It is an entirely veganic/organic garden, with no animal manures or products, no pesticides or herbicides or artificial fertilisers. The soil is quite acidic, so I do use plenty of wood ash. The wood ash itself comes from our bush stove which we run during winter, burning only storm-felled wood. We do not “harvest” wood that has obviously settled as habitat for insects and animals.
Last summer’s tomato crop (planted late) was still yielding in June! Even the Chinese cabbages were going into late autumn. The frost finishes things off when winter really sets in, but the dramatic seasonal shift brought on by climate change means long late summers and autumns. We also had a sizeable harvest of butternut pumpkins, masses of snow peas through winter, a winter and autumn continual harvest of sugar-snap peas and broad beans, excellent winter broccoli, silverbeet throughout the year, even in the middle of winter, late carrots and beetroot, autumn chillies and capsicum, plus various herbs (exquisite oregano and basil).
I went out to survey the garden beds today — it’s not so hot, reaching only the low 30s. A couple of weeks back it was in the mid-to-high 40s! That’s around and above 120 Fahrenheit. Sears gardens. Anyway, I checked out the ground... dry and dusty with a jungle of wild oats that came up late and were left, obscuring all. Amazing after months of no water that some things that weren’t harvested, because they didn’t finish in time, or weren’t quite up to scratch, still struggle on. Especially cabbages. Lots of dried and split broad-bean pods, spilling beans on to the ground. Will collect those. A bean so sun-affected that it caught my eye, had gone from its regular brown opacity to a transparent redness, like a fierce eye glowing at night.
I took a couple of photos (below) of part of the garden:
When it’s thriving, it attracts a large numbers of birds — all are welcome. They work out insect issues (insects are also welcome), and also naturally fertilise the ground. If it falls there without human intervention, I’m okay with it!
When I am working out there on warm evenings, willie wagtails hang around, and often a pair of red-capped robins. The 28 parrots have eaten most of the seed from the vegetables I left to go to seed. I harvest enough and they get the rest.
The garden area is quite large and spreads along the flat. It will take a lot of work to prepare but it yields enough to feed two or three families daily, once it’s up and running. If I had my way, I would spend my life growing organic vegetables for a community. Maybe down the track! Oh, that garden is the source of many poems. I have a garlic poem from six months ago I haven’t published yet. I include it below. A veganic garden is a poetics.
Planting Garlic During a Dry Winter to Ward Off
Break the corms —
separate cling-wrapped
inner growth, free succulent
cloves, organs that open to dry
winter air. Make happen.
Cloves, curved as half-moons
out from the turntable of roots,
rotating out of the stalk core,
unsteady walking stick,
nervous maypole.
Give of tension, therapy,
cure-all for colds and plague,
torn from the dry cradle,
broken-skinned, into
the earth’s crumbling
encapsulation. Purple-
veined, as if all paper written on
still pulses with life. Ink blood
we read against, white intrusion
of page, of gleam.
An action less
than snapped apart, no more
set adrift, upright from parameter
to tip, mimic-thrust from boldness
to discrete finger up,
pointing. Thrust down, cold
to curve away from straight and narrow,
rupture surface, displace
fate. Attract rain.
Make warmth.
The sun, low, insists
its sweep across the winter dry,
stenographer’s growth,
politicising nurture,
meliorating.
John Kinsella
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