Garden Archives - Another Day

Food Garden :: Tomato Planting

October 21, 2016 | Leave a Comment

There’s a local lore in Southern Tasmania, that if you want to successfully grow tomatoes in your food garden, you must plant them on the one and only ‘Tomato Planting’ day of the year – otherwise known as ‘Show Day‘. This is the day when the entire greater Hobart region grinds to an absolute halt and nothing other than tomato planting or show going, happens. This whole shenanigans of ‘show day’ was quite the calamity for us ‘just arrived in Tassie’ mainlanders 5 years ago! We were baffled at why we had to live in limbo for a whole day when we first arrived, biding our time at the Hobart airport hotel, waiting until normality resumed on the following day to collect our key from the Real Estate Agent! Yes, show day is a huge thing in Hobart – whether you’re show going or not, because it also dictates the one and only day of the year that you should, if you want any chance of a good tomato harvest, plant your little seedlings into the Earth. A day earlier and you risk Jack Frost pummelling them to the ground, a day later and your harvest will not ripen in time through our short windowed ‘growing season’.

Therefore, like all good ‘lore’ abiding Southerners, yesterday we visited our local seedling growing friend, Lindy of Island Herbs for a good mix of local climate loving tomatoes and also courted some self seeded cherry tomato seedlings from Nanny and Poppy’s greenhouse soils where their boomer cherry tomato plants kept producing right into late Winter, having only just recently given themselves over to returning back into Mother Earth’s cradle.

:: Placing plants around the space in their pots before beginning to plant so as to plan out the area first ::

Marlin and Papa spent a recent weekend converting our simple garden shed into a space with deep filled garden beds made of fallen fence palings on our property. I cannot tell you the number of applications these old abandoned fence palings have been put to good use in. From compost bin bays, to garden borders, orchard net supports, park benches and even a clothing rack to hang and fold clothes on in our bedroom. He’s quite the ingenious man our Papa and we’ve been greatly inspired through the years by some of the creative ideas and notions in Alys Fowler’s book ‘The Thrifty Gardener‘. Alys is one of my favourite food garden authors and my other two favourites of hers are; The Thrifty Forager and Abundance.

We have planted a mix of predominantly heirloom variety fruits with a sprinkling of various chillies and capsicums throughout. A handful of tiny bite size fruits and then the majority being larger ‘beefsteak’ style tomatoes with a few plum/roma shaped tomatoes as well. Our mix includes; cherry tomatoes (I’m unsure of the exact variety of these as they are self seeded), yellow pear, tommy toes, marianna’s peace, amish paste, st. pierre, money maker, apollo, debarao plum, black krim, black russian, hungarian heart and tigeralla. Hopefully the tomatillos will come up again from seed in the garden – I’m sure they’re already doing so underneath the jungle canopy – otherwise we’ll plant a few of those seedlings as well.

Last season we missed out on making one of our favourite condiments for the Winter – green tomato chutney. We normally mix tomatillos and the last of our season’s green tomatoes, but unfortunately last year our tomato crop was less than impressive – bordering on near non existent. I’m guessing we most likely ignored the local lore and thought if we planted a few days either side of Show Day, what could possibly go wrong!

:: I remember reading years ago in a Waldorf article, how the 6 year old child needs heavy duty, meaningful work; raking leaves, wheelbarrowing and carrying fire wood as a few examples. I know that this Grade 3 farming year will deepen this work a little further and I think it will be wonderfully therapeutic for Chilli! ::

Heading into the Grade 3 farming year with Chilli, it’s wonderful to see not only her interest, but also her ability in the farming and cooking tasks around the home, increasing. She’s become quite the little cook, whipping up cakes, muffins, breads and other treats, all on her very capable own. I’m looking forward to journeying into this growing season with her in this more focussed way. Including preserving tasks in her school program, means we should get to a lot more of the recipes we like to include in our Autumn repertoire, but occasionally don’t get to through day to day busyness.

The base of our Grade 3 farming studies next year will be the Seedlings course from Spiral Garden, alongside the Herbal Roots Zine program and also bring in elements from Earthschooling and Christopherus homeschooling programs. Everyday food growing, seasonal preserving, making compost, keeping chickens for eggs and watching springtime sheep shearing are all part and parcel of our daily life. We are deepening our own farming practises over the coming year and also therefore the opportunities Chilli will have for learning more about these activities in her Grade 3 studies. My parents keep sheep and goats for us that we will be raising for meat, we are looking at the possibility of a milk cow homed at a friend’s property, we have begun expanding our chicken keeping to be able to process our own meat chickens and I am hoping we will have the opportunity to attend a farming and cooking workshop throughout 2017 at Fat Pig Farm’s new school and restaurant facility. We’re planning for the year ahead to include building bee hives as well as a wood fired pizza oven. I know that Chilli will also love the Earthschooling Fibre Arts block contained in the handwork program for Grade 3. I’m hoping we will be able to visit a local spinner who also dyes her own wool, as well as a local weaver. I’m envisaging a little bit of a ‘Pelle’s New Suit‘ project for her! The spinner lives behind our first property here in Tasmania and keeps her own alpacas whose wool she spins and dyes. These alpacas were such a beautiful part of Chilli’s early childhood and first experiences here in rural Tasmania, that it will be lovely if we can include these in our fibre block for Grade 3 handwork.

:: Before planting our tomatoes, we headed into the bush areas of our property and collected sticks to fix in the soil and plant in front of. These of course, as our tomato plants thrive through the coming months, will become our stakes for tall growing, strongly supported food plants of beauty and greatness! ::

:: Chilli enjoyed being able to use a handsaw for the first time on her own, in a real world application ::

:: Papa spoke with Chilli about how the water sits on top of the soil and takes a while to filter down to the roots of the plant. They discussed when we water plants, why it’s important to do so with a sweeping motion, giving a light water and returning a few times. Chilli was amazed to dig a little into the soil and realise for all the water she and Marlin had put onto the soil, just below the surface was very dry! ::

:: Our rustic, scrap craft gardening, tomato hot house ::

Homeschooling :: Spirals

December 8, 2015 | Leave a Comment

I’ve been very much looking forward to our spiral form drawing which is coming in at the end of our Grade 1 school year. I think the spiral is so therapuetic on so many levels and offers much to both child and parent/teacher, as we explore the form, find it in our world and work with the going inward/reflective – coming out/unfolding energy of the form.

On form drawing day we followed all the common form drawing process’; walking the form forwards and backwards, tracing the form with both fingers (opposite eye closed), drawing the form both inward and outward on the pavement, drawing the form with our toes in the sand, drawing the form in both directions with both hands and finding/talking about where we see this form in nature. We spoke about how we felt creating the form with each hand and how we felt in drawing each direction – inward and outward. We also used the Earthschooling spiral form drawing story written by Kristie Karima Burns – ‘Daedalus and the Spiral’. This was lovely to tie back into the story of ‘Daedalus and Icarus’ that we’d used (from the same program) for some of our looped running forms.

Spirals are a form that translate well to any season I feel. In Winter we’re tending to be walking ‘into’ the spiral (hence why Spiral Walks are so powerful as part of our Winter Solstice activities) and in Summer we’re unfolding and coming ‘out of’ the spiral. It’s like that journey of winding into the darkness – reflecting, and then turning to journey back out into the light – unfolding, having transformed from our time held in the cocoon of the spiral. The spiral centre holds this amazing energy for us to ‘unload’ anything that no longer serves us – the ‘darkness’ within ourselves, so we can emerge out cleansed, lighter and transformed. As we emerge, having grown into something anew, we spread our wings and fly off on the Summer breezes.

In prelude to this form, we’ve been hearing a tale about snails in our daily nursery program story (from the Waldorf Essentials Pentatonic series), singing Springtime songs about snails, baking cheesy snails, walking in and out of the curly house of snail, as well as looking at the curly patterns on shells, upon visits to the seaside.

Following our formal part of this lesson, we then went into our pine forest area and began to plan out and create a ‘meditation spiral’ area. I’d read many years ago an article and project idea of this nature from the Tan Family in a Little Acorn Learning Enrichment Guide. It planted the seed in creating a space like this for reflection and meditation and I thought the study of spirals in Grade 1 was the perfect time to create this, bringing a more ‘integrated’ experience into the form exploration and lesson. The area we are creating this in is where we build our Winter Solstice spiral and I thought a more permanent spiral for meditation and reflection through the year would be nice. We can then ‘enliven’ the path at Winter Solstice with our traditional wattle sprigs. The area is so meditative in itself. It is a cleared area in the middle of a beautiful pine forest at the top of our property. There is this nice energy of being ‘held’ in the space when you are there.

We started to rake the area, clearing fallen pine needles and rake a little ‘reflection area’ space under one of the pines that the spiral naturally leads from/into. This task was fantastic will cultivating work for our Grade 1 daughter! Our nursery aged son will cart logs, haul stones and collect pine cones all day – but the Grade 1 daughter needs some help with the motivation to continue on with a task at times! Such is the wonderful ages and stages our children move through! I remember when she was 3 years old and similar to her brother would happily; weed, rake and cart firewood all day, thoroughly content! Sorting the stones, pinecones and wood pieces we’d collected into piles as well as a rough division between larger and smaller pieces, was also a great way for her to revise Kindergarten and Grade 1 ‘categorising’ work.

We collected some stones to create a nice pathway into the reflection space and decided pinecones, which we have an abundance of on the property – would make a nice path for the spiral itself. We brought a little log over that seemed to have a nice natural ‘seat’ shape and also brought into the reflection space our Christmas log from a few years ago that we’d planted some trees in at the time for our Festival table. The challenge would just be to find something to plant in it, which the pademelons won’t eat. Apparently violets are good for that and we picked up a few pots on the weekend. So far – so good!

Of course, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was our meditation spiral! We’ve been heading into the space most days for our nature walk time and adding a wheelbarrow load of pinecones per day to our spiral path. In the meantime though, we’ve started to use the space and it was the perfect area for Chilli to sit and do her ‘Sound Mapping‘ activity the other day.

It’s lovely to be able to create these little nooks of serenity at our own home. I always say that I feel so blessed that my ‘happy place’ is in our very own backyard! A few years ago we created a ‘children’s garden’ area where Chilli plants a rose each year as she starts a new grade. Over the years the space has grown around these roses to also become a medicinal garden, as Chilli is very passionate about herbal studies and natural medicine. She enjoys to grow the plants, harvest and make preparations from them. Graham has also built a lovely wooden ‘park bench’ in the space for us and it is a beautiful area to sit, reflect, meditate and ponder. It really is my ‘happy place’ – right in my very own garden! It’s also lovely to reflect back and think about how just 2 years ago, this space was nothing but a dusty little slope with an overgrown tin tub in the corner. I’m excited now to see what this meditation spiral area will grow and blossom into over the years ahead.

Do you have a space of reflection and meditation at your place?

Fairy Garden :: Peach Blossom Cottage

July 30, 2014 | 4 Comments

When scouting a space to allow the magic of a Fairy Garden to weave itself together here in our new little cottage grounds, there really was only one suitable place – protected with the fruit trees in our enclosed orchard amongst the food gardens here on our island home. Our property abounds with wallabies, possums and one rarely spotted – but resident all the same, echidna. And while all of these animals we are sure would love to frolic with our resident Fairies, they’d also like to nibble greedily on their garden plantings, leaving nothing but stumps within a few hours. Within the orchard rows was a little corrugated iron tub. Standing low enough for little arms to reach in – but high enough to prevent fuzzy little burrowing bandicoots from pottering amongst the roots. So there in the community of Apple Grove, right by the only peach tree in our orchard – ‘Peach Blossom Cottage’ was named by a little girl and born with great love, excitement, imagination and wonderment.

Whilst watching the countless hours, conversations and festivities my children have shared there at ‘Peach Blossom Cottage’, amongst the Gardens and with the Fairies – perhaps my very favourite part of this experience was watching Chilli and Papa one Sunday become totally absorbed together in the magic of dreaming up, creating and bringing to life little pieces of hand made necessities and furniture for the Fairies Cottage and Garden spaces. The bonding, the giggles, the helping each other and the joy in bringing these pieces to life in the home there at ‘Peach Blossom Cottage’ was truly heartwarming to watch. I loved their ingenuity in including natural native Australian treasures such as gumnuts for lamp posts and a dotta vine jumble wrapped around a fallen branch of melaleuca for an arbour. Papa remarked afterward at how impressed he was with Chilli’s creativity, as apparently most creations – including the walnut shell larder shelves – were her dreamed up inventions.

Friends have visited and shared adventures with the Fairies, brother and sister have tended this little home lovingly through the changing seasons – playing happily together in only that magical childhood space that children exist. The Easter Hare visited and parents, grandparents, godparents as well as family friends have witnessed silently this wonderment that is the magic of Fairyland play amongst sweet, happy, inspiring young children.

Through the past year as ‘Peach Blossom Cottage and Gardens’ have been birthed, tended, cared for, loved and grown, I have delighted in the many little random Fairy Gardens I find built -here, there and everywhere. Groves in bowls for the Mermaids, Circles of Rainbows for the Leprechauns to visit and tiny little nooks on every part of our property that become spontaneous places to offer tiny delights for the Fairies. As I walk past ‘Peach Blossom Cottage and Gardens’, I always enjoy to stop, be marvelled by and smile at the sweet little creations that have sprung up through my children’s play; acorn tea cups filled with pansy pudding, a clothes line pegged with leaf towels and beds made snuggly soft by petals of sweetly scented rose blooms. I love to see where the bike has been ‘ridden’ to, who has ‘stopped in for tea’ that day and which little folk are currently ‘at the park’. It is always interesting to see what the ‘larder’ has been ‘stocked with’ as well. These are the things that make for wonderful childhood memories, and these are the moments that I will look back on fondly with a warmth in my soul when they’re both off living their own adult lives one day and have flown this tiny little family nest of ours. Hopefully they’ll always carry the magic of these early years in their hearts.

I invite you now to come on a little journey through the Gardens at ‘Peach Blossom Cottage’…
(Please click the first thumbnail below to enable the slider with image captions, telling the story of our Garden)

Are there magical tiny folk that live in your garden? I’d love to know if you’ve written about the adventures in your wonder filled Fairy Garden.

This post has been written to not only share the story of our All Season Fairy Garden Adventures with you, but also as submission to The Magic Onions 2014 Fairy Garden Contest. To Donni and her gorgeous family as well as the community of supporters bringing this opportunity to life – we thank you for inspiring great wonderment through this encouraging of Fairy Garden creations the world over.