Food for the Soul

The happy garden in various stages of growth. Notice the frangipani still losing summer leaves.

Winter in the garden is a restful time for me. I love how the vegetables seem to grow overnight, the hose and sprinklers stay idle as the rain waters and washes off unsuspecting ‘nasties’. The whole process of reproduction and food production goes off with barely a hitch. But I’ve felt something missing of late and it took a lady some streets from here to remind me what it was.

One afternoon I heard my husband chatting to someone as I waited for him to return with some freshly cut herbs. I listened to their conversation from inside and heard her comment how she comes past almost every day to see how my vegetables are growing but she never seems to catch me in the garden anymore. In an instant I knew what was missing. It was the human contact tending to the garden each day had given me! I have met more people in our front patch in the last 4 years than the previous 22 in our old house. I burst out the front door to say hello and we were soon chatting about what we were picking this week and how soon I would do a bed of green manure and what would follow it and how the cumquats had ripened early and….. I soon forgot the food on the stove!

A garden gives us so much more than our food. In a world where contact is now so often via the Internet and our lives too busy to walk to the shops, the part of our home that is open to the world, is our portal to the neighbours and community. This is where I learnt from the older Polish lady (who just happened to attend school in our home when it was a church and Catholic school) gave me her family recipe for dill pickles, where I have met new people to the street, where I say hello to the Nun who diligently walks past everyday to the new Catholic church, where Tessa, our dog’s ‘girlfriend’ thrusts her nose through the fence to say hi each morning. This is where I met almost all our neighbours when we first moved in and how I gauge whether I am running late for school by who has been past yet!. Our front garden is the window to our community and will remain so, even if I have to spend a few minutes a day battling the elements on cold winter mornings!

So,  back to the vegetables! This year has seen us have a bumper crop of broccolini and broccoli. Once the main heads were picked, the side shoots went crazy and from 12 plants, we have been eating every 3rd night for 8 weeks (and I am talking about a lot of broccoli)! It is my favourite winter vegetable in our garden as it just keeps producing the most beautiful stems. We blanche ours most nights, preferring it au natural and crunchy! Sometimes I add it to silverbeet and make a gratin which is just delicious.

A full bed of broccoli with kale in the foreground.

We were very lucky to be given two mature potted cumquats from family and these have gone from strength to strength, with every 1½ kilo producing 8 jars of chutney, made by my superstar friend Rosi. Next year, I shall make it as I have been promised the recipe. The cumquats were suffering a little when they first arrived, quite deficient in iron but have really changed colour 2 weeks on after a good dose of iron. 

Sad, nutrient deficient cumquat leaves before treatment.

My first cumquat harvest!

Brussel sprouts are new to the garden this year and also to me, as far as growing them. Until I researched them a few months back, I was totally ignorant of the fact that the brussel sprouts grow on the trunk above each stem! They really look so cute and photos of mature plants are going to be mindblowing in their 'weirdness'! No one seems keen on eating them in this household but I am told that if picked young, they are so delicious and not at all like the ones we buy at the supermarket. 

Healthy, happy brussel sprouts.

Sprouts growing on the trunk

What else is in the garden? Chillies, kale, basil, silverbeet and chard, lettuce, carrots, leeks, garlic (they take such a long time but we will soon harvest a whole year’s supply) and all the usual suspects as far as herbs go. Oh, gooseberries also.

The last of the beetroot were eaten 3 weeks ago.

Kale continuing to thrive

Chillies loving the wet weather.

The last large bunch of basil picked 4 weeks ago

Basil still thriving

Gooseberries

And, no bug deterrents used in the last 2 months with only 12 caterpillars, 6 snails and one huge grasshopper found. The broccoli has been free of any pests (except for 3 snails) the whole season! No idea why, maybe the resident kookaburras over the road have been helping out!

 There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.  ~Mirabel Osler

All Systems Go!

Officially Autumn started 37 days ago. But, in my garden, the jury is still out. Thirty degrees yesterday and 35 forecast for Wednesday makes me believe that summer hasn't left. One look at my new Autumn seedlings and I know it for sure!  I waited and waited for summer to finish and just when I thought it had in the second week of March, I planted my new 'crops'. Forever fearful  of the heat returning (and now justifiably so), I have mulched and continued to use No Frills Fertilisers' Hydrofish and Seaweed Tonic in the garden regularly. Thankfully the poor darlings have only wilted at midday for a short time but bounced back by evening. 

Garden One - 4 weeks ago and just planted

The biggest threat has actually come from neighbourhood cats and slaters. The nocturnal activities of the cats were pretty  easy to spot - craters filled with fresh poo and the newly planted garlic bulbs, dug up and resting nearby. Small scratch marks were also visible where they'd tried to cover the evidence. I haven't had trouble with felines since my last neighbour gave me a spray bottle of water which she'd said I was quite welcome to spray at her cat any time she (the cat, not my neighbour), set foot in the vege patch. Two separate 'christenings' and she never returned. However, there is a new cat on the block nowadays, so I am constantly vigilant and desperate to give him a squirt or two. Cats seem to have good memories regarding water so it should do the trick. 

Beware the green eyed garden wrecker

If you have a cat problem and the above doesn't work, there are a few non-toxic sprays on the market. Just ask at local pet shops. When googling for advice I came on one site where a writer had suggested 53 ways of keeping them out! I have decided to mention a few leaving out the more radical or slightly questionable (I have tried none of these but will do so if spraying doesn't work on the latest marauder). I must add that one of their methods was putting garlic cloves around but it obviously didn't work in our garden as this is where kitty cat pooped last time - right in the freshly planted garlic! Anyway, here are some to try: sprinkled black pepper, aluminium foil  (I am assuming you leave small balls of it), recycled wood pulp, cedar compost, cinnamon (expensive?), citrus peels and sprays, fresh unbrewed coffee grounds ( I don't like to waste my brew of choice so don't think I'll try this one), citrus essential oils, lavender, motion sensor sprinklers (you'd have to have a serious problem to go to this expense I think!), rose bush clippings and vinegar sprayed where they roam. Oh, dogs are a great deterrent but our pooch has too stay out of this area most of the time due to his addiction to baby tomatoes and smelly manure!

I also lost two new brocolli seedlings overnight to slaters and presently they attacking the stems of Swiss chard and silverbeet. They are quite efficient killing machines.

Slaters attacking the base of stems of Swiss chard. Damage can be seen on left hand stems.

Some hastily prepared orange juice gave me 8 intact half orange skins which I placed around the garden. See below for what happened next!

Orange half scooped of pulp ready enticing slaters

A day later and a good reward for me in the 'trap' as well as amongst the mulch

So, what have I planted? In other years I have gone for anything and everything believing the rest of the family would enjoy parsnips and artichokes as much as my husband and I. Finally got it right after a few seasons and I now plant in Autumn what we really love and what I can 'keep on top off' pest wise. Broccolini and brocolli have almost a bed to themselves, shared with Marigolds which attract pests away from the veges. Hopefully the moths will lay their eggs amongst the flowers. Cayenne pepper sprinkled on the brocolli leaves is a good deterrent but the best way is to be vigilant and pick off any caterpillars as you see them. Beetroot is under-planted with leeks  and a few kale completing this bed. This year I will be making heaps of Kale chips courtesy of my friend Cathy who has promised to tutor me on the use of the borrowed dehydrator. I am calling her classes  "Dehydrating for Dummies'.

Garden One 4 weeks after planting. Gap in line of broccoli on right is where I lost one to slaters.
You can see the new one planted in its place.

The second garden contains half a bed of garlic with  some onion chives. Garlic takes up to 8 months to mature so place it where you don't need to rotate cops in a few months (don't forget when planting the separated garlic cloves...pointy end up!) The other end contains the last of the summer malabar, silverbeet, basil and a few carrots. Onion was planned but I ran out of room.

Garden Two with garlic in back half, and assortment of others in foreground.

The third garden is now free of eggplant but capsicum still grows abundantly so have planted around them with lettuce, more silverbeet, brussel sprouts and a few herbs. 

 

Garden Three with newly planted brussel sprouts on right and assortment of other vegetables and herbs.
Large capsicum is at far end and small one on foreground.

Beautiful capsicums in abundance still thriving in Garden Three.

The two small gardens contain lettuce and basil which I am still using for pesto. Once a month I manage to make 7-10 containers of the yummy green stuff. And the last garden contains masses of mint and potted herbs as well as a compost bin.

A mass of pesto ready to divide and freeze.

Basil Garden

Lettuce Garden

What I call the 'Last Garden'

Two big mistakes this year - I put in beans and forget to protect them with crushed eggshells around the bases. By morning the damage had been done and it was slaters - 4 / me - nil. Overnight they had stripped the out skin off the bush bean trunks and although the beans continued to grow and start to produce beans, they were also slowly dying and I eventually pulled them out as nothing could be done. My mourning is still continuing and I think I will wait a few weeks before planting more. 

The other error was that my desire for vegetables was too big for the space and I had too drastically reduce the number of seedlings I had intended buying.  Once we get 'that' acreage, I'll be fine!

So, apart from periodic replanting of lettuce, some fertilising, daily checking for pests, water and a little conversation, all I need to do now is wait. Winter gardens and a little sun are the perfect companions for a good book, cup of tea or a warm red. I just wish the heat would disappear so I could practise what a I preach! 

I sit in my garden, gazing upon a beauty that cannot gaze upon itself.  And I find sufficient purpose for my day.  
~Robert Brault