The Joys of Gardening in Spring

- and yes, I am being sarcastic since my spring time mantra is lovely to look at but horrible to breathe which does make gardening somewhat problematic. Off on a slight tangent: because European seasons don't actually work out all that well here I prefer to use the local Noongar seasons. This makes August and September Djilba, instead of the end of winter and beginning of spring. The Noongar seasons were worked out by the local weather patterns which makes a lot more sense for here than those entirely different ones of the Northern Hemisphere. So my heading should read The Joys of Gardening in Djilba but I figured that would only confuse everyone.

Whatever it's called this time of year has its challenges. It's still cool and often rainy but starting to warm enough that the weeds are springing up everywhere. This explosion of grasses into flower means the air is full of pollen which makes breathing less than enjoyable for those of us who suffer from asthma and/or hay fever. Western Australia is famous for the spectacular displays of wildflowers at this time of the year and they are truly glorious. Supposedly they don't add much to the cocktail of allergens so I suppose I should be grateful for that.

Along with the wild flowers, of course, there's winter grass - untidy and prone to appearing in places I'd rather it didn't but otherwise not a real problem to control - and wild oats turn up everywhere. If they would only confine themselves to out of the way places I wouldn't mind so much. The wild oat in particular is quite graceful and delicate as they move in the wind. Pity they have pointy seeds that stick into just about everything including flesh. Then there are the clovers which are already covered in prickles and such a pest to have to pull out - and I can't forget the thistles which range from the familiar milk thistle to a nasty one that grows up to a metre high and is a nightmare to pull out because it is literally covered in sharp prickles.  On top of all this there's another vicious grass that keeps finding its way under the fence from next door and comes with prickles that hook onto anything - clothing, shoes and skin. Its little barbs dig in making them hard to remove as they break off leaving the tips behind unless you're very lucky. Then there's the double gee (also called the three cornered jack or spiny emex) which has three very tough pointed spikes that dig into pretty much everything as well. It was apparently imported back in the day by the earliest European settlers as a green vegetable, though why anyone would even think of bothering to eat its less than appealing looking leaves I do not know. Of course it escaped and is now rampant across the agricultural areas causing significant problems.

I haven't even started on the insect pests which appear regularly at this time of the year. First to invade were the cabbage white butterflies and they lay their eggs on all and any of the cabbage family - cabbages, kale, broccoli, nasturtiums. They don't care. I might be the kind of gardener who doesn't like to kill things - I don't use chemical insecticides - but picking them off doesn't work so I do spray with Dipel, which is a spray containing a naturally occurring bacterium (Bacillus thuringiensis) which kills caterpillars that ingest it.

The other serious insect pests at this time of the year are the aphids which seem to be under the impression that the onion tribe is being planted purely for their sustenance. Uh, no. These reproduce at an incredible rate and the theory espoused by the gardening experts on all the gardening shows I've seen recently - just hose them off and wait until the natural predators build up - is in my opinion simply rubbish. I've tried that and by the time the natural predators arrive there are precious few of the plants I want to save left. In the past week I've tried the squash 'em method, the sharp spray with a hose method and then I tried spraying with a soap based spray. While each method has helped a little by the next day they are already back in numbers. I don't think I can wait for nature to take its course any longer - I've already lost half my onions, the garlic chives are disappearing almost before my eyes and today I noticed the wee beasties had started on the onion chives.  I'm reluctantly giving in and heading to the garden centre for a pyrethrum based spray because it has a very short residual period so is less of a worry than chemical based sprays. Wish me luck.

There Are Days

when you wonder if it's worth the effort. I'm talking about gardening, of course. Today I went out to put up the summer shade cloth covers over the most delicate veggies - this is essential here and the daytime temperatures are already reaching the low thirties - and discovered the following:

1. I have bud worm in my tomatoes. The fruit affected were already on advanced plants I bought a few weeks ago so whether they were already infested or they came from my garden - the most likely scenario I have to admit - I don't know but now I'll have to start some sort of spraying regime. I don't like to use poisons so this means I need to track down one of the Bacillus thuringiensis based sprays specific to these destructive, little critters. These sprays contain a bacterium that kills caterpillars once ingested and has no effect on other beneficial insects - or people for that matter.

2. Something is eating my pak choy. They are covered in so many tiny pin holes that the leaves literally fall apart when you touch them. This has happened suddenly and is not due to the ubiquitous white cabbage butterfly because 1) I can't find a single one of these caterpillars on the plants proving the BT based spray I've been using to combat them is effective and 2) those little beasties don't cause this kind of pin hole damage anyway. I'll have to pull these plants out and dump them and hope that the caterpillar spray I'm getting for the budworm works on whatever this is before they decimate the new seedlings I planted out yesterday.

3) The garlic chives are again infested with black aphids. These nasties have already wiped out most of my red onions - they brought some sort of a virus with them as well damaging them by sap sucking. Luckily, although they attacked the spring onions and onion chives as well, those have survived - so far at least, though if the aphids spread from the garlic chives I'll be in trouble. I've seen some ladybirds in the garden which is heartening because their nymph stage just loves to eat aphids.

The good thing is that I can still find plenty to eat in the garden. The first zucchini flowers opened this morning. They are glorious to look at and to eat. I think I'd grow zucchini and pumpkin even if they didn't produce such tasty fruit because the flowers are so beautiful. I'll try to get a photo tomorrow so you can enjoy them, too. The rainbow chard is just as stunning - with red, yellow and pink stems that positively glow when the sunlight hits them - and they taste as good as they look. Then there's the kale which so far hasn't been attacked by whatever has attacked my other brassicas - and has been keeping us and our neighbours fed for months. The grape vines are shooting madly and that means dolmades soon while the dwarf French beans I planted months ago are still producing and we still have beetroot, Florence fennel, lettuces and nasturtium flowers and leaves to pick. Oh and I forgot to say we have just picked the first of the strawberries and blueberries.

So we're not going to go hungry just yet. Unfortunately neither are the bugs so I'd better get on with finding a suitable spray, hadn't I.