All gardeners, at some point or another, are affected by what I like to call irresistible plant urge syndrome. The symptoms go a bit like this. You stop by your local nursery with no particular intent other than to have a browse. Out of the corner of your eye you spot a plant that’s been on your wish list for years, but have never been able to find a place in the garden for. You purchase the said plant and take it home, only to find that there’s a good reason it was stuck on your wish list – you don’t have a place for it. Undeterred, you convince yourself that you’ll make a spot available in the not too distant future, and will leave the new plant in its pot with a number of other plants also waiting to be planted into the garden.

The poor old plant sits there in horticultural purgatory for the next year, where it gradually deteriorates, becoming pot bound and turning yellow. One hot summer day you forget to water the plant and it dies. You throw the contents of the pot onto the compost, and resolve not to buy the same plant until you have a position in the garden ready to go. One spring day a few months hence, you stop by your local nursery and…all serious gardeners know how the story ends. Irresistible plant urge syndrome. I’ve had it, and still get the occasional relapse.

I’m doing my best, though, to resist the urge to buy plants on impulse. Instead, I’ve resolved to work with the plants I’ve already got in the garden, taking cuttings from favourites, dividing others, and where necessary, digging some up and moving them to a more favourable position. I find plant relocation particularly satisfying work for some reason. Maybe it’s because I’m making the most of what I’ve got, fine tuning rather than longing for more, and at least part of the pleasure is that the work is done mostly in autumn.

The weather for the last three days has been absolutely superb in my garden. We’ve woken to frosty mornings followed by perfectly clear, still days, with enough warmth left in the sun to wear a short sleeved shirt. There’s also plenty of warmth left in the soil. This warmth is a legacy of summer, and it will gradually decrease over the coming months until the soil reaches its lowest temperature in early spring.

The benefit of transplanting in autumn is two fold: first, the warm soil means quick recovery of damaged roots. Secondly, the cooler air temperatures mean that the plant loses less moisture through it’s foliage. Put simply, a plant moved in autumn is under less stress.

Even so, there are a few rules to follow to give a relocated plant the best chance of success. Start by identifying which plants move well, and which don’t. Those with a deep and woody root system, such as many natives, tend to be much more difficult to move than plants such as camellias or citrus, which have a fairly shallow, fibrous root system. Clumping perennials such as agapanthus, bearded iris, cannas, sedums, kniphofia and catmint, for example, are perfect candidates for division and relocation.

For plants that are small enough to be dug and moved by hand, you should begin by cutting the foliage back by at least half it’s overall size. This reduces moisture loss. Then drive a sharp spade around the rootball of the plant and dig it up. Aim to strike a balance between retaining as many roots as possible, and allowing easy relocation of the plant to its new position.

Once the plant has been lifted, a race is on. Roots exposed to the air will begin drying out and left for too long, the plant might fail to recover. Ideally, you should get the plant into its new position as soon as possible, which means having the site prepared ahead of time, otherwise “heel” it into a temporary position, or put the plant in a plastic bag with the roots contained in moist sawdust or newspaper. Plant out at the next opportunity.

Just prior to replanting, soak the roots for half an hour in a bucket containing a weak seaweed solution. The seaweed will help the plant overcome transplant shock, then plant out carefully into well prepared soil. Water the plant in well, even if the soil’s moist. Keep the water up for the first few months at least, and fingers crossed, your relocated plant will grow away strongly in spring. Then you, the gardener, will feel the warm glow of having made the most of what was already in the garden, rather than succumbing to irresistible plant urges.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 21st May, 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’.

The events come thick and fast at this time of the year. Easter, Anzac Day, and Earth Day last weekend, Gardenfest and Autumnfest this weekend (see Garden Cuttings for more info), and the Hampton Food and Arts Festival in a couple of weeks’ time. One event that’s likely to fly under the radar, but deserves more attention is the inaugural National Permaculture Day, tomorrow, May 1.

Despite being described by veteran environmentalist David Suzuki as “the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet”, Permaculture has yet to gain any real traction in our part of the world. As far as I’m aware, there are no local events being held tomorrow, which is a shame, and though there are a handful of dedicated permaculture gardens hidden around the place, none are throwing open their gates to the public. I wonder why this is the case. Is it because of Toowoomba’s conservatism, where anything and anyone bearing a green tinge generally gets treated with suspicion? Or is it simply that permaculture is a difficult concept to understand?

Conservative our area might be, but in my experience the latter reason is true: most local gardeners have heard of permaculture, but few actually understand what the concept is about. Personally, I find permaculture to be brilliantly conceived, even revolutionary, but it is a very difficult concept to penetrate for the average home gardener with no experience in design or ecology. And while I don’t really consider myself a permaculturalist (and certainly don’t qualify as a permaculture designer), I would like to spend this Saturday and next introducing the permaculture concept and outlining ways we might be able to apply it in our gardens.

As with all concepts, it’s worth starting with a definition. The Oxford English Dictionary defines permaculture as “the development or maintenance of an ecosystem intended to be self-sustaining and to satisfy the living requirements of its inhabitants, esp. by the use of renewable resources”. That hardly pins the concept to the mat, so let’s expand a bit with some history.

The term Permaculture” is a portmanteau of permanent culture, and permanent agriculture. The concept originated in the mid 1970′s when a young ecology student, David Holmgren, and his lecturer at the University of Tasmania, Bill Mollison, published an article in Tasmania’s Organic Farmer and Gardener Magazine. This article was soon followed by an interview on ABC radio, and in 1978, Holmgren and Mollison’s seminal book on the concept, Permaculture One: A perennial Agriculture for Human Settlements.

Sadly, the two visionaries have since gone their separate ways. Mollison, who still lives in Tassie, has focussed on education, believing that permaculture could spread exponentially by teaching students, who would in turn teach others, and so on. He taught the first Permaculture Design Course (known as PDC’s by Permies) at Stanley in Tasmania, in 1979, and thousands of PDC’s have been taught around the world in the years since.

David Holmgren took a different approach. With permaculture gaining widespread publicity, he retreated to a smallholding in Victoria to quietly test his ideas. In 2002, he re-emerged with Permaculture – Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability a landmark book that reinterpreted permaculture’s fundamental design principles as a creative adaptation to the decline in non-renewable sources of energy such as oil. I’ll talk more about these principles next week.

Until then, I want to conclude this week’s column by mentioning the three ethics at the core of the Permaculture concept. In Permaculture One, Mollison and Holmgren described these as: Care for the Earth; Care for People; and Fair Share. The first ethic is self explanatory. The second suggests that all people should have access to what they need to live a safe, and healthy life. The third is a principle that most gardening and farming models overlook, and is based on the ethic we’re all taught as kids – only take what you need, and share the rest. Some permies call this, “return of the surplus”.

While some elements of permaculture are ripe for critique, I confess to having a great admiration for any movement that is built upon a set of foundational ethics like those above. What’s more, I believe they are the right ethics to build upon. We’re living in an age when most big, established institutions – business, politics and religion – are being white-anted from within by self interest and a desperation to cling to the status quo. In some cases, ethical foundations rotted away years ago. Permaculture offers a creative response.

Next week – The Principles of Permaculture Design

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 30th April, 2011.

Mention the words “winter vegetable garden” and one plant immediately springs to mind – the humble, and much maligned cabbage. I picture ornamental rows of big ruby red drumhead varieties, all standing bravely against the worst weather that a Darling Downs winter can bring. There’s one problem with this image though. It’s the sight of slimy, boiled cabbage being unceremoniously dumped onto a dinner plate beside slices of corned beef. To me, it looked and tasted like boiled seaweed. Don’t even mention the “wind”.

Do you share my dilemma? On the one hand, I love the look of a winter garden full of cabbages. On the other hand, I absolutely loathe eating the things. Since my gardening philosophy is to concentrate on growing what the family likes to eat, I’m very choosy about the cabbage varieties I grow, and of the few that make the cut, most of the plant will end up in the gizzard of a chook. Fortunately, they don’t share the same sense of repulsion.

I’m probably being a bit unfair to what is actually a valuable, nutrient-rich vegetable. Half the problem was that my Mum, who is otherwise a first-class cook, probably didn’t know how to cook it. Maybe it’s a hereditary thing. Mum is of Scottish descent and I guess that meant that vegies were either roasted or boiled. If she was Irish, I might have scored colcannon. If she was German, sauerkraut would have been the go. Even bubble and squeak would have gone down alright. But boiled it was.

There I go again, deriding an innocent vegetable. Poor thing. Let’s see if I can put the image of boiled seaweed out of my head and highlight some of the cabbage’s good points. For one, it is about the hardiest winter vegetable there is. Cabbages, and their closely related cousins the kales and choys, contain natural anti-freeze which allows them to easily cope with frosts down to minus 10 or lower.

I wasn’t kidding when I said that cabbages are packed with nutrients. They are particularly high in Vitamin C, making them useful for warding off winter ills, and also have high levels of calcium, fibre and Omega-3 fatty acids. There’s evidence to suggest that cabbages can help prevent cancer due to their high levels of antioxidants.

Neither was I kidding about ornamental value. The crinkly leaves of savoy cabbages are especially beautiful, and red drumhead varieties look good when backlit by a low winter sun. Some of rocket-shaped sugarloaf cabbages look pretty, but my favourite of the lot is Tuscan kale or cavolo nero. The Italian name translates as “black cabbage” and indeed, the foliage combines an unusually dark, slate green colour with lance-shaped, savoy leaves.

The other good thing about cavolo nero, is that it’s actually edible. Delicious in fact. I like it pan-fried in olive oil with chopped bacon and garlic, then mixed through mashed potato. Maggie Beer does a lovely looking bruschetta with cavolo nero, and describes it as “a rustic dish for which I would travel miles.” Perhaps I do like eating cabbages after all.

There are three rules to bear in mind when growing cabbages, and any related members of the Brassicaceae family such as broccoli, cauliflower and rocket. The first is that they love rich, well drained soil. Manure heavily, add well rotted compost, and plant cabbages after a crop of nitrogen fixing legumes (beans or peas). The second is that cabbages appreciate a sweet soil, so incorporate about a handful of dolomite lime per square metre to raise the pH if required.

Finally, time your crop to mature when the weather is cool. Considering that spring on the Downs can be warm and dry, the best time to plant cabbages is in autumn, with harvest occurring progressively through winter. It’s not too late to get some plants in now. Brassicas grow easily from seed, and this is a good way to experiment with some of the old fashioned varieties. Depending on the variety, you might need to plant as far as half a metre apart.

Pests are few. Possums will eat the tender young leaves, but the main enemy of most brassica growers are those frustratingly persistent cabbage white butterflies. Their numbers are much reduced during winter, but in warmer areas, you have two choices to keep them at bay: netting the plants, or spraying with non-toxic “Bt” (Bacillus thuringiensis, sold as Dipel).

There you go – cabbages are a virtuous plant after all. Does this mean that I’ll be filling my patch with them? Probably not. I’ll always find room for cavolo nero and stuff like bok choy, but I still can’t come at the big drumheads. By all means give them a go, but for me, the sight of slimy boiled cabbage has left a permanent scar.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 12th June 2010. Photo by Justin Russell – Tuscan Kale or Cavolo Nero.

“Soil thou art, and unto soil shall thou return.”

Genesis 3:19

Last weekend, I uncovered a finished compost heap. What began life as a fairly haphazard pile of leaves, manure and vegetable matter at least a cubic metre in volume became, with little help or effort on my part, two generous barrow loads of beautiful looking compost, the stuff that hard core gardeners call “black gold”. Feeling very chuffed, I couldn’t resist holding a handful up to my nose for a whiff. Just as I hoped, it smelt sweet and earthy.

To those who wander the corridors of power, composting is seen in a purely utilitarian light – it’s a means of reducing pressure on the municipal waste management system. Talk about selling something short. In my view of the world, compost making is akin to a sacrament. When I take a bunch of dead vegetation and animal dung and form it into a pile, when I allow it to ferment over the course of many months and eventually dig up barrow loads of living humus, there’s certainty in my mind that I’ve witnessed an everyday, backyard miracle.

The lesson at the heart of a compost heap is that life is made from death. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” is the line recited from the Book of Common Prayer in traditional funeral services. To emphasise the point, the minister will grab a handful of dirt and ceremonially throw it onto the coffin. Mourners will often follow suit, yet most people seem to miss the tag line: “in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.”

All of this relates to the Old Testament story of Adam and Eve. Adam, whose Hebrew name derives from “earth”, was formed by God from the soil and placed in the Garden of Eden.  Eve, whose name means “life” in Hebrew, was formed from Adam. Together, they were charged by God to dress and keep the earth yet you’ll recall that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, and were thereafter banished from the Garden to a life of toil and decay. Christians believe that restoration eventually came in the shape of a resurrected Christ. Little wonder that garden writer Margaret Simons refers to a good compost heap as “a very literal and practical kind of resurrection.”

Practical Composting

Known as Mr Compost, Peter Rutherford is an ecologist who coined the acronym A.D.A.M. to describe the key principles of composting. Besides being an obvious reference to the first man and the Hebrew derivation of his name, Rutherford’s ADAM principles are an excellent reminder of both the art, and science, of good compost making.

Aliveness

For a compost heap to work well, it needs care and maintenance just like a pet dog or cat. A healthy heap will contain fungi, worms and insects, all of which play a role in composting, but bacteria is the major prime mover in converting organic matter into humus. A good compost heap is bursting with microbial life.

Diversity

When making a compost heap, aim to include a diverse range of materials based on the general principle that anything once living will decompose. For best results, try to achieve a balance between green, nitrogen rich materials (grass clippings, manure, vegie scraps) and brown, carbon rich materials (dried leaves, straw, shredded paper). Avoid meat scraps, as these attract vermin.

Aeration

By letting oxygen into the heap you’ll stop it from smelling rotten and will create the ideal habitat for micro-organisms to do their work. The easiest way to aerate your heap is to turn it, and by doing so every couple of weeks, you’ll hopefully have finished compost within a couple of months. Alternatively, make “chimneys” in the heap with slotted ag pipe or using a special composting corkscrew.

Moisture

All living things require moisture to survive. In a compost heap, moisture assists in breaking down organic matter and helps keep composting organisms alive. When making your heap, wet it down as you go, and check to ensure it’s still moist during periods of dry weather. The material should be about as damp as a well wrung sponge. Be aware that too much moisture is as bad as too little because it creates anaerobic conditions. I cover my heaps with an old tarp or piece of weed mat to stop them getting too wet.

First published in The Chronicle 31st October 2009. Photo by Andrew Dunn via wikimedia commons.

No vegetable is more commonly grown by gardeners than the tomato. West Virginia resident “Radiator” Charlie Byles knew this when he developed his ‘Mortgage Lifter’ cultivar in the 1930’s. The radiator repair shop owner and one-time plant breeder developed his own strain of beefsteak tomatoes and set about selling the seedlings for $1 each. In Depression-era America a buck was a hefty price for a single plant, but Charlie was on a winner. In six years he’d sold enough seedlings to pay off the $6,000 mortgage on his house.

Even though they enjoy a level of popularity of which Jamie Durie can only dream, tomatoes aren’t necessarily the easiest of things to grow. Some people think they’re not worth the effort. Obviously they’ve never tasted a proper home grown tomato. Grow them well and you’ll find that in addition to taste, tomatoes are prolific, reliable and far more cost effective per kilo than supermarket fruit.

I can’t claim to be a brilliant tomato grower, but I have had some good crops over the years. In fact the easiest tomatoes I’ve ever grown were totally neglected, not staked, never hand watered, and not even deliberately planted. They popped up in a 30cm deep earth drain that until recently carried wastewater from our kitchen sink. In this exposed position they got regular water and nutrients, and defying all tomato growing conventions, produced kilos of delicious fruit.

There was a lesson in this. When left mostly to their own devices, tomatoes will produce a crop, sometimes a beautiful one at that. What we gardeners call culture is often just blind adherence to tradition, so my top tomato growing  tip is to give them the bare basic amount of care necessary.

Traditional pruning is largely a waste of time. Lots of growers still pinch out all the lateral shoots that develop in the leaf crotches along the main stem. In my experience, all this does is provide multiple entry points for disease. Instead, try banging in four supporting stakes around the young plant, or better still grow your tomatoes in a wire cage or against a trellis. Tomato plants are not vines. They want to grow as sprawling plants, and perhaps the best way that gardeners can assist, is simply by tying the main branches to a support structure.

The second piece of advice I’d offer, is that if you want to employ some cultural techniques employ those that limit the potential for disease. Tomatoes are members of the Solanaceae family of plants, which includes relatives like capsicums and potatoes. As such, they can be prone to some devastating ailments. The worst of these is late blight, a form of phytophthora that caused the Irish Potato Famine in 1845, but this is just one of many possible problems.

To reduce the incidence of disease, mulch your plants to stop soil splashing onto the foliage and when irrigating, flood the soil at ground level. Keep plants evenly moist so stress isn’t an issue, and apply seaweed once per month to strengthen roots and foliage. Choose vigorous cultivars with built-in resistance. Cherry tomatoes are top choices in this regard – the heirlooms ‘Broad Ripple Yellow Currant’ and ‘Tommy Toe’ are two of my favourites. ‘Rouge de Marmande’ and ‘San Marzano’ are two large fruiting varieties worth trying.

Some final tips. I know it’s convenient to buy tomato seedlings from the nursery, but I reckon you’ll get better results starting your own seeds. Sowing them directly where they are to grow is the best method of all, though seeds started in coir pots, which are planted out pot and all, work nicely and avoid transplant shock. I always plant seedlings deeply, levelling the soil just below the top set of leaves. Extra roots form along the buried stem.

Fruit fly will wreck your crop unless controlled. I don’t advocate using toxic chemicals and instead, recommend organic splash baits (such as EcoNaturalure) or exclusion bags. These bags are simple but effective. They slip over a truss of fruit and are tied off, thereby physically excluding the female flies from laying their eggs. The mail order supplier Green Harvest has a good selection or you could just as easily make some up yourself.

Last, but not least, don’t fall for the myth of “sun ripened” tomatoes. The determining factor in tomato ripening is actually temperature, not sun, so you ought to have no qualms in placing trusses of fruit in a warmish place to fully ripen up. Besides looking pretty on your windowsill or kitchen dresser, you’ll give the fruit every chance of making it from seed to burger unscathed and in top condition.

First published in The Chronicle 24th October, 2009. Photo by Ben McLeod via flickr.com

Strawberries are an integral part of my family history. I grew up at Birkdale, a bay side suburb in Brisbane that is now wall to wall housing estates but 25 years ago, was one of south east Queensland’s major food bowls. I remember it as a landscape of rich red soil, coastal streams running freely into the bay, and small farms growing everything from gladioli to passionfruit. Strawberries were a staple crop in the area because of its ideal growing conditions.

There’s also a more personal connection with the strawberry. My Mum’s late father, Douglas Fleming, worked a large market garden at Manly West and one of his major crops was strawberries. Sunday lunch at Grandma and Pa’s house was always a bit nondescript – Grandma had a penchant for burning the roast – but dessert was a thing of beauty and simplicity. A bowl full of fat “berries”, dusted with icing sugar, and served with vanilla ice cream. Superb! I’ll always associate Pa with strawberries.

I don’t know whether it’s in my blood or just a fluke, but this season has produced the best crop of berries I’ve grown to date. The plants are loaded with fruit. A new flush of flowers means that we’ll be enjoying berries with icing sugar for a couple of months yet. My one-year-old son Fergus wanders through the garden picking every half ripe strawberry he spots, calling eagerly to his brother and sister to come and share the harvest. Rarely do they knock him back, since kids seem to have an innate attraction to strawberries.

The wild or alpine strawberry, Fragaria vesca, is known in France as “fraises des bois” (fraze da bwa). This translates as strawberries of the woods and in appropriate conditions wild strawberries can be found growing all over Europe, from Iceland to the balmy shores of the Mediterranean. In my experience fraises des bois is an adaptable plant that will grow happily in quite hot conditions with plenty of sun – a division given to me by a neighbour is growing beautifully in a north facing bed as a groundcover beneath old roses. I haven’t tasted the fruit yet, but my wife (who nicks them before I have the chance) tells me that they have a silky texture and a sweet/sharp balance that’s more intense than the garden strawberry. Fraises des bois might be tricky to come by, but it can be grown from seed. Definitely worth a try.

The common garden strawberry is a hybrid, Fragaria x ananassa. Its cosmopolitan heritage includes the Chilean strawberry, F. chiloensis, and the F. virginiana, a north American species that once covered vast tracts of open land on the US east coast. The fact that the garden strawberry prefers a warm, sunny position is reflected in its parentage, though like the wild European strawberry, good soil conditions are important.

Site your strawberry patch in an open position with soil that is very freely draining, and slightly acidic. The red ferrosol soils found along the escarpment are perfect, but if this isn’t your situation, try adding lots of compost and manure to your strawberry beds, and grow on a raised mound or in a tub to provide drainage. Black plastic was traditionally used as a disease and weed suppressant, though for home growers the better option is a decent mulch of sugarcane, pine needles, or straw. This will keep the fruit off the ground, keeping roots moist and cool.

Perhaps the main issue with strawberries is that they are prone to disease. Verticillium wilt is a problem, and plants shouldn’t be grown where tomatoes or potatoes have been for at least five years. Fungal diseases are rarely fatal but can ruin a bumper crop. Try spraying with a milk spray or something like potassium bicarbonate (EcoRose). Always start your patch with certified virus free plants from a nursery, and to really stay on top of disease, replace your plants every four years. This is easily achieved by replanting runners, ideally into fresh ground, and discarding the old plants. Slugs love strawberries, so keep them in check with beer traps, or non-toxic snail pellets made from EDTA.

A final word of warning: strawberries are perhaps the most irresistible plant in the garden, and have a habit of disappearing before they ever reach the kitchen. The usual suspects are kids. Well and good I say, and another reason to grow your plants organically. Nothing is quite as gratifying as seeing a toddler wandering through the strawberry patch, picking berry after plump berry, popping them straight into the mouth still warm from the sun. If there’s any fruit left over, you might even like to try it yourself.

First published in The Chronicle 3rd October 2009. Photo by Lily Zhu via flickr.com.

After a haughty decade of the fast life, Australia’s economy isn’t the only thing now slowing down. People are too. Some are inadvertently finding themselves with time, be it through a job loss or reduced hours, others are simply seizing the opportunity to step off the soul sucking treadmill of modern existence for a slower, yet infinitely more rewarding lifestyle.

The result of this social slowdown and its associated cocooning trend is that alongside traditional crafts like cider making and preserving, old fashioned gardening techniques are being rediscovered as well. In 2007 I wrote a column about the techniques espalier and pleaching. This week, it’s coppicing. These are all ancient gardening skills, yet all are absolutely relevant and useful for the home gardener. None of them have been superseded by something more revolutionary. Experienced and professional gardeners have always used the old techniques, but for whatever reason, newer gardeners didn’t really “get the memo”.

If that’s the case, let me introduce you to coppicing. A centuries old means of maintaining woodland areas, coppicing is the art of repeatedly cutting down young tree stems to a stump or more correctly, a “stool”. As a technique, it exemplifies the concept of renewal. Coppiced trees can be maintained almost indefinitely in a juvenile stage, and in fact, there are ancient coppices in the UK with a stool of nine metres in diameter. These ancient trees suggest that coppicing is a far more sustainable method of timber production than clear felling, which destroys old trees and requires that forests are regenerated, rather than renewed.

A natural form of coppicing exists in the Australian bush. As an adaptation to bushfire many species of eucalypt develop lignotubers. These swollen underground root systems are full of starch and covered in dormant buds that are ready to burst into life and regenerate the tree when the above-ground portion is damaged by fire or animals. Mallees in particular are naturally multi-trunked, prone to lignotuber development and through coppicing, are able to survive for centuries.

What applications does coppicing have in the domestic garden? One is the production of useful material for stakes and fencing. Bamboo for example is very popular for these purposes, but most gardeners pay good money for what could otherwise be grown very easily at home. A clumping bamboo that won’t run and invade the neighbour’s yard would be perfect. Bambusa textilis ‘Gracilis’ will take the coldest Downs winter, grows quickly to about six metres, and with a bit of summer water would produce an endless supply of stakes.

A more traditional option for coppicing would be the common European hazel tree, Corylus avellana. The Celts revered the hazel. They equated the tree with wisdom and poetic inspiration, but when it suited, weren’t adverse to harvesting the very strong timber from coppiced woodlands to make shillelaghs and other weapons. You could do something similar if you’re so inclined, but a more peaceful use for a backyard hazel tree might be to make latticing, traditional woven hurdles, walking sticks or simply stakes to grow your sweet peas on. Oh, and you shouldn’t forget about the nuts either.

The other significant use of coppicing is in the production of decorative young growth. Many deciduous trees can be cut to the ground in early summer, and will respond by sending up vibrantly coloured shoots or young foliage to lighten the bleakest winter. Some of the best species for this treatment include the dogwoods Cornus ‘Sibirica’ and ‘Midwinter Fire’ with their red and orange suckers, and the golden yellow stems of the willow Salix alba ‘Vitellina’. The cider gum Eucalyptus gunnii is also an ideal specimen for coppicing as its young foliage is distinctly circular and glaucous, earning the plant the colloquial nickname silver dollar.

The only things to be careful of when coppicing, is to prune at the correct time of the year (for most trees and shrubs this will be early summer), and to give the tree you’re planning to coppice a decent head start before you cut it back to a stool. One final bit of advice: hand down the technique to the younger generations. With good management, coppiced trees will prove useful for many, many years into the future.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 4th April 2009

If you’re looking for a sign of the times look no further than this: Michele Obama is putting in a vegie garden. You heard it right. A vegie garden. For the first time since Eleanor Roosevelt’s World War II victory garden, a patch of White House lawn will be dug up, and replaced with an organic plot filled with 55 different types of vegetables, herbs, companion flowers like zinnias and marigolds, even a berry patch. Barack Obama loves his berries, apparently.

The total up-front budget for the project is $200. Beds will be fertilised with White House compost, and much of the pest control will be left to beneficial bugs like ladybirds and praying mantises. The garden will even include bees, for honey and pollination. The White House carpenter, an amateur apiarist, is knocking together and tending the hives. Seeds will be started in on-site greenhouses, and heirloom varieties will be favoured. According to Mrs Obama “A real delicious heirloom tomato is one of the sweetest things you’ll ever eat, and my children know the difference.”

The naysayers are already venting their spleens. Some argue that a White House kitchen garden is little more than symbolic, that it exists in a sea of manicured lawn soaked in chemical fertilisers and pesticides. One commenter on the New York Times even declared “What next, chickens scratching about the South Lawn”. And yes, I’ll admit that Michelle Obama does look a bit ridiculous turning the sod in patent leather boots.

In defence of the garden it appears to be fair dinkum. White House assistant chef Sam Kass is co-ordinating the project, and the garden will be tended by a team made up largely of White House staff, many of whom were so keen to be involved that they volunteered to help out. Michelle Obama is also partnering with a local primary school, giving the project an educational edge, and the produce grown in the garden will be used in the White House kitchens and donated to a local soup kitchen.

But if it proves to be largely symbolic, so be it. A kitchen garden started, and tended by, the leaders of the free world is a pretty decent step in the right direction as far as I’m concerned. What the Obamas have done is something previous presidents (and first ladies) didn’t. They’ve connected the dots between food, health, economics and sustainability. Maybe that’s what Barack Obama meant by his campaign slogan “Change We Can Believe In” – a White House kitchen garden sets an example that’s potent enough to fire the collective imagination and translate into genuine change.

The big question I have is this: would our Prime Minister be so bold as to tear up a section of lawn at The Lodge and replace it with a vegie patch? Mr Rudd is a farmer’s son after all, and tending the tomatoes would be a nifty way of winding down after a long day saving the nation from the global economic tsunami (or is it a cyclone?). If he’s not interested, perhaps the G-G would be keen to install an orchard at Yarralumla. Quentin Bryce strikes me as an orchard kind of lady. Refined yet practical. Either way, the Obamas are leading with their actions, and the pressure is now on for other stately residences to match their efforts.

When Eleanor Roosevelt started her victory garden in 1943, she also started a movement that ended up producing around 40 percent of America’s war time food supply from the backyards of 20 million Americans. In Australia, we are now net importers of food, we don’t produce enough to feed ourselves and have to buy some in. Drought has played a major role in our food deficit, climate change is likely having an effect and the shrinking Aussie backyard doesn’t help. But imagine the possibilities if 15 or 20 percent of Australians grew a decent proportion of their own food, and shared any surplus. Would our water issues improve? Would our greenhouse emissions reduce? Would we benefit from eating fresher, tastier food?

Almost every day, I hear people say that there’s no silver bullet in solving some of the great calamities facing our world – issues like energy depletion, climate change, economic crisis, and poverty. But I’m utterly convinced that there is a silver bullet, and it’s to be found in backyard vegie gardens and home orchards. Mine isn’t a romantic view. Gardening is hard work, prone to the vagaries of weather and nature. But the fruits of such labour are immense, even in a single household. Collectively, gardeners can, and should, change the world. If the Obamas can do it, we can too.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 28th March 2009

Cottage Garden, Spring Bluff

The food producing garden has long been derided as the ornamental garden’s poor cousin. Unsophisticated, grubby, homespun, and even uncouth is how productive gardens have been perceived. In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the big manor houses of Britain and Europe hid the productive areas of the garden behind high walls, taking an out of sight, out of mind approach to what was considered to be a blot on the landscape.

Behind the fortress like walls was secret world of activity and fruitfulness. Gardeners would come and go, using service roads and living in bothies well detached from the “big house”. Dung heaps were made within the walls and wells dug for irrigation. Crude glasshouses were built and heated by a furnace. Productive gardens, necessary as they were for the provision of food, spoiled the Arcadian style of garden being created by the era’s artist gardeners.

During other periods of history, and within the confines of a different social class, distinctions between utility and ornamentation didn’t exist. In Medieval England, yeoman farmers (a kind of emerging middle class) were able to hold title to an acre or two of their own where they could grow food and keep livestock for their own use. These smallholdings usually included a pig, beehives, chickens, vegetable beds, and flowers. Apple and pear trees were grown to make cider and perry, while herbs were planted for their medicinal, rather than culinary value. Flowering plants were included to fill gaps, attract pollinators and to look pretty. Similar gardens were created by Australia’s early settlers.

It wasn’t until the late 1800′s that cottage gardens were created purely for ornament. Gardeners like William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll were espousing a wilder, more romantic style of gardening, and the traditional cottage garden was cleaned up for a more up market demographic. The vulgar, productive bits like livestock and vegetable beds were hidden, the pretty bits like flowers championed as an ideal vision of naturalistic gardening. The functional yeoman’s cottage garden became the pleasure garden, and the schism between utility and ornament became firmly entrenched.

Funnily enough, the schism broke down to some extent during the Great Depression and the post war era of the 1950′s and 60′s. In those days, almost every backyard had a lemon tree, a vegie patch, some flower beds and a passionfruit vine climbing over the outdoor thunderbox. Food was again grown out of necessity. There was no pretence or overstatement, just an innocent, happy jumble that most of us now look back on with a sense of nostalgia.

So what am I getting at? I’m calling for nothing less than a rediscovery of the traditional cottage garden, albeit one more in concept than direct imitation. If you live in a Queenslander, it should come as no surprise that a relaxed, informal garden filled with flowers and fruit will fit like a well worn pair of boots. If you live in a rendered, Tuscan inspired house, a Mediterranean inspired garden that combines formal ornamentation and utility will work beautifully.

Whichever direction you take, we have to realise that in a carbon constrained, energy depleted future, virtually every household will need to grow at least some of it’s own food, just like the yeoman farmers of old. Don’t get sucked into thinking that productive gardens can’t be beautiful, or that they can’t work in tandem with ornamental gardens. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Rather, like the black and white keys on a piano (I can hear a cheesy Stevie Wonder/Paul McCartney duet coming on), utility and beauty should be considered two aspects of a single entity. Could the authentic cottage garden be re-imagined as the defining style of the 21^st century garden? We’ll just have to wait and see.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 7th February 2009

What a month! September 2008 will surely go down in history as one of the most significant of the modern era with four weeks of massive bank failures, volatile share prices, and even serious doubts about the future of free market capitalism itself. How’s your household faring?

You might describe the Russell family as “alert, but not alarmed”. Things are starting to mount up. Our superannuation has taken a hammering. Interest rates have come off a bit but there is now the spectre that they might go back up as credit tightens. We’re making fewer trips because petrol prices remain high. And then there are the elephants in the room that everyone seems to have forgotten – global warming and interminable drought. What’s a bloke to do? Well, at times like these, I reckon it pays to have a good hard think about how best to respond, and then act.

I’ve learnt much in the decade or so I’ve been a serious gardener, but the thing that stands out the most is this: to garden is to hope. To plant a tiny carrot or lettuce seed, and watch it germinate and grow is as good a vote of confidence in the future as any I’ve come across. The very act of growing things makes gardeners the most hopeful group of people on earth. My wife once asked me what I would do if I was told I had just a few months left to live. I told her that I’d make a garden.

I for one am not buying the line from our politicians that if we just sit tight, everything will work out fine. Our banks are well capitalised. Well regulated. Really? This isn’t just a distrust of politicians but the reality that I have three little kids to feed and nurture, yet I’m being urged to simply bask in the glow of our well-regulated system and just ride it out. Sorry, but an issue as major as the credit crisis demands a response other than passivity, and the way I see things, that response can either be negative and fearful, or it can be positive and life affirming.

I consider myself an optimist. So my response to plunging markets is to plunge a spade into worm-filled soil. In the face of speculative $700 billion bailouts, my reaction is to plant a bean seed, speculating that it will sprout, grow and bear fruit. As trillions of dollars worth of paper derivatives blow up in the faces of Wall Street fat cats, I’m driven not to despair like the window jumping bankers of 1929, but to things that are tangible and real. I make compost. I plant seedlings.

The stark reality is that we’re facing a number of calamities that will have a restrictive effect on the ways in which we’ve lived. Our lifestyles will change. But history teaches us that calamity is nothing new, human beings have a tremendous capacity to endure hard times, and best of all, brighter days tend to arrive like a newborn baby after a time of blood, sweat and tears. Senior readers of this column, those of you who may have lived through two world wars and the Great Depression, will attest to this principle.

For those of us who have only known prosperity and relative wealth, there’s never been a better time to get into the garden. If you’re not sure where to start, why not join a gardening club, or subscribe to a decent gardening magazine. Have a yarn to older, more experienced gardeners or enrol in a gardening course to teach you the basics. You might even want to get really radical and knock back a Saturday night out with your mates to watch Gardening Australia. The point is that it’s time to get fair dinkum, and the best place to start is in your own backyard.

During the 1930′s Depression almost every household grew a decent proportion of their vegetables and fruit. Lemon trees grew in tandem with outdoor dunnies and pumpkin vines sprawled happily over boundary fences. People grew vegies to save money, which was far tighter than it is now, but I get the sneaking suspicion that they actually enjoyed the fruits of their labour. How many times have you heard someone from that era say “Times were hard, but we never felt poor”?

I’m not trying to be romantic here, but I think it’s important to realise that life goes on, and you can live very richly indeed by growing some food. You don’t need to become a hippy or strive for self-sufficiency. It can be as simple as popping a few seeds in the ground or a container and nurturing them to maturity. You face the same choice as I do, and my hope is that you choose to cultivate a garden, which when you boil it down to its essence, is an investment in real living.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 7th October, 2008