consider, beside the climate, which i’m unfamiliar with – long, hot, dry summers and wet winters – and the considerations of winter sun, access, water usage and the hope of a backyard pump track for training.

so i’ve started out the front, only to discover that (presumably) spring-flowering bulbs are popping up in all the most inconvenient places. and today, with the steady hours of rain, it’s become obvious that two melaleucas are dying. they were going to be removed in any case, but not quite this soon!  another couple of shrubs are slowly dying off as well, and one major neighbour-screening bottlebrush is effectively blocking most of the oh-so-valuable winter sun from the lounge and main bedroom. i have a plan to work around that, however.

i’ve been gratefully taking drops of lawn clippings from a couple of local lawnmowing businesses in an effort to get some organic matter back into the place. grass clippings can work very well if they’re mixed with leaves, small sticks and blood-and-bone (with 5% added borax for termite control). it seems that for years the leaves, weeds and grass have been raked up and thrown in the greenwaste bin by the former owner, as the soil is dry, impoverished, and totally lacking in organic matter. one large area of the garden had been covered in clear plastic with a thin film of soil spread over the top, which was doing nothing to stop the weeds but quite a bit for the large black ants that had a very handy solar panel for their egg chambers. the gardens our the back have even been weeded to the point that the beds are up to six inches below the level of the lawn….

there’s large drifts of a particularly ugly succulent and several dead or dying lavender and salvia bushes. there’s a million daisy seedlings coming up in the front yard and garden beds with rubble edging. it’s a bit of a mess, really.

but… with a north-facing aspect and one rather beautiful eucalypt in the front yard, i have a structure to work around. some smaller grevilleas by the front fence will be staying while a weed tree and the succulents will not.

I’ve been fortunate that some lovely people from Freecycle have been willing to come and dig up some of my unwanted plants, and that’s left me with a bit of room to move. i’ve also removed some rather ugly besa-blocks that were harbouring snails from the back yard by simply loading them three at a time onto a hand truck and wheeling them away, after carrying the first three by hand across the yard! I’m not sure at this point whether i’ll re-plant in this garden bed or not, as we’re still deciding where to put the pump track.

more in the next post…..

Where it all began….

My gardening journey probably began with my great-grandmother’s thrifty gardening genes, and spending a few glorious years of my childhood in a marvellous tangled and overgrown garden surrounding a wooden house that was over 100 years old at the time that left me with a sense of true delight in growing, living plants, in birds, bugs and frogs.

Fast-forward to age thirteen and I was watching my stepfather die a slow, terrible death from a totally preventable cancer. I was never a particularly social child and his death only made me more introverted. I read everything – my parent’s British science fiction, my sister’s book club magazines, the neighbour’s textbooks, the Bible, articles on comparative religion, stock-raising manuals, and even the encyclopaedia – yes, from cover to cover. I was interested in everything. Years of my own chronic bronchitis had me looking around for reasons why I was unhealthy, which led me to what research was around back in the mid-seventies about nutrition, and on to herbal medicine.

My conclusion even then was that food, being the very building blocks that our cells require to replicate, was the answer. I mean REAL food. I’d been a very healthy and robust young child while my mother was cooking real, fresh meat and vegetables, but when my stepfather became ill we began eating a lot of canned and packaged food. even our cheese was the infamous Velveeta “cheese” and Rice-a-Riso, tinned soup with white bread, and Kraft Mac-and-Cheese were weekly staples. I don’t remember having even a fresh piece of fruit or fresh milk from about ten years old.

By the time I was thirteen I had a faceful of acne, I was always sick with one thing or another, and was constantly breathless from bronchitis. I was unfit and overweight and constantly hungry, even though I was obviously getting way too many calories.

So I kept looking into nutrition, and when i left home at sixteen I began being able to look for my own food choices. I had a brief foray into vegetarianism from eighteen to twenty-one, back to omnivore through the pregnancy with my twins and the breastfeeding period, then back to vegetarianism at twenty-six on the insistence of my (then) husband. He seemed to do well but I became very ill. When my youngest was two and a half I was floored by Glandular Fever and then Bahmar Forest virus in the same year. I was weak, listless, constantly exhausted, always hungry and constantly craving sweets. At the time, I had four kids underfoot, working part-time on weekends and was planting out a 2/3 of an acre property. I didn’t have a diagnosis at the time, but I was suffering from Fibromyalgia and Chronic Myofascial Pain Syndrome. Don’t get me wrong, we ate very well, homegrown vegetables and mushrooms, lots of cheese, Kefir and other dairy, bread I would bake myself, eggs from the chook lady up the road and wholemeal cake with real butter that I would bake for the kid’s school lunches. 

What was missing for me, was protein, pure and simple.

My journey to managing the Fibromyalgia and becoming well again began with the back-to-basics approach of what I call my farmhouse cooking – fresh plain meat, vegetables, less starch and potatoes, and lots of homegrown herbs.

 

What’s it all about, you ask?

Sixteen months ago I left my practice, home and fruit forest garden in Coffs Harbour and followed my heart to Adelaide. Of course the move didn’t go completely to plan, and instead of opening my practice straight away I found myself spending the best part of a year caring for my in-laws.

Just recently we were able to purchase a little home with a decent-sized, partly-established North-facing garden and so here I am, beginning to plant what will effectively be my fourth fruit forest/edlble urban landscape in 26 years of gardening.

Riverworks Remedial isn’t only a massage therapy and reflexology practice. It’s my intention run stretching classes, meditation workshops, injury management workshops, and exchange ideas about healthy eating. It’s a place where I will be using my own garden to inform and inspire people to use their own gardens to help them on a path to a healthier, happier lifestyle.

And yes, this blog will be a place where I will get on my soapbox from time to time, put on my ranty pants and talk about those things that are dear to me – clean food, clean air, sustainable living, the right to grow our own food and not be bullied by corporations or shovelled poorly-tested and peer-reviewed drugs by the pharmaceutical industry. I’ve used modern medicine where I feel the need to, such as insisting on surgery for an ovarian tumour just three years ago – but I fully support the right of the every person to make informed, conscious choices about their health care and not be forced to use only what is offered by their GP.