In My Garden - Frank and Laura March 2022

The Food Garden Group first visited our property in September of 2018. Back then our orchard was very new, and our veggie patches were just being established. We’ve now lived here 5 years and we’re rounding the corner on our learning curve as our beds, plants and understanding of the local conditions are settling in for a productive food future.

When we moved here, there were a couple of veggie beds behind the house with a lot of weeds and too much slope. Our first efforts went into those to create terraces, remove the weeds, revitalise the soil. We have had some success with those beds but they don’t get the right kind of light and are competing with the olive trees so they’ve degraded a bit. That might be this winter’s project. Which is a good time to point out that the garden is Frank’s domain. He plans what goes where, when; he does the back breaking work, day-in-day-out (and loves it). My efforts go into harvesting and preserving what Frank grows and losing every battle against weeds in our ornamental garden beds. So when I say “we” in this post, you can bet I mean “Frank”.

The main reason the original beds have been abandoned is that the veggie beds at the back of our orchard are so much more productive and easy to manage. They are on a nice terrace with good, north facing sunlight, plenty of space and air.

The basic strategy of these beds is: create them, build up the soil, plant things, water them, pull weeds, harvest, repeat. Because we have so much space, we tend to leave plants in the ground past their prime so they can flower (our bees love this) and we can collect their seeds. Those seeds produce the next season’s crop and so it goes. If (when) we feel space-constrained, we create a new bed. Part of the “problem” with space is we keep planting perennials and therefore have lost what seemed like heaps of seasonal veggie beds. Culprits include raspberries, strawberries (we get 10s of kilos of berries each year), artichokes, oca, Thai basil, yacon, rhubarb, walking onions… The list goes on. As does the creation of new beds.

We also have 2 glasshouses which might seem like the best thing ever, but I’m not a fan. On our property, mature plants do markedly better outside. The biggest problem with the glasshouses is they are magnets for pests (white fly, red mites, and aphids are the worst offenders). Also, the moisture content is a LOT harder to keep consistent than in a normal garden bed, leading to plants becoming stressed. We are lucky as we’re at sea level on the Derwent River so frost isn’t much of an issue which negates some of the advantage of a glasshouse. It’s worth pointing out that our glasshouses were built decades ago as a growing house for seedlings with heating to control the temperature. The buildings were never designed to be sealed so they can still get quite cold overnight and in winter which minimises their value in extending growing seasons.

Anyway, we do use the larger glasshouse to sow seeds, raise up seedlings, and strike cuttings, and it’s great for that. The smaller glasshouse may one day become an orangery, a home for our bananas and potentially other warmth loving plants.

A good demonstration of my problem with the glasshouse is our tomatoes. We have tomatoes in 3 different places: 1) the glasshouse, 2) a main garden bed, 3) several smaller beds shared with cucurbits. All were from the same source, sown and planted at the same time. The pictures below tell quite the story about the glasshouse and makes me wonder why we would ever bother. To underscore my point, the capsicums are also doing MUCH better outside than in.

Glasshouse tomatoes: Weak plants, little fruit, ripening a bit earlier than outside, too many pests.

Main garden bed tomatoes: Only 2 unhappy plants out of the block of 20. Plenty of fruit ripening steadily.

Small garden bed tomatoes: Heaps of fruit on each plant. They look to be struggling more than in the main bed but that could be because they’ve decided to fruit at ground level. And they are grazed by native hens regularly.

Note our tomato growing technique. Each plant has a straw bale tie hanging down. The plants can be easily wrapped around that as they grow. Extra strings can be added if needed for side shoots. 

In front of the veggies, we’ve got a lot going on in the orchard. We have more than 40 fruit & nut trees and most are producing at least something. It might be a while before we get any avocadoes or walnuts, but we’re not exactly going without. The orchard has also benefited from the extra space we have – trees are planted 3.5 metres apart with berries in between. Each tree or bush has its own dripper which makes keeping the plants hydrated easy and efficient. That said, we all know plants prefer rain, but at least we can keep them alive if not absolutely flourishing.

The orchard is fronted by a row of hazelnuts and brambles of berries along the fence, and we’ve recently added a dozen edible grapes at the back. Future plans include a small citrus grove and probably chestnuts, more almonds and,… That paddock beyond the orchard beckons.

Behind the orchard and veggie beds, we keep a couple of pet chickens. Phoebe and Phoenix supply us with eggs and some good compost-enhancing manure while sharing their run, their water and their food with all the clever birds of Otago – they are clearly avian lovers. To the side of the orchard is a nice-sized apiary with 6 beehives. This is our 2nd year keeping bees in Hobart and, as with the garden, we’re learning the ropes with conditions here being very different than Sydney.

This time of year, the plants aren’t the only thing demanding our attention. The produce must be harvested and, if not consumed, stored. It’s keeping me hopping right now. The freezer is full, the pantry is filling, the root cellar is healthy-looking and the wine is bubbling… The garden provides for us all year but the stores keep the variety going so we can augment the seasonally fresh goods. Come on, as wonderful as fresh fruits, berries and veggies are, who doesn’t love a good jam, some chutney, a cured olive or a bit of dried fruit?

We really do have a great property for a garden but that’s not to say we don’t have our fair share of issues – heavy clay soil, a plague of ducks, enthusiastic native hens, a family or 2 of possums, a couple of wallabies, cherry slug, curly leaf, coddling moth, snails, lizards and every sort of fruit/nut/seedling stealing bird in Greater Hobart. But, again, the space works to our advantage by allowing us to over-sow (3 sowings this year to get corn to come up without the turbo chooks gobbling them – the jury is out whether we’ll get much of a harvest with such a late planting) leaving plenty for us even after our visitors take their “angel’s share”. I’m convinced the space is also a deterrent to the marauding fauna. Yes, we have a dog and cat that might discourage some animals (though not that we’ve noticed) but our back garden, with plenty of large trees surrounding it, suffers much more from robbing. I suspect that with our short fruit trees, well-spaced plantings, lots of open areas, a few floppy fences and the occasional net, it’s just not as inviting as it might otherwise be. That’s my theory anyway. I know from talking to many of you at garden visits that you have a much bigger problem with thieving critters than we do. Every time I get frustrated at a pecked piece of fruit or an uprooted seedling, I look around and know we’re doing okay in Otago.