When Kylie and I were newly married and had moved into our first house, we were given a tiny little hand-me-down black and white TV. Being a long-time footy fan, I’d attempt to watch games in black and white, and Ill tell you, it was a seriously frustrating experience. It was almost impossible sometimes to distinguish between the opposing teams.

A year or so later we inherited another TV, still a tiny little box but this time, a whiz bang colour version. You can guess what happened. The change from watching the footy in black and white to watching it in vibrant colour was absolutely mind blowing.

This is how I like to think about spring – it’s as if nature is suddenly playing out in full colour, rather than black and white. Life appears to be bursting forth all over the place, and there’s an obvious sense of urgency in the air. The garden looks fresh, but I know that some plants are using up all their stored energy reserves and will soon be hungry. One of the major spring tasks for the gardener, therefore, is to provide nourishment. But there’s a catch: nourishment means a lot more in garden terms than simply throwing around a packet of urea or super-phosphate in the hope that it will “green things up”.

The true way to a healthy, well nourished garden is by continually building healthy, biologically active soil. Bottom line. Healthy soil is a diverse ecosystem full of decomposed rock minerals, decayed organic matter, micro-organisms, and beneficial fungi, and will therefore support plants that naturally resist pests and disease. By contrast, gardens that are over fed with artificial fertilisers look lush, but they’re actually bloated and sappy, fed on what is the equivalent of junk food.

I use no artificial fertilisers in my garden at all. Nothing is applied to the soil or a pot that is based on synthetic chemicals, which means no orange slow release pellets, no ammonia or urea, no super-phosphate and no soluble “liquid” fertilisers. None. These fertilisers damage, rather than enhance, soil life, so the only fertilisers I use are those made from natural products such as manure, blood and bone, worm poo, fish emulsion and rock minerals. This is not a boast, just a simple statement of my principles, and actions.

One of the reasons I abhor the use of chemical fertilisers is because in my view, they are weapons of violence and war. If you think this sounds far fetched, consider the history of chemical fertiliser use. It all began in the peace-time years immediately following World War Two. Munitions factories that had been making bombs from ammonium nitrate were re-purposed to produce cheap, nitrogen-rich agricultural fertilisers. More recently, ammonium nitrate fertiliser was used to make bombs used in July’s Mumbai bombings and confessed Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik even went as far as to purchase a farm so that he could access chemical fertilisers to make bombs.

This isn’t to say that chemical fertilisers can’t be used for peaceful purposes. Of course they can. There is also no doubt that the use of chemical fertilisers have greatly increased crop yields, and as a consequence fed billions of people. But so have natural fertilisers, and they can be used with few of the risks associated with synthetic chemicals.

One of the major issues arising from over reliance on artificial fertilisers is a serious deterioration in soil quality. Chemicals can provide specific plant nutrients, but they contribute nothing to the biological activity of soil and excessive use can lead to ground that is effectively dead – nothing more than a medium to keep plants from falling over. An obvious consequence of poor soil quality is even greater dependence on artificial fertiliser for a farm or garden to remain productive.

The washup is that I’m not what you’d call a gung-ho plant feeder. I never throw fertiliser around willy nilly, even if it’s a natural product, and I only fertilise in a limited range of scenarios: to give young seedlings raised in pots a healthy start; to provide nutrients to container plants grown in potting mix; to replace nutrients leached on very free draining soil; to ensure healthy growth of particularly hungry plants such as citrus trees and vegies; and to give a quick boost to heavily pruned plants such as roses.

I basically ignore all the gardening experts telling me to fertilise like there’s no tomorrow. Instead, my real concern is with the soil. I’ll use fertiliser when and if it’s required, but my overwhelming concern is with the health of my soil. Nourish it, and not only will my plants be well-fed, but I will be too.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 10th September 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, unfertilised cottage garden in spring.

What a run of magnificent winter weather we’ve just experienced. Frosty dawns and sunny afternoons are tonic for the soul as far as I’m concerned, and it seems the various fruit trees in my garden appreciate the weather just as much as I do. There are signs that my fruit trees are waking from their winter rest. Most notable are the buds. On some trees they are small and slender. On others, the pears and apples in particular, the buds grow fatter and more expectant by the day.

But hard won experience has taught me not to get fooled. It is, after all, barely the start of August. Officially, winter still has a month to run, and in some parts of the Downs, including my little cold pocket on the western fall of the Great Dividing Range, frost can settle on the ground well into October. My enthusiasm for the garden is swelling just as quickly as the buds on my trees, but I’m not quite ready to throw open the windows and embrace the wonders of spring.

Besides, there’s still a mountain of jobs to do in anticipation for the season to come. August is probably the busiest time of the year for food-centric gardeners like me, for the simple reason that if the preparation work isn’t done in earnest now, there will be slim pickings in the vegie garden until the summer crops get started in November. And if I can help it, I prefer to grow my own, rather than depend on the seasonless conveniences offered by the supermarkets.

Traditionally, the period from late winter to early summer was the leanest time of the year in cold climate gardens. People called it the “hungry gap”. It was a time when the stored surplus of autumn began to dwindle but the weather hadn’t thawed sufficiently for fresh produce to be ready to eat. Hunger, even starvation, was a very real possibility. This is why lent is celebrated during the northern hemisphere spring – the religious symbolism of fasting and suffering coincides with the reality of rarely filled bellies.

Thankfully, the situation isn’t quite as dire as it once was. Yes, I loathe the supermarkets, that much is obvious. And I’m very dubious about the perceived security of the modern food system. But compared to the average medieval peasant, or the modern day Somalian for that matter, we’ve got it very easy. The grocery shops offer a safety net that would be inconceivable to many, and our climate is, for the time being at least, conducive to growing a broad range of nutritious vegetables every month of the year.

So for me, it’s head down bum up for the next month, not so much in an effort to avoid the hungry gap, but to build a level of security and sheer deliciousness into my family life that no supermarket can ever begin to match. My Woolies…my big toe! I’ll tell you where my real loyalties lie, and that’s with my garden.

Top of my notepad titled “Jobs for August” is spuds. Some people ask me why I bother growing something so cheap and readily available in the shops. My answer, beside what I just wrote above, is that you must never have tasted a freshly dug spud. Tender, new potatoes bandicooted from the soil before the main crop is ready, are exceptionally flavoursome. I’ll always find some room for them in the garden. At the moment though, my seed potatoes are sitting on the kitchen bench waiting patiently for me to get them into the ground. They’ll go into well drained soil into which I’ve incorporated some compost and a generous scattering of pelletised poultry fertiliser.

Besides potatoes, my next priority is roots. Especially carrots. They are a nightly staple in our household, and the last of our autumn sowing was pulled from the ground this week. This time around I’m trying out an heirloom variety called ‘Danvers’ as well as my old favourite ‘Purple Dragon’, and unlike spuds, both will be sown into well dug soil that has no added compost or fertiliser. Carrots and parsnips prefer lean ground.

Finally, I’m going to sow a “catch crop” of leafy greens. Because greens are so fast growing they can be planted to catch the small window of opportunity that exists between late winter and the first plantings of summer ripening tomatoes, corn and beans in September and October. Rocket, mizuna, kale, Asian cabbage, and lettuce are all easy to start from either seed or seedlings and give quick results when speed is warranted.

There’s plenty to be done. And to be honest, after writing this week’s column I’m almost so keen to get into my vegie patch I could burst quicker than a plum blossom in September. It’s an exciting time of the year.

First published in The Toowoomba Chronicle 30th July 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, unfurling buds on an ornamental peach.

Suddenly, after reading about them in an apple growing book of all places, I’ve developed an interest in mushrooms. Or more specifically, fungi. Mushrooms are nothing more than the fruiting bodies of a fungal organism running through some kind of substratum such as wood, or more commonly, soil. The organism itself takes the form of microscopic fibres called hyphae, which in turn form an underground, cotton wool like mass called a mycelium. You may have come across the white fibres of a mycelium while digging in the garden.

I don’t like to overstate things, but in the case of mycelium, mind blowingly awesome is the term that springs to mind. Mycelium can form underground networks many thousands of kilometres long, and is thought by scientists to be the largest organism in the world. A single fungus in Oregon, for example, has been found to cover an area equivalent to 1665 football fields and is estimated to be more than 2,000 years old.

Mycelium sequesters carbon dioxide. It plays a vital role in decomposing plant matter, and generally has a beneficial relationship with plants, aiding in water absorption, distributing nutrients, and conferring resistance to soil borne pathogens. There is evidence that fungi can “bio-remediate” polluted land, protect houses from termites, and at least one mushroom expert, mycologist Paul Stamets, has argued that the solution for the nuclear contamination around Fukushima, is mycelium. You can encourage the growth of mycelium in your garden by ceasing the use of toxic fungicides.

No less remarkable is the use of fungi as food. If I’m ever forced to choose a final meal, a contender would have to be fried mushrooms, seasoned with salt, pepper, thyme and a splash of Tabasco sauce, served on home baked sourdough toast. Or plain old mushies on toast. It’s a dish fit for a king in my opinion, and the Holy Grail for me is to cook it up with mushrooms that I’ve grown myself, or better still, foraged from the wild.

Every autumn, a couple of different fungi appear beneath a stand of Monterey Pines along our front boundary, and another type always pop up in large clumps in various parts of the lawn. With the hope of scoring a free breakfast or two, I bought myself a mushroom book, and have managed to identify at least one species – the small fungi growing in the lawn are magic mushrooms. For some this discovery would be like stumbling across a gold nugget, but the hardest drugs I consume are caffeine and alcohol. Mind altering hallucinogens aren’t my thing, as besides, it’s illegal to consume magic mushrooms in Australia. Including those growing in your back lawn.

The other two species growing under the pine trees I’ve yet to positively identify. At this point I need to provide a serious caveat to anyone considering foraging for wild mushrooms – take care! Some fungi are poisonous, and can cause effects ranging from mild diarrhoea to death. If you consume a Fool’s Funnel, for instance, you’ll probably break out a major sweat, but mistake a Death Cap for a field mushroom, and it’ll be a case of lights out.

The golden rule of mushroom foraging is simple: “If in doubt, go without”. This implies that before any fungus is consumed, it must be positively identified. Mushroom books contain a step-by-step identification key, and the author of mine, John Wright of River Cottage fame, suggests that: (i) you should never eat a fungus if you don’t know its name; (ii) you should only eat a fungus if it agrees with the book’s key, and the description, and the photograph; and (iii) only a small amount should be consumed when trying a species for the first time. Got it?

If this foraging business all sounds like too much hassle, it’s entirely feasible to grow your own mushrooms at home. Kits are available in nurseries from about April to October, and they represent pretty good value for money. I manage to get up to four kilograms of mushies from a kit costing around $25, so it’s cheaper than buying mushrooms from the shop and as with most produce, home grown mushrooms are also far superior. The rubbery excuses for fungus they sell in the supermarket taste like pencil erasers compared to home grown mushrooms.

I hope you’ll share my new found appreciation for mushrooms. Two hundred years ago, no-one would ever have believed that fungi could be so interesting, let alone realise that the vast web of mycelium beneath our feet may hold the solution to some of the world’s big problems.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 14th May 2011. Image by Joel Hagerman via flickr.com.

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.

I’ve had quite a few letters the last couple of weeks from readers concerned that a particular plant might be dying from the recent wet conditions. Catherine from Crow Nest wrote, for example, “After all the rain our apricot tree is looking very sad – its leaves are all brown. Is there anything we should do to ensure it doesn’t die?”

Considering we’ve spent the last decade getting used to gardening during drought, this is a very pertinent question. The weather has well and truly swung from hot and dry to the other extreme, cool and wet. As a consequence all the rules from the last 10 years are being rewritten as we come to grips with the fact that the Darling Downs is indeed on the fringe of the subtropics and as such, can experience very rainy summers. Our soils are now loaded with moisture, the water table is high enough to get springs popping up all over the place, and for some plants, the conditions have become very inhospitable.

The first sign that something is wrong with a plant during excessively wet conditions is usually wilting or yellowing leaves. It seems totally counterintuitive. You’d assume that when there’s so much moisture in the soil, plants will be lush and perky. But when soil becomes saturated, all the air pockets are removed and conditions become anaerobic. The consequence for some plants is that fine feeder roots are deprived of oxygen and start to rot, which shows up above ground in terms of damage to the plant foliage.

Some plants are adapted to wet conditions and can live in perennially wet soils. Some can survive short periods of inundation, and recover once soils start to “breathe”. Others absolutely hate having wet feet. In my garden there have been quite a few losses in the last two weeks, and some plants look like they’re teetering on the edge of oblivion. The worst of all have been silver or hairy foliaged plants. Artemisias, buddleias, salvias, gazanias, rosemaries, lepechinias, ceanothus, and arctotis – all of which are supremely drought tolerant – are either dead or dying.

As sad as it is, many will need to simply be ripped out and replaced. If the foliage of a plant has all gone brown and dropped, like Catherine’s apricot, try scratching away a layer of bark with a fingernail to see if there’s still living tissue. If the layer below the bark is bright green, the plant may well survive. If the scratch reveals a brown layer, the plant is probably dead. Give it a few weeks, and then send it to horticultural heaven. Choosing replacements will be tricky, because the new ideal for our climate is plants that can equally tolerate extreme wet and extreme dry. Ornamental grasses, sedges, cannas, rainforest margin plants, and agapanthus fit the bill, and our local plant palette will no doubt adapt as we get more familiar with boom and bust conditions.

For those plants in your garden that are teetering, perhaps with yellow or wilted leaves but some signs of life, there are a few actions you can take to help them recover. I’m forever saying it, but start by seeing this event as an exercise in patience. Give the soil time to drain naturally, perhaps scraping away mulch to allow sun and wind to aid in the drying process. Clay soils will take longer to dry than loamy soils.

As you’re waiting for the soil to dry, which could take weeks, try spraying plants with Yates Anti-Rot. This product is applied to the foliage and travels down through the plant’s vascular system to the roots. The active ingredient phospahric acid inhibits the growth of root rotting fungi such as phytophthora, and is particularly useful for treasured trees.

Once the soil becomes workable, there are three things you can do to help it recover from inundation. The first is to throw on a handful of lime per square metre. Waterlogged soils tend to become acidic, so a dressing of lime will help get the pH back into balance. Secondly, throw on a handful per square metre of blood and bone. This helps replace nutrients leached from the soil by heavy rain. Finally, incorporate some compost into garden beds. This will help get some oxygen back into the soil and provide a boost of beneficial micro-organisms.

All is not lost. Being a glass half full bloke, I’ve taken to wandering through the garden with fresh eyes. I’m planning to redesign some areas and as for the dying plants, no quarter will be given. They’ll be unceremoniously ripped out and replaced with something more appropriate to the booms and busts of our awe inspiring climate.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 29th January 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, apricot tree, Villa Vista, Killarney.

More than any other, September is a month brimming with potential. For backyard food enthusiasts the main growing season stretches out ahead like a long untravelled highway, and here, at the start of the road, expectations are high. The Southern Oscillation index is consistently positive, which means that there’s a decent chance of getting above average rainfall during our traditional dry season. Increased cloudiness means the dust storms and heat waves of last spring are less likely. I’m hoping for a bumper end to the year.

To provide the best opportunity of reaping a mighty harvest, there’s one essential September job to do before putting fork to soil, and that’s to plan out my crop rotation for the months ahead. Lots of gardeners see this type of planning as a bit “Type A personality”, a kind of administrative cop out that makes a poor substitute for practical action. Well, contrary to the opinions of some, I’m your classic Type B. I haven’t worn a tie since my wedding day and prefer a relaxed approach to most aspects of life. But if there’s one thing I won’t skimp on in the garden it’s a proper crop rotation.

My underlying reasoning for this otherwise atypical behaviour is simply that the vegie patch is unique in that it’s a hard working garden. It exists to produce abundant crops. Without a planned crop rotation, productivity would gradually decrease, problems with pests and diseases would increase, and the building block of the garden – soil – would eventually be little more than a growing medium dependant on artificial chemicals. By implementing a rotation, I avoid growing the same plant family in the same bed for more than two seasons in a row, depriving pests and diseases of their favourite host plant and preventing long term infestations.

So let’s start with the basics. The simplest crop rotation is legume-brassica-root (I think of it as “LBR”), that is, a crop of leguminous plants such as peas and beans followed by a crop of brassicas such as broccoli and cabbage, followed by a crop of roots such as carrots and parsnips, all moving through a single bed over the course of a year. There’s an important reason for this LBR sequence – it maximises production. Legumes suck nitrogen from the air and fix it in their soil, which helps feed nitrogen hungry brassicas. In turn, brassicas use up most of the nitrogen in the bed, creating perfect conditions for root crops, which need little nitrogen and tend to fork if conditions are too fertile. Crop rotation is a symbiotic, tried and true means of husbanding a productive piece of land.

When I designed my garden, I planned it around the basic legume-brassica-root rotation. There are eight main beds in total, which allows for two LBR sequences to be running at the same time, with extra room for “catch” crops like tomatoes and corn. The central bed in my vegie patch is planted with herbs and three long narrow beds around the outside borders contain perennial crops such as rhubarb, asparagus, grapes, and strawberries.

From a crop rotation point of view, I divide the year into three parts: spring and early summer; late summer and autumn; and winter. At the start of each of these periods I print out a plan of my vegie garden, compare it to last season’s plan, and then plot out my rotation for the months ahead using the basic LBR sequence.

Then, with paper plan in hand I head to the vegie garden and get the appropriate beds prepped for the new round for crops. Those that like an alkaline soil get some dolomite lime, gross feeders get some rotted manure and blood and bone, other beds get some potash to help with flowering. Carrots, one of the more important vegetables in my household, get special treatment with a finely dug bed. This gives their long, tapering roots plenty of room to grow deep into the earth and resist drought.

If you’re new to growing your own vegies, or a laidback Type B personality like me, this kind of planning probably sounds like complete gobbledygook. My advice is to plan (preferably on paper), practice and be patient. It takes a while to really get the hang of a rotation system that will work in your garden, but eventually it will become second nature. And guess what? You’re vegies will love you for being such a disciplined gardener. They’ll be bigger, healthier, and best of all, the tastiest things you’ve ever shovelled into your mouth.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 4th September, 2010. Photo by Justin Russell – Thistlebrook vegie patch.

To dig or not to dig, that’s the question. If you’re part of the legion of new vegie gardeners taking up the spade in a quest for the good life, you could be forgiven for wondering who you should believe. The advice seems completely contradictory. Should one take the advice of the no-dig advocates, who argue passionately for the spade to be left in the shed, or is it safest to believe the traditional gardeners, who argue that theirs is a tried and true method refined over hundreds of years? Or is there a third way that finds some common ground between the two extremes?

We’ll get to the answer later, but first, let’s explore what I mean by “no-dig” gardening. The concept has actually been around for decades, just under different names. It began in the1930’s with the Japanese farmer/philosopher/scientist Masanobu Fukuoka, who from 1938 until his death in 2008, experimented with various small scale farming techniques that he collectively referred to as “natural farming”. Fukuoka’s philosophy was based on a simple concept: the farmer should interfere as little as possible with natural processes. Crops could be grown, he argued, without machines, with no prepared fertiliser and no chemicals, yet attain yields equal to or greater than the conventional Japanese farm.

One of the main components of the Fukuoka approach was to use ancient techniques like cover cropping and seed balls in order to totally avoid having to cultivate the soil. Fukuoka’s concept was characterised as “no-till” farming and enthusiastically embraced during subsequent decades by both agricultural scientists and the growing band of farmers interested in natural farming methods. It wasn’t until the late 1970’s though, that a Sydney gardener named Esther Deans applied Fukuoka’s techniques to the domestic backyard.

In two well regarded books, Deans outlined the concept of “no-dig” gardening. Her basic idea was to build garden beds above the soil surface by layering various materials on top of each other like a kind of horticultural lasagne. Layer one is wet newspaper laid on the soil (or lawn) surface to smother weeds and grass. Layer two is straw or lucerne hay. Layer three is organic fertiliser such as pelletised chicken manure, or blood and bone. Layer four is straw. Layer five is manure. Layer six, the top layer, is good quality compost. Each layer is watered progressively as the beds are built.

Anyone who’s done a spot of composting will know what’s going here. When first made, a true no-dig garden is basically a fancy compost heap. A high nitrogen material (manure) combined with a high carbon material (straw) will decompose in the presence of moisture and oxygen, creating a soil-like material (humus) that is okay for growing plants in.

No-dig advocates claim a slew of advantages over traditional techniques. No-dig gardens don’t need to be cultivated, thereby eliminating damage to fragile soil flora and fauna. They are perfect for those who are unable to wield heavy tools. They are more fertile than traditional gardens. They can be made over really poor soil or even solid concrete.

Sounds great, doesn’t it. In practice, no-dig isn’t as simple as it appears, especially long term. As no-dig gardens decompose, they shrink, and need to be constantly topped up with copious quantities of organic matter. When built over a hard pan, serious drainage problems can develop in wet conditions. No dig garden beds need to be either really narrow or modular for ease of access. Then there’s the myth shattering truth that vegetables need to planted, and planting (even sowing) requires some degree of cultivation. There ain’t no such thing as a totally “no dig” vegetable garden.

So in answer to my original question, to dig or not to dig, my approach is to find a middle way. I’ve tried no-dig gardening, and it proved a tricky proposition. Instead, my philosophy is one of minimal till. I believe there are times when a good dig is beneficial for both the health of the garden, and the health of the gardener. While I don’t advocate the old techniques of double digging and annual winter cultivation, I have no qualms about digging in a green manure crop, cultivating the soil as part of my annual crop rotation, or growing carrots in ground worked to a fine tilth.

I suppose what I’m saying is that there’s a case to be made for digging, but with restraint rather than abandon. Before putting spade to soil, I try to use my brain. I ask myself questions, things like: “why massacre earthworms if I don’t have to”; and “do I really need dig this particular bed, or am I blindly following convention”. In gardening, as in life, the real answer is all about finding a healthy sense of balance.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 29th June 2010.

When it comes to Easter, who do you believe? If the hardware stores had their way, we’d all be stocking up on supplies for a four day burst of DIY. Believe the camping stores and we’d all be heading off to a national park or a beach for a four day “escape”. Believe the bottle shops and we’d all spend the long weekend on a bender. I sure as heck don’t believe the supermarkets, but if I did, I’d spend four days eating chocolate and hot cross buns.

Here’s what I believe: faith still has its place. For me Easter is, amongst the chocolate, camping, and DIY, a time to reflect upon the big issues. Chief amongst these are life and death. If this sounds dreadfully old fashioned, and more than a bit moribund on the second biggest holiday of the year, give me half a chance. Let’s make the connection with gardening. That is, after all, the topic of this column, so here goes. When you distil gardening down to its pure form, it’s not about plants or soil or beauty or nature. Strip all that stuff away, and gardening is essentially about the two biggies, life and death. Growth and decay.

At this point, I’m sure there are more than a few loyal readers reaching for the anti-ageing cream. It’s not hard to understand why – our culture is obsessed with youth. We’re terrified of decay and do almost anything, no matter how ridiculous, to avoid its inevitable conclusion. Hair gets dyed to rinse out the grey. Breasts get “enhanced” to resist the effects of gravity (good luck!). Food becomes a convenience remote from the reality that for human beings to eat, something that once lived must die. The concept of ageing gracefully has gone the way of the Tassie tiger.

Gardeners, however, are a wise lot and I’m hopeful that those of us who practice the ancient art know better. In the garden, decay isn’t something to be feared, but something to be celebrated as a part of the grand cycle of life. Plants grow, mature, decay, and then they die. Either that or they are eaten. When plants die or get eaten, they rot, and the process of decomposition forms humus, the building block of healthy soil. In turn, soil humus helps produce healthy plants, and so the cycle goes. Gardening is about life and death.

The early 20th century botanist Sir Albert Howard, one of the “fathers” of the organic farming movement, believed that the first principle of agriculture is that “there must always be a perfect balance between the processes of growth and the processes of decay.” The consequences of this balance, according to Howard, are “a living soil, abundant crops of good quality, and live stock which possess the bloom of health.”

Around the same time that Howard wrote these words, soil scientists found that they could effectively isolate the key elements in soil that nurture plants, namely nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous – NPK respectively. Once the three elements were identified, scientists were able to synthesise them. This was believed revolutionary at the time, in that the “problem” of soil fertility could now be solved by the mass production of synthetic fertilisers, rather than reliance on animal manures. Thus began modern industrial agriculture, and the NPK ratio can still be found on the back of every pack of commercially produced fertiliser.

For Howard the industrialisation of soil fertility more or less threw the balance of nature completely out of whack. Synthetic fertilisers could replace key elements in soil, but it couldn’t reinvigorate depleted topsoil and therefore violated the “Law of Returns”, Howard’s concept that what comes from the soil, must be returned to the soil to keep it healthy and productive.

I’d take this concept a step further by arguing that decay or death actually sustains, and gives meaning to, life. One can’t properly exist without the other, yet many households see decay as inconvenient, so they unwittingly break the cycle of nature by behaving as though death is absent from the equation. A prime example of this is when people put otherwise beautifully compostable plant waste in a green lidded wheelie bin that gets carted away once a week to become someone else’s problem. And pay for the privilege!

Compost your green waste, and return the black gold to the soil. Get some chooks and feed them kitchen scraps. Use their manure to feed some fruit trees, and complete the cycle by feeding any spoiled fruit to the chooks. There’s one sure way to affirm life this Easter, and that’s by accepting, and dare I say, celebrating death.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 3rd April, 2010. Photo by Justin Russell – Davidson Arboretum, Highfields.

The air might be cooling at this time of the year, but to the gardener’s benefit, the soil will retain summer’s warmth for weeks to come. If you don’t believe me, try dropping your daks on a crisp autumn morning and make contact between your bare bum and a bare patch of ground. Compared to the air temperature, the soil should feel warm. This technique works better in spring than autumn, but it was how they did it on the low tech days of old. Try it, but remember that bare bums and ground dwelling wolf spiders don’t mix! If you are the modest type (or fear spiders), try poking a finger in the soil. Better still why not save yourself, and the neighbours, from embarrassment and poke a thermometer into the soil.

The combination of warm soil but cooler air temperatures makes autumn the ideal time to get stuck into some planting. Evergreen trees, shrubby natives, hedging plants, perennials and spring bulbs can all go in now, allowing time for strong root growth before winter without the stress of hot air temperatures.

As well as planting out newly purchased or propagated plants, autumn is also the best time in the year to transplant existing shrubs, perennials and even small trees. Even experienced gardeners make the mistake of planting things in what turns out to be the wrong spot, but it’s hardly the end of the world. With care and confidence, most plants can be dug up and moved to a better location.

For small plants, transplanting is simply a matter of digging up, dividing if necessary, and replanting in well prepared ground. Evergreen perennials like bearded iris, agapanthus, and liriope cope beautifully with autumn transplanting, but it’s suitable for herbaceous types as well. Species geraniums, herbaceous salvias and other spring flowering perennials are actually better divided now than in winter or spring.

Woody shrubs are slightly more difficult to move, but not much. The three keys you need to bear in mind for successful transplanting are: (a) prepare the new planting site in advance, adding any soil amendments and having stakes and other materials ready to go; (b) keep as much of the plant’s root ball intact as possible and keep it moist by wrapping in damp hessian; and (c) water deeply after replanting using a seaweed extract to stimulate new root growth. There’s always an element of risk when transplanting, and the plant will usually experience some degree of shock at such invasive treatment, but if you do these three things your transplant should recover fine.

For larger trees, the first thing to determine is whether the plant is deciduous or evergreen. If deciduous, you’re much better off waiting until the tree is dormant and leafless before attempting the move. If evergreen, transplanting is basically the same as for shrubs, but requires a combination of brute strength and delicate treatment. As a rule of thumb, the younger a plant is, the better it will transplant. Unless you have access to specialised tree digging equipment, the risks will be greater than for small trees and shrubs, but so can the rewards. Besides the three rules mentioned earlier, there a couple more worth considering before you put spade to soil.

Firstly, it may pay to prune the canopy of a tree to be transplanted by up to fifty percent. This helps compensate for any roots that are damaged during the transplanting procedure by reducing transpiration. Secondly, newly transplanted trees will generally require staking for the first year or so after being moved. This helps anchor roots against strong winds. Thirdly, transplanted trees will usually need to be planted in a good sized hole (double the width and depth of the root ball) that’s backfilled with existing site soil. Backfilling with fresh compost or manure is a recipe for disaster. You should, however, ensure that the soil is broken up finely and firmed in to make good contact with the roots. This process, combined with deep watering, will help remove any air pockets which may cause roots to dry out and die.

Once you’ve got your plant in its new position, there is one final requirement: patience on the part of the gardener. This is standard practice for anyone working with plants and seasons, but is especially important with a new transplant. If you were suddenly uprooted and transplanted to a different home, you’d take a while to recover and so it is with plants. Don’t expect too much too soon. Use the opportunity to hasten slowly.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 27th March 2010. Photo by Justin Russell – Queensland bottle trees at Crows Nest transplanted from Acland coal mine.

If this statement doesn’t hit you square between the eyes, nothing will: the world will run out of topsoil in 60 years. When I first heard scientist John Crawford make the claim on the ABC’s 7.30 Report a couple of weeks ago I was, literally, slack jawed. Sixty years! The implications of a number like this are massive, but when combined with a number like nine billion, the projected population of the earth in 2050, the figures are almost too much to comprehend.

Crawford, a professor at the University of Sydney’s Institute of Sustainable Solutions calls the soil depletion process “Peak Soil”. He points to China, where natural forces and industrial agriculture combine to deplete topsoil at a rate 57 times faster than it can be replenished. In the US, the National Academy of Sciences estimates the depletion rate to be 10 times. In NSW, the rate is about five times. To put the depletion in other terms, more than 75 billion tonnes of topsoil is lost annually and 80% of the world’s farming land is moderately or severely eroded.

Our topsoil bank, says Professor Crawford, will soon be empty. In Australia the problem is exacerbated because our rocks, which break down to provide the minerals in soil, are geologically ancient. Much of their weathering has already taken place. This means that our soils have generally lost much of their “goodness”, and most of the nutrients are stored in Australia’s existing plants. Read between the lines and you’ll realise that in Australia, an estimate of sixty years until the topsoil is depleted is likely to be very generous.

For those of you reading this article from the comfort of your lounge room, this might all seem a bit trivial, alarmist even. You rock up to your local supermarket week in and out to purchase a trolley full of food. Other than when banana prices skyrocket, it’s no big deal. The groceries get stacked in the pantry, eaten by the end of the week, and a fresh trip to the shops conducted 52 weeks of the year to replenish supplies.

What we’ve forgotten is Wendell Berry’s reminder that “eating is an agricultural act”. Those groceries lining the cupboard and the fruit bowl were grown by a farmer, on a farm, probably in soil. If you think soil depletion doesn’t affect you, it’s time to wake up. No topsoil by 2060 means widespread, aching hunger, the kind that compels people to fill their bellies with anything – even the dirt that once produced crops.

The good news, says Professor Crawford and other soil scientists, is that there are simple solutions to the problem. These solutions can be applied equally on a scale that ranges from a tiny backyard to a broad acre farm, and they can be very cheap to implement.

1. Keep the soil covered. Soil that has dried out during a drought has a diminished capacity to support microbial life and it’s more prone to being blown or washed away. Spread a layer of mulch, preferably something that will gradually break down to feed the micro-organisms in the soil. The use of cover crops in the vegie patch will perform a similar role.

2. Soil can be replenished. It takes time and effort to do so, but through the continual addition of organic matter to depleted soil, fertility can be significantly increased and microbial life enhanced. An added benefit of soils rich in organic matter is the capacity to store moisture. The easiest ways to improve soil at home are by making compost and growing green manures.

3. Avoid cultivating the soil. No till gardening isn’t practical (try growing carrots in non-sandy soil that hasn’t been dug), but we can all aim to make our practices minimum till. Don’t dig for the sake of exercise, and once soil has been dug, try to implement point one (above) as soon as possible. It’s also a good idea to regularly spell beds in the food producing garden.

John Crawford says that most people encounter soil as that inconvenient stuff that sticks to the sole of your shoe and has to be scraped off before entering the house. In other words we treat it like dirt. Those days have to end, and a new era of soil conservation – where we treat it not like dirt but an essential building block of life – has to begin. Start now in your own garden, and implore your friends to do the same. Unless you all want to eat hydroponic tomatoes. But then, where would we get the water?

First published in The Chronicle 13th February 2010.