Sweet Spring!! Sweet, sweet September!!!
What can I say?! I have never loved her like I love her here, in Central Vic. So much sunshine and an only the occasional blusterous day. It is a radical difference to this time last year when we were still drowning in endless downpours that we were repeatedly told by locals, was not “normal”, as if to reassure us. We must have looked concerned.
The entire first month of Spring has felt like the last, in that a sense of summer has lingered in the days as if it were just around the corner with temperatures in the mid to late twenties almost every day and where we mow, the shortened grass browns off, instead of turning into the carpet of irridescent green it had been all the way into December last year.
It was life-giving, September. The sun on my back while I worked and pure blue sky days, the bird song like excited chatter, like they shared my enthusiasm and the way life didn’t creep upward as it did last year but rather pushed through the soil more impatiently than I’d ever seen it. It felt like it was over, altogether too quickly this first month of spring that I barely felt I got to relish it in the ways I dreamt I would in the depths of the previous few months and their short, icy cold days.
Thanks for joining me on this recap of the month that had me smiling from ear to ear despite being consistently hamstrung by the hangover of winter’s relentless toddler lurgy tirade which has seen me ground to a halt so many times in the last two years I am starting to develop a twitch but none the less, we cracked on. I was chuffed with what we achieved despite feeling like it flew by.
THE ROSE GARDEN
The Rose Garden always steals so much attention in the first month of Spring as it our first chance when the frosts aren’t as frequent or severe, to begin to think about cutting them back, treating them and by the end of the month, feeding the soil and mulching them, trapping in all that winter wet before the heat gets up. We made a few videos of our pruning techniques if you’re a paid subscriber and wish to see, follow Moorfield TV to find it.
The most exciting thing to happen in the rose garden however was thegetting down of the composting paths at long last having had any remaining twitch grass removed by excavator. Finally the beds feel insulated.
THE DRY POOL GARDEN
Oh the dry pool garden!!! It is such a HUGE project! It is the one area I have had to decide to stop work on after September. I have planted out the last of what I had in pots for the area, I need a hell of a lot more but being that Spring has been quite mild and dry and summer has been forecast as a scorcher, I have decided to cease work until autumn, for the most part anyway, as this area will be without irrigation, indefinitely so it is important plants can establish and then fend for themselves.
One thing I will do, however, is continue to give everything diluted seaweed solution every few weeks to keep the root development happening into the stress of summer.
THE VEGETABLE GARDEN
The vegetable garden is patiently waiting, lasagne beds slowly breaking down, for the first veggie seedlings we’ll plant here at Moorfield. I have only gone so far as to sort all my seedlings after throwing them in a drawer dejectedly last year when the wet weather stopped everything in it’s tracks. I am waiting, as Nes has been unwell, to sow them with her as she will love watching them come up and then plant them out and then get to harvest them with me. She has a new set of gardening gloves and even her own set of seeds from a family friend, so we will get into that this month. I look forward to showing you a big fat red tomato, Nes and I sowed from seed.
The Glasshouse has not moved forward at all as it turns out that this mild, very warm spring has turned our vegetable garden floor into concrete and when Hugo went to start digging the footings out, the shovel would’nt even go in, an inch.
I’m really chuffed with how the berries are all going, the raspberries have started coming up and the last berry to pop up of the four, the Tayberry has finally emerged as I’d started to wonder if it ever would.
BRASSICA BREAKDOWN
I shared to our insta this week, our tips for big healthy brassicas after being asked by a few folk following a story I put up from Facebook, a memory of the first propert head of broccoli we ever grew, 10 years ago. We’ve grown a tonne since, so thought I’d share our tips here too:
Seedlings
🥦 Start with healthy seedlings, and the right time of year and don’t buy leggy/pale seedlings as they will only bolt. If you can, grow them from seed yourself and wait until they are quite big before planting.
Position and Prep
🥦 Plant them in full sun and prepare the soil well by adding lots of organic matter, such as compost and composted manure, Blood and Bone and organic fertiliser pellet. Brassicas are really big eaters to be able to produce such big florets so make sure they won’t go hungry. We try to put brassicas in beds where nitrogen fixing crops, such as beans and peas, have just grown.
🥦 Try to plant brassicas in a position protected from wind and make sure they don’t dry out, wind can dry out soil as quickly as the sun so mulching with something like pea straw, is also important.
Planting
🥦 Once we’ve let our brassica seedlings get quite large, we plant them quite deep, so there is not much stem, if any left visible, this allows for greater root growing surface while they establish and help to anchor them in the long run against wind.
🥦 We also water in with a seaweed solution to help recover the seedling from transplant shock and stimulate root development. I feed with a fish emulsion every two to three weeks after that.
🐌 Snails and cabbage moth larvae love them so make sure you protect them with insect netting, or regularly check the underside of the leaves for the caterpillars. There is also an Organic Snail Pellet on the market.
THE LONG BORDER
There has been a huge amount of weeding and feeding with compost and composted manure and Blood and Bone in the Long Border this Spring. We’ve been so busy with everything else that we turned our back on it as everything was growing really well and then all of a sudden, so were the weeds from the seed bank we will be dealing with for the first few years.
THE GREEN ROOM
I finally paid some attention to the Green Room in September, composting and putting down blood and bone and watering in with a Fish Emulsion before pruning all the lower growth off the London Plane trees to begin to form their crowns into a living pergola.
I also had a row of poorly looking young Portuguese Laurel which I’d paid no attention to since I put them in last year and gave them a good weed and layer of composted manure and Blood and Bone and watered in with seaweed solution and by the months end they were covered in new growth.
In other news…
Reading:
“Yia Yia” , a cookbook made up of recipes from Greek Grandmother’s in preparation for our Greek dinner. We pick an international cuisine out of a hat and cook dinner’s between our house and mum’s twice a month as a way of staying connected and ensuring we keep food and meal times fun and interesting for Nes.
Writing:
The Moorfield Master Plan Garden Guide and Chapter 4 of the Life at Little Oak Farm.
Buying:
Something to grow along the terrace between the rose garden and veggie garden but I am just not sure what!?!?
Planting:
Anything left over in pots from the previous spring and summer before all the moisture has gone.
Listening to:
The Avantgardeners Podcast which is currently featuring yours truly AND The Imperfects Podcast speaking to Dan Sultan.
JOBS FOR OCTOBER…
🌿 Finally getting around to weeding the fruit trees, adding an organic fertiliser pellet for fruit trees, called ‘Gyganic’ and mulching with the compost from the big compost bay we’ve made in the orchard.
🌿 Dealing with the terrace between the rose and vegetable gardens, mulching it and cardboarding the wall to ensure we stop any remaining grass from coming and figuring out what to plant there.
🌿 Weeding and feeding and mulching the Shade Garden and the Useful aka Herb Garden.
🌿 Sow veggie and cut flower annual seeds with Nes.
🌿 Plant out remaining trees in pots.
🌿 Get in the mini-excavator in to dig the footings of the glasshuse.
Thank you, as always, from Hugo and I, and our family, for being here and for supporting what we do. Pip xo
Wonderful Pip thank you for sharing. I think our climate here in the Central West of NSW sounds v similar to yours so I’m following along nodding as my garden jobs are so similar. Only the heatwave and huge deluge of last week has moved all my roses to bloom suddenly so boom here we are in blooming summer?!? Except we’re still lighting fires at night.
So much going on.... spring is such a wonderful time of year in the garden. Thanks so much.