The sight of a silvery raindrop as quick as mercury, wobbling in the cup of a nasturtium leaf, the warm smell of curing compost and the first pale stem of a sprouting bean: these are just a few of a gardener's treasures. There is nothing on earth as pleasurable as crunching into a fresh corncob, or plunging your hand into a bag of warm chook manure and grabbing a fistful to broadcast.
'You really should wear gloves,' my mother says, "and shoes."
For years I put off having a garden, it seemed so futile to go to all that trouble with a rented property and it looked so expensive. Then, one spring I planted a couple of tomato plants. When I finally picked off the first fruits and ate them - then and there, toes in the mulch - I was hooked. The tomato was still warm from the sun; it was thin skinned, sweet and juicy. For the next thirteen years, wherever I lived I planted gardens. My landlords have never complained. In fact, the last one so enjoyed the newly refurbished garden that she moved back into the house.
Australian soil is ancient and very hungry. The ground eats up everything I offer it. Anything that ever came out of the dirt goes back into it: paper, cardboard, lawn clippings, pet hair, ash, charcoal, vacuum dust, leaves, the neighbour's topsoil (as it washes under the fence) and kitty litter. Even the headless rats my cats bring. A word of warning about the litter: cat faeces can carry toxoplasmosis bacteria, which is dangerous to pregnant women and unborn babies. Having passed the stage where that is a concern, I find litter an excellent soil conditioner.
I am what the art world would call a "naïve" gardener. I don't know the chemistry behind the methods I use; I know nothing of pH balances or horticultural terms but more often than not, my methods work. Landscapers shake their heads, horticulturalists tut and gasp. Ideas that don't work in practice are reviewed and discarded and I learn something new every season. I refuse to dig - except for a little scuffling with a trowel for the sake of straighter carrots - and instead I layer. Layering is nowhere near as instant as getting an expensive load of topsoil delivered, but successful gardening has never been a “hurry up” kind of thing. You are at the mercy of the seasons, the weather and the natural world.
Lawns were never really meant for the Aussie climate, they require a lot of water, they need to be mowed and they produce bindii. Aussies well know the cry of,
“I'm stuck in the middle of the lawn! Somebody throw me a thong!” So, just get rid of that lawn, not the whole expanse in one hit, slowly take it over.
I begin my beds by happily slaughtering the section of lawn onto which I want to build. My favoured method for lawn culling is suffocation. Plants need light and air to thrive, so I cover the site of my proposed plot with an old carpet for a few weeks until the underlying grass is weak, yellow and gasping for air. Next, I replace the carpet with a thick layer (2cm) of newspaper, cardboard and the junk mail that insistent walkers deliver in spite of my sign. At this point I wet the paper down so it doesn't blow away.
The next layer consists of lucerne, or old lawn clippings if you can't get hold of hay. It is worth asking your friends and neighbours if they happen to have an old pile of lawn clippings around. Spread the clippings, or hay, over the paper as thick as you can, 10cm is a good thickness, as it will compact very quickly.
After the hay comes the compost and finally, the straw. Now I love a rich, steaming compost heap as much as the next gardener, but I am impatient. My small household is unable to produce the amounts of organic waste needed for any decent quantity. These days I empty the compost bucket straight onto the hay and cover it with a little straw. I know this is unconventional but it hasn't posed a problem so far. If anything it has been a blessing, which last year's self-seeded pumpkin crop can testify to, and it gives the worms something to get their little teeth into.
I have managed to create some disastrous compost over the years. Once I produced what looked like wet clay, it reeked like a dead sheep. I still used it and the plants loved it, it was just more tricky than usual to apply, and the stench nearly made me vomit.
When the whole bed has been composted and strawed, you will need to put some kind of edging around your plot to keep all that yummy, organic matter together. Here again, if you are not too fussy, anything can be used for edging. It need cost you nothing. Being born in the Year of the Rat, I am a resourceful kind of person and not above screeching to a halt at a pile of hard garbage or a builder's skip and rifling through it. 'Oooh look!' I squeal, "old bricks and curtain rods!" Bricks for edging, rods for staking and everything else for compost. Very rat-like and apparently illegal, but I care not as I search for more paper, or a nice length of mouldering timber. My daughter cringes and sinks low in the car seat hoping to become invisible.
