Visit Wendy 15 January 2017

On Sunday 15 January the Food Garden Group visited Wendy's garden at Sandy Bay:

Standing in the street one can not see much past the house, so passers-by would not know what a wonderfully productive food forest Wendy has in her backyard.

Wendy is in the rare situation of living on the property where she grew up, and she remembers her father planting some of the trees that are now tall, lush and productive. Yes, today's garden is the result of the work and dedication of more than one generation of a very talented gardening family.

Here Wendy welcomes us amidst the lush vegetation. This season the original garden is mostly inhabited by fruit trees and ornamentals, with many varieties of stone fruit and figs in abundance.

Rare these days, this garden has a Kentish Cherry tree and it had a nice crops of cherries on it.

Plums on their way. Everywhere you looked there was fruit, a combination of dwarf varieties and very mature large trees, that had in some cases been pruned to decrease their height.

The internal block that was added to the garden later is mainly devoted to vegetables and berries.

In the photo above beans are very happily climbing up an ornamental metal frame.

Wendy foliar-feeds with two Nutri-Tech Solutions (NTS) products that she finds really make a difference: Triple 10 (also recommended by Steve Solomon) and Trio (provides calcium, boron and magnesium). You can buy these products locally from Nolan Alderfox (phone 0448 983 269) or online at http://www.nutri-tech.com.au .

The berry cage is really getting too small to contain it all.

This additional block also has on it a very happy cool-climate Avocado tree (variety Bacon). These are a rarity and it tells us that the climate in this garden must be quite moderate. Wendy also has a smaller weeping Avocado variety called Wurtz.

On her deck Wendy had Avocado pips (from shop-bought Avocados) in soil. One in the top left corner of the tray has sprouted. She uses these to create 'root stock' onto which she then grafts branches of the Avocado variety of which the fruit is shown in the photo above.

Lots of people checked out Wendy's watering system and her composting methods. These are also described on our Food Garden Group blog.

Wendy has grapes all along the back fence that are obviously very happy and productive.

Wendy shows us how dedication over more than one generation, knowledge, experimentation and a love of gardening can produce a wonderfully productive food oasis.

Many thanks, Wendy, for showing us your garden.

Thanks everyone for the produce, plants and seeds you brought.

Morning tea was delicious and a reason, all of its own, to come to our garden visits.

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