Once you have your layers down and the edging in place, the garden is ready for the next phase. Rest. You will need to leave your garden to settle for a couple of weeks; you will see it sink slowly as everything melts together. Then you can plant. No kidding, straight into those layers. I make a little hollow in the top layer of straw; fill it with a handful of potting mix and plant straight into that. It works and it will only cost you a bag of potting mix for quite a few tomato plants and some lettuces.
Over the years, I have tried to raise plants from seed, but find I have a lower fatality rate when I start with seedlings. Seeds need intensive care and, like babies, seeds have to be kept warm, given light and treated with gentle hands and patience. Therein lie the many reasons for my shocking track record with germination. I have done better with my daughter. Nonetheless, seeds are better value for money and I am preparing an old glass-topped coffee table to act as a mini greenhouse for my next mass slaughter. I am not that easily defeated.
Some things will grow with absolutely no effort on your part. Some plants begin life by sending up a shoot from the bottom of a plastic bag in the pantry for God's sake! I often wonder why hardware stores and garden centres even bother to sell "seed potatoes", mine usually start growing roots just weeks after I have lugged them home from the market. As soon as I see the first signs of growth, I tuck the sprouting spuds under the layered newspaper and wait for my free crop. I keep them well covered by mounding straw up the stems as the plant grows and I harvest wonderful crops of tiny potatoes, some no bigger than marbles. It's the same routine with garlic. As soon as the nob starts throwing out green shoots from the onion basket, stick the garlic in the dirt, one clove at a time.
Here's the thing: plants know how to grow. With our help or without it. If we were to introduce a mowing moratorium for five years, the planet would make excellent headway towards reforestation, all by herself; and Saturday mornings would be a lot more peaceful.
As far as pest control goes, I am primarily an organic soldier. When aphids invade the snow peas or the roses, I take the jar of crushed garlic and smear it all over my plants. I plant marigolds to deter cutworms and oregano as a guard against all the other crawling, flying things I can't name. I have mixed plantings instead of block plantings. I won't plant a bed of orderly rows of one variety; I will plant a patch of tomatoes in with some broccoli and beans. I do this because I once read that insects recognise plants by their silhouettes, so it is good to break up the easily recognisable “sameness”. Consequently, my beds don't have that neat, organised look and I end up with various beds all over the garden. This proved to be a good move in my earlier gardening days when kangaroos decimated one bed, but I still had other plots to eat from. Destructors aside, my biggest challenge, in the garden, is mildew.
Mildew is one of those primitive organisms that is hard to eliminate and it spreads quickly. Mildew has been bothering people for millennia. The Israelites even had special measures in place for those times you discovered a spot of mildew on your papa maland. This is what they did. They took the offending plant, or object, to a priest who then isolated the mouldy thing for seven days. On the seventh day the priest would check the spot and, if it had spread, I'm afraid it would be the pyre for papa. I am quicker to act. I just rip out the host plant on the spot, in the hope that the spores will quickly spread the word that they are unwelcome in my suburban garden.
As far as herbs, ornamental plants and shrubs go, I spend no money at all. I raid my friend's gardens for cuttings. I will have a go at striking anything and have succeeded where many have failed. I have also failed where many have succeeded. I lurk the streets at night with secateurs and plastic shopping bag in hand, hunting down that particular purple pelargonium, or just a wee branch of melissa officianalis. This too is probably illegal, but I justify my dark acts by seeing them as theft for the sake of multiplication, for the betterment of earth, my contribution to greening the planet. Like Robin Hood.
The biggest hitch with my current back yard is the lack of sunlight, due to the abundance of trees. Don't get me wrong I love trees; I have even hugged a woody friend or two at stranger times in my life. However, when the intent is to grow food and flowers, trees are a hindrance that must be contended with, worked around. As much as I would love to scale that lofty trunk and go the hack with a sharp and noisy chainsaw, I would miss the owls and, yes, even the screaming possums. So, this year I have planted broccoli with the cornflowers and, sweet corn amongst the foxgloves in my front yard. I have also put in one of the avocado trees that germinated by itself in the middle of the drought.
Water is always a concern. Hopefully the last few dry years have taught people the value of water. When you don't have much, you learn to conserve. We lived with a 500-gallon rain tank for four years and we never had to have any water carted in. The plug was left in the bath while we showered, then the used water was bailed into the old twin-tub washing machine for its second use. After that, we drained it straight onto the garden. We had only a cold tap in the kitchen and a long-drop dunny. Not really having these options in the suburbs, you can use a sink-bowl for washing up so you can toss the wastewater straight onto the gladys. You could only flush after solid sittings. If you leave the plug in your kitchen sink for one full day, you will get an idea of the amount of liquid your household throws away. That precious liquid could be mother's milk to your eggplant seedlings.
In my garden there is peace and colour. It is my escape hatch into the natural world and the place where I can focus on the simple things. In my gardens I have taught my daughter about the seasons and about nurturing small things. I hope, when I die, I will be mulched, composted and put to good use.
