garden share collective: september

I was beginning to think I’d have to skip this month’s Garden Share Collective because there was nothing to report.

But there’s been real action in the garden just recently, with Dad starting to box up my vegie beds.

We — or more accurately, he — is not finished yet, for a couple of reasons. First, finding all the timber we needed took much longer than he expected. Many of the timber yards were very low on stock; apparently all our Tassie timber is being shipped to NSW for the housing industry.

 

Second, my dad is super-accurate and a complete perfectionist. ‘That’s close enough’ is not in his vocabulary (before retiring, Dad was in earthmoving; he did jobs such as the Eastern Creek raceway and Sydney Airport’s third runway, where levels had to be millimetre precise). So even though these are ‘just’ vegie garden beds, Dad was uber-obsessed with getting everything perfectly flush and properly aligned. The fact that none of my perimeter fences or existing, inherited paths and borders are square presented frustrations and logistics to be overcome. But he’s getting there.

 

I am immensely grateful for the hard physical (and emotional!) work Dad has done for me. Because it’s allowed me to dream of crops and produce never before possible. In fact, I really have to improve my gardening game now to live up to the brilliant standard of these structures.

 

The new bed (dug by my friend J; on the left in the pic below) is already destined for ten tomato plants. Corn is another crop that will now be possible because of the extra space.

 

All of the beds, once they are topped up with some extra ‘vegie mix’ soil, will be considerably deeper than they were (the framing is 30cm deep). So I’m now planning borders of root vegies — beetroot! carrots! parsnip! — that couldn’t be grown before because the beds were shallow or full of the pebbly fill that we found beneath the lawn. I am imagining leafy borders of these root veg plus some low-level companion plants such as marigolds and poached egg plants.

 

So there’s still nothing new to report to you on the growing front (garlic, kale and silverbeet is going along nicely), but I’m filled with real excitement about the possibilities to come as the frames are completed — and the days grow lighter and the soil warms up — much more so than in previous years.

 

After reading Garden Deli’s glorious English summer ode to sunflowers, I’ve decided to try some in my revamped space, both for their happiness and their bee-attracting qualities. And in the plot where the bay tree was (at the end of the path in that pic above), not a new lemon as previously pondered, but a patch of annual companion plants that hopefully won’t be too bothered by the mucky bay roots I haven’t been able to completely remove. Pretty for bees and for me.

 

The weather in Hobart has been unseasonably warm of late, and spring bulbs and blossoms and other beauties are lifting our spirits after a gloomy winter. One of my favourites is pussy willow. These branches were a gift from mum; we both love the metamorphosis from soft grey kittens to the explosion of yellowy fireworks (see another pic here).

 

It’s a beautiful time to be outside right now, though many of us are being realistic — September and October can be colder, frostier and snowier than winter proper. But right now we are enjoying these glorious days. I hope you are too.

 

Don't forget to see others in the Garden Share Collective. Click on the logo in the column at right to see more green thumbs.