Did we skip autumn?

Just around the corner from the Davis St Community Garden on Parson’s Street is a house with a vine which does all the right things from a colour perspective come Autumn. Walking back from the local supermarket at this time of year I look forward to the rapid change in colour and then sudden drop of the red leaves…

Here are four photos of the leaves taken just weeks apart. The last I took this morning. Although it has nothing to directly with our little community garden which continues to attract interest from passers by – especially children during the holiday times, it provides a visual cue to the need to select and plant for the season.

A common mistake I make is crowding too many plants into a plot which literally only takes a a 30 litre bag of potting mix to fill it. Add to that my penchant for planting chillies and over a season you quickly end up with a root bound growing plot that needs replacement after just one year. Given that the chillies probably have a couple of seasons (years) in them, it seems a shame to throw away a good plant and soil.

My backyard has only so much room for rescued chillies. In our household we have a yin and yang approach to gardening. I am more like Mary Lennox, the little girl who discovers the secret garden in her uncle’s sprawling mansion grounds – nurturing plants on the edge of death back from the brink of becoming compost. My wife on the other hand subscribes to Darwin’s survival of the fittest notion and woe betide any plant that fails to fruit or flower in an abundance seen only in the Garden of Eden.

I will be working back Darwin for the rest of this year, with fortnightly returns to Davis St in Melbourne. The good news is that the dry season (which is what we just entered in Darwin) is the time to grow things like snake beans, okra, basil and of course chillies – so I will be planting (although late March – early April is the best time to plant for the dry season. So there might be the odd story about my challenges up in Darwin as I combat pests like the fruit fly and spiralling white fly.

Happy Winter Gardening!