The waiting game

I am having a huge amount of fun at the new community garden. Lots of chatting to people, building ramps, scheming about the future, turning compost, all the good stuff. But I can't help feeling there's something missing.

Plants.


Because we're growing everything from seed it is taking a lot longer to really feel like things are progressing. I guess when you start from scratch all over again you suddenly notice it more than when you already have plants to hang out with in the garden and you're just adding to them. But things are getting going now, so fingers crossed it won't be long until we have a box bursting with vegies!


At least the communal salad box that I tend is starting to put on a show. Rocket and lettuce seedlings are getting going, and radishes are looking promising.


If you ever need a gardener pick-me-up, just grow radishes. They are so quick that you feel like you must be doing something right!

Landscaping with Pallets

I'm normally terrible at taking photos before I start a project, which is always somewhat disappointing because then I don't have a reminder of how far a garden or any other project has come since I started it. So this time I'm going to try to show the start as well, and while it might not be pretty, hopefully it will at least be interesting to watch a guerrilla community garden changing and taking shape.

So this is the view as it was on Saturday morning:


The closest garden box is ours, but I'll give more details on it another time.

We had decided to build a second entry point to the garden down at our end, and luckily someone pointed out that a ramp was far better for wheelbarrow access than the stairs I'd been happily plotting. So one friend did the major grunt work and dug out part of the bank to make a rough ramp.


But another friend and I were too excited to leave it at that, so we decided to build a retaining wall from pallets, which is the main building material at the site. So we cut a pallet into three sections of varying sizes and then dug a trench area for them.

We whacked them in place, chucked in some plastic lining and scoria, gravel and earth, and voila! The perfect start to our ramp and beautification of our end of the garden.


The same view, but with a ramp!


And the great thing about a community garden is that others continue to chip in. When I went to drop off our compost this evening I noticed that someone has driven in star pickets in front of the wall, and used some astro-turf that was lying around to cover it.

Snowballs

On the weekend we headed up to CERES to buy a stack of seeds for our new garden bed. The walk home took us close to the railway garden which I abandoned after getting spooked about soil quality, and it looks like no one has been harvesting much there. I couldn't resist pulling these up, because I've never grown them before.


They're called snowball turnips, and it's a great name for them, isn't it?

Now I just have to weigh up just how worried I am about heavy metals possibly being present in my food...

A riddle for you all

What's a gardening gal to do when she has spent a year getting an empty garden to a point of overflowing abundance...


...only for the landlord to insist that every single sliver of green be removed from the property upon departure? (And we are talking bare concrete and dust here.)

A) Be heartbroken for a little while and instead spend time in Ikea kitting out the one bedroom flat she now calls home, trying to fill the silverbeet-shaped hole in her heart with meaningless consumerism/pretty birch veneer products.

B) Cultivate a ridiculous houseplant per square metre ratio.

C) Look after a friend's railway-side guerrilla garden patch through most of its growing season but then freak out about heavy metals in the soil just as the winter harvest rolls around due to concerned words from friends who test soil for a living.

D) After despair and despondency find another guerrilla garden closer to home which has abundant community and potential, talk about it non-stop for weeks and then plunge headlong into it, forcing her poor boyfriend to spend entire weekends dawn to dusk helping her knock together garden beds, source soil, etc.

E) All of the above.

I think you folks know the answer. Which also means I feel excited about blogging again! (Not that it's just a garden blog, but let's face it, gardening is the backbone.)

Looking forward to chatting with you all again.

Here's a shot of the railway-side garden before we broke up. It was fun while it lasted!

Bucket of Broccoli

During our Weekends o' Weddings month our broccoli went bonkers! We were able to pick a bucket just about every night. It tasted much more floral than shop bought broccoli.


After some heartbreak at the jaws of aphids last year, this year we went for sprouting broccoli so that we could chop off any infestations without losing the whole crop. But then this year we had almost no aphids and those that did arrive were promptly eaten by ladybirds, which I think were around because we have so much parsley.


The only downside was that it went to seed very quickly, I'm not sure if it went quicker than normal broccoli or if it was just due to the wacky weather at the time.

Some updating to do

Due to popular demand (Hi Mum) I'm not going to let this blog just fade away entirely as it was threatening to do.

The past month has been an absolutely crazy month of weddings, I've spent my weekends in Newcastle, South Africa (that was work rather than wedding),the Huon Valley of Tasmania and Ballarat.

It's been wonderful to watch friends and family make such an incredible commitment to each other, each wedding has been amazing for its own reason. The Newcastle wedding had the most heartfelt, beautiful vows I can possibly imagine, the Tasmanian wedding was such a celebration of the entire lifestyle the couple have embraced together, and the Ballarat wedding was a completely accurate reflection of the couple's sense of humour - they had a giant novelty wedding certificate and their vows were hilarious.


So look for some updates starting now on our chooks, vegie garden and more.

These photos are from the Stellenbosch Botanical Gardens in Cape Town. I spent three hours there on the day when I was leaving South Africa and I took a huge number of photos. And then forced Tom and my parents to sit through a slideshow of every shot when I got home - lucky them!

Sowing seeds pays off

These carrots were a pleasant surprise. They'd been chugging along in the backyard, doing their thing, and it was only on a rainy evening when I was getting ready to make soup and kicking myself for forgetting to buy carrots that I thought it might be time to check their progress.


That large one was seriously huge! They're also not a bad metaphor for what's been going on in my life and taking me away from the blogosphere: finally, after years of study, interning, volunteering and freelancing, I've got a paid full-time job as a journalist. I'm really enjoying it, and it's nice to have some stability and routine in my life.

Meet the girls!

I'm pleased to introduce Joyce, Maud and Betty - the newest members of our sharehouse, which is living up to its nickname of The Fitzroy Farmhouse more and more each day! See their little bums sticking up in the air amongst the silverbeet?


This is Joyce, who rules the roost:


This is Maud:


And Betty refused to stay still for a photo, so she can be introduced at a later date.

It's lovely to have little companions clucking around the garden, although they do wreak havoc at times and they're not really laying very many eggs. Luckily we got them for free from a friend, and we got seven tons (!) of barley for free so it hasn't exacty been a difficult equation in terms of money spent vs eggs gained. They love banana, silverbeet, warrigal greens and porridge, but turn up their noses at silverbeet stems and pears. Definitely fussy urban chooks. We still like them though!

On the wireless

G'day folks, sorry for a slight absence of late. I've been very busy taking on a fun new project - my own gardening radio show on community radio!

Get Growing is on at 9am every Saturday on the Student Youth Network (90.7FM in Melbourne and Geelong or at syn.org.au). And hopefully I'll soon have podcasts of the show up on show's page on the SYN website as well. The show is aimed at the station's 12-25 year old audience, with an emphasis on growing vegies and making a garden when you're not a home-owner and you have a tight budget.

It's been a bit of a stressful, steep learning curve, because I only completed my four week radio training course the week before I applied for the show, and then I only had another week or so before the first episode went to air. To add to that, I'm my own producer, panellist, everything, so I push all the buttons and sit alone in a studio with no one to ask questions of when things go wrong! But there haven't been too many long pauses so far, I've had some great guests to interview, and I've had a lot of fun chattering away about what to plant and harvest, budget tips and indigenous food plants.

To answer a couple of questions left in previous comments:

EcoMILF, we planted our beetroots as seedlings in the second week of January.

Katiecrackernuts, after a bit of warrigal greens tasting experimentation I would have to say no, they don't taste like spinach. They are probably closer to silverbeet but a bit less minerally tasting. They actually almost remind me of the taste of potato, but in leafy form. Odd, I know.

A Problem and Solution Side by Side

Our pak choi is getting absolutely savaged by fat little caterpillars at the moment, despite being picked over each morning.


But while this type of green is getting stripped to its very skeleton, right in front of it another is thriving and bug-free:


Warrigal greens.

I was intending to plant these in the front yard and let them slowly replace the lawn, but I chickened out, which is just as well because at our first rental inspection last week the property manage told us the owner is incredibly attached to his garden and wouldn't take kindly to the lawn being torn up. So instead these were plonked down on the edge for easy access and they seem to be loving life! They're an indigenous plant that is used just like spinach.

Working from home...

...is sometimes wonderful. Like when your lunch is silverbeet fresh from the garden with mushrooms, olives, cannellini beans and a squeeze of lemon juice on sourdough toast:


mmmmm.

... sometimes messes with your head. I spent so long staring at our lettuces during my morning coffee that I started to see ballet dancers.
This:


Started to look a bit like this:


(except my lettuces have their arms folded around their shoulders, not stretched out in front)

This:


Started to look a bit like the male lead here:


(except my lettuce is being more dramatic and yearning and is bending at the waist)

...and it sometimes leaves you to be the person left at home to discover that the two mysteries of our household

- where has the brush for the dust pan gone?

- why does our weird laundry/annexe room smell so disgusting?

can be answered in one fell swoop:

Because the brush fell down some odd, until-now-unknown open drain hole behind a cupboard and caught anything from any of our household sinks in the last month or two in its bristles. It was foul.

Ballet photographs by Andrew Bossi.

Beautiful Beets

We pulled the first of our beetroot this week. Glorious ruby red and bright pink globes, destined for greatness in a starring role in Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion recipe for beetroot, avocado, walnut and pink grapefruit (and lettuce) salad.




It was one of the dishes served up last week at a big dinner for friends that made me so proud of our garden. We all sat around on those (previously posted) benches drinking mojitos with lots of fresh mint from the garden before eating a tasty meal which used garden produce in every course. Far too much was eaten and drunk and a merry time was had by all.

Flower and Garden Show

I've never been to the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show (or MIFGS, as the cool kids call it) because it costs a lot of money to go and I suspected that it wasn't really my type of gardening. But suspecting and knowing are two different things, and I always consider going, and this year the landscape design company my housemate works for had an entry, so last weekend I figured now was as good a time as any to see what it's all about.

Money. That's what it's all about. Apart from the part that was about almost all the gardens looking pretty much the same, the use of the same plants over and over and most notably the same colours over and over. I did get to look at lots of pretty succulents, which I loved. But I couldn't understand why people were paying a few dollars just for a cutting when you can get them for free from friends, parks, the bits that fall off onto the pavement outside people's houses, etc. It all seemed so soulless, and even when I did see a really cool plant I found I wanted to buy it from one of the three local nurseries I frequent and support them instead of a vendor I'll never see again.

So now I know. That's not my type of gardening. But it was interesting to see I suppose, if only to be grateful that my garden is built with a lot more love and a lot less steel blue paint, lime green cushioning, and that particular brown that popped up in every single design. And of course, a lot less money.

This weekend should be an entirely different experience as we're heading off rockclimbing at the Grampians - should be fun!

Coming soon

I've just started seeing previews for The Pacific on Channel 7. Which I imagine is exciting if you loved Band of Brothers, the previous series by Steven Spieldberg. I, however, never saw it.

But it's also exciting if your house was filmed for it! Much of the filming of one story thread took place in our old neighbourhood and in particular in the house next door. In one exterior shot a soldier suitor plucks a rose from the garden next door to the house he is visiting. From this (gorgeously set-dressed) front garden, in fact.


They tore up all the weeds in our front patch and put pots of box hedges around the edges, fake mondo grass along the front, and pots and pots of roses.


To make such a dense screen of roses in the front they took tall standard roses and leaned them up against the fence in between shorter pots of roses. There was also plenty of fake ivy woven around the place - even though we've moved house it still haunts me, I found what I hope is a final plastic leaf when repotting something the other day.

It was a week of mayhem in our neighbourhood.


And when it was all done, and the front garden was left bare and empty of weeds...
I started a vegie patch.

Cold frame

And further to our bench-building carpentry efforts:
A cold frame.


Not wanting to waste the last scraps of floorboards or an old window found in an alcove full of junk at the last place, we built a cold frame for raising seedlings. While we don't need to keep our seedling safe from frost very often, we do struggle to keep them moist enough in baking heat, and this has helped with that. Currently it has marigold and bok choi seedlings to replace the ones that kept getting savaged by bugs when planted directly, and nasturtiums.


The construction of this was full of confused conversation about why the other person kept holding it upside down until we realised we were visualising very different interpretations of our verbally agreed upon plan. So it has an odd tilt in one part, but it still works a-okay.

Pot o' potatoes

I have always been skeptical about claims by gardening book authors that potatoes are so easy, you can just plant them in a pot and almost forget about them until it's time to harvest. Often these authors are based in the northern hemisphere, and as our pot of potatoes baked on concrete through an Australian summer, I couldn't help doubting their claims. Finally I was sick of wondering, so this week (perhaps a little too early) I tipped out the pot to see if anything had happened.


Hoorah!


We got nearly a kilo of potatoes from one big pot. I'm not sure it's enough to really bother doing again in our garden, but interesting and satisfying nonetheless.

Quite a suitable post for around St Patrick's day really.

Sustainable meal

It was pretty nifty to be able to look at our dinner the other night and realise how much of it was from the garden.


Lots of salad leaves, some of our cucumber bounty and tomatoes. And then the piece de resistance - silverbeet tart from Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion, which I was given for Christmas.


(It looks better when she photographs it!)
I've already used this book so many times; it's brilliant to be able to look up whatever you have a glut of in the garden and make something different and I'm enjoying browsing as I'm choosing what to plant.

And to accompany it, a bottle of Re-Wine, which I wrote about last year!

Kooky Cuces

Is Cuces how you would spell a cucumber abbreviation? But quite seriously, our cucumbers are amazing. I've never grown them before, and they keep surprising us. You just think there are a whole heap of leaves covering some ugly trellis and fence,




but then, whammo! A huge cucumber.




Sometimes they're so good at hiding that they get a bit out of hand. And now they're starting to try and make a break for it.




One of them even tried to peer around the corner of the barbecue this morning.


With one of those every day or two and a salad bed that looks like this:


we're eating plenty of garden food right now!

Something to keep in mind

Sums it up well doesn't it?
Painted on a garden bench down at Veg Out.
I think I might need this on a plaque in my garden for those moments when I wonder why I bother.

Veg Out and a week that was far from a vegging out week

Wow, what a whirlwind of a week. Last week was the Students of Sustainability conference and it was an incredible experience. So many passionate speakers and interesting ideas (along with a depressing reality-check about climate change and the world's responses to it). I had intended to post daily with something that blew my socks off each day (and there always was something) but unfortunately we spent the week rushing home to interview for new housemates in a desperate rush, which was pretty exhausting and time-consuming. So I think I will try to do a few posts about it, starting with my favourite activity: an excursion to Veg Out community garden down in St Kilda.


I so enjoyed seeing what people were growing (all far more successfully than me), but it was also such an interesting story about how the garden had come about and then become an indispensable part of the St Kilda community. Some community gardens I've visited are really just a patch of personal backyard for a large number of people but they aren't a truly community-oriented garden. This garden is open to the public, numerous groups (like the war veterans who live in a hostel closeby) have a plot, and what I found most striking was that it had no high fences within the garden - it all felt open and welcoming.

The garden used to be a bowling green, so it has some quirks like the original lights and bunkers.



It's positioned in the shadow of Luna Park which makes for an odd juxtaposition as the sound of rollercoasters and screaming children is quite loud, but the garden still feels peaceful.



It was great to see flowers, succulents and vegies all planted together.



We spent the day digging up vegies that had been grown to help feed the conference-goers and I had fun chatting to others about their vegie patches or plans for one. One of the best personal things to come out of the week was a reinvigoration of my gardening enthusiasm. My friends suggested I get a t-shirt printed with my most succint explanation of why my enthusiasm had been dropping: 'Aphids ate my mojo'. But hopefully I'll have some new garden projects to show you soon as well as some more environmental posts about the conference.