Making the bed

So much work and so little to show for it, but that's making the bed for you. Garden beds, I mean. It's a classic piece of 'behind the scenes' work, much the same as all the scraping and sanding that precedes a decent paint job.

My garden is so small that I need to do things in a certain order, due to a lack of space. Today was 'prepare the beds where the gardenias will go' day. This is the bed I showed in my previous post, where the mother-in-law tongues once lived. Over the 22 years I've been gardening here this poor bed has hosted a range of different, grumbly and troublesome grevilleas; a totally out-of-control monster rosemary bush; and the potted curry tree, plus various others. 

The last time I tested the soil pH there was when I moved in 22 years ago, and it was mildly alkaline (7.5) back then. 

What a difference 22 years makes: now
it's acid, pH 6. Glad I checked!

It took three hours of hard yakka to
get the bed right. I made the mistake at
some stage of thinking a pebbly mulch
would look nice, and over the years the
pebbles had worked their way down
deep into the soil. There were far too
many of them, so out they came, one
by one. Then I added three bags of
cow manure, and numerous handfuls
of lime, to help correct the pH level.
Dug over, raked over, watered well,
it now has a week or two to settle in.

One good bit of news is that I scored a
nice plant this morning. I went down to the
local Marrickville organic vegetable market
(on Addison Road, Sundays 8.30 to 3), which
is well worth a visit. As well as all the fruit
and veg and other foods on offer, it also hosts
all sorts of people with stuff to sell, including
some very good little plant stands. I ordered my
Tiger grass from one plant stand and on the way
out spotted another one selling orchids, clivias,
bromeliads and lots more. The orange clivias
are the common ones, and don't cost so much,
but the other colours, such as the yellows and
reds, usually come with a hefty price tag.
$30 isn't a super bargain but it's a good price
and the plant looks very healthy indeed.

I hope that Radox stuff works its magic on my poor old back. At some stage today I used every heavy-duty garden tool in the shed: mattock, spade, fork, rake and gave my back quite a workout. Combined with yesterday's heavy lifting of all those bags, I am waiting to see what tomorrow brings when I attempt to get out of bed in the morning!

Heavy lifting

It's a glorious, sunny Saturday afternoon and here I am inside blogging on my computer, when I should be outside weeding, digging, planting and, well you know... gardening! Never fear I am just giving my poor old back a long, late lunch break before I saunter outside for a final burst of activity. But I haven't been slacking this morning: I've been doing some heavy lifting, all in a good cause.

I went out to Turtle Nursery at Rouse Hill in north-western
Sydney. It's about an hour's drive from my inner-western
former crime den now trendy village of Marrickville. I
was on a mission to buy some sand, the right sand, for
my succulent beds, and Turtle Nursery is the place to go,
so I've been told. As Turtle also has the pebbles and
manures I also need, I loaded up my poor little Citroen
with about 380kg of bagged garden goodies there, then
slowly drove home, my little car looking like a lowered
hot-rod, when the truth was a lot slower.

Once I got home, the serious heavy lifting began.
Eight 20kg bags of 'P-Coarse' sand, at $6 a pop. It's
the right stuff: nice, clean, washed, coarse-grained
river sand, ideal for adding to potting mixes or to make
soils sandier. Not having a trolley or barrow at hand,
I pressed our wheelie garbage bin into service, popping
two bags at a time on the lid and wheeling each load up
the narrow passage along the side of our house.

Six 20kg bags of 10mm-size Cowra white pebbles,
at $10 a pop: the future mulch around the planted
succulents. An organic mulch (eg, bark chips, leaf litter)
would hold too much water during one of Sydney's week-
long drenchings that happen a few times every year.

Six 25-litre bags of aged cow manure,
at $6 a bag. These are to enrich the soil
where I will be planting the gardenias, and
the leftovers will go into the vegie patch,
along with lots of home-made compost.

Well, that's the heavy lifting done: I'm going to give my back a rest today and begin on the digging in and spreading around chores tomorrow. In the meantime, there is still plenty more to do in the way of removing existing plants, weeding and cutting back. 

I'm making progress on this garden renovation every day now. As I work from home it gives me the chance to do a bit of gardening in the early mornings, just an hour of activity before I start work each day. And yes, it's hard to drag myself back to the desk sometimes. I'm in the mood to be out in the garden all the time, right now. I think I've got my gardening mojo back!

Almost everything in this photo had to go. Pam has
never liked the mother-in-law tongues in the background
here, although I admired their tenacity, if not their looks.

Gone now, the mother-in-laws and the money tree.
The mulched foreground was once occupied by quite
a large sage bush, but it is making way for that
purple-flowered tibouchina on the left. I've dug up
a small piece of the sage bush with a good root system
attached and new baby leaves all over it, so I hope sage
junior keeps up the fine tradition set by its parent plant.

All is not sand, manure and destruction here right
now. The potted herbs are all off to an early spring
start. I already had a packet of chive seeds, so I
combined a cheap new pot of chive seedlings with
a surrounding sprinkle of seed. The seed has come
up nicely, the seedlings are happy and this should
be a nice, dense clump in a month or so.

The common mint and spearmint are both thriving
in their new potting mix and the regular liquid feeds
haven't done any harm, either. Happy plants.

A few weeks ago, I saw a Mr Fothergill's packet of
coriander seed set into little circular pads of seeds
(like seed tapes, only round). I've never used seed tapes
much and so something in me said 'give them a try' and
they seem to be working quite well.

Finally, the rest of the garden is very
definitely of the opinion that spring has
sprung. My potted Turkish Brown fig,
which was Underperformer of the Year
in its first year in the garden last year,
is off to an early promising start in its
second growing season. Good!

Well, lunchtime is over, my back seems (touch wood) to feel fairly normal, and I'm back out into gardener's playland for an afternoon session. I think I'll stick to weeding, though. That's enough heavy lifting for one day.