Wandering around the streets of Blackheath last weekend, we walked past a young couple pruning hydrangeas in their garden. They were piling up the trimmings on the street. I asked them if I could take some of the discarded plant material and then carried it home. Once home, I trimmed them up, dipped the ends in honey and put them in pots of seed raising mix.
Whilst this is not especially unusual, even as I was asking them for the stuff and carrying it home, I kept thinking that there was a time when I wouldn’t have done this. A time, say, if I were with my mother and she had done this I would have cringed perhaps even winced. How things change.
I’m on a bit of a propagating bender at the moment. I’ve taken some Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) cuttings and am planning on taking cuttings from the Native Sarsparilla (Hardenbergia violacea) and a prostrate Grevillea - I can’t remember if it’s G. Gaudichaudii or G. laurifolia. Both are local (native) ground covers and are already in my garden. No need to cadge them from anyone else. Will take cuttings from these (see below) Hairpin Banksias ( Banksia spinulosa) plus some other plants too. Once I’m out there with secateurs, there will be no stopping me.
How cool are these flowers.
Over at Fat Pigeons, they tell us you can get tomatoes from Australia in London, which of course raises the issue of food miles. The issue was brought home to me recently, when I made some tomato sauce from tomatoes whose origin I could not be certain of. My mother purchased them for me from the large produce markets near her. I resorted to this due to the failure of the Brandywines and I planted less of the plentiful Tigerellas. Lesson one.
Here’s the thing; the purchased tomatoes were in boxes that had previously stored kiwifruit. Nothing strange there? A bit of box re-use. Well, these kiwifruits were grown in Italy and shipped to Australia. Why? Why? Shipping refrigerated water around the world - it’s so patently absurd. All in the name of trade.
Given the various climate zones in Australia, I’m sure you have kiwifruit growing somewhere at any given time. This doesn’t eliminate food miles but it certainly reduces them somewhat! Back to the purchased tomatoes….they were probably grown somewhere in eastern Australia but I don’t know where and I can’t really be sure. If kiwifruit are coming from Italy well …….who knows? Second lesson.
The bottled sauce does taste great but each time I look at the jars stored in my pantry, I feel a little uneasy. I try not to do without thinking but how easily was my complicity bought?
There are few stores or shops that I like to visit. A shopper I am not. A couple of hours browsing in anything like a mall and misanthropic is not quite adequate to describe how I’d be feeling.
I do, however, like hardware stores. My sisters all like hardware stores too. I think it comes from going to hardware stores and the like with our dad. Our father was a builder and an all round DIY guy. He was not a recreational shopper. Our father’s maxim was, “You shop to buy something you need, not to look for something to buy.” I always loved the distinction he maintained. Anyway, the hardware store with our dad was always fun. He would deal with, what he was there to do and we could wander around looking at different things. The blokes in there always were amused by this man with at least a couple of daughters in tow and how mesmerised we were by all that stuff.
Today, I went to a newly opened hardware store (a couple of towns over) with my bloke. He had to exchange a spirit level. He did not tell me much about the place but being aware of my hardware store fetish was looking forward to the ’state’ I would be in. The store was kind of generic but not too big or too small. I just walked in and was transported. I wandered around just looking at things. Lock barrels, door handles, copper wire, millet brooms , Felco secateurs….some basic good gardening tools and deals on blood+bone, pea straw etc. Talk about nostalgia. Fortunately, there were no live plants or seeds there because in this state I really could have bought anything.
The smell of formaldehyde (new store) snapped me out of the fug - these places whilst fun are also pretty toxic - so the purchases I made were very sensible - a new type of gutter guard (please work!) and a gutter cleaning tool. Water tank installation is underway and keeping debris/animals out of the gutters is essential. Much as I love eucalyptus trees, they shed leaves all the time - sweeping is very meditative. No leaf blowers used here!
Some harvesting. Some planting. Some planning. Some of the seedlings are for my mother’s garden which is my version of sucession planting this year. The plants will grow and mature much more quickly down in her Sydney garden and then mine will be ready up here. I’m going to try to grow tomatoes over winter in her garden - summer time offers a huge pest problem for any tomatoes other than cherry tomatoes. Sydney winters are mild. To maintain temps overnight I’ll need to use some plastic. We’ll see how it goes. The broccoli, lettuces and winter greens should do well in both places. Peas and broad (fava) beans too. The great thing about my mother’s veggie patch is the fabulous soil. It is so much better than the stuff I’m working with here. Oh and the perfect full sun orientation. Envy - hmmm?
Stretchy little seedlings …..even with careful sowing I still couldn’t avoid the multiple seed in the cell. They have come up very quickly. They were planted less than a week ago.
Bulbs will need to go in soon. This year, I’ll grow them in pots until I sort out if I should incorporate them among the hellebores, hostas (yes I’ve ordered some - not yet here) and arum lilies (zantedeschias - ordered Green Goddess and was given some yellow and pink ones). Plus my dear husband needs to finish some hard landscaping in this area before anything is really settled.
This is the bloke hard at work - covering the greens with polytunnel plastic. The underlying structure (not visible) is made from bent steel wire like they use in concrete form work. Don’t know what the technical name for the stuff is but it works really well. Saw it being used in someone’s garden in a permaculture video.
Finally, am slowly making in roads into the mushroom compostbut why did I order so much?
Some pictures that result from wandering the streets of my town.
The street trees in the village precinct are ornamental prunus. Springtime - it’s all pink.
