garden share collective: may

Dead peas

Autumn is traditionally the season for tidying up the garden after the glories of spring and summer. With the recent extended Easter-to-Anzac Day break, there was plenty of uninterrupted time, and mostly cool fine weather, for doing just that.

I spent a few days at my parents’ place, helping dad prune his apple and pear trees; chopping down desiccated corn plants; helping mum deadhead the agapanthus; and generally weeding and helping where I could. We added to the vast stockpile at the bottom of their property that is the remains of the trees cut down in the aftermath of last year’s January bushfires. That will be one magnificent blaze when the local firies come to burn it for us, and a significant milestone for my parents and me. I intend to be present to witness this event.

I then returned home to tackle my large garden to-do list:

 

This covered both the back yard (which is predominantly the vegies and fruit trees) and the front garden (ornamentals). High on the list was removing trees that had literally outgrown their welcome: the apple tree whose fruit was always spoiled by coddling moth, then consumed by birds and wasps; a bay tree that was all of a sudden a giant, blocking light and sending its insidious roots into the surrounding vegie plots; a rosemary that also had a carpet-like root system that made it impossible for anything nearby to flourish; a self-sown yellow peach that was simply in the wrong spot (plus I have its ‘mother’ tree).

Dad and the bay tree. Dad is about six foot tall, so the bay is perhaps eight foot

I heard landscape gardener Paul Bangay once declare that ‘a garden is not a hospital’ — meaning there is no place for nurturing sickly plants along; remove them and replace them! By extension of this philosophy, I believe that a garden is not a charity, and if a tree or plant is superfluous to my needs or even causing harm to the rest of the garden — well, again, get rid of it.

Dad attacking the roots of the bay tree

It’s a liberating concept once you get used to it, and it does take some getting used to, if you’re someone like me who looks kindly on self-sown plants in particular, thinking that if they’ve decided to grow in that crack in the path, who am I to stop them? And it’s also difficult to cut down or pull out a perfectly strong, healthy, ‘good’ plant; but one has to be realistic and rationale (no, plants don’t have feelings…do they?), especially in a small suburban backyard. There is no space for an eight foot high bay tree that dominates the soil and the sunlight.

 

The bay tree felled! Dad still working to free the roots

 

Of course, now there are great holes in the landscape that my eye needs to adjust to. The back yard in particular looks larger. I have plans, but I’m in no hurry, especially after this work program — which, let me absolutely clear, was done largely by my heroic father and his trusty mini-chainsaw, mattock, crowbar and huge garden fork; and for which I have the utmost gratitude and appreciation.

I’ll need to bring in new soil and other ‘stuff’ to coax the ground back to life. And no doubt I still have some roots to remove. Then, where the apple tree was, will be a damson plum. Our research shows that apart from birds, a damson’s rich, jewel-like flesh is usually free from grubs and disease. And where the bay was, a Lisbon lemon. I have a lemon tree already, but I’ve never liked its flavour, so (again, with research) I think a Lisbon is the way to go.

The vegie patch itself is also on its way out, after, I must admit, a fairly ordinary summer. I was not entirely pleased with the productivity of some of my plantings. I’ve been pulling out the dry, grey-moulded pea and bean vines, and mum collected a small handful of dried borlotti bean pods, ready for next year’s sowing. I’m impatient to remove the rest because they are looking pretty ugly.

Pulled peas. Will be buried as a green manure

But I have a few more weeks perhaps of climbing beans, and there are still a couple of zucchini on. There are a few green tomatoes left, heavy and bulbous, but with the autumnal sun fast losing its heat, I’m not sure if they will ripen.

Last tomatoes. I've already pruned back their plants, so they look very skeletal and forlorn

The dwindling crops signal that the gloom of winter is not far away. You can of course garden over winter in Tassie, but apart from silverbeet and kale, I choose not to. Gardening is restricted to the weekend, as it’s just too dark after work to see the garden! Opportunities and time for work are very limited when you work full-time, or that is my experience anyway. Maybe I’m wimping out (because along with the dark comes the cold)), but the months off do give me time to plan and dream about what I’ll sow and plant and grow and harvest next season.

Currently growing and harvesting

• Beans, tomatoes, peas, zucchini: but not for much longer

• Capsicum. Singular. Hmmm. Still as small and hard as a golf ball and as green as billy-o. Not a great success, but at least I can say I tried.

• Lettuce. A bit like the capsicum; has really failed to flourish, and the plants are not much bigger than when I put them in. This baffles me.

• Garlic (below). I planted perhaps early April, in two grow bags, and already it is shooting ahead. Very exciting.

Things to do

• Tidy, pull out plants when they are finished, and their stakes and supports. This is the first step to putting the garden ‘to bed’ for the winter.

• I’ve asked my friend J (male, with muscles) to dig up another part of my lawn. This will further expand the size of the beds (more tomatoes! Corn!).

• Once the tomatoes are removed, and the soil fed up a bit, I intend to plant my winter crop of silverbeet and kale. I suspect this is late, but I had no other option but to wait for the tomato bed to be freed up.

• Work on those craters left behind by the apple, bay, rosemary and peach trees.

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