Meant to be

The funny thing about writing for both the hippy press and as an independent essayist for around a quarter century, is that you come across trolls. They’ve always been around, and are most likely part of the human condition. Yet sometimes, their poisonous pens reveal an underlying truth. A confident dude reads their words, says ‘whatever man’ (for it’s mostly a guy isn’t it?), then gets back into life. On the other hand, it’s a busy time of year in the garden, so the dealing with the trolls will just have to take a back seat. The other day Sandra and I were discussing what seeds need to be planted out next, and decided that it was to be the beans. The time and conditions suddenly just felt right. So bean seeds will be planted out out over the next week or so. How did we know that though?

Pattern recognition is a funny thing don’t you reckon? With gardening, for years and years, you do the same thing over and over again. Before you know it, the activity becomes second nature. There’s a beautiful grand order to the seasons in a garden with the annual procession of planting. We now know how all that rolls in this area. And each year our experience with the growing season improves.

Over the years we’ve increased the diversity of edible plants grown here. Some years, if time and resources allow, new planting areas will be opened up. Like the four new potato rows planted out a few months ago. The amount produced differs each year too, and over time we harvest a little bit more of our food from the farm. We’ve trialled a lot of different varieties of those plants, and then stuck with the open pollinated varieties which more or less work good enough here during most seasons. It’s been a very interesting journey, and if you can disregard the dastardly inflation monster, we tend to spend less mad cash at the supermarket nowadays.

It’s not always easy sailing though, and nature will throw some curve balls. In February and March (late summer, early autumn) earlier this year, the rains simply disappeared. And the heat got dialled, way up. By the end of March, the place was looking crispy and dry. Water is a limited resource here, and relying on water tanks alone to catch the wet stuff which is meant to fall from the sky, if there’s no rain, a bloke gets to watch the storage levels dwindle in real time. Not an experience for the anxiety riddled! Yet, after previous experience with such dry conditions, you sort of know how to muddle through, and have a plan B and C if things get dire. Over the years, you adapt to the local conditions, and so become even more careful with the limited resources available. It’s worthwhile noting that the plants got through the hot and dry period just fine.

In nature, there’s heaps of competition. Plenty of things want to eat all of the yummy produce you’ve gone to all the time and effort to grow. Fair enough too, a good portion of the fruit and vegetables grown here does go towards the local wildlife. Those forest critters in turn fight off all the newcomers, and convert the plants into valuable soil enriching manure which gets spread randomly about the area. Hopefully they don’t take everything. The plan is to out-produce their needs, which as a strategy, mostly works out.

I only get annoyed with the forest critters when they breach an area which is fenced off. The area is out of bounds for good reasons. Recently, the rabbits burrowed under a fence and munched upon my tasty radishes and sugar beets seedlings. I’m not a fan of such activities, and you could say that they’ve annoyed me, yeah. But do I head out at night and shoot the rabbits? I could, but then what will the foxes, eagles and snakes then eat? That bunch of carnivores may all suddenly decide to move their activities closer towards the house in search of a feed. Who knows? Every action you take has consequences, and maybe this rabbit situation is a balance a dude needs to learn to live with. Or it’s a prod to fix up the fencing, which will probably happen over next winter. And the munched rows will get re-planted out with tomatoes, the leaves of which are most likely toxic to the rabbits.

It takes a lot of years to be any good at this stuff, and as long term readers will know, growing edible plants is just one aspect of the systems here at the farm. We’ve followed a similar learning journey with firewood, harvesting water from rainfall, energy from sunlight etc. It’s complicated. So when I read naive words penned by angry trolls, I kind of feel sorry for them. It actually reminds me of way back in the day when we planted our first vegetable seedlings in a layer of woody mulch, and unsurprisingly all the plants died. I’d read the mulch advice in the hippy press and believed it. So in the very early days I added mulch, lot’s of the stuff. The advice might have worked somewhere, just not in my garden.

It was of interest to me that the trolls appeared outraged that I dare suggest that there were limits to the quantity and volume of soil minerals available for growing edible plants. People unaccustomed to considering limits can be frightened by the mere thought of them. Therefore, it’s a topic I’ll come back around to in the future, it’s just that right now, there’s heaps of work to do.

But really, it highlights the really strange thing about ideology: you can believe whatever you want. Doesn’t matter at all if it’s nonsense, it’s about the comfort and the emotional rush from the defence of the thoughts. How those beliefs work out in a garden, well that’s an entirely different matter. Even I used to hold funny ideas about growing plants, but now after considerable hands on experience, I know better.

It’s been quite a warm and dry week, which has been very pleasant. The pumpkin seeds will have to get in the soil over the next two weeks, yet first I had to get the water system to the growing area working. Regular readers will recall that recently two 12V water pumps were installed with all of their associated gear in a timber frame. Earlier in the week, one of the frames was clad with corrugated steel sheeting, then plumbed and wired up.

Dame Plum supervised the wiring and plumbing of this water pump

Observant readers will note that there appears to be a small pool of water to the rear of the water pump housing. An o-ring which would ordinarily seal the agricultural plumbing joint, failed for no reason that I could discern. It took a while to track down what was wrong, mostly because the join looked perfect. The reality was otherwise, the connector was replaced, and now the system fully works.

The extra low voltage 12V power cables sit in conduit and are correctly fused at each end, they’re just sitting above ground right now until the new firewood shed is constructed.

To the left of the water pump there are two steel rock gabion cages. One of those is now full, and was sewn shut.

A steel rock gabion cage was sewn shut and the last cage is rapidly filling

At the other end of that wall of rock gabion cages there is a second layer. One of those upper layers of cages was also sewn shut.

A double height rock gabion cage wall in the courtyard

Over the next month or so, a new cage will be assembled and then installed on the second level.

The big green water tank will eventually have two water pumps connected to it. The pumps run separate water lines. The timber frame holding the second water pump was also clad with corrugated steel sheets. It’s yet to be wired and plumbed in.

Ollie supervised the cladding of this water pump frame

The new concrete staircase below the courtyard is slowly inching it’s way uphill one step at a time. The journey of the staircase, begins with but a single step! We poured the fifth cement step this week. There were plans to pour another, but there’s no hurry, and if in doubt, do less!

The new concrete staircase now has five steps

Long term readers will appreciate the challenges we face having to work out what to do with large harvests of lemons. This week we’re trialling a new usage by making a batch of lemon marmalade. It smells nice enough, but the proof as they say, is in the pudding. The lemons had to soak overnight.

Lemons soak overnight in preparation for lemon marmalade

On Friday we took the day off work and headed to the nearby nature reserve of Bald Hill. I can confirm that the hill was in fact devoid of trees, and had a good view of the mountain range here.

Bald Hill really is devoid of trees at the peak

Having granitic mineral rich soils, the forest was quite a rich open woodland. And the grassy under story had some very interesting plants:

These may look like dandelions but I believe they are native yams
These seeds may indeed be a variety of native millet grains

I even noticed a local fruit tree, the Cherry Ballart (Exocarpos cupressiformis).

A native fruit tree, the Cherry Ballart (Exocarpos cupressiformis)

There were two hills in the reserve, the other was also unoriginally named: Granite Hill. Part of the hill had been removed so as to provide granite presumably for the nearby township of Kyneton. There’s even a wallaby in the next image, although it’s tiny looking in the large landscape. It’s halfway down the photo and about three quarters across from the left hand side. It’s a big quarry.

This quarry is part of Granite Hill

Long ago, the famous Light Horse mounted brigade of the army used to train at the reserve. There were even the remains of some sort of improvised WWI dugout used for training.

Dugouts once used to train the famous Light Horse brigade

In breaking produce news, we consumed the last of the previous seasons pumpkins. They’ve been very tasty additions to meals over the past six months.

The last of the previous seasons pumpkin was consumed this week

Eating that last pumpkin (a Queensland Blue variety) reminded me that this time of year is the traditional hungry season. In these enlightened times of trolling, people forget their history. With that thought in mind, the video this week showed just what we are harvesting from the garden:

Spring the lean and hungry time of year in an edible garden ep 23

Over the past week or so, the Globe Artichokes have decided to produce lots of tasty produce.

We boil the tasty chokes with bay leaves

The European pears are continuing to put on size, and one of my favourites is this tasty red variety. They’re good but probably too soft to ever be commercially sold.

Hopefully this tasty red variety of pear produces lots of fruit

This may well be out first good Fig season. There are many fig trees growing here, but one of them is much faster growing than all the rest. It’s now producing a lot of tasty looking fruit. The tree was a long ago gift from another local gardener who told me the story that her grandfather had long ago brought the tree over from Africa. I wasn’t entirely convinced of the truth of the story, but that’s what was recounted.

This Fig tree is loaded with developing fruit

The Apricots are getting larger each week, and the cheeky parrots have sampled a few of the yet unripe fruit and found them to be not to their liking. That’s a good thing, and here’s hoping we can harvest some of the marginal-for-here stone fruit.

The Apricots look better every week

A few months ago at a nursery clearance sale I purchased a seedling chestnut tree. Until very recently the tree was believed to be dead. However, I had a good chat to the tree and asked it: What do you need mate? A sharp pruning tool halved the size of the tree (and I’d pruned it heavily prior to planting). Each day for many days now, the new tree has been enjoying a bucket worth of seaweed solution. Over the past couple of days, some of the nascent buds have begun to swell. The patient may well survive!

This bud swelling is a good sign of life

Onto the flowers:

This Horse Chestnut produces a lot of flowers
The air is thick with bees near to this hedge of lavender
It’s Rhodie time
Rhododendrons add some great colour to the orchards
The Rhodies are getting quite thick now

The temperature outside now at about 9am is 11’C (52’F). So far for last year there has been 779.6mm (30.7 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 779.4mm (30.7 inches)