Gardening

..painting
of mine. The original purity of design has been a trifle compromised by the
modifications but there were impracticalities inherent in triangular garden
beds. Manoeuvring wheelbarrows around one hundred and twenty degree angled corners
being one.
During the reconstruction effort I have discovered that red gum is very much
heavier than I thought, moving cubic metres of gravel and soil is an interesting
exercise for a dodgy back and that treated pine does not last forever –
I suspect that the old arsenic treatment lives on only in the ants that seem
to have eaten it. They will probably be immortal.
I’m not actually quite sure how we arrived at the idea that a vegetable
garden would gladden our hearts, but ever since we arrived here some thirty
years ago we have grown things in plots of various size and location. Perhaps
deep down we are Italian or Greek?
For those who don’t know we live in an outer bush suburb of Melbourne
listed as liable to spontaneous combustion in the summer. We enhance the risk
by being perched on the top of a ridge high above the Yarra River. We found
out – after we had bought this acre of land – that two houses had
previously burnt down in the bushfires of 1939 and 1961 where we were planning
to build. Across the river is a National Park where the recent rains have done
little to mitigate the effect of a thirteen year drought turning trees into
matchsticks.
Even though we have water tanks, fire-pumps and the whole kit and caboodle they
only exist in case we are taken by surprise as we have a very, very early departure
policy. I, for one, don’t intend to find out whether I have the bravery
of a Bill Putt. As there is only one bridge across the river there is no prospect
of a last minute decision to leave – the road is blocked solid for nearly
two kilometres just with school traffic in the morning. So given a fire it would
be an automotive spit roast
Being on the ridge with rock just below the surface we really started off with
no soil – only a thin layer of yellow clay which grew onion weed, disappointed
Cootamundra wattles and little else. So we had, until the recent moment of weakness,
slowly built the soil up through thirty years of composting, dolomite and profanity.
There has been a degree of agricultural experimentation. We gave up on artichokes
when we realised that whilst they grew magnificently they don’t actually
produce much for the stupendous size of what is really a large thistle. And
that falling backwards into one is entertaining for fictional characters like
Eeyore with impervious backsides, but not for men in shorts. The same may be
said for the gooseberry bush that also did extremely well until it attacked
me in the same thorny manner. Again I was in shorts.
I have a regrettable tendency to try growing things because they seem interesting
at a particular moment in time – such as when perusing seed catalogues.
Show me an exotic list of heirloom vegetables seeds and I will try to grow them
even though they may be nearly impossible to raise outside of a Latvian cowherd’s
cottage, subject to diseases not seen since the seventeenth century and requiring
twenty-four hours a day nurturing. But when they do grow they taste so much
better.
The genesis of my desire to have particular plants is fairly obvious to me.
I have a grapefruit tree because my grandparents had a small orchard of them
in Auckland New Zealand where every August school holidays we were sent to be
overfed and to see our father. We have apricots and nectarine trees because
my wife’s family grew them and we have an apple tree because we have an
apple tree. Actually it is because my stepfather’s family had an orchard
on the farm near Geraldine where the apples we kept stored through winter in
wooden boxes in a special shed.
I have French tarragon because it is the most sublime herb. French tarragon
foxed me at first as it dies away completely in winter only to reappear the
next year better than ever. Unlike the French it seems to need little love
I also grow asparagus which is a bit perverse given the plentiful seasonal supplies
and that they need more food and water than I have been giving them over the
past ten years of drought. Asparagus and tarragon sauce are a marriage made
in heaven
My wife has a strawberry plant fixation which fits into much the same category
we have most varieties failing to produce the strawberries’ flavour of
the past..
But the prime reason that we grow non standard plants is that we are squandering
the heritage of centuries of vegetable and fruit breeding diversity for supermarket
expediency. Many varieties are already lost and so we move dangerously close
to vegetable monoculture, like the Irish dependency on one variety of the humble
potato that saw a famine where a million died an another two million left the
country.
The other problem with lack of diversity is that in order to protect monocultures
from catastrophic failure we become more dependent the widespread use of pesticides
and also inappropriate genetic engineering from such ‘philanthropic’
organisations as Monsanto.
Even if you don’t grow some your own food, different varieties can be
found in various Farmers’ Markets around the state.
If nothing else we can bring the richness and diversity past into the future.
Correction: In a previous blog I wrote that I had found that there were sixty
cookbooks in our house. Since then I have found another thirty more carefully
hidden in a cardboard box – including my grandmother’s legendary
‘Edmonds “Sure to Rise” Cookbook’ published in 1956.

Here’s one to try – Beetroot Mould
Ingredients –
2 bunches of beetroot boiled until tender
1 packet Edmonds Red Current Jelly crystals
Dissolve jelly crystals in one cup of water in which beetroot has been boiled;
add ¾ cup of vinegar. Slice beetroot and place in mould; pour liquid
over and leave to set. Delicious served as a salad or with cold meat etc.