Green and Growing Things
25/04/2012 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaThe Izzie has been busy lurking around the lair tossing things and doing bits of decluttering. But today’s grand plans concerned green and growing things
Due to a certain public holiday and needing to use the broomstick as transport to the daily six hours of house elf servitude, decided to save all the coffee crawls for tomorrow and Friday and return to the Lair without the usual detours.
After scrubbing the scales and an early afternoon snooze in the garden, the remaining hours of daylight would be devoted to mixing up soil for the big fat green vegie bags, planting out some newly acquired specimens of chili and most importantly the handful of cloves of garlic. It is so so hard to find local stuff these days. There are claims a plenty but at this time of year sprouting is the best sign that the stuff is really kosher. And sprouting is especially important when the purpose is for planting
Always managed to get big fat lush green leaves and would occasionally chop bits off and nibble them or fry them with olive oil but had never been able to actually get the cloves to set. They always managed to fizzle out and the soil would go all dry and water repellant
In this bit of Oz, the dark side of the equinox is when the gardening season really begins. This includes the assorted open gardens and the annual Garden Week expo. That ran from last Thursday to Monday just gone and largely explained the serpent absence from Cyberia. Spent last Wednesday evening and Thursday evening too over at Petunia’s place and we both went to the garden show on Thursday
It is simply not the same ever since the ABC and their utterly adorable Peter Cundall and friends gave up their association with it several years ago. It got all too commercial and there was too much hard sell and not enough useful unbiased gardening advice. But this year was a big improvement. Growing your own edibles is becoming a seriously big thing now that no one has any space anymore. The sorts of people in that scene are greenie, hippie, organic and permaculture sorts who are not into the Big Sell.
Looked at the assorted toys and the assorted garden patches including a very pretty landscaped feature which included all sorts of vegies as features. Kale, parsely, sweet peas and pumpkins are way too pretty to be confined to a dingy corner in the back garden.
Then there were all sorts interesting talks on subjects such as how to improve the local sandy soils, waterwise gardening and using the garden as a natural air conditioner as well as herbs for chooks.
Did manage to get the serpent paws on some Dorset Naga chilis which are in the seriously hot brigade. It is not quite the right time of year for growing them here but with a bit of tender loving care, they should make it through the pissy excuse for winter we have here
As garden stuff tends to be seriously bulky and often weighs a ton, the trick was to confine buying to rare and hard to get plants and to get contact and ordering information for the other stuff such as compost and rock dust for improving our sad gutless excuses for soil
Vegie growing bags and Naga, Ghost or Scorpion chilis were therefore the main items on the Izzie wish list
That interesting adventure was followed by the first visit in more then ten years to the Herb Society who had Peter Coppin as their guest speaker this Monday
This guy is officially a horticulturalist but is in reality the Severus Snape of Herbology. You are allowed to be a serious snark when you know your stuff
He used to work for the department of agriculture and belonged to the nuke ‘em brigade. There was no problem that could not be fixed with a spray gun or a chainsaw. He took great delight in sneering at the organic greenies. Now he has come full circle and spends his time promoting pesticide and herbicide free gardening and encouraging folks to get critters in their gardens and to grow stuff not just suitable for our climate but also useful and edible. He has not time at all for what he calls poncy pink camelias when you could be growing an avocado or lemon instead. He is also nuts about macadamias and thinks every garden should have one. They also make pretty street trees too and are as tough as old boots. (Tough and all as they may be, the Izzie managed to kill off our one specimen big enough to have produced nuts. Got lots of baby macadamias grown from seed but they all manage to come up in the most inconvenient locations where they just do not have the room to grow properly)
He is also a big fan of growing one’s own food. Not just because it is an interesting and enjoyable thing to do and tastes so much better but that the stuff that passes for food in the supermarket is becoming so questionable. It has no gotten to the stage that half the stuff in the stores will be imported from China. Those bags of Heinz frozen broccoli on sale in Coles this week at half price turned out to be from there. Dropped the thing like it was a bomb on finding the source on the label. Even reputable old fashioned Australian companies like Ardmona have now resorted to sneaky shit like bringing in pasta sauce from the USA with all sorts of dodgy ingredients like soya and canola oils.
The first things the Izzie ever looks for on a food label is the sugar content and country of origin. If it is from USA or mainland China, it goes straight back on the shelf. Canada, Taiwan and Malaysia the Izzie considers to be mainly kosher but wonders if their dodgy neighbours use them as a front.
But now the usual label seems to be “made from local and imported ingredients” which is about as meaningless as it is possible to be. Some one is trying to hide something.
Got the garlic and chilis in their little boxes, tossed around some kitty litter and slashed back the rampaging bouganvilleas but got rather less done than anticipated
Will be needing to get some big fat bags of piggy poo to fill the rest of the vegie bags and some bales of hay to spread out on the ground around the fruit trees. Got six months to get the garden soil good enough to eat. The sweet potato vines rampaging around everywhere are certainly a good start
The good thing about these 30 litre vegie growing bags is that you can move them around and it does not take that much soil to fill them as compared to trying to make a garden bed and keep out the doves, snails and other gobbling monsters. It also means being able to experiment with different mixes of ingredients such as sand, coir peat and compost to see what works best
The Izzie 3 year plan includes two chooks for the garden but they can wait a while yet. It also includes avocado trees so it is time to get out there to the markets to feast on the critters and save all the seeds.
Saturday will be slinking off to the Subiaco farmer’s markets to see if the Guinea Grove olive oil people have saffron bulbs for sale like they did this time last year. Will be snatching a few bags if they do and Petunia can have some as an insurance policy as she has much greener fingers than her daughter
Due to a certain public holiday and needing to use the broomstick as transport to the daily six hours of house elf servitude, decided to save all the coffee crawls for tomorrow and Friday and return to the Lair without the usual detours.
After scrubbing the scales and an early afternoon snooze in the garden, the remaining hours of daylight would be devoted to mixing up soil for the big fat green vegie bags, planting out some newly acquired specimens of chili and most importantly the handful of cloves of garlic. It is so so hard to find local stuff these days. There are claims a plenty but at this time of year sprouting is the best sign that the stuff is really kosher. And sprouting is especially important when the purpose is for planting
Always managed to get big fat lush green leaves and would occasionally chop bits off and nibble them or fry them with olive oil but had never been able to actually get the cloves to set. They always managed to fizzle out and the soil would go all dry and water repellant
In this bit of Oz, the dark side of the equinox is when the gardening season really begins. This includes the assorted open gardens and the annual Garden Week expo. That ran from last Thursday to Monday just gone and largely explained the serpent absence from Cyberia. Spent last Wednesday evening and Thursday evening too over at Petunia’s place and we both went to the garden show on Thursday
It is simply not the same ever since the ABC and their utterly adorable Peter Cundall and friends gave up their association with it several years ago. It got all too commercial and there was too much hard sell and not enough useful unbiased gardening advice. But this year was a big improvement. Growing your own edibles is becoming a seriously big thing now that no one has any space anymore. The sorts of people in that scene are greenie, hippie, organic and permaculture sorts who are not into the Big Sell.
Looked at the assorted toys and the assorted garden patches including a very pretty landscaped feature which included all sorts of vegies as features. Kale, parsely, sweet peas and pumpkins are way too pretty to be confined to a dingy corner in the back garden.
Then there were all sorts interesting talks on subjects such as how to improve the local sandy soils, waterwise gardening and using the garden as a natural air conditioner as well as herbs for chooks.
Did manage to get the serpent paws on some Dorset Naga chilis which are in the seriously hot brigade. It is not quite the right time of year for growing them here but with a bit of tender loving care, they should make it through the pissy excuse for winter we have here
As garden stuff tends to be seriously bulky and often weighs a ton, the trick was to confine buying to rare and hard to get plants and to get contact and ordering information for the other stuff such as compost and rock dust for improving our sad gutless excuses for soil
Vegie growing bags and Naga, Ghost or Scorpion chilis were therefore the main items on the Izzie wish list
That interesting adventure was followed by the first visit in more then ten years to the Herb Society who had Peter Coppin as their guest speaker this Monday
This guy is officially a horticulturalist but is in reality the Severus Snape of Herbology. You are allowed to be a serious snark when you know your stuff
He used to work for the department of agriculture and belonged to the nuke ‘em brigade. There was no problem that could not be fixed with a spray gun or a chainsaw. He took great delight in sneering at the organic greenies. Now he has come full circle and spends his time promoting pesticide and herbicide free gardening and encouraging folks to get critters in their gardens and to grow stuff not just suitable for our climate but also useful and edible. He has not time at all for what he calls poncy pink camelias when you could be growing an avocado or lemon instead. He is also nuts about macadamias and thinks every garden should have one. They also make pretty street trees too and are as tough as old boots. (Tough and all as they may be, the Izzie managed to kill off our one specimen big enough to have produced nuts. Got lots of baby macadamias grown from seed but they all manage to come up in the most inconvenient locations where they just do not have the room to grow properly)
He is also a big fan of growing one’s own food. Not just because it is an interesting and enjoyable thing to do and tastes so much better but that the stuff that passes for food in the supermarket is becoming so questionable. It has no gotten to the stage that half the stuff in the stores will be imported from China. Those bags of Heinz frozen broccoli on sale in Coles this week at half price turned out to be from there. Dropped the thing like it was a bomb on finding the source on the label. Even reputable old fashioned Australian companies like Ardmona have now resorted to sneaky shit like bringing in pasta sauce from the USA with all sorts of dodgy ingredients like soya and canola oils.
The first things the Izzie ever looks for on a food label is the sugar content and country of origin. If it is from USA or mainland China, it goes straight back on the shelf. Canada, Taiwan and Malaysia the Izzie considers to be mainly kosher but wonders if their dodgy neighbours use them as a front.
But now the usual label seems to be “made from local and imported ingredients” which is about as meaningless as it is possible to be. Some one is trying to hide something.
Got the garlic and chilis in their little boxes, tossed around some kitty litter and slashed back the rampaging bouganvilleas but got rather less done than anticipated
Will be needing to get some big fat bags of piggy poo to fill the rest of the vegie bags and some bales of hay to spread out on the ground around the fruit trees. Got six months to get the garden soil good enough to eat. The sweet potato vines rampaging around everywhere are certainly a good start
The good thing about these 30 litre vegie growing bags is that you can move them around and it does not take that much soil to fill them as compared to trying to make a garden bed and keep out the doves, snails and other gobbling monsters. It also means being able to experiment with different mixes of ingredients such as sand, coir peat and compost to see what works best
The Izzie 3 year plan includes two chooks for the garden but they can wait a while yet. It also includes avocado trees so it is time to get out there to the markets to feast on the critters and save all the seeds.
Saturday will be slinking off to the Subiaco farmer’s markets to see if the Guinea Grove olive oil people have saffron bulbs for sale like they did this time last year. Will be snatching a few bags if they do and Petunia can have some as an insurance policy as she has much greener fingers than her daughter
