Mother Earth’s Garden

January 11th, 2007

Compost De’cay

I was talking to a friend about this blog the other day, and she told me a fascinating story. She said that years ago, when she had been working at the Women’s Health Centre in northern rural New South Wales, she had regular contact with women from the nearby all female commune, which was called […]

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January 10th, 2007

Lack of water - no new plants

Today, a sad executive decision. We will plant nothing new until the drought is over. The thought of spending water on plants, then being forced to let them die is too sad for words.
Already we are finding it difficult to keep the vegetable patches watered, given that we are only allowed to do it on […]

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January 6th, 2007

Sins and camellias

I noticed the other day that my camellia had singed-looking new growth, and I know from my forays into the scarey gardening books that this means the root ball has probably dried out.
Is there any gardening sin greater than letting a camellia’s root ball dry out? I doubt it. It is a situation from which, […]

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January 5th, 2007

Hint for lavender and wormwood

Hint: When you cut back fragrant bushes like lavender and wormwood, keep the trimmings. Dry them in bunches, then break the leaves off on to newspaper and put in old odd socks to scent drawers and cupboards.

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January 5th, 2007

Things I know about gardening

People have been suggesting to me recently that I must know more about gardening than I pretend.
I don’t think this is true, but I suppose it is not the kind of thing on which a judgement can sensibly be made. When the amount to be known is infinite, we are all ignorant no matter […]

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January 4th, 2007

High Summer and Zucchini Slice

High summer, and normally I would expect to be spending my days in the shade while the garden burgeons without much effort from me, other than watering. This is the season of easy living, when the zucchini are embarrassing in shape and profusion, and it is too hot to bake zucchini cake. Summer is […]

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January 3rd, 2007

Lists of gardening tasks and counsels of perfection

I don’t like gardening columns that give me lists of things to do appropriate to the season. I rarely get to do them, or else they are done at the very last minute, when the efficacy is all but gone.
I don’t like the aspirational approach to gardening. Just like over-thin models, pictures of supposed perfection […]

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January 2nd, 2007

First Tomatoes!

Put your tomatoes in the ground on Grand Final Day, (mid Spring here in Melbourne) and harvest the first ones in time for the Christmas table. Well, we didn’t quite make it, but today we picked our first fully formed, perfect, glossy skinned tomatoes. There were a few earlier ones, it is true, but the […]

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January 1st, 2007

Saving water

Happy new year’s day everyone, but for gardeners in Melbourne today is a sad occassion. Our city’s water supplies have dropped so low that Stage Three Water Restrictions are necessary, this means, among other things, that we can only water our gardens with tap water twice a week, with the days determined by our house […]

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