Sustainable life: Spring gardening

Posted on 6 October, 2018

Trees are waking from their winter sleep and bursting into colour.

Wildflowers are out. The blossoms smell sweet. Each day brings more sun than the last. It’s warm enough to wear a t-shirt. Springtime in the garden is unreal!

Here are four ideas to inspire you.

Vertical garden

Want to surround yourself with green? Transform a drab wall on your balcony or entrance way into a vertical garden. With inspiration from the world’s hipster café scene, vertical gardens are the perfect way to garden in high-density homes. The only natural ingredient that you need is sunlight. The best walls for vertical gardens are north facing, with plenty of sunlight. However, with the right plants and nurturing, vertical gardens can thrive on any wall. Actually, all vertical gardens require a bit of love. Put them somewhere that you’ll remember to water.

After finding a wall, work out how you’re going to attach some pots.  You can buy ready-made vertical garden frames from most garden outlets. Or, get creative. Use wire and some nails to attach pots that aren’t currently in use. Consider putting your vertical garden on a rack that can be moved, as the seasons change. This will let you avoid the extreme heat in summer or frosts in winter.

Fill your pots with beautiful soil, think: rich and well-draining and get planting. The classic vertical garden is herbs, like parsley, mint, coriander and rocket. Branch out from the classic with some flowers or strawberries.

Tepee made of beans

A great joint project for kids and parents, it’s fun and nutritious at the same time.  Find a part of your veggie patch that’s got plenty of sun, rich soil and where you’re happy for the kids to frolic. Mark out enough space on the ground in a circle, for the bottom of the tepee.  The space needs to be large enough for two small children to sit.

Now, it’s time for the tepee frame. Source at least six long, straight sticks – to create the tepee frame.  We use sticks that are about 1.5m long, left over from the winter fruit tree pruning. You can buy purpose-created sticks from garden stores, made from bamboo or tea trees. Secure the tepee frame by pushing the sticks gently into the garden bed and securely tying the top of the sticks to each other with some string.  Secure the sticks in a tepee shape by looping string around each stick.   Each piece of string should loop around the sticks, joining them to each other, at about 30 cm intervals, along each stick. The largest looped string will be at the bottom, giving the beans extra scaffolding to grow upon.

Finally, planting time! Near the base of each stick, plant two bean seeds – one on either side of the stick. Our favourite variety is blue lake climbing beans, as they’re plentiful and stringless. The tepee works equally well with any variety of climbing bean or even with snow peas. Just make sure that you haven’t selected a ‘dwarf’ variety as these may not climb high enough to cover your tepee.

Now you can watch the bean seedlings grow and create a gorgeous green covering around the tepee frame.  About nine weeks after the original planting, the tepee will start to flower and ten-twelve weeks later there’ll be beans to eat. A tepee made of beans is a gorgeous garden feature;  it’s a place for children to play and a source of delicious, fresh beans to eat.

Flowers in the vegetable patch

Cut flowers bring sunshine, love and whimsey into a home. Why not grow your own? Consider growing a row of flowers, beside each row of vegetables. It will look gorgeous, improve pollination and supply you with cut flowers. The best cut flowers for growing between vegetables are annuals, grown by seed. Cosmos (white or mixed colours), poppies, cottage garden mix, sunflowers and marigolds are all favourites in our garden. Flowers generally like similar conditions to vegetables. Most flowers prefer full sun, rich soil and regular watering.

Grapevine

Grapes have been cultivated for eating and winemaking in the Mediterranean for more than five thousand years. There, the summers are hot and winter is cold and wet… a bit like the climate in Canberra. With enough water, grapes are easy to grow in Canberra. The hardest part is finding a part of the garden for your grapes to stretch out. You can trellis them along a fence or along the side of your deck. If you want to create a garden feature with your grapes, grow them over a pergola so that the bunches drop down in a glorious early summer display. Most grapes like full sun and rich, well-drained soil. They have deep roots, so dig deep when preparing the soil. There’s a generous selection of table grape varieties available in Canberra’ speciality nurseries, right now.

Like to know more about vegetable gardening? Check out my earlier article with backyard veggie patch tips.