Visit Jo 31 May 2015

On Sunday 31 May the Food Garden Group visited Jo's garden at Geilston Bay

Rain, hail or shine, so far food garden visits have always gone ahead. Since the very first visit in May 2011 forty food garden visits have been advertised and to date all of them have taken place.

The last visit of the season to Jo's food garden was no exception. It was a windy, cold and rainy day, but by the time 15 people had turned up in Jo's sheltered garden, even the sun came out.

Here Jo welcomes us and discusses the challenges (a steep block, some good and some very bad soil, drainage, wildlife) she faces in her garden.

Jo pointed out some very wet spots and what she planted there. She also showed us some of her success stories. We discussed her current soil problems and how they might be solved with the help of a soil test.

Someone pointed out that a deciduous tree in the middle of her usable garden area would take a lot of goodness out off the soil and suggested it might be a good idea to have it removed. We even had someone offering to do it cheaply. Comments like this show how useful it can be to let outsiders look at your garden with new eyes and come up with suggestions.

The chooks were happy enough, but Jo reported that they have not been laying well recently. Some comments were made about chicken soup and they must have heard that, because Jo reported that after our visit there suddenly were more eggs.

We looked at Jo's netted fruit tree area and talked about her Feijoa tree that is really still a bush, but progressing well. Feijoas comes from Southern Brazil and in ideal circumstances can become up to 7 metres high. Fruit is green and matures in Autumn.

Here Jo sowed Lupins as a green manure.

This is an old mattress frame that Jo used this summer for beans to climb up and that she will use again next season because it was so successful.

This is one of the brassicas Jo put in to grow over winter.

At the front of her property she used parts of an old trampoline frame, some pipes and stakes to make a frame for fruit trees. She will put a net over this permanently and keep the trees pruned to fit within the frame.

There was so much interest in what people brought for the produce table that I did not get a chance to take a photo before everyone swarmed around it and negotiated who would take home what.

Morning tea, inside because of the cold, was great as always, and everyone agreed that a good time was had and valuable info was exchanged, in spite of the weather.

Many thanks everyone for their contributions of plants, seeds, produce and morning-tea treats and a special thanks to Jo, who was happy to invite us, in spite of the season and the fact that she had been away recently on an international trip.

This text was previously published on the Food Garden Group blog. It was written by Max Bee.