The Garden at Moorfield Journal: 42
Building a Glasshouse is a 2 person Job and other things I have learnt along the way.
Dear Readers
It is I again, Hugo, taking over the Garden at Moorfield Journal for another month while Pip focuses the current limited use of her digits to the actual gardening advice pieces. I very much appreciated all the positive feedback from last months entry as keeping step with Pip’s writing is no mean feat, though she assures me I am doing a good job of things and has kindly contributed this months Plant Pick as I can barely remember the names of most things and a breakdown of what you can expect from us in April here on Substack and around the property.
Again, I hope you enjoy my perspective of life and the building of the garden here at Moorfield as Chief Engineer and Head Google-r of How-To’s.
Hugo
When it comes to the distribution of labour at Moorfield, I tend to leave the actual gardening and general plant care to the expert (aka my wife, Pip) and I tend to pick up most of the other bits. Not necessarily plant related but definitely a big contribution to the look and feel of the garden. As discussed in my previous entry this mostly relates to brush cutting, lawn mowing and hauling barrow loads of just about anything around the property. Heavy, brutish tasks that can’t really do too much damage but need to be done with a certain regularity that make them equal parts mind numbing and frustrating, yet essential and as long as my wife still has parts of two fingers missing thanks to a run-in with a kitchen cutting device and can’t steer, let alone lift a wheelbarrow one handed, here we are.
Occasionally, however, the jobs that fall under my remit at Moorfield are a little bigger and largely way out of my comfort zone and have the capacity to go horrendously awry and just this week, I tackled a doozy.
Many of you that follow our journey would know that after a solid 2 years of sitting on our driveway on a couple of pallets, the Glasshouse has sprung forth and is largely resembling the building it was intended to. Now let me preface this with some vital pieces of information. I am not a builder. I have never been a builder nor do I have any close friends that are builders that I could call on for help or even advice. I do however have an inquisitive mind, am a feverish problem solver and am armed with a smartphone and arguably the sum of all human knowledge at my very fingertips. A heady combination to give more faith than is probably warranted to a rank amateur like myself.
Whenever I consult the oracle (Google) for projects such as these, I tend to use a variation on the scientific method as my general approach. Ask Question, Form Hypothesis, Validate with research that supports hypothesis. Experiment to prove hypothesis. Evaluate the results….. And for the most part it works out OK. If I have it in my brain how I would carry out a certain task, I research (Youtube… mostly) examples of people that have done similar things and if I can find a couple of people that have done what I need to do how I would like to do it, with varying degrees of what more or less could be classified as success, I tick it off as peer reviewed and move on to the doing.
As an aside it has introduced me to my new favourite dark corner of the internet and that is older tradies complaining in the comments sections of videos about how a particular task is carried out. In fact if I ever get the time I plan on starting a Tik Tok account of me just building things incorrectly so I can have 1286 retired builders with too much time on their hands tell me I’m doing it wrong. Every 10 comments or so I would log in as a different user and comment “100%. That’s how I learnt to do it 35 years ago and I’ve done it thousands of times. Well done” just to fire every one up again and give purpose to their otherwise very dull days. AHEM…
So armed with the results of my rigorous research I settled into the very first step. Pouring the strip footing. Not long into the process I realise that this might be a 2 person job. There’s a lot of shovelling, a lot of swearing and no shortage of further research. “ How many parts sand and aggregate to cement?” “ How much water do I add to the concrete mix?” “Is cement dust bad for you?” For those playing at home, it’s definitely not great for you. I get into a routine. 3 shovels per bucket, 6 buckets per mixer and half a bag of GP cement. 15 seconds of water into the empty mixer, 15 after the first three buckets and 15 after the sixth. 15-20 seconds of water after adding the half bag and then a few minutes to mix in properly. The work is just mundane enough for me to lose track while I count out 15,3,1,3,2,3,3,15 and so on and so forth. All the while the lyrics to Disney’s “Welcome to Rosas” playing quietly on repeat in my brain thanks to our daughter’s latest obsession.
The fatigue sets in rather discreetly as you begin to lose count of the small stuff. How many shovel loads was that? Then I wonder if that was actually 5 buckets or 6, because according to the oracle (Google) that would have a considerable impact on the strength of the footing. Did I actually add the cement to that load? Before long the sun has risen the concrete is baking as quickly as I can shovel it into the footing and I'm left contemplating whether or not the subplot of “Welcome to Rosas” is really what I think it is. All the while a small but insistent voice plays in my head demanding that I measure and re-measure the dimensions. Will this very rigid structure we paid a lot of money for, sit where it needs to or have I just pissed away a small fortune because I had to google Pythagoras Theorem Calculator to make sure the footings were square-ish. By the time I finish my lower back is in flames from a mix of sunburn and lactic acid and I can barely get my boots off. I feel a sense of accomplishment, achievement and a mild trepidation that now that it's poured and hard as the baked crust of the earth that surrounds it, it had better be right.
In a couple of days the reinforcements will get here and I can verify all the information I have been holding in my head with someone else. There’s a strange satisfaction you get when you qualify what you think you know with someone who may not inherently know anymore than you do about the subject and they agree with your approach. Two people armed with nothing more specialised than reason and logic agreeing that, “Yeah, that sounds about right”. And with that same reason and logic, a little more research and some bloody hard work the job gets done and it more or less works out pretty well. An old fashioned community barn raising, where the strength of numbers…More than 1 anyway. Got the job done.
The thought that kept going through my head at each stage of the process is that Humans have been doing this for millenia. There are buildings made of little more than straw and cow dung made centuries ago that are still standing. For however long ago our cave dwelling ancestors decided that it would be a good idea to build a shelter, people have just been figuring it out, doing what makes sense and more or less getting along. Now that is not to take anything away from master builders and craftsmen that have always lived side by side with us mere mortals for as long as we have as a species, been using tools, but how could I, Modern Man armed with the culmination of all human knowledge in my pocket and a Bunnings down the road, possibly fail.
PIP’S PLANT PICK
Dahlia ‘Carlos Watermelon’
I am a big, no, HUGE fan of the generous nature of dahlias, they bring a joy to a garden, and the home, that few other flowers can match bar roses and only in that not being fragrant is perhaps their only downfall. They are easy to grow, or at least I feel this way about them, as long as your soil is well cultivated with lots of organic matter and composted manure, a good all round organic fertliser pellet and free draining, mulched well to preserve moisture, they will give and give and give until you’ve filled every vase in the house and still are left with the most amazinf display in the garden.
So what of this dahlia, the ‘Carlos Watermelon’? It has been profuse, grabbing my attention away from all other dahlias all season, it changes colour in the light, it’s outer petals so paper thin it absorbs the golden hours and glows gloriously in the palest pink and peach tones, saucer sized blooms. As much as I adore the big sphere like dahlias of the ball varieties, and I do, I have loved the openness of this dahlia, it just makes you smile with it’s upright faces unfurling pointed petals until it radiates countless numbers of them to form the perfect dahlia. I have always adored Dahlia ‘Cafe au Lait’, I mean, who doesn’t in the dahlia growing world? Yet for me, this season, my first with this new Cut Flower Garden, it has been this guy, ‘Carlos Watermelon’, who knocked the reigning Queen off her throne for how often I brought it inside to fill rooms with it’s cheer and gorgeous salmony blush tones.
GROWING DETAILS:
PLANT IN LATE SPRING/EARLY SUMMER AFTER FROSTS HAVE FINISHED❄️WELL CULTIVATED AND FREE DRAINING SOIL 💩 💦 PERFORM BEST AND WILL REPEAT FLOWER ALL GROWING SEASON IF FED WELL 🍽 NEEDS FULL SUN 🌞 FLOWERS MID SUMMER TO FIRST FROST OF AUTUMN 🌹DO NOT LIKE FROST AND TUBERS MAY NEED TO BE LIFTED AND STORED IN DRY PLACE 🥶 WILL NEED HIGH SUMMER IRRIGATION 🥵 BENEFICIAL INSECT ATTRACTING 🐝 PERFECT FOR CUT FLOWERS 💐
COMING IN APRIL….
Much hedge planting will be happening this autumn to get them nice and settled over the winter period, ready to get growing next spring and be ready to take on next summer.
Planting out the new Australian Native plants purchased from The Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show as additions to The Dry Garden (aka Pool and Outdoor Kitchen Garden).
Planting out in the Productive Garden, the autumn/winter cropping plants such as brassicas, as well as sowing our collection of three types of garlic but more about that in the next (Moor)Field Guide, as well as dividing strawberry runners across the new strawberry dedicated bed so they can settle in over the cool, wet months.
Moving into the glasshouse!!!!!!!!
Ordering new bareroot fruit trees for the orchard and a few bareroot ornamental trees for elsewhere in the garden.
Planting out a very patient Amalanchier x lamarckii and finally getting the 7 x Luma apiculata cuttings given to me by Deborah of Melrose Cottage (read about this incredible garden here ) in The Dry Garden to act as a wind break for the citrus grove.
Prepping the final raspberry bed now the glasshouse is mostly up with a variety that will extend our season to almost all summer and autumn harvesting, more about that in the next (Moor)Field Guide.
Here on Substack, you can expect, the next The (Moor)Field Guide in the third week of April, this is #10 and will include, amongst other things, all things new glasshouse and my full Dahlia List and suppliers from the burgeoning Cut Flower Garden here at Moorfield, another Cheat Sheet: Growing Roses Organically (and many other plants really) which is an accompaniment publication to the detailed Rose Guide 1 and Rose Guide 2 as part of Garden Guides and speaking of Garden Guides we will be uploading, The Dry Garden: Part 1. A famous family recipe, well, famous in our family anyway, in Farm Recipes and because we didn’t get it out last month thanks to my little run-in with the kitchen mandolin, The Design Guide: Little Oak vs Moorfield. An Overview.
As we always do, we want to thank you for being here, supporting us in our writing and the work we do here at Moorfield. We are so grateful for your interest and your commitment to following our story, we so enjoy your engagement and learning from and with you and hoping you learn something from us too and are inspired to just get in there and give it a go.
Hugo, Pip and fam xo
Fantastic Hugo, you almost make it sounds like fun!!
Bravo Hugo…can sooo relate to the Disney ear worm!!! Another witty read…exciting times re the glasshouse…sending all the good vibes for a finish sometime soon…👏🏻👏🏻🦊✖️