Visit Lindisfarne Ross and Elizabeth 2023

The Food Garden Group visited Ross and Elizabeth's garden in February 2018, so it was high-time for a second visit and see what these devoted food-gardeners had achieved in the last five years. But then it became clear that this visit needed to happen soon because the property is now for sale and soon we might no longer be able to see the large sloping garden hidden behind the house. 

The properties on either side of Ross and Elizabeth's had equally large gardens a few years ago, but both properties were sold, and now what you see over the fence is just units and concrete. And that made this visit somewhat bitter-sweet. 

Here Elizabeth welcomes us and shares their feelings about leaving a house and garden they love dearly. Hopefully they will find a property where they will create another great garden that takes less time to maintain.

Ross and Elizabeth have not given up hope that someone keen on a large garden will buy the property. They made the garden look really wonderful, and with fruit tree blossoms here, there and everywhere, things look just delightful at the moment. Now the right buyer needs to see the text on the real-estate sign - Country Idyll in Premier Suburb -  and Bob's your uncle.

With a bee hive in the left bottom corner of the block, then a few large chook pens, and a generous composting area in the right corner of the block, you really have a property with an amount of garden space that would make many of us with small gardens jealous.

  

I had to take a photo of the stone wall in the front garden. It was a work-in-progress, or perhaps I need to say a work without progress, for a few years. It's finished now and it looks impressive! Well done, Ross! The young avocado tree on the left was recently planted. It is a lucky tree! 

Next to the front door along a white north-facing wall we found basking in the sun another very happy flowering young avocado tree. Both avocado trees came from Food Garden Group member Wendy, who attended today's visit and who was very happy to see her young avos doing so well. 

Meanwhile there was a lot happening in Ross and Elizabeth's main garden behind the house.  

The broad beans, for example, are already producing their first flowers. Ross is really happy with the large metal trays (see bottom of photo) that he found at the Mornington tip shop because they provide support to the broad bean stems, so they don't fall over in high winds.

Elsewhere one of these large grids protected spinach, so at least some of it will end up on Ross and Elizabeth's plates, and a myriad of fridge baskets were needed to make sure the birds don't eat all the young pea plants. Where would we be without the Mornington tip shop?

 

The savoy cabbages and beets were going gangbusters ...

 

Ross and Elizabeth have lots of citrus trees in their garden. They have a Meyer, Eureka and Lisbon lemon, as well as a mandarin and they all seem to be very happy.

 

Something that is not going well in a food garden can be a really good subject of discussion during a food garden visit. We walked over to Ross and Elizabeth's Greengage tree and examined it to hopefully understand why it does not produce many greengages.

Greengage trees are officially partially-self-fertile:one greengage tree on its own can produce greengages, but that there will be more fruit if other plum varieties are grown nearby. 

'Nearby' can mean grafting them onto the greengage tree, or it can mean planting them close by. 

It is important to choose varieties that are compatible: they need to flower at the same time and they need to have the same vigour. Vigour is important because you don't want one variety to grow much faster than the other ones and overwhelm the other varieties.

Ross told us that when he bought the greengage at the nursery, he was recommended to plant it with a Golden Drop and Cole's Golden Gage plum tree in the same planting hole, to get a good crop of greengages.  These plum varieties are often recommended as the perfect partners for greengage, both in terms of vigour and flowering, so Ross definitely did the right thing in this respect.

Then we looked at the trees in question and noticed that the trunk of the greengage is much thicker than the other two. Some of us also commented that these trees desperately need some good pruning.  Ross explained that he prunes by running the hedge trimmer over the outside of the trees. 

Following discussion most people thought that the three trees need a drastic prune and shaping into vase-shapes. This may then gradually improve the yield of the greengage. Someone also commented that by running the hedge trimmer over the outside of the trees Ross might be removing branches on which flowers and fruit would form.

All in all it was a really good discussion to have!

Elsewhere in the garden we loved the big trellises that later in the season will carry beans, pumpkins, cucumbers, tromboncino squash (two of last year's very ornamental crop were still hanging there) and many other climbers that are so much better off than on the ground.

Ross's hothouse was a great example of why it can be so useful to have one.

I told the group how difficult it had been to find someone to host a food garden visit in September, in spite of the fact that there can be plenty to see in food gardens at this time of year.

This garden showed us how great a food garden can look in early September, so a big 'thank you' to Ross and Elizabeth for hosting this visit!

Also, thanks everyone who made this food garden visit a success!  Our 'regulars' were clearly keen to catch up after the winter break, but there were also plenty of new members, and a great mix of young and old.

It was a cold day and Ross had lit a nice warming fire in his outdoor fireplace next to where we had morning tea.  I reckon it will be hard to say goodbye to this wonderful garden.

There were a lot of interesting things on the produce table and we were spoiled for choice of yummy contributions on the morning tea table.

We will gladly do it all again on Sunday 8 October at Howden!