Spring Springs

Rain for the next three months I was told. Which – being a Leo and so suffering an entire childhood of rained out birthdays, and being a pessimist when it comes to weather and Fairday – I thought was a bit of sound forecasting. I was pretty sure we were in for a fabulous time for the garden, with lots of gentle precipitation neatly appearing every few days or so as the weather and the soil slowly warm up.

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All of which fitted in well with my grand plans for converting my newly acquired uber-suburban garden of buffalo lawns with rose border and concrete slab patio into a environmentally friendly, waterwise, food producing, bird attracting blend of fruit, vegetables, natives and flowers attractively sculpted into a sort of romantic Piet Olufsen inspired wilderness with neo-classical framework and a contemporary twist. Clearly my collection of garden porn (collected at no small expense to the management from Planet Bookstore’s far too interesting gardening shelf) had installed visions of a garden as achievable as the Sun King’s garden at Versailles and it was time to get stuck into some actual gardening.

But this year spring has sprung a few surprises. August for once, had, in one of those blinding flashes of sodding reality that afflicts the over keen gardening newbie, delivered a wakeup about the lack of water wisdom currently manifesting itself in my garden.

Usually it’s not til September or October, but this year, at least a month too early we had the brilliant blue, sunny skies that herald the onset of the crisping of my struggling new plants. New plants, old plants even the dead sticks were suddenly hugging the ground and gasping. I thought they were clearly a bit soft, as I had been very dutifully mulching, knowing that that’s critical to stopping soils from drying out. I hadn’t noticed the mulch slowly being worked into the soil to the point that it was almost non existent. Or more to the point I counted on a month more rain before I had a big evaporative problem.

Along with a big lot of mulching, major work in my garden was now also becoming critical in order to establish planned dwarf apples, peaches, mandarins, oranges, limes and lemons before summer.

So with much haste and a bit of pleading the family were called in for a bit of lunch – and a bit of moving cement slabs, digging trenches, shifting monstrously wide roses of prickly dispositions and that kind of entree. I’m sure they enjoyed themselves, they said they did as they left in the dark. It’s odd though, I have noticed that recently people have started to question surprise invites to my home from an otherwise avowedly cooking averse grrl offering fancy meals.

Dirty tactics aside, my new trees were planted; more buffalo lawn surreptitiously turned into herbs, cement slabs were replaced by lippia, thyme and lawn chamomile; and new mulch was laid on thick. Upended water bottles with holes drilled in the lids next to the new big plants are my back-up drip watering system. I was now ready for spring. ‘Bring it on!’ thought I, prematurely as it turns out.

Spring Stinks

Mulch I find has its little problems. My lupin mulch had been great but was breeding more slaters than is quite decent in one small garden. Slaters, I find, are not my friends. While the ravaged eco-system I currently potter in may be responsible for their baby boom, it would be quite nice if they would stop eating the seedlings I’m virtuously companion planting to ward off unhelpful insect pests. As I took a cup of tea out to the garden and noticed a few of these insectoid armoured trucks decoratively hanging off the French marigold, I pondered their general reputation as garden friends. By the time my tea was finished and the entire 10cm high marigold had been redistributed to little slater bellies, I decided I was fed up with nature and that maybe organic gardeners could slip up every now and then and sprinkle a bit of bug splat here and there.

After reading the ingredients on the back of the chemical box I chickened out. The chemicals involved all sounded big, bad and scary, so I reverted to the less effective though more bleeding-heart friendly strategy of providing empty half oranges for the slaters to munch on and then scooping the lot up and redistributing them to a new life in a local park.

The other thing so far sprung by spring has been aphids. Without aphid munching wrens and robins in the garden, they’ve been encrusting all new growth while I was busy plotting the recruitment of my family labour force. Leaving the temptingly handy bug spray out of it, there’s a couple of suggestions. Spraying them off with a hose seems rather reckless when water is scarce, so I went for the more hands on approach. Might I suggest to others suffering aphids that one wears gloves whilst squishing. Unless of course you like your fingers acid yellow.

Spring Sings!

August hasn’t, however, been a complete disaster. One of the surprising victories where everything went to plan sans slaters, slugs, random bugs or running out of water – was a pot-garden of edible greens. I wish I’d tried it when living in a flat with only a balcony on which to accrue what my brother persisted in calling the ‘plant cemetery’, because to quote Peter Cundall, it was ‘dead easy’. One big unloved pot (I hear old foam eskies are pretty good too), a couple of bags of potting mix and a couple of punnets of seedling – one of mixed lettuce and the other of mixed Asian greens – as well as one pot of something called corn salad and about 10 minutes was all it took. I cunningly avoided suggestions about how far apart to plant things and whacked them all in to enjoy a bit of serious red and greenery for a wee while before whatever bug had lined them up decided to have a go. Wafted over a bit of Seasol. To the complete astonishment of myself and most of my acquaintances, they grew. And grew. And grew! I wasn’t too sure about the quality so I harvested handfuls of bok choi and odd looking lettuce and fed them to my Mum and Dad. As they both continued in surprisingly good health and the garden re-sprouted I thought I’d have a munch myself.
I can’t believe how virtuous I feel that I have saved all those ‘food miles’ by growing my own greens! I am clearly on my way to planet friendliness, and once I work out how to overcome the food milage between the depths of my couch and the pot of lettuce I might even be on my way to having a good lunch.

Rain is again threatened (ha! as if!) as I write, but my mulch is in place, and encouraged by my greens, I have ventured into experimenting with pots of rocket, bush beans, mini cauliflowers and mini beets. Also on the plans are a hedge of sunflowers, which will hopefully screen my yard from the road as well as providing a handy trellis for some runner beans.

As I get more attuned to my garden (and even more obsessive, according to my partner) I am starting to realise that gardening is a learning process that is going to take quite a while. Surrounding my water guzzling bean seedlings with my cactus collection, for example, is a decision that I now know was not quite bright. I am, however, finding that there is a wealth of information available to the novice gardener. One particularly handy brochure that is available from your local nursery is ‘The Waterwise Guide to Gardening’, published by the Water Corporation. Realistically though some things will survive, and some things won’t. But the shelf of luscious garden literature at the local bookstore will endure, and there’s not much Spring can do about it.

Spring Things

With major work done September in the garden is a good time in the garden to…

Plant – Herbs, beans, chard, beetroot, cabbages, chillies, eggplants, melons, lettuces, pumpkins, squash, sweetcorn, sweet potato and silverbeet

Appreciate – Spring bulbs, including freesias, daffodils, tulips, muscari and sunshine

Watch out for – white cabbage moth, snails, slugs, aphids, sock tans

Spring Festivals

Kings Park Festival – Not So Seedy

Now in its second year, the Kings Park Festival is the new, updated version of the annual Wildflower Festival that ran for 43 years. This year’s festival revolves around the theme ‘Seeds of Change’, acknowledging the importance of seeds in conserving indigenous flora. Festival highlights include the unveiling of a new Conservation Garden, a photographic exhibition entitled Hard Rain that documents the impact of climate change, a Stay on Your Feet Seniors Day, a Wild Fairyland Festival for young fairies and a Wildflower Marketplace. For those keen on gardening, there are plenty or workshops and courses, including one on how to grow your own native bush foods. All in all, the festival has plenty of interesting activities warranting a trip to King’s Park. The Festival runs from September 1-29 and a complete list of events is at www.kingsparkfestival.com.au

Araluen Botanic Park – Torrent of Tulips

Take some time out this September to admire someone else’s hard work in the garden at the Araluen Botanic Park for the spectacular Springtime at Araluen Tulip Festival. This year may well be a good year to go as it may be the last chance to catch the festival. The Foundation that currently runs the park is having difficulty with the City of Armadale over parking problems caused by its two major yearly fundraising festivals and may lose custody of the park.

The Tulip Festival boasts over 100,000 massed tulips on display as well as other spring bulbs and is open from 9am to 6pm until September 29. See www.araluenbotanicpark.com.au for details.