September is the most irresistible month of the year. For gardeners living in a four season climate, the few short weeks of transition from winter to spring are so full of promise that it’s difficult not to get carried away.

For the wise heads out there, heed this word of caution. Be patient. Try and curb your enthusiasm just a wee bit. I know it’s hard. The sun’s out, the weather feels warm, the soil’s moist after the recent rains and all the nurseries are selling your favourite summer vegie seedlings. It seems like the perfect growing weather. This is certainly true for some plants, but for true warm season vegies, we’re not quite there yet. The air temperature is warm enough but the soil is still cold. If you doubt me, try the bare bottom test used by medieval peasants. Drop your daks, place your bare bum on the soil surface and test the temperature. I’ll bet it feels darn cold.

The problem with cold soil is that some seeds – corn, beans, pumpkin and tomato for instance – need a soil temperature above 15 Celsius to germinate. Capsicum, eggplant and melons need even warmer soil – 18C or more. Try sowing these seeds early in September and you are likely to be disappointed with the results. Plus, there’s still a chance of late frost and a single decent freeze may wipe out all of your warm season crops and you’ll have to start over. Old timers have learnt to take it slow and steady in September. They know that time lost at the start of spring will be well and truly gained by the end.

Inevitably, some of you will completely ignore this advice and rush headlong into the season without caring a fig what the weather may or may not do. Who am I to judge. Excitement gets the better of us all and I too have been guilty of starting plants too early in spring. If I’m to be really honest, I think I might have lost a few plants on a frosty night or two last October.

So if you simply can’t resist the urge to get some summer plants in the ground, you might want to try planting seedlings. You can purchase these if you like, but you’ll get better value for money, not to mention better plants, if you raise the seedlings yourself from seed. Start the seeds indoors. Light isn’t essential for germination, but warmth is, so look for balmy places like the top of the fridge or a bench top near the oven in the kitchen.

Once the seeds have germinated, which might take anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks, it’s vital that they go outside into a well lit position. Don’t fall for the mistake of placing them on a sunny windowsill. The tiny seedlings will become weak and leggy as they crane toward the light. Put them out into bright shade or morning sun, and avoid covering the seedlings with those clear plastic mini greenhouses. If the seedlings blow about a bit in the breeze and are in bright light they will develop stout, strong stems that eventually support healthy plants. Also, don’t saturate the soil either before or after germination. Water daily, by all means, but allow the soil to dry out a little between times.

What should you sow the seeds in? I like to use a custom seed raising mix and biodegradable pots. I make the former from fairly sandy commercial seed raising mix (Debco is my favourite brand, if you are wondering) and perlite combined at a ratio of two thirds to one third. It doesn’t really matter what brand or mix you use as long as it is sterile, to avoid problems such as damping off, and reasonably loose. I don’t add any fertiliser to the mix. Instead, I start feeding the little seedlings with a weak fish emulsion fertiliser once they are up and growing.

Biodegradable pots can be made from toilet rolls, egg cartons, or rolled up newspaper. I’ve got a big carton of coir punnets sitting in my propagating area so I use those, but the principle with all the various materials is the same. When it comes time to plant the seedling in the soil, put it in pot and all. The pot will decompose, and the seedling will suffer very little transplant shock. Wouldn’t you be happier if you weren’t squeezed and cajoled and shaken from your bed in the morning? One of the hallmarks of master gardeners is that they have learnt to think like a plant.

All the best for spring everyone. As American farmer Joel Salatin might say, may your earthworms dance with celebration and your carrots grow long and straight.

First puublished in the Toowoomba Chronicle 3rd September 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, pansies.

Blossom season has arrived on the Downs, and we ought to celebrate. It’s a privilege to inhabit a part of the world that experiences four seasons, and considering our spring is fleetingly intense we should all make an effort to embrace the wonder of the natural cycle.

If we were living in Japan, a nation beset by catastrophes far more monstrous than our January floods, spring blossom would currently be a national obsession, with hanami (flower viewing) parties held in parks and gardens throughout the islands. And rightly so. On the back of a winter that has been colder and drier than average, spring is a welcome gift. It’s a reminder that change, though inevitable, brings opportunities for renewal.

While a range of blossom trees are enjoyed in Japan, the plant at the centre of the hanami festival is Prunus serrulata, the non-fruiting, ornamental cherry known by the Japanese as sakura. The tree is widely grown outside of Japan, and though the species is uncommon on the Downs, it’s many cultivars, including ‘Kanzan’, ‘Shirotae’ and ‘Ukon’ are popular.

I haven’t grown any of these varieties in my garden yet, but I do have a Prunus ‘Okame’, planted (with thanks) by the previous owners and currently blooming in all its spring glory. Being a hybrid between the Formosan cherry (Prunus campanulata) and the Mt Fuji cherry (Prunus incisa), Okame combines the best features of each species. It produces a mass of pink flowers on a fairly upright tree in early spring, much like P. campanulata, while colouring up superbly in autumn like P. incisa. It really is a beautiful, undervalued plant.

But as much as I love our Okame, my enthusiasm for cherries is directed mostly toward the edible cherries, both sweet and sour. Sharing many of the same attributes as the non-fruiting species, fruit bearing cherries are just as ornamental in spring but come with the significant bonus of delicious, home-grown produce. Why Toowoomba Regional Council doesn’t plant edible versions of some plants is beyond me. Imagine being able to wander through a local park, enjoying not just the shade of a cherry tree on a summer’s day, but also being able to harvest some fruit. It would mean that TRC would have to resist spraying the trees with chemicals, lest they poison the public, but that wouldn’t be a bad outcome.

If council was to get adventurous with its public plantings, the cherry I’d recommend above all others is the sour cherry, Prunus cerasus. In Australia sour cherries carry the stigma of being a “cooking” fruit, but in Europe it is by far the most commonly grown cherry tree. The reason it’s so popular overseas is that the tree has considerable advantages over its sweet cousin.

Cold winters are essential for both species, but sour cherries tolerate more summer heat, are genuinely self-fertile, are less attractive to birds, come into bearing earlier, and form a tree half the size of the sweet cherry, which can reach a height of 10 metres. Additionally, the fruit of sour cherries won’t split open during wet weather like some sweet varieties do, and the tree is more resistant to brown rot.

These advantages apply equally to home gardeners. I’ve just planted a Morello sour cherry in my garden and I’m looking forward to using the fruit in the kitchen. Maggie Beer is a big fan of sour cherries, as is UK smallholder Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of River Cottage fame, who describes jam made from Morello cherries as “superb”.

Last but, certainly not least is everyone’s favourite, the sweet cherry. Christmas lunch in the Russell family wouldn’t be complete if a bowl of sweet cherries wasn’t on the table alongside the bon-bons and baked ham. This summer, I’m hoping to harvest the first fruit from our own trees. To keep them small and net the fruit against birds – the botanical name of sweet cherries is Prunus avium, after all – I’m growing the trees in a restricted bush form, where the vigour of the tree is spread over a large number of small branches.

To date I’ve planted Stella, a self fertile variety from Canada and Naploeon, an old French “white” cherry, but have two more waiting to go in the ground, the NSW bred ‘Ron’s Seedling’, and ‘Early Burlat’, developed in Morocco during the 1930′s. There are many other good varieties beside these four. If you’re keen to give sweet cherries a try be prepared to prune the trees to keep them manageable, consider their pollination requirements, and most importantly, plant in a cold micro-climate. Cherries, both sweet and sour, are fruit for the coolest parts of the Downs. But if you do manage to get cherries thriving, these superb trees will provide generous rewards for many seasons to come.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 27 August 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, Okame Cherry.

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.

In July, it can be tempting to believe that the garden has become a cold, drab, lifeless wasteland dominated by bare branches and frost-bleached grass. I’ve fallen for the myth lots of times, but in reality, it’s simply not true. When I actually slow down and really pay attention, I see a garden bursting with energy and colour. In this week’s Secret Garden I want to give a snapshot of what’s happening in my garden during July, with the hope that you’ll be inspired to see your own winter garden in a new light.

We’ll start in my favourite part of the garden – the vegie patch. Come winter, spring, summer or autumn, the patch is the beating heart of Thistlebrook. This is true in a physical sense, because the patch is located roughly in the centre of the most productive part of the property (right next door to the chooks and espalier orchard). But more importantly, the vegie patch brings to life our ideas of what good gardening, and good living, is all about.

The vegie patch feeds my family all year round. Winter moves at a slower pace than spring and summer, of course, but there’s still something to harvest every day. The two carrot varieties I sowed back in early autumn, Lubyana and St Valery, have been feeding us for months and there are still enough roots in the ground for a few weeks yet. The bed of leafy greens I sowed with my daughter in March is still providing fresh leaves of rocket, bok choy, mizuna, lettuce, spinach, and lots of beautiful Tuscan, and Red Russian kale. I’m growing the latter for the first time and it’s a winner – tender and delicious and quietly beautiful in the garden.

The brassicas are coming along well. A row of broccoli is sprouting dozens of side shoots, extending the harvest, and an adjacent row of purple cauliflower is big and tall and starting to form a startling violet coloured head. Next to the cauliflower is some young purple sprouting broccoli, a row of cabbage and finally, a row of wombok, now ready to be picked. All of the plants are thriving in soil that previously grew potatoes, and was enriched with lots of home made compost, some lime, and a decent scattering of pelletised chook manure.

My garlic is powering along. In addition to bulbs I saved from last spring, I’m experimenting with some heirloom varieties this year and so far, the results are good. The bulbs were tiny when they arrived in the post, and I was worried they wouldn’t grow. But garlic is tougher than people give it credit for and every clove bar one sprouted. I can’t wait for harvest in November. Nearby, in a permanent bed, is my prized rhubarb. The variety I grow is called Highfields Ever Red, and true to it’s name, produces glowing scarlet stems almost all year round before dying back to the crown in mid-winter. This year it’s still going strong.

The potted Eureka lemon tree, which has struggled along for a few years in the face of drought, frost, flood and the beautiful, but very hungry, orchard swallowtail butterfly caterpillars, is finally bearing fruit. Not a lot, and quite under-size compared to my neighbours’ lemons. But all fruit, whether abundant or scarce, is welcome in this household and I’m looking forward to this tree’s first harvest. A better performer is the blood orange. It’s going gangbusters for a young tree, and is covered with half ripe oranges that I’m hoping will survive July’s hard frosts.

There’s much more to this garden than just edible plants, and though flowers are scarce in July, observant visitors still manage to spot the odd beauty. Forget-me-nots planted beneath and old flowering peach are still producing their electric blue flowers, a red grevillea and a neighbouring teucrium are making a brilliant combination and out the back, along the rear boundary fence, a Mutabilis rose hedge continues to be a show stopper. This variety needs space, but it ranks as one of the most garden-worthy plants I’ve ever grown.

Now if that all sounds a bit too idyllic, take heart. Thistlebrook is hardly the perfect garden that some people imagine it to be. And to be honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Perfect gardens are an illusion, often created by a hyper-dedicated property owner or a small army of gardeners working day in and day out to create something that for most of us, is out of reach. Give me a garden that’s rough around the edges, but productive and beautiful, over a micro-managed show piece any day of the week. Let’s aim to keep it real.

First puublished in the Toowoomba Chronicle 2nd July 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, forget-me-not flowers.

Being a Dad is one of the great joys of my life. Child raising isn’t without its challenges, of course, but neither is it without some happy by-products. As a parent, I’ve had the pleasure of reading lots of kid’s books and watching the occasional kid’s movie. The best of these are brilliant works of art, and while I’ve got a soft spot for oldies like Mary Poppins (love the chimney sweep scene) my favourite so far is the 2006 film version of EB White’s classic fable, Charlotte’s Web.

One of the major themes of the movie, or at least the theme that gets telegraphed most insistently, is the idea of finding the miraculous in the commonplace. The closing song leaves little doubt about the “ordinary miracle” concept, and while the same theme is present in the book, EB White takes a less sentimental approach.

The novel’s title character, a spider named Charlotte, befriends a runt pig and saves him from the axe by writing a series of well chosen adjectives in her web above the pig’s pen. Charlotte describes Wilbur the runt as “some pig”, “terrific”, and “radiant”, and by the time the word “humble” appears in the spider’s web one morning toward the end of the book, crowds are flocking to witness the miracle first hand. As a consequence, her friend’s bacon is spared from the smoke house, and Wilbur lives to see winter.

What fascinates me about EB White’s story is the suggestion that people are drawn to the extraordinary sight of words written in spider silk, yet they overlook the real miracle – the web itself. There’s nothing grand about the sight of a dew laden web, catching sunlight on an autumn morning, but the incredible strength of the threads and the precision of the structure makes a spider’s web one of nature’s truest marvels. Every time we walk past such wonders without a second thought, we do ourselves a disservice.

Gardeners claim to love the natural world, but we’re as guilty of overlooking ordinary, everyday miracles as much as anyone. The problem stems from what amounts to a perpetual quest for the newest, the brightest, and the boldest. It’s exacerbated by some of the big garden centres and the broader horticulture industry, both of which are obsessed with the development of new plants with showier flowers that become further and further removed from their wild ancestors. We miss far more than spider webs.

I think there’s plenty we can learn from children. A child development expert could explain why, but I’ve noticed that kids are innately aware of, and get incredible joy from, the small details in their surroundings. When my kids pick a flower for their mum, they usually choose something insignificant, and unspectacular. When they appreciate autumn colour, it’s through a single leaf, not an entire tree. When they pick a piece of fruit from the garden they rarely salivate over the largest specimen. In a child’s world, little things are extraordinary.

One of the plants my kids enjoy the most is the common sweet violet, Viola odorata. We’re growing it as a groundcover on either side of semi-shaded path leading to our back door, where it also adjoins the kid’s sandpit. When the plant is in bloom from early winter to spring, the flowers get picked constantly for everything from making perfume to decorating volcanoes to sprinkling over miniature ponds. There are hundreds of other flowers to choose from in the garden. But it’s a purple wonder the size of a thumbnail that my children gravitate to.

I share the kid’s enthusiasm for violas. My favourite cool season flower is the humble Johnny Jump Up, Viola tricolour, a plant that earned its common name because of a tendency to self seed and pop up spontaneously in the garden. Its other common name is heartsease. This refers to the plant’s historical use as a medicinal herb, but I think it perfectly suits Viola tricolour’s ability to inspire cheer on the bleakest days of mid-winter. I also grow the larger flowered pansies (which are viola hybrids), but for me, a clump of happy looking Johnny Jump Ups is pure gold.

The 19th century American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “the invariable mark of wisdom is the ability to see the miraculous in the common”. I’ll leave it for others to judge whether I’m wise or not, but as a gardener, and a dad, I think it’s vital that I learn to see with eyes attuned to nature’s common glories. If I can pass such wisdom onto my kids, and they pass it on to their own children, I’ll die a very contented man.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 4th June 2011. Photo by Justin Russell – common violet, Viola odorata.

There’s something undeniably spectacular about a Toowoomba spring, as the city’s parks and gardens burst with colour like horticultural firecrackers. But for uncontrived beauty, autumn has a special appeal, and the season just gone must rank as one of the best in decades.

The weather has been truly pleasant, rainfall has been regular but not overwhelming, and you might have noticed that the display of autumn colour has been simply magnificent. The liquidambars in particular have put on a memorable show over the last couple of weeks, and we owe it all to the floods at the start of the year. I told you there’d be some upsides. With so much moisture in the soil plants that survived summer have grown explosively. Leaves have been produced in great number and they’re full of sugars, which means that when chlorophyll production ceases as we head into winter, intense red and yellow pigments are revealed. And what a revelation they’ve been.

But autumn is more than a one trick pony. If you look carefully, there are humbler delights to savour as well. I love working in the vegie garden during May, and one of this year’s highlights is a bed chockers with various kinds of leafy greens, including bok choy, ‘American Curled’ spinach, ‘Red Russian’ kale, ‘French Breakfast’ radish (the leaves are just as edible as the root), ‘Cavolo Nero’ kale, ‘Purple Oakleaf” lettuce, mizuna, and rocket ‘Astro’. My daughter Marley and I planted these successively from seed and punnets over the last six weeks. We’ve been harvesting from the bed since the start of May, and by picking just a few leaves at a time, we’ll be enjoying a continual harvest right through until spring.

A bed full of leafy greens might lack the visual spectacle of some crops, but you’d be a fool to underestimate the value of these simple plants to the Grow It Yourselfer. Besides being among the easiest vegies to grow, leafy greens are nutritional powerhouses. Anyone who watched Popeye as a kid would know that spinach is a rich source of iron, but you might not realise that Cavolo Nero, for example, has double the cancer fighting anti-oxidants of broccoli and some lettuce varieties contain more vitamin C than oranges. Kilojoule for kilojoule, leafy greens are the most concentrated source of nutrition available.

In my garden, leafy greens play a role a bit like the drummer in a band. While more conspicuous plants hog centre stage and lap up the oohs and aahs from adoring visitors, leafy greens just plug away in the background week after week, pumping out food with regularity and little fuss. Unlike some of the more fickle crops, greens are, like the best drummers, indispensable.

Most of them are also a cinch to grow. Some can even be weedy. Alongside radish, rocket is the easiest of all vegies to grow from seed, a quality that can become problematic if you let the plants flower and scatter their seed throughout the garden. You’ll be pulling them out by the dozen. Brassicas including kale, bok choy and mizuna are similarly easy to grow from seed, and will be up within days when sown into warm soil prepared to a reasonable tilth.

Lettuce is only slightly more difficult. This is by virtue of the seed, which is very fine and requires care that it doesn’t scatter in the wind while being sown. I usually start lettuces in punnets, covering the seed with a very fine layer of sand or seed raising mix before transplanting the seedlings into the garden once roots start poking out through the drainage holes.

At this time of the year, growth is pretty moderate, even with the aptly named rocket. In many ways this is an advantage, as leafy plants are less likely to bolt to seed like they can in warm weather, but to encourage them along, I often make a mini greenhouse out of an old two litre plastic milk bottle. I cut out the top and bottom of the bottle, then slip it over the seedling like a sleeve. The plants benefit from the extra warmth created inside the bottle, and are protected from slugs during their vulnerable seedling stage. Once the plants are growing strongly, the sleeves can be removed and harvesting can begin.

As for how you should use leafy greens in your winter cooking, my suggestion is to be creative. Try warm salads, make rocket pesto, add spinach to risotto and bok choy to stir fry. One of our family favourites is colcannon made by combining creamy mashed potato with Cavolo Nero fried in olive oil with bacon and garlic. Serve with warming lamb stew and crusty bread. Bring on winter!

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 28th May 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, leafy greens, with Red Russian kale in the foreground.

It’s been more than 150 years since Easter Monday last coincided with Anzac Day, a date well before the landing at Gallipoli and one that won’t be repeated until 2095. For the keenest of the keen, such a rare event equates to five days in a row of gardening bliss. I’m pretty keen myself. I plan to do a bit of work outside, but I’ll also be making time to relax, and reflect on what the weekend might mean beyond chocolate bunnies and slouch hats.

Easter and Anzac Day share a common message as far as I’m concerned. It’s a message not of war and glory, but one of sacrifice and ultimately, enduring peace. The Old Testament prophet Micah foresaw this peace in pointedly non-violent, agrarian terms:

“They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.”

These words ring true for a fruit grower (and peace-lover) like me. I’m a bit taken by the idea of sitting under my abundant fig tree and pruning it with a tool furnished from a defunct weapon of war. It’s certainly not the reality at the moment. I’ve got one old, poorly positioned fig in the garden, and the world’s most cursed marsupial – the possum – usually beats me to the fruit. I’m planting more figs this winter, and hope for a day when I can eat from a number of trees and live not just in peace with my fellow human beings, but the local wildlife as well.

The common fig, Ficus carica, is probably the oldest of all the domesticated fruit trees. It is one of a number of contenders for the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, and was first described in stone tablets by the Egyptians more than 2700 years ago, when it was revered as the Tree of Life. The tree and it’s fruit are afforded frequent mentions in the Bible, but the most famous is, of course, Adam and Eve’s use of the leaves as “modesty patches” to hide their nakedness.

The fact that the leaves were able to hide the dangly bits of the first man should give some indication of their ornamental value. The leaves are big and handsome. The tree itself can look scrappy, but a well pruned example can make for a very attractive specimen that meets my ideal characteristics for a plant – beautiful and productive.

The fruit is even more luscious than the foliage. If you’ve never eaten a fat, fleshy fig straight off the tree then I don’t reckon you’ve quite lived. Don’t even give the occasional supermarket fruit a second glance. Figs have such a short shelf life that they demand to be eaten fresh, cooked or dried. Freshly picked figs, halved and baked with honey, then served with a dollop of double cream is nothing short of a taste of heaven.

Figs will grow in any climate the Downs has to offer, from warm to cool temperate, to subtropical, and while the tree prefers reasonably rich ground to sand, isn’t overly fussy. The real key to getting bumper crops is to grow figs “leaner” than you would most other fruiting trees. A well-nourished fig tree will get fat and lazy, developing an extensive root system and putting lots of energy into a lush canopy. It will do this at the expense of fruit, so in fertile soil, feeding is only necessary to get the tree established. As Louis Glowinski says in his excellent The Complete Book of Fruit Growing in Australia, “neglect seems to be a good policy as far as fertiliser in concerned.”

The other trick people employed to stimulate fruiting, was to constrict the tree’s root ball. Old timers would plant a fig in a 44-gallon drum to keep the roots compact. Others advocate pruning the roots periodically with a sharp spade. A simpler option is to either plant your tree against a sunny wall and espalier it, or grow a fig tree in a large pot. Half wine barrels are perfect, both practically and aesthetically, but don’t forget to drill drainage holes in the bottom, and for longevity, treat with a wood preservative. As for varieties my picks for the Downs are ‘Brown Turkey’, ‘Black Genoa’ for colder areas and ‘White Adriatic’ where its warmer.

My hope is that you’ll take some time this weekend to reflect on the common message of both Easter, and Anzac Day. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to plant a fig tree. In years to come, maybe you too will be found sitting beneath your tree, eating its fruit, looking forward to the day when war is over and peace reins upon the earth.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 23rd April, 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, Ripening Figs, “Summerfield”, Cabarlah.

Driving through Crows Nest this morning I spotted what were, for me at least, the first of the season’s autumn leaves. Rosier than a dairy maiden’s cheeks, they were on a box elder maple, Acer negundo ‘Sensation’, and herald the start of what I consider to be the best few months of the year.

If you haven’t yet realised, I’m a goner for autumn. Love it. Passionately. Part of the attraction is the sense that the heady days of summer are on the wane, and a change is under way. For me, autumn is a time to harvest apples and organise the firewood stack. It’s a time to harvest the last vegies of summer, and pull the heavy doona out of storage. And being more of an introvert than extrovert, autumn is a time to down tools, at least to some extent, and catch up on a few good books. I’m guessing that you have your own rituals at this time of the year too.

But let’s not forget foliage. American philosopher Henry David Thoreau described October in New England as “the month of painted leaves”, and I have to admit to imagining myself, for a very fleeting moment or two, doing a Thoreau by building my own cabin among a forest of oaks and sugar maples. That’s when I’m not daydreaming about a cottage in the middle of an old apple orchard somewhere in the Russell’s historic stomping ground of Herefordshire, England (apples and painted leaves!). Then I snap back to reality. Truth is, I’m more than happy with my lot here on the Downs.

Unlike most of Queensland, we at least get to experience proper seasonal change. Already at Thistlebrook we’ve had a few nights under 10 degrees, and it’s cool enough some mornings to walk gingerly across the bathroom tiles. If the weather remains true to form, we’ll wake to our first frost somewhere around Anzac Day or the first week of May. By that stage, the colours in the garden will really be glowing.

Autumn leaves are testament to the principle that nothing in nature is wasted. I recall the environmentalist David Suzuki saying that his household of four adults has managed to get its waste down to one small rubbish bin per week. To me that kind of effort is pretty impressive, but it’s still not a shade on nature, where everything is recycled. In fact the very notion of waste is nonsensical from a natural perspective because everything living will, upon death, decompose to become food or habitat for something else.

If you need evidence of nature’s recycling prowess, I reckon you’d do well to spend a year living with, and observing, a big old deciduous tree. In summer the leaves will be full of chlorophyll, carbohydrates and minerals. But as nights cool during autumn, the tree will prepare for winter by drawing all these valuable nutrients back into buds and bark, where they’ll be stored until the weather warms again in spring. The leaves, now depleted of green pigments, will reveal underlying hues of red and yellow, and within weeks, an “abscission” will occur in the cells joining leaf and branch. Leaves then fall to ground.

But the autumn story doesn’t end there. All those fallen leaves, which were solar energy collectors in the summer, assume new importance as they get eaten by worms and woodlice, or decompose through a natural composting process. The net result of all this decomposition is that the soil under a deciduous tree gets richer and richer. Within decades it will be magic. The single best bit of ground I’ve ever seen was up on the Toowoomba range, in a garden bed beneath an ancient liquidambar. That soil was so chocolatey soft that I could have happily lay down and gone to sleep.

To make the most of autumn foliage in your garden, it pays to choose trees wisely. Most deciduous plants colour up as the weather cools, but some produce a much more spectacular show than others, so in no particular order, here are my ten recommend trees, shrubs and fruiting plants for autumn on the Downs: Nyssa slyvatica, Tupelo; Pyrus calleryana ‘Redspire’, Ornamental Pear; Pistacia chinensis, Chinese Pistacio; Sapium sebiferum, Chinese Tallow; Acer rubrum ‘October Glory’, Maple; Ginkgo biloba; Diospyros kaki, Persimmon; Mespilus germanica, Medlar; Cotinus coggygria ‘Grace’, Smokebush; Berberis thunbergii, Barberry.

There are very few Americanisms that I like, but the word “fall” is one of them. To me it’s a beautifully poetic way to describe autumn in a temperate climate, and my hope is that you’ll make time to simply stand back and watch the season unfold. Let things go a bit more than normal, and enjoy the wind down.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 9th April 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, Chinese Pistacio, Davidson Arboretum, Highfields.

What a summer. As I write, another torrential downpour is passing over my garden and I’ve just received word that Toowoomba’s three dams are overflowing. This is tremendous news for us all, and a huge relief after the last decade of drought.

A combined dam level of 100 percent doesn’t come without cost, however. I’m conscious of those in Toowoomba, on the Downs and beyond whose lives, homes and businesses have been devastated by flood. In particular, I offer my sincere condolences to those of you who lost family and friends during Monday’s disaster.

I’m also thinking of the many farming families doing it tough. I was chatting to my wife’s cousin last weekend, who passed on the sad news that he’d heard of eight farmer suicides in the week prior. The devastation of losing a record crop to floods after enduring so many years of drought has simply been too much for some people to bear.

My hope is that as the floodwaters recede and the cleanup begins, everyone will come to see the silver lining. My wife will probably scoff at the idea, but I reckon an event like this is a bit like childbirth. After all the pain and suffering there is the most wonderful reward at the end – a precious new life. We can look forward to an explosion of life in the months ahead, so let’s endeavour to keep our spirits up, look out for our neighbours, and prepare for what should prove to be good years to come.

It almost seems trivial to be worried about gardening at the moment, but for many of us, the garden is a source of solace and provision. As soon as the opportunity arises, I’ll be outside making repairs, pottering about and preparing for the next big rain event. According to the BOM, La Nina is likely to persist until March or April, so there may be worse yet to come. Some plants and even entire gardens will be a write off, but there are a few key things we can do to limit the damage to our gardens by persistent moisture. Here’s what I’d be focussing on:

Soil protection

The most overlooked aspect of any flood is that massive amounts of topsoil are washed away in chocolate coloured creeks and rivers. Australian soils are at greater risk than most because they are geologically ancient and tend to be relatively thin, so anything you can do at home to keep the soil on your property is worthwhile. Vegetation cover is the best soil defence of all, but as an urgent stop gap, you should cover any exposed soil with mulch or weedmat. It’s also important not to dig wet soil. This can destroy the soil structure. Wait until the soil is just moist before you attempt any planting or cultivation.

Fungal diseases

A prolonged period of wet weather is the prefect breeding ground for all kinds of fungal diseases and rots. For the first time in my current garden nectarines and peaches have developed brown rot, which causes fruit to “mummify” and drop from the tree. Grapes and cucurbits have been badly hit by powdery mildew and the vegies are covered in all kinds of fungal problems.

Spraying at this point would be useless. Fungal sprays work best as a preventative, so there’s little I can do now except clean up and dispose of any infected fruit and leaves to avoid reinfection. Once there’s a week or two of dry weather predicted, it would be a good idea to spray with an organically approved fungicide to help control future outbreaks.

Drainage

Over the last few years we’ve all been planting drought tolerant plants that cope beautifully with the dry, but can suffer badly during prolonged wet weather. Humidity in the air is part of the problem, but the main issue is generally poorly drained soil. If the ground stays soggy for long enough plant roots suffocate and rot.

To avoid swamps forming in your garden it’s important to create adequate drainage. This is achieved partly by improving the porosity of the soil, and partly by directing surface water away from sensitive areas. Put on a raincoat and wander around outside during a downpour. You’ll quickly see where the problem areas are, and you can then dig drains or create small levees to direct the water where you do, and don’t, want it.

Hang in there everyone. It might be a rocky period ahead, but once the crisis is over, we can look forward to months and months of ideal gardening conditions. The soil will be moist, our dams and tanks will be full, and hopefully, the sun will shine bright and warm on our sodden gardens and rain soaked lives.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 15th January 2011. Image by Justin Russell, Thistlebrook sunset, Monday 10th January, 2011.

There is a truth known to every serious food gardener that is at once frustrating and comforting: there’s always next season. Usually, my vegie patch is a picture of abundance at the start of January but this year it looks neglected and anaemic. There are some successes – ‘Lazy Housewife’ beans are fat and sweet and my ‘Golden Bantam’ corn is boasting four cobs per plant – but the remainder is looking miserable.

Worst of all are the warm season solanaceous plants, the tomatoes, capsicums and eggplants. Due to the rain the toms have been hit with fungus but the biggest problem is that the plants have simply dug their heels in and refused to budge. The eggplants, for example, have grown about two inches in two months. Capsicums have fared a little better but seem reluctant to flower. The tomatoes were planted back in October and still haven’t produced a single ripe fruit.

For a family determined to produce a decent proportion of its food, failures like this are a serious bummer. To add insult to injury, our potatoes are stuffed. Not as in stuffed and roasted, but ruined. As with everything this season, the problem was moisture. We’ve been bandicooting potatoes for a few weeks, but only last week dug the main crop ready for use over the rest of summer. The yield was respectable, 24kgs from four kilos of seed spuds. But we made the twin mistakes of not letting the skins dry and harden enough for long term storage, combined with accidentally piling in a couple of rotting potatoes with the good tubers.

What Chaucer said about apples is also true of potatoes – one bad spud spoils the bunch. Within a day or two the rotting spuds ooze onto the others, passing on infection and promoting the growth of mould. Worst of all is the smell. The stink of rotting potatoes is disturbingly like rotting rat. We’ve rescued as many decent tubers as possible, but the bulk are destined for the tip.

Don’t get me started on the possums. In a wet year you think it would be safe to assume that there’s food galore for the marsupial pains-in-the-backside but it seems as though the opposite is true. Apple leaves are being stripped. A nice crop of apricots decimated. Cricket ball sized peaches ripped from protective fruit fly bags, nibbled, and left to rot on the ground. It’s lucky that possums are a protected species because evil thoughts of marsupial stew and warm winter hats have regularly crossed my mind this summer.

In the midst of such calamity, what’s a gardener to do? Exactly what needs to be done, that’s what. I’m so hooked on the promise of home grown food that I drag my spirits up out of the mud, hose them off, and prepare to have another go. Despite my failures I’m reminded that of all the things I’ve done in life, gardening is the most hopeful of pursuits. My tanks overfloweth, the soil aboundeth with moisture and next season’s harvest might jolly-well be my best ever.

So I’m making plans. The weather bureau reckons it will be wet for a few months yet, which means leafy greens like lettuce, rocket, bok choy, and silverbeet will absolutely thrive if the slugs can be controlled. It should stay cool enough for broccoli and Tuscan kale. Cherry tomatoes are disease resistant so they should do well as a late summer crop. Another round of corn will be worth a shot and I’m planning a big bed of bush beans that will later be harvested and dried for use during winter.

All is not lost. At the risk of sounding too much like a poxy motivational speaker, it’s a case of chins up people. Let’s accept the reality that we’re not in control of nature and that it’s our job to make the most of what she dishes up.

Yesterday I was reminded of a quote by one of my favourite writers, the 19^th century philosopher Henry David Thoreau:

“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience.”

My experience is that nature can sometimes be mean, but life is indeed, sublime. I’m absolutely determined to make the most of 2011, regardless of the weather, and hope you’ll join me in another year spent gardening.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 8th January 2011.