Planting and Barking

The plants have been letting me know that Spring's almost upon us. The fig tree is about to explode into greenness and the dwarf Washington Navel Orange was starting to show signs of new growth. That meant but one thing: I had to get the trees planted tout suite!

So last weekend we got stuck in, and while Suyin was engaged in the therapeutic task of picking rocks out of the garden bed, I was digging holes for the citrus trees.

Here are some holes, and here are some trees. You can guess what comes next.

You may also have noticed in the above photo that the path is looking more path-like and less like a ditch. We decided to try some finely chopped pine bark as a fill but I was too chicken to buy more than one bag in case it looked bad. It didn't, so I've since bought some more to finish it off. Now, back to the citrus..

Final preparation before planting the lemon tree. Nice path, yes?

Still being paranoid about drainage after the untimely demise of the resident lychee tree from fungal root rot, I tested the holes by filling them with water and seeing how long it took for them to drain. The nursery we bought the trees from has a handy page on planting citrus where they suggest you should plant your tree elsewhere if it takes more than 30 minutes for the water to drain away. Mine took more like 5 minutes, so I was pretty comfortable with that.

Lime, lemon and orange trees ready for a good watering in.

After that it was pretty straightforward to plant the trees and water them in. With grafted trees you're always supposed to plant them with the graft above the ground, and in this case it was no problem as there was about 15cm to play with. Now it's just a matter of making sure they have enough water to get established (but not too much!) and looking out for any signs of distress or pestilence.

Girt by Dirt

Last weekend was a pretty productive one in the Front Yard Farm, although apart from the previously mentioned spuds, you'd be hard pressed to tell just by looking at it. I finally got the leftover bricks and rubble cleared away and the mounds of soil redistributed roughly to where it should be. The temporary brick recycling facility was decommissioned, and it's surrounding soil moved. It occurred to me that all the mortar that was pummeled to dust by the jackhammer as it was chipped off the old bricks would make the soil a bit too alkaline, since it contains lime. And of course I'd been doing this right where the citrus trees are going and they do not like alkaline soils. Fortunately, after several amusing hours separating out all the rocks, mortar and broken glass from the soil, it wasn't too much of a problem to redistribute it around the vegie beds. 

Starting to look like a proper garden again. A sort of dirt garden anyway..

As an aside, you always find unexpected stuff when digging in the garden, and the past few years have yielded some interesting finds, including:

- an assortment of gardening tools
- old coins I haven't yet cleaned up or identified
- a glass bottle stopper
- layers of plastic sheeting
- several ancient soft drink can ring pulls encased in cement
- a plastic army man
- a lump of coal

Anyway, my activities didn't go unnoticed by the neighbourhood, with quite a few people stopping for chat or commenting as they passed. I was digging out some nasty onion weed next to the chard when our Greek neighbour stopped by.

"This is very bad!" he said several times, pointing at where I was digging. I though he was criticising my chard.
"The chard?"
"No this!" (pointing at the weeds) "This weed! Very bad! You have one, you get ONE MILLION!!"

Ergh. Don't I know it...

Our Japanese next-door neighbour said the garden was beautiful as she was arriving home. A few minutes later her Indian husband said it looked very professional as he was rushing out. We live in a refreshingly multicultural area.

A passing jogger said "Keep up the good work". It is nice to receive a little random encouragement.

Another lady mentioned that there's a new community garden starting up just a few blocks away. I must remember to grow some extra seedlings to send their way in an attempt to get the whole neighbourhood growing weird purple vegetables..

 

An elderly Greek lady asked if she could have some chillies, so I gave her the last few half decent ones left. I warned her several times that they are REALLY hot ones. I do hope she understood.

Can't wait to plant stuff!

A Path! A Path!

The path is finished, in so much as the brick border is done. The actual surface material has yet to be determined, right now it's hard (when dry) or sticky (when wet) clay. I'm thinking straw, sawdust, bark or gravel. Gravel is maybe a bit permanent and hard to get rid of for my liking, at least the others will rot down eventually on their own.

Also, being clay underneath means it doesn't drain very quickly. If it turns out to be a problem I can always dig a channel along its length and put some ag-pipe and gravel in it. We've had a few heavy showers lately and so far so good. At the moment it ends quite abruptly, which was done just to see what it looked like. I'll probably change that to make it blend slowly into the garden bed, maybe with a few stepping stones.

Now I have to find somewhere to stick the excess bricks and building rubble. Under the house maybe...

In other news our seed potatoes arrived yesterday! So exciting! This year we're planting King Edward and Royal Blue varieties. Yes, I know a parcel full of potatoes may not excite everyone but think of it this way:

1 potato + good growing conditions = 10 potatoes

That's a lot of yummy roast, boiled or mashed potatoes.

And chippies! Think of all the chippies...

Tiny Increment of Progress

Here's a photo of last weekend's progress, taken in the thirty seconds I had today between getting home, and darkness and rain again descending. As threatened, here it is:

Yes, the S is almost complete.

So it now seems like a good time to mention that the "S" is actually for Suyin, without whom none of this would be possible. Her courage in working in the garden, despite freaking out at the sight of wormies, is also matched by her outstanding cooking talents. Her kale risotto for example, is an absolute triumph. To have a bucket of home grown produce transformed into a wonderful feast is, I believe, about as satisfying as gardening can possibly be. Thanks Sweetheart!

Sorry. I said I wouldn't mention the wormies. And I will find a place for a Japanese Maple somewhere, even though it isn't at all edible.

The Path of Progress

Progress is slow but steady in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is the Front Yard Farm. The bricks are being recycled yet again as a border for the path, probably for the 3rd or 4th time. I think they've been in the garden for about fifty years already: some had bits of bathroom tiles stuck to them..

Anyway, this was how it looked a week and half ago. I've since done about this much again so it's nearly finished. And yes, there will be more boring photos of each tiny increment of progress as it occurs. The neighbours have certainly been showing some interest, stopping to have a chat while passing by. Some comments so far have been:

"I like your colourful silverbeet" - Woman trying to recruit me for a bible study group.
"Nicely informal" - Man with woman trying to recruit me for a bible study group.
"Is good! Is not yard! Is for Fruit!" - I think this was the bat guy from February's post..

That's all for now, but be sure to stop by again soon to hear about our exciting fruit tree acquisitions!

A Blank Canvas

Well, almost. 

Finally this Winter it's time for a major re-organisation of the Front Yard Farm. I've never been entirely happy with the layout we inherited, basically rectangular beds defined by rows of bricks. To walk around the garden you had to balance on the bricks, some of which were loose and wobbled. Also, being slightly higher than ground level made it that much harder on my creaky bones when bending down to weed or pick vegies. In Summer, when the tomatoes and corn were powering upwards it became more three dimensional, but most of the time it looked a bit flat and a bit Farmville.

You can see the brick dividers here in this photo from last year of me putting up the pea trellis. This is before I pulled out the dead lychee tree.

I've long been pondering alternative designs, most of which were geometrical in form with a lemon tree in the centre (we use a lot of lemons) while keeping as much space as possible for vegie beds. But a few weeks back Michael, our Garden Oracle, came over for afternoon tea and a chat. We had a wander (not that it's really large enough to wander through) around the garden and talked about the microclimates of each part, what had grown well and what hadn't. There's a warm sunny spot along the front wall of the house, a cooler spot by the side fence that's sheltered from afternoon sun, and a shady spot behind the front boundary wall where nothing grows in Winter. He rightly pointed out that I'd be better off putting something else, like perennial herbs, in the spots where vegies have been less successful. There'd still be plenty of sunny open areas for vegies and a lot more variety in the rest of the garden to act as a semi-permanent framework. His infectious enthusiasm for small fruit trees has also rubbed off on me, and the plan at the moment is to at least have mango, lemon and orange trees in a warm sunny spot as well as some raspberry canes alongside the fence and espaliered avocadoes against the house. He also suggested some sort of curved path to try and maximise rather than minimise the distance needed to access the garden. Since it's such a pleasure to walk through a garden, why not make it take longer and seem larger? At first I thought maybe a kind of wavy circle around the periphery, but Katherine's suggestion of an S-shaped path looks like a winner - thanks Katherine. 

Aerial shot of the construction site.

As you can see, the bricks have now been dug up, as have the few remaining vegies apart from the rainbow chard. This frenzy of activity left my mattock-swinging and brick-carrying muscles sore for a week, but it was worth it. The path has been roughly marked out and the bricks are in the process of being cleaned up for reuse for the path borders. A few stepping stones may be needed to help access the middle of the vegie beds.

Temporary brick recycling facility at centre.

So that's the progress so far. Hopefully the weather will be kind this weekend and I can disturb the neighbours by jackhammering the rest of the old mortar from the bricks. Then the path can be properly defined and I can start actually planting stuff again. That'll be fun and a bit less strenuous.