Early spring

My first jonquil flowered a couple of weeks ago, just after the winter solstice. It's been a weird winter: warm most of the time with occasional bouts of freezing  snowyness. My fruit trees' buds are swelling as a result, and I'm a bit worried that they'll bloom and then get frosted off. Anyway, it's nice to see the (damp) jonquils brightening up my patch of skeletal fruit trees. 

I'll come back when the bulbs are flowering

bulb-surrounded naked fruit trees

As my previous posts indicate, I've been dancing round the other hemisphere for a couple of months. There's nothing like 2 summers!  My lovely sister house sat for me, and not only looked after the garden, but planted half the current garden.  At Easter, I blogged about digging up the massive patch of bulbs, which I then stashed away to replant a couple of month later. Of course, I didn't get around to it, but Clo did it while I was away. House Elf to the rescue!

from the paved area (spot my lovely new mandarin and magnolia trees)

daffs are a sproutin'

My family trekked down to Tassie for Easter, and I put them to work (picture me with whip).  Collectively, we built this whole landscaped side area, and I transferred the rhubarb from the square up the back, to act as decorative (but delicious) border plants around the scallops.  They're starting to sprout back, as you can see from the photos.  I should give a giant shout out to my dad, who did more grunt work than the rest of us combined. He's a star.

Pip's helping to garden by devouring a bone twice her size.

Clo bought this little guy today. He's meant to be scary.

 Below you can see House Elf's (oh sorry, Clo's) amazing vegie garden effort:

beetroot

fennel

pea

 

 

 

 My Japanese plum has broken through and is the first of my budding deciduous trees for the season:

for the living room

Garden vs Time

I'm curled up in bed at 1am writing a post about not having enough time to garden. I've been working in multiple jobs around the clock for the last couple of weeks and the poor garden is a bit neglected. The seedlings that I've raised from seed are way too big for their pots and need planting out, the weeds are crawling up where they can, and the grass is so long that my dog disappears from view when she walks across the lawn.

However, over the last year I've developed some great 'time insurance' systems, which means that the universe doesn't implode if I'm absent for a couple of weeks.  Here are a some of my faves:

1. The watering system.

Sounds complex, but in reality it's only hard for the procrastinator.

I buy the 'starter kits', simply because they're usually cheaper (mitre 10 often does '2 for $15' sales, for instance).  Oh and if you buy the kits, you don't have to look like a fool digging though the buckets of miniscule parts for which you have no idea of their purpose.  Just lay the pipe out in the garden, cutting at bends or t-junctions, and then stick in the upright spray bits (I'm not into technical terms).  Just a word of warning on the fitting of the upright spray bits.  There are little nozzle bits about 5mm in size that have to be fitted to each of the 'rigid risers'. Do NOT attempt to do this in the vegie garden. You will cry. Instead, sit inside one night with a mug of boiling water in front of the telly and a large bar of chocolate and/or wine, softening the risers in the boiling water and squeezing the bastard bits into the impossibly narrow pipes. Your hands will hurt, but that's okay because you're on the pretty path to sanctioned laziness.

The kit will tell you to measure the garden, to draw complex plans etc etc. which, if you're anything like me, will terrify you and result in the kit being abandoned in the corner of the laundry, gathering dust for 3 months. The manufacturer will also direct you to a website where you can develop your complex system, however, you have to have a conformist PC. In retrospect, I'm glad I have a mac and never got the opportunity to be overwhelmed by their program, because it's bloody easy just to go with it.  And luckily the system is fool-proof. If you make a mistake, cut the hose, buy a connector or wrap it in gaffer tape and HUZZAH you've a very snazzy-sounding 'watering system'.

If you want to make it even fancier, you can buy a computerised water timer, but a) that requires a lot more money that I can comprehend spending, and b) it means that you have to work out how many litres/hour your garden needs and I'm not really into that shiz. I have manual timers on each of my 3 taps, which means I just use my own judgement as to when the garden needs watering.  You can buy them for around $10.

Dial and walk away. Happy times

2. Mulch.

Until 18 months ago, I thought mulch was just the pine bark peeps put down to give their gardens a certain 'Aussie suburban' aesthetic.  Yes, I'm a fool. 

Mulch is sugar cane mulch, straw, pea straw on the vegie garden; wood chips around the natives; pine bark under the play equipment; gravel around the standard roses (again, I'm thinking of a specific aesthetic with this last example).  Mulch is great for the time poor gardener not only because it helps retain moisture in the soil and keep the plants at an even temp, but if you chuck on enough, it helps prevent a lot of weeds from sprouting.  Those that do sprout seem to come out more easily too, perhaps because they've grown tall at the expense of strength?

Oh and the sugar cane mulch gives the vegie garden quite a 'professional' look if you want to impress the neighbours.

3. Weed matting

I've just bagged out pine bark, and now I'm waxing lyrical about weed matting. Yep, I'm somewhat hypocritical.

Weed matting looks ugly, but if you want a semi-temporary solution to a lot of weeds re-sprouting, as I need in my post-weed seeding backyard, it's like black gold. Hmmm... maybe I should turn down the hyperbole a little.

After valiantly resisting the roll out (ha) of matting in my backyard, I finally decided that to keep weeding the same naked patches around the fruit trees over and over until I came up with my 'grand plan' for the area, was a false economy.  So I surrounded the area with weed matting over Christmas, and I've never looked back since. It's not going to be there forever, but I love not lying awake at night worrying about the evils that will sprout overnight.

4. The ability to go with it and not freak out about bok choi going to seed, grass overgrowing, or a couple of plants dying.

I will now try and sleep on my last point of advice.

Bloomin' Progress

Well, all but one of my expensive 'sticks' has bloomed.  When I say sticks, I mean the fruit trees I bought and have been anxiously waiting for them to flower and greenify.  The exception is one raspberry cane, which definitely just looks like a prickly stick.

A few of the trees have flowered and well as growing leaves, and I wonder if they'll actually produce one or two edible cherries, apricots, nectarines, apples, or greengages this year?  I proved last year with dear little Figly (the Genoa Fig tree) that I'm unable to pull off fruit in a tree's early formative years simply to encourage growth, so they definitely have to be edible. 

In regards to the artichokes mentioned in the previous post, since I last blogged I've had 5 more smaller artichokes to play with.  They're wonderful boiled for 20mins in salted water and then eaten with oil and balsamic.  Just watch out for the boiled baby slugs curled up in the 'petals'.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I'm having a few image transfer issues.  I hope to post photos of the trees and get back to more illustrated blogging soon.  What's the fun in just words?!

In two years time I'll be rolling around drunk on fruit

The rest of my fruit trees went in today.  I didn't plant them though.  I'm slightly ashamed to say that I hired a gardener to clear the weeds up the back of my garden and he put in the fruit trees at the same time.  The garden[weed]beds had been there since I moved in last September and the ground is prohibitively dense and hard to dig.  Many of the weeds had mega roots and I destroyed two gardening forks in an attempt to clear them.  In the end it seemed like a happy compromise to get someone stronger than me to dig them up.

The decided order in the end (from the left) Granny Smith/Pink Lady Apple; Stella/ White Cherry, Moorpark Apricot, Goldmine Nectarine (white), and Santa Rosa Plum.  The decision was mainly due to sunlight.

 From the other side, with the rhubarb in the foreground

The Greengage/ Goldendrop Plum tree planted yesterday

The first of the fruit trees is in!

Today I planted the first of my fruit trees: a Greengage/Golden Drop Plum combo.  While the cherry, apple, apricot, plum and nectarine trees are going to be planted along the southern fence in my backyard, I thought I'd plant the mini plum tree out the front for a bit of variety (plus I kinda ran out of space along the boundary fence in the backyard but still wanted a greengage).

I read quite a bit about planting fruit trees - many of them say things like 'start preparing your soil early, 6 months is best' (!).  Despite my best intentions, I haven't had time to even so much as weed the area out the back and the front year patch has only had a bit of minor digging in of mushroom compost.  However, I've spoken to a few v successful gardeners since then, and they all say that as long as you mix some good compost or well-rotted manure into the soil when you dig the hole for the tree, that should be more than enough.  In fact, if you believe some of Peter Cundall's recent articles in the local paper, fruit trees are pretty resilient and can actually benefit from a little neglect!

I mixed in some compost with the soil, and planted the tree in an earth mound for drainage as I have very dense clay soil and plum trees appreciate good drainage apparently.  I then laid wet newspaper over the soil and spread sugar cane mulch over the top.  I've got a lot of crazy little annoying weeds in the area and the newspaper coupled with mulch will stop the weeds from making home in the area and also keep soil damp come summer (that's if the black birds don't dig it all up like they do the pine bark).  I'll also extend my front yard watering system next weekend to include the tree.

I did a wee bit of remedial weeding as well.  As a result of my 3 week leave, I've got a mini weed jungle in the back yard including some very irritating, quick-spreading weeds that have a clover like leaf and a root that stems from a bulb like thing at the bottom.  It's quite hard to pull up the plant without leaving the bulb.  Additionally, if you leave it more bulbs grow on the root stem, and so it spreads.... ergh!

Turkey

I've had a bit of a hiatus from blogging due to a 3-week trip to Turkey.  I left my flatmate in charge of watering the garden (if necessary in damp, wintery Hobart) while I was away and frolicked amongst the very different landscape that is Western Turkey.

The landscaped gardens around the Blue Mosque, Istanbul

The one thing I noticed the most about the Turkish landscape was the number of Oleander trees.  My travelling partners and I were all taught by our parents at an early age to be very very afraid of the Oleander.  Luckily, my parents just taught us not to eat them, but my friend was told that if she touched them, she'd be gone.  As a result, when we passed by the strangely named 'Oleander Restaurant' in Olympos, none of us were very keen to try our luck.  Despite their deadliness, the pink flowers were very pretty growing by the country roadsides.

hardy Oleanders growing in the salty slopes of the travertines, Pamukkale

We hired a car and drove down from Istanbul, stopping at Iznik, Bursa, Bergama, Çeşme, Ephesus, Pamukkale, Fethiye, Olympos, Göreme, Ankara, then back to Istanbul.  We drove over some amazing mountain ranges, saw the unlikely Pamukkale salt springs and rock forms of Cappodoccia. 

 My sister sitting on the salty Travertines, Pamukkale

 

  the town of Göreme, Capadoccia

 

The optimistically named 'Love Valley', Cappadoccia

The mountain drives through the coniferous forests and steep alpine peaks in middle of Turkey were well worth the petrol money (they do need to do something about the lack of guard rails and massive car-sized boulders that occasionally appear on the mountain roads however).

 a somewhat speedy image taken from the moving car

Turkey's meant to be one of the few countries in the world that is self-sustainable agriculture-wise.  It doesn't surprise me.   Crops of all descriptions were planted in any spare bit of ground available.  Along the roads, we'd see olive trees, citrus or cherries, and amongst the trees would be silverbeet, curcubits, tomatoes or other low-growing crops.  We stayed in fantastic accommodation in Olympos called Saban Pansion, where the log cabins were surrounded by such diverse planting, particularly citrus trees, and the ingredients for the home cooked dinners were all sourced from either their garden or local farmers.  The bar and dinner area was cloaked in shade by mulberry, fig, apple and lemon trees, as well as twisted grape vines - very welcome in the intense Turkish summer heat.

 the citrus trees and impressive cliffs that surround Saban Pansion, Olympos

Additionally, along the roadsides throughout the country, local producers set up temporary stalls selling watermelon, cherries, figs, peaches and greengages.  On our first day, we stopped by one such stall and bought an entire shopping bag of cherries for only 5 lira (about $4 Australian).  We couldn't believe our luck.

My garden might be weed-ridden and overgrown now, but Turkey was really inspiring produce-wise.  I can tell this weekend is going to be happily spent in the backyard.

smart chickens hanging out by their house on the road in the middle of Goreme.

tidying up for a change of seasons

I returned from Sydney on Sunday to pumpkin, cucumber, tomato and basil plants that were shrivelled and dead or dying.  You see, while I was frolicking in the sun at the Sydney Biennale, Hobart experienced the first snow for the year. 

Winter is coming, the happy times are over. 

Ok, maybe I sound a bit macabre, but that's how it feels.  The days are so short that I can no longer see the vegies to pick when I come home, let alone garden at 9pm (which I enjoyed in the peak of summer).  I've never been successful with winter vegie growing, although maybe that has to do with my method of gardening.  Polystyrene boxes are great for moving plants around to take full advantage of sun/rain/wind; however, things take so long to grow in winter, and I just am not quite as enthusiastic and the plants consequently would historically suffer quite a bit of neglect. 

This winter I plan to be more organised, more enthusiastic, and try a bit harder.  After all, I have an entire backyard begging to be used.  So on Sunday, I covered everything in blood and bone (which the dog was later caught munching on. Etch); I pulled up and composted the beans and pumpkin and cleared the weeds, dug in mushroom compost into the pumpkin and bean beds where I will plant cabbages/ broccoli in the latter and garlic/onion/ potatoes in the former.

For the first time in my life I've been confronted with the need to practice crop rotation.  I've never rented a house for more than 16 months in a row really, so crop rotation was not really an issue.  It's quite confusing, as the crop rotation 'groups' are not the same as companion planting 'groups'.  I'm not much of a planner so it's proving quite hard to manage.

The one thing I have planned though, is the row of fruit trees that will be down the back of the yard, along the southern boundary so the vegie beds aren't shaded.  I've ordered from Stoneman's Nursery in Glenorchy a Granny Smith/ Pink Lady tree, a Greengage/Golden drop plum tree, an apricot tree, a Japanese plum, a Stella/White Cherry Tree, and a white nectarine.  I tried to order a Plumcot, which is a divine apricot/plum hybrid, but apparently it wasn't available after all.  Booo...

Now to weed the back beds in preparation for the trees... [groan]