Member's Gardens > Stories from the One Acre Plot > Part 6 September 2006
by Phil Ryan

Over these last few months we have supported ourselves with a great variety of fruit and veggies from The Plot. The thrill of eating and enjoying your own produce never diminishes.

I have started my spring make-over with the fruit trees. The job entails clearing away any mulch or weeds around the base of the tree out to the drip line, and then giving this area a good drenching with comfrey tea (which is a great worm enhancing fertilizer, full of minerals), three cups-full of Organic Xtra ™ spread out (again, to the drip line) and then watered in well. All this is followed by a wheelbarrow load of aged compost spread out this time to just past the drip line, another watering, and then a thick layer of mulch. Now the tree is ready to cope with yet another long, hot summer. Just like last year, this summer looks as though it too will unfortunately break records. Most of the fruit trees have been pruned and trained over the last couple of years, so its only a matter of getting rid of the new shoots growing inwards, or downwards towards the ground. I try to keep the trees ‘skirted’ so that the lowest branch is about a meter above the ground. Apart from that, the tree’s shape should be squat and look somewhat like a wine glass – open at the top to let in sunshine, light and air flow.

Another job is to check for any gall wasp on the branches. They usually appear on the new wood of the citrus tree and the gall looks just like a raised lump. To get rid of these wasps I use a sharp blade to slice through the gall. If you cut just above the bark of the wood where the gall has formed and cut through the length of the gall, parallel with the branch, you’ll expose lots of tiny worm-like creatures all nestled in a honeycomb of holes inside the gall. Exposing them to sunlight kills them and the nest turns into a sealed, empty scar on the branch of the tree. Some gardeners cut off the whole branch to be rid of this pest, while others just simply ignore them altogether.

Planting out the five two year old “Mary Washington” asparagus crowns that I purchased from Green Harvest while at the Nambour Plant and Flower Expo recently, was a challenge. So, I did some homework and looked up several books to make sure I was doing it all the right way. A few tips to share on planting asparagus is that they like their own space; don’t like being invaded by other plant roots or weeds; like good drainage, morning sun and protection from the hot afternoon sun; love lots of lime and adore aged compost; can’t tolerate clay or heavy soils, yet need to be kept moist. Vic Calthorpe advised that I dig a trench some 30cm to 40cm deep and line the bottom of it with old hessian bags, woolen or cotton garments – anything that is organic and will break down, but will first do its job in keeping the roots of the new plant moist. They need lost of water in the hot weather, especially in the first few years. Plants should be approximately 40cm apart. The root system of the new crown is fanned out over a saddle of raised soil, then covered. The head of the crown is sitting up and you cover this with about 5mm of your finest soil. Water in really well. Sounds like a bit of work, but once over this establishing stage these plants will produce quality food for twenty or more years and fresh asparagus is a very special taste sensation. Once tasted you’ll never go back to the tinned variety!

One of the things I have wanted to try at The Plot was to plant a green manure crop. It is by all accounts an excellent way to rejuvenate your soil whereby you turn the lush, green crop over and into the soil in which it has been growing. You do this just before the crop starts to flower in order to get the maximum benefits for the soil. My plan was to grow this winter crop in the area where I annually grow my rosella bushes, an area about half the size of a tennis court. However, I needed rain. So, I waited patiently for the rain to come that would nurture the seed to life, before I planted the seed. Yet another learning curve for me! But nature and I are starting to get on so much better these days! In June it happened and I opened the 40 kilo bag of Italian rye-grass seed. Boy, oh, boy! Would this gift from my son turn this area into a sea of lush, green grass just full of minerals! Being a novice and a romantic I first lightly raked over the area and then cast great handfuls of this magnificent seed over the wet soil. I must admit I did this with a song in my heart and just a little streak of gay abandon. Well, that effort was a total disaster. The hungry birds and all and every other form of life that eat freshly strewn grass seed had a great feast at my expense. How they must love me! So, with half a bag of my sought after Italian rye-grass seed still in tact I waited AND waited for the next lot of rain. It came on the last Friday of July. So, I up and into it! Operation green manure was a goer! But, this time around I was street smart and savvy compared with my previous effort, when I was a complete innocent in this area!!

The comfrey plant is my number one plant at The Plot. It affords me an endless supply of very practical and useful applications, be it as a compost activator, a liquid tea spray, a soil enricher, a major ingredient in my potting mixes, a green manure, as chook feed or as a concentrated liquid. It’s a super, quality, organic fertilizer that produces exceptional results for me each and every time I use it. Comfrey is best grown in a space all by itself in rich, composted soil. Full sun is okay, but, like a lot of plants, it does well in a spot that is shaded from the afternoon sun. Ross McKinnon generously gave me a very informative set of notes on comfrey and I hope to have copies available to hand out to Members. It is interesting, too, to note that of all the 500 herbs that Isabell Shipard writes about in her national bestselling herb book “How Can I Use Herbs In My Daily Life” (a BOGI bestselling title) comfrey has some eight pages of text devoted to it alone, whereas the majority of the remainder have about half to three quarters of a page of text. It is a favourite, too, of another very well-known and respected gardener, Esther Deans. So, I’m not the only one to use and love comfrey!

Until next month, bucket your garden with love and dreams! It’s the water of life!

PS: John Box, our BOGI Shop Convenor, Life Member and Purveyor of Organic Goodies, found time this week to turn into an eighty-year-old citizen! So, perhaps we should adjust the regular Newsletter request of John’s for all our empty one litre bottles and instead hand him a few that are full of ‘bubbles of thanks’ for a great job done. Tommy and Russell will gladly wheel the lot out to John’s car! Congratulations young John. Well done!