Natural growth

I spend some time today pruning back pea vines, burying potato plants with homemade compost, and giving plants I want to have a bit more space to expand into. There's still some dirt under my fingernails, as I don't wear gloves, not sure how much I'm affected by leaves of a datura plant rubbing my sweaty skin.

Officially, autumn has begun here. Yet Melbourne has its own seasons, frost not happening and causing trouble. While the days are getting shorter, and nights cold enough for a good night's sleep, no rain means only the strongest plants survive without care.

Geraniums and Vietnamese Mint seem most thirsty, happy to give the tomatoes some special treatment. I slowly get a hang of the variety of ways plants grow, which parts we use, how to train them, how to prune them. I hardly ever used compost from our plastic compost bins, instead harvested the bottom layer of our green manure box for dark, worm crawling soil.

My houso build some trellis for our tomatoes in the back yard, the front yard ones got some height from one of my sculptures, and then used the neighbouring rosemary as support. The first time I harvested tomatoes from the back yard I had ample supply for weeks (low demand still), but the vigorous way of its growth demands good guidance for plenty of harvest.

The patterns of growth vary. The shrubs, pineapple sage, rosemary, yarrow, grow strong once established. I had dozens of parsleys plants, competing and going to seed prematurely. The mustard grew too dense and attracted fungus. The mint captured some edges, competing with the succulents. I cut them back in favour of the mint.

The succulents show an amazing resilience. The gifted pallet planter box/ bench combination didn't really work for any herbs, the succulents are thriving. Some of weedy ones even flower, and would provide a simple low maintenance green cover for neglected patches of soil. Anyone can propagate succulents, especially those tending to grow fast.

The creepy-crawler kind of plants pose a different problem. We have an amazing green cover for our front fence made of some peas. Plants using support by the environment instead of growing a strong support don't always treat their mates nicely. Ivy conquers slow and steady. Peas seem unstoppable in strangling whichever plant their tentacles reach.

'My' side of the fence looks a bit bare after I cut back the peas, yet the smaller brugmansia plant showed an abundance of pink flowers after being disentangled. Fighting back survivalists like grasses, vines and prickly plants like raspberry takes some effort, but without 'natural selection' by human hand evolution goes in different directions.

I feel inspired by the idea of permaculture. Using compatible diversity to create low-maintenance, high yield patches. Honestly, I feel like lightyears away. I still feel like I learned an awful lot within two years of tending a tiny patch, maybe about 4 square metres.

Leafy greens totally outpaced my knowledge how to keep them healthy, productive and not seeding prematurely. While I missed out on parsley, swiss chard and mustard, at least compared to my ambitious expectations, I learned a valuable lesson how less is more. Mustard and parsley produce a prolific amount of seeds, which I spread deliberately and generously. Overcrowding happened, plants went into seeding mood, others went as food for fungi.

Some parts of the patch seem to be thriving enough to stay for good. Comfrey and mint seem hard to get rid of, but might need some water to establish for good. Rosemary seems indestructible once established, even with little to none additional watering. Yarrow and peppino thrive on warmth and watering, although yarrow seems happily to wait a while to grow strong once it has good view to the sun.

I introduced the most persistent weed myself: a native raspberry. It's root system has captured a decent spot in the patch. I'm well aware that whenever I pull its obvious growth above the surface its roots live on. It would be tempting to train it along one of my sculptures, but it takes plenty of attention to keep it where it should be.

Potatoes blow my mind. Last year, the yield wasn't too good (maybe the best plant was harvested by neighbours). So I found out that burying the plant in soil should produce more tubers. I planted some gone off potatoes from the pantry, as deep as possible. Once the green parts grew out, I buried them in soil, mulch and/or compost.

They share the planter box with some hot chillies. So far, only four out of eight of them survived in there, at least two of them flowering. They are not really companion plants, so I have to wait and see whether I'll get some chilli and some potatoes. If I pile more soil on the potatoes, it will bury the chillies, one plant is already half submerged.

Some of the soil came from the green manure compost, started about two years ago. About 5 to 10 cm of rich, black compost, thriving with worms has collected at the very bottom of the box used for it. Every now and then I use a shovel to break down the dried plant matter a bit more to ease decomposition.

I didn't fertilise the patch much. Besides maybe 2 litres of worm juice, and the same amount of carp fertiliser, only the comfrey leaves contributed to keep the soil rich. Plus a few mouse corpses. And random things like tea, hibiscus flowers, coffee sludge and other foods. In other words, I have no idea why the plants continue thriving.

It's hard to tell how much work this patch needs to stay healthy and somehow productive. Pruning tomatoes kept me busy in the last weeks, and during the long hot summer watering was essential. It feels mostly relaxing, and the details I encounter reward me lots. The variety of shades of green, the elegant scarlet pineapple sage flowers and the passion flower vine trained around the wooden arch provide me with simple entertainment and peace of mind in times of stress.

Garden Of Hope

For the first time in my life I claimed responsibility for a garden patch, and I enjoyed the experience immensely so far. If I had still access to my facebook profile, I might pinpoint the time when it all began, I guess it started in January or so.

Due to some accident we had a large branch of a tree in front of the warehouse I'm working in. It looked ugly, took up valuable space and invited itself to be upcycled as sculpture for the front yard. The garden bit was overgrown with weeds at the time, with a healthy parsley bush and some rosemary worth keeping.

Together with Jonyo we decided to create an arch out of two large pieces, after we spend a couple of hours digging up the patch and removing everything not wanted. To make it sturdy, we cemented the base of the branches into the ground, and screwed the other ends into an arch.

As his backyard thrives with plants, Jonyo came back with heaps of cuttings ready to go into the ground, as well as some cans planted with succulents. I enjoyed finding a random arrangement for all the plants given, quite oblivious about their names, growth needs and likeliness to spread. As I finished, it started to rain for a good watering in.

I did know at the time that mulching has plenty of advantages, and enjoyed that the local council provides mulch for free. The parsley and rosemary were still thriving, about twenty or thirty other plants fought for initial survival.

A few weeks after the second of mulch, fruiting bodies of mushrooms appeared. For a few weeks, I could trace the mycelium by connecting the mushrooms sticking their head out. Strike! Shrooms provide a plant nutrient internet, essential for recycling carbon based materials. A fertile canvas opened up, ready for careful experimentation with creating a mini eco system.

While most people enjoyed the transformation, Adrian wanted to plant the front yard as well, but didn't get around doing it. With lots of empty space available, I invited him to cooperate. We found some good spots for heaps of sunflowers, some pepino and chamomile.

I treated all the wooden bits (two planter boxes, the arch and the top of the compost bin) with some old vegetable oil I found in the warehouse. It darkened the milled bits of timber, and brought out plenty of colour in the tree branches. I couldn't resist and integrated a small tensegrity structure.

The chaos came in the shape of a big dog named Wolfie. He enjoyed the garden so much that he dug for sticks, ran over succulents and laid some big heaps of poo. It took me a while to find out the culprit, restoring an unspoiled look of the garden project of mine. Some of the artistic components, a broken vase, a mini chair and a mouse shaped piggy bank have vanished as well. Other bits which might be easy enough to nick still remain. The biggest acts of vandalism are done by visitors to the warehouse usually, and have been sufficiently minor not to be disheartening.

Sometimes neighbours helped themselves to some of the edible parts of the garden, especially while the parsley was thriving. Some of the produce ended up in the kitchen - parsley, rosemary, chard, mint - and I used lots of comfrey for a healing creme.

Winter and some accidents acidifying the soil reduced the variety of plants and colours, and brought some new competitors on. The pineapple sage managed to establish itself and grew into a nice bush, currently flowering in shiny red. Mint and comfrey appeared, and currently thrive as well. Some of the succulents grow very prolific, and take over lots of space.

Watering the garden with an old-fashioned watering can has become a contemplative routine, and a great opportunity to notice what happened with to my plant friends. I hope some of the tomatoes will grow tall and have some fruit, and I'm still waiting for the pepino fruit to ripen. The aloe vera plant which got buried for some while, recovered. It got overgrown by a chard leave as well, but it looks like some of the succulents don't mind living in the shade for a while.

Sorry if I stretched your attention span without eye candy to illustrate the process I witness for nearly a year now. The popular concept of abundance becomes palpable when you stick your hands into soil and keep a garden growing. It takes nurturing, sometimes pruning and weeding out for a good harvest. The hours I spend caring for the front yard never felt like work and gave me a good deal of inner peace.