Spring is officially a few days away still, but nature is telling us she’s already here. I spotted the first bee of spring, happily buzzing around a daisy bringing with it the energy that the oncoming season will bring to our modest patch.
Everywhere I visit lately is showing me the break from winter torpor. I recently visited a mate Jack’s (Dad’s) place and it is looking stunning, with healthy citrus, fruit trees in bloom, veg garden preped and a nice patch of stinging nettle (pity it had just been weed sprayed!).
The Graceview patch is also alive, which we admired on a recent visit when we arrived for a working bee, making more garden beds and laying a base layer of straw mulch. That place has come to life these past few weeks, with blossoms bringing colour and joy to the garden. Graceview has so much charm, just like our good friends Em and JB who own the place.
Over the last few months JB has been working tirelessly planting fruit trees, clearing weeds and bushes and building the vegetable patch big enough to feed three households. The place has come alive! You can see how proud he is when we do a garden tour, he’s always eager to show me his progress. If only I could transfer this enthusiasm to other people.
The progress at Graceview. Only three more beds and we’ll be set and ready for summer.
My girls really love the soil!
We’re now finally at the stage of propagating a range of veg for our phase one planting for spring. I say phase one, because I tend to plant in waves, so as to avoid a glut of the one type of veg. Like a wave of fierce Spitfires from a RAF base we’ve started the attack!
Growing your own food I’m sure will have to become a necessity in the future. This believe reaffirmed recently whilst watching David Attenborough’s Life of Mammals series, were we learned more about the fall of the Mayans. Explained by the wise man himself, the Mayans had advanced their agricultural technology so much so that they farmed the crap out of the land that provided for their cities, their very life blood. This encouraged a population explosion that eventually overwhelmed the carrying capacity of the land. The inevitable came thereafter, reduced soil fertility, then poor crops and finally famine enough for the civilisation to collapse. We’re talking 1500 plus years ago, and what have we learned? Fuck all! Does it not make you think? Food is the key to our survival and equally our downfall. Yes I’m pessimistic, but I don’t see the world changing. There is still more emphasis on the ‘importance’ of material and wealth acquisition compared to the contentedness that living simply and within our means can bring. It’s embedded in the human psyche to out-do one another, hence my dislike of competitive sports, well competitive anything really. We ought to strip back all the rubbish on TV, Cinema and radio and concentrate on helping one another, and ourselves. But I fear we are far too selfish. In the meantime, I for one shall continue to propagate, and one will preservere, in a state of denial, waiting for the day I can harvest this next season bounty.
I found your blog through design files the other day. Just wanted to say the site is great.
Love the post today as well – I have to agree with your view regarding looking after our planet. There is too much focus on the economy – making money and buying stuff – while important things like caring for each other and looking after our environment are usually left behind.
Keep up the good work!
Nick, I couldn’t agree more!
here via the design files… and will eagerly be following from now on!
Go for it! Even if you grow just a small percentage of your household needs, it will reduce our dependency on the big supermarkets! Thats has to be a positive outcome!
Looks totally amazing Ro. Those massive beds look fantastic.
I’m not ready for spring yet, it’s not usually this warm until October – caught me unawares it has.
Yeah same here. But this morning walking to work, I experience the final death roll of winter and I got spat on by mother nature. Ace
So do tell, what does one make with nettle? I make tea when I’m ill, with ginger and garlic (and chilli sometimes), but there’s more?
yeah there is heaps more…..my favs are soup and the best is a pesto which is a vego delight!!!
oooh pesto – YUM! Do you make it the same as normal pesto, just using nettles instead?
Yeah kinda, but process the nettles in boiling water first to take out the toxic sting!
I was JUST thinking that very thing today, when I say how much the nettles in my garden have grown… Thanks for the info xo
Ive also bookmarked your blog via TDF- thanks for such an interesting post on growing your own food, we have hits and misses in our patch however reading your post spurs me on to plant the next crop
keep it up, it will work ou. I just peeked in at the school garden this morning and it’s been hammered by slugs! Disappointing but I’ll just plant more!
Hear, hear! Found your blog through 74 Lime Lane (I think) and I love it! The pictures are gorgeous, and I happen to have very similar views on food (and the possible state of the future world). I am not as accomplished a gardener as you, nor as adventurous a cook (because I don’t enjoy cooking all the time so I tend to rely on standbys), but I feel if I keep reading along, I just may be.
~Cinnamon
Well I hope I can provide a little bit of inspiration!!
hello! just read the comment you left on my blog about what you would like to have one of my birdhouses. really? would be great! I admire your blog and know that you could have one of my houses would be an honor. Please contact me via blog or email and specify the subject.
Luis.
You betchya!!! I’ve been wanting to make one for ages but never get around to it. One would be fantastic in my back yard!!!
Great! Check out the link below http://carballoestrela.blogspot.com/p/cajas-nido-nest-boxes.html and tell me what model you’re interested. Today and tomorrow I’ll be busy but as soon as possible I will go to the post office to find out about shipping costs.
We keep in touch.
Greetings!
CASTIÑEIRAS NÓRDICA all the way….It’s beautiful!
i remember when corn prices soared a few years back. Mexico, so dependent on maize as a staple of its diet, was starving. food as a percent of (an already low) household budget was astronomical. and there was nothing they could do. such is an impact of this interconnected world, which brings so much good but has the capacity to cause so much harm; food costs rise in one area, famine strikes another.
but we’re seeing more and more community gardens crop around here. more heritage purveyors. so there’s hope yet…
sorry I dropped off.
Well said Mr Newman!!!!
then let’s not even get started on subsidies.
Wow – love the website as I read it from Abu Dhabi. I am living in the most unsustainable city on earth and am working on projects that are trying to get a little bit of understanding of the destruction that is going on by constructing a city in the desert. Token effort really. Trying to do my bit by growing our own veg on the 22nd floor. Luckily my folks post across Diggers seeds (no quarrantine here) however the 50 degree heat outside means that I have to grow most things indoors though. Starting to get some greens and had a few tomatoes. Whoever says it is too difficult to grow in the city is just not trying hard enough! Can’t wait to get back to Oz and go back to my old way of growing just about everything at home. Will be following your blog to keep me inspired (and wanting to come home!)
I often scratch my head when I see the skyscrapers and ski resorts in the desert. I liken it to the peak of great civilizations of the past, showing off thier greatness just before it crumbles into dust and history.
Diggers seeds are the bomb! I lost about $100 worth to mice over winter, I was so devastated, there was such great potential in those seeds. My mistake, I didn’t have the container sealed, I hope they enjoyed their herloom feast the little bastards.
Mate that is really inspiring to hear you making the effort in such dodgy conditions. Very admirable! I think for most people it’s just a matter of being to lazy and addicted to convenience, obviously not in your case. Dude come home and plant a big crop!
Another year and I’ll be home in the south west of WA sipping a locally made wine, eating a feast of home grown veggies and surveying my tranquil surrounds! I’ll keep reading your blog until then!