The joy of annuals

Click on image to enlarge view.

Elsewhere they debate these things, but from my subjective POV I'm real glad that I'm an 'annuals' man. Don't get me wrong: I like to eat of the fruits of the trees like any other human. But when it comes to growing my own comestibles I steer clear of perennial plants.

This 'preference' began -- fortunately it now seems -- because I could not get the food trees & shrubs I planted  to grow in my patch. Sterile sandy soil you see.

Aside from selected natives, the only trees that thrive in my outback are mulberry and citrus.

This limitation -- supposedly a handicap -- has nonetheless enabled greater flexibility in what I do plant. 

I don't have to angst over a garden 'plan' or do the design thing , because I can remake my garden anyway I choose and when I choose.

That's the joy of annuals. All I need is a little patience for each 'annual' crop to run its course before I can replace it or remake the patch it grows in.

That makes my garden very malleable. Depending on my imagination and perspective I can have many gardens throughout any one year simply by changing the seeds and seedlings I plant. I can do that because no stuck-in-the-mud perennial will get in my way. And when push comes to shove, I can even choose to grow perennials as annuals.

I look at the dirt I have available and start checking out the seed catalogues -- they're porn for annual gardeners like me.

Oh the thrill...!

 So my garden beds are my oyster, so to speak. I have whole wide world of edible annuals to choose from.

But there's much more to this annual thing...at least the way I do it.

When you grow annuals you can do whatever with your own soil. You can reshape it. Turn it over...or not. You can move it about. You get to play in the dirt as it is yours to do with as you please because no 'permanent' plant has got its rooty mitts in it.

Much as I love my own good earth and so keenly offer my labours unto it,that I can 'make garden beds' wherever I choose is so darn liberating.

Anywhere. Anyhow. Anytime.

Constraining the soil by building walls around the beds, or using raised bed devices like corrugated iron,  isn't my way. Initially this was a cost thing -- it took cash to capital invest like that, and I was gardening el cheapo. But as I got into the maintenance thing and fiddled about I learnt that I was gardening with an advantage.

And that advantage is not self evident. Much as I'm keen on raised bed gardening I'm not of the persuasion that you raise you bed 'up' with walls. Of course walls keep the soil in place but I've found that they aren't essential to do this as soil will hold itself in repose at an angle of between 35 and 45 degrees. And where any built wall could be is also where you could be growing plants...

I've been thinking about this phenomenon  when I came upon this snippet of info:

The most specific and oft-repeated analogy from Chad wick was from the early Greeks and their observations: that crops grew well in the river bottom valleys and floodplains, with their alluvial soil deposits. However, crops flourished and grew even more “lushly” at the edge of the valley, where there were “mini landslides” and slightly disturbed, better-aerated soil. This effect was even more pronounced on south-facing slopes. Whether this analogy was literal or apocryphal, it serves as a good image or metaphor for raised bed gardening, and the benefits of microclimate and site selection. -- French Intensive Gardening: A Retrospective

'Better-aerated' soil...

Talking of disturbed soils and landslides isn't part of the perennial scheme of things. And since keenly shifting to mound gardening, I've appreciated the convex exposure to the elements.

• More space to grow things.
• Better access to sunshine most of the way around the mound.
• Variations in micro-climate along and up and down the contour.
• Better drainage.
• Easier access and maintenance.
• Heat variations.
• Shifting air temps around the mounds.
• Base of mounds are useful as composting bins: paper, cuttings, leaves, detritus, etc.

It warrants pointing out that growing perennials in small mounds does not suit their sedentary habits. Such contours are even resistive to growing monocultures of annuals.  But, let's say, it's very much a garden's mons pubis...or so I'm thinking.

Of course this isn't proven: just an observation...

But then I reckon the mix of

annuals  + mounds (or raised un-walled beds) + polyculture (mixed vegetable gardening)

is a ménage à trois ...that maybe works for me.

This is the life -- maybe the good life --of annual plants.

1910 postcard celebrating the ménage à trois.

GETTING DOWN AND GETTING DIRTY WITH MOUNDS

As escavations go, garden mounds are not the least bit photogenic. As soon as you say, 'show us your best side' -- the contour seems to flatten out or its bumpiness is drowned in greenery.

So these images are suggestive rather than scenery you could base a map on.

And they're messy. Higgledee piggledee. Poly plus mix of plants. Any old china plate on top. Wood ash and mulch smeared everywhere. ..

But the main thing, the takeaway impression, is that the mound garden grows. I don't think I have lost a plant despite the angle I'm growing them on.

I've thrown a lot of different plants into the mix so here goes...In another few weeks the mounds will be hidden in jungle.

The long strips of mulch are stuff I got from guys trimming shrubbery at the local tavern. I wanted to lay down mulch stuff over all the cardboard and paper that's carpeting the valleys between the mounds.

Not neat and not quite in forest floor mode. But the thing is my mounds are more verdant than my beds. There is a qualitative difference in activity.

So going with the verdant flow, I've got carrots and radishes planted among all this stuff. Roma pole beans are in there too, and I've just dropped down some jute twine from  a cross-garden aerial line above.

Obviously tubers like mounds -- sweet potato, potato, sunchokes,purple yams (and oca/NZ yam is in there too). So too do cucurbits. In the mix is choko, pumpkins, zuchini. There's spring onions, root veg, pole beans,Chinese broccoli ...For cover : coriander, dog bane, Indian shot canna, pigface, nasturtiums, Brazil spinach and Warrigal Greens.... In the valleys, tomatoes --only because if they were on the mound summits they'd take over the whole hill.Flower essentials: sunflowers and marigolds.

Elsewhere quinoa is coming up, but that's another story (they're on my ridges) I've also planted some pigeon peas out of season among the mounds to see what happens.

The adventure of garden mounds...the thrills come  from all that up and down.

Notes on Mounds

As I mentioned I'm garden  intense at the moment and since my bush turkey fiend seems now to be boycotting the beds she roamed and brutalized so often, I thought I'd risk a plant out. I wanted to plant out some seed spuds -- Nicola -- so I built a series of mounds as is my experimental habit.

But it is nagging me that you can do more with 'a' mound than grow potatoes....so I'm seizing any and every opportunity to mound up.

I planted three mounds with spuds and a fourth with Zuchini. In each I stuck a couple of Roma Italian Pole Beans . Dotted the bottom of each mound with Dog Bane and Pigface cuttings. Threw on a coating of grass clippings as mulch ....inserted my pots....

 

And as a further decoration -- I dotted my DIY hill with bamboo skewers in case the bush Turkey comes back.

I had built a bed only a short time ago -- like a camel's back with two humps -- two mounds -- and it is doing a extraordinarily well with its cargo of potatoes, pole beans, coriander and tomatoes.

So I'm telling myself, 'This works! By gingoes mounds are go!'

But I immediately felt anxious because this isn't garden lore. Ridges or raised garden beds may be  horticulturally approved, but mounds don't get much gardening press. I do have ridges running hither and yon but give me a good round mound any day.

Conical shaped. Knoll like...dotted about the landscape.

In geography, knoll is another term for hillock, a small, low, round natural hill or mound.

With mounds you have all around to play with. Research in New Zealand suggests that , at least there, productivity varies between the northern and southern faces of traditional Maori kumera mounds. My experience, using much smaller mounds, doesn't replicate that conclusion. Indeed, my mounds seem to share whatever fertility and moisture is in the mound by facilitating plant access. In a sense they are an oblique version of a vertical garden. Although I  have a shadier southern side too.

Do I get erosion? With a Bush Turkey mining away I get plenty. But with the roots and tubers infesting the hillock, and a coating of mulch , these smallish mounds hold their ground. Even with subsidence, all you have to do is mound up anyway.

Mounds give you more surface area to grow plants.

 It's simple:
^ has  a larger surface area than -

So hypothetically you should be able to grow more per square metre.

Mounds offer at least 2 microclimates: One in the valley (between the mounds or at their base)and one on the hillock. I'm thinking that you plant accordingly. While I water the mound -- embedding its core with a terracotta pot -- the valley acts like a swale and collects precipitation and run off. Indeed, it seems to me that mounds embedded with terracotta pots -- are extremely irrigation efficient. I've found that when I convert a flat garden bed to a succession of mounds I need fewer terracotta pot watering stations., and it's easier to monitor the hydration of all the plants.

Traditionally, mound gardening in Melanesia generates a sort of compost heap effect. I'm sure I could engineer that too if I stuff manures into the core of each of my mounds. But for now, my mounds make sense because I have a small tank of water embedded inside them.  On my sandy soil that's  a big advantage.

You plant differently for mounds. Since you are planting on a slope you don't have  the concept of rows to rely on. 'Spacing' doesn't mean the same thing. I'm still experimenting but obviously a root vegetable like a carrot may not suit mound gardening if it was planted on an incline. Indeed, what's the preferred angle for a mound that enables you to plant the largest array of different vegetables?

• Read further extended discussion on this topic: HERE

The Garden in July

The way it comes together!

There may not be the explosive growth of the warmer and wetter months but the plants that appreciate a bit of chilling start doing their mid Winter thing. And you still get new growth. The seedlings come on. Plant cuttings take root. And the garden's navvy gets to work longer shifts in the cool and sunshine.

No sweat. Nothing gets away from you and you can engage more with the dirt.

It's potting about weather.

Insect Hotel

A friend had a wee small hostelry for insects. The horticulturalist I work with who is new to the area bemoans the shallow local bee population. And I, to my credit, was renovating my two ponds when  I thought in a sort of 2 plus 2 equals five moment...I'll go into the hospitality industry.

So the last few days I've been collecting bits and pieces from around the yard and recycling them into apartments for insects. Re-imagining yourself from the house hunting insect POV is a lot of creative fun. With so much old bamboo about the place my industry had ready hardware. Saw up a few canes. Chop through some pawpaw trunks. Recycle some old bamboo curtain beads. Make use of some old containers...Hang em up. Attach them.

I already had structures: Sculptural local woods laid and strutted together around the ponds and skywards for a wind chime,  so I simply inserted the apartments among all that. Clambering over these was some keen growth: nasturtium, Bolivian cucumber and a coastal legume.

So now, all I gotta do is wait for the clientele to come visit. Here and a the local school gardening project  methinks stingless native bees may be an option...

Mounds

It makes me distinctly uncomfortable to be obsessed with a gardening contour that no one else (on this continent at least) seems to indulge in: mounds. (See the recent: Notes on Mounds)  I may be an eccentric gardener but I do not garden in the nuddy. I do however build up mounds of dirt, shove a terracotta pot in the top as a flu and grow stuff at an angle of  45 degrees.

I grow at an angle... I'm telling you it works!  45 degrees. 45 degrees.

My mounds aren't Polynesian/Melanesian huge. My mounds are little islands rising up out of the detritus like a volcano in a shabby sea.

On these pet knolls, I've planted out a lot of stuff. A lot of different stuff to see how it grows.

I've got potatoes, oca (NZ Yam), pole beans, tomato, zuchini, coriander, Sunchokes, spring onions, carrots, sun jewels, sunflowers, sweet potato, pumpkin, purple yams, aloe vera, cannas...planted atop or on the sides of my wee hillocks.

Truth to tell I thought such a polygamous mix was sure to be a hard ask of elevated soil, but each mound is becoming its own micro-climate. Each is its own fantasy land.

I'll need to christian each and everyone of them. That's a lot of champagne!

Indeed when I look at what can happen at 45 degrees and then gaze  at the flat beds,  the horizontal beds seem desultory and vapid  in comparison. But here's the thing: I can see these islands'  flora  easily  because the convex contour offers a 360 degree look around. In a polycultural gardening indulgence such as  mine, that's a real plus.

Gardening is easier...because it's diced up into manageable parts.Wee round beds: O-O-O all about.

While the initial mound I built this year is so verdant -- I cannot see anything at all except jungle -- the others are likely to follow suit. I'm now meditating on the option of engineering mounds on my east/west beds. My north/south beds are so far gone that they'll all metamorphasize into mound-dom within a few months. Any delay in earth moving is simply about waiting on what's there now to reach harvest.

Between the mounds I throw all the brush and cuttings I collect and tramp it all down as I traffic hither and yon.

Garden vistas

Looking south: poles supporting aerial lines for climbing plants; seedlings on the go at bottom right;    
behind them a two mound bed buried under growth; milk crate garden bottom centre. Click on image to enlarge view.

In my mix are a lot of climbing plants. The old garden hoses I strung through the air across the garden are now supporting feeder lines both vertical and horizontal as I drop twine down to pole beans, Bolivian cucumbers, Mouse Melon, an exotic cucurbit (so exotic I can't recall or pronounce the name) and choko. The advantage of taking these plants so sharply skward is that this time of year they don't shade their neighbours so much and I get to plant climbers more or less where ever I like without having to build trellises. No need to clump plant. I'm still gardening with an eclectic polycultural, companion planting, mix.

I give aerial gardening with jute twine: nine and a half out of ten. 

As the Vulcan salute says, "Live long, climb up and prosper."[ Or should it be?: " Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to bravely go where no plant has gone before".]

Milk Crate Gardening.

 

Not my norm, but I'm experimenting with container gardening. Usually I hate containers as they are so routinely thirsty.

But...

I'm a milk crate junkie. Can't live without them. And now that I've found a regular supply of these design masterpieces at the local tip, a lot can now happen.

At the local school gardening project  we've been vertical gardening with pallets and I passionately hate them. I think the whole exercise is absurd. So in looking around for useful hardware, that could use weed mat in its walls, I  researched  milk crate gardening as an option.

Bingo: crates have wings. 

The pros of milk crates as gardening containers are:

• milk crates are cheap ( I pay $1) or free.(Retail: $12)
• milk crates offer good volume to grow stuff. Indeed a milk crate on average has a volume of around 27 litres.
• milk crates neatly butt against one another so they are easily arranged into 'garden bed' shapes.
• milk crates when butted together insulate one another and the soil they may contain.
• milk crates can be stacked so that a quick 'raised bed' is a milk crate atop a milk crate.(You can also create vertical gardens this way if you must.)
• milk crates are sturdy and moveable so they can be shifted about with changes in the seasons and weather.

The one drawback with  milk crate gardening is that when filled with soil, a milk crate is a hefty lift (over 30 kgm I'd guess) -- so moving them about may (or 'should' for the back conscious) require the use of a trolley.

Are they worth the effort -- collecting them and fabricating with weed mat?  That's why I'm experimenting. My beginner plant is tomatoes. I suspect crate gardening will also suit sweet peppers and cucumbers...and they may offer me the advantage that some of the fungal diseases my garden is prone to will be  less when the plants are grown above ground in a crate.

Or so I hypothesize...