How nice it was to go out last week to dinner and take a salad half of which was from the garden... I will be self-sufficient in lettuce from this week, after a month and a half. Broccoli and broad beans are looking strong, though I got them in a bit late. The rhubarb is doing brilliantly... I left the hose dribbling among them and they got 4000 litres of freshly collected rainwater! One strawberry in flower already in a sunny corner. I've put a net up on poles over the yard, against the bower birds and parrots — a net with holes big enough for smaller insectivorous birds to come in. Not much for the big birds to destroy yet, but I needed to get the net up before building underneath.
For mulch, I have made a couple of Monday dawn forays to the local newsagent, for dead newspapers. The weekend papers make a stack three or four feet high. Newspaper to put under woodchip - friendly chat with the arborist who did some pruning for me and he emptied his truck of wood chips. So the paper goes under the woodchip to make paths and reduce the grassed area — I am now able to use a hand mower. Council did a trial of a prunings mulching service last year and say they plan to continue it, with a sensible desire to leave mulched material at your place rather than carry away green waste. Existing council services and information here.
The compost bin is doing well, warm against a sunny wall. Ev contributed some old compost with masses of worms to get it started. Compost will add complexity (humus, worms, worm castings, bacteria and fungi) to the garden into which I ploughed (with the rotary hoe) blood and bone, chicken manure pellets, coconut peat (for organic mass and moisture retention) and dolomite. Dolomite is a kind of lime containing magnesium as well as calcium. Most of our commercial food has the potential to be magnesium deficient as most Australian soils need their acidity reduced and in broad acre farming calcium lime is generally used, high doses of calcium driving out magnesium and lack of magnesium preventing proper retention of calcium in animals. The ground is also full of grass chopped by the rotary hoe. Some of the kikuyu and couch re-shoots, but shoots are easy enough to pull out at this stage, as the rotary hoe chopped the grass into short lengths before burying it.
Many people already have difficulty paying to get to town to buy food. A home food garden adds fun, exercise and top quality eats. And you really only need a few square metres for intensive gardening. Keep the food garden close to the kitchen where you can run out to get something; remember too that the shoes of the farmer (visiting and caring) are the best fertiliser. When you can, get the best of strong traditional plant types from the Seed Savers stall at the Tomerong Markets. And you can take seeds from your successful crops there to share with others... it all goes around, with smiles. Whatever you do, DON'T MAKE IT BORING!!!
Yesterday's work had the added impulse of inspiration from my step daughter Bindi, who went to Shoalhaven High from Tomerong and nowadays works as a teacher in Darwin. Bindi had written on Saturday with the happy news that on Friday the ABC's Country Hour chose her school farm (Bindi is the farm teacher at Alawa Primary) to celebrate Farm Day, broadcasting from the chicken pen. Hey, look also at the links on the right of that page at the ABC - see the comments from kids and also read about local volunteers involved with the school farm.
We can use the backyard to learn with the kids about healthy food production. As every street contains someone who is a handy gardener (and someone who has difficulty doing physical work) we also have potential to share and build community.
Out at the Dog Track Markets early Sunday I asked a stallholder (from whom I had bought the hand mower last month) about getting a tool to make more verjuice this year. Last year I found the grapes very hard to crush, even by hand, because they are so hard and green when you want to make verjuice. The stallholder came up with the world's biggest potato masher, what a great idea. Hope I can remember where I put it half a year from now. I will have to find an old porcelain tub to do the crush in... and must soon plant the grapes!
cheers
Dennis
p.s. writing early, woken up by rain... how good is that after working in the garden on a dry and sunny day... :-)
