Enjoy the Fruit
A labour of love
Such joy 🩷
Spring gardens are created in winter.
Gorgeous colourful blooms, new life sprouting around you, soil teeming with activity, and those bursts of new energy you are now surrounded by, all started a while back.
Experienced gardeners know this well.
Though the cold months don’t require as much hands-on work for your garden to thrive,
they are a perfect time to quietly tend to your space and prepare for when the weather warms up.
So what do we do in the cold months, Warin season here in Naarm?
We feed the soil and keep it loose and covered, clear dead and diseased plants, and keep pests and weeds under control. Other great garden tasks include direct sowing seeds that benefit from a cool period (known as stratification) or starting summer fruiting plants indoors. It’s a good time to take care of your gardening tools by sharpening, cleaning and protecting them from rust. And, one of my personal favourites: reflecting on what you’d like to grow next, while sifting through my seed collection. Slow and quiet winter activities that will ensure that by the time the next season rolls around, you and your garden will be ready to make the most of the warmth and sunlight.
The cooler season is also a good time to preserve the late autumn harvest. Curing, dehydrating, fermenting, cooking and bottling. Age-old practices that mark the rhythm change between abundance and activity, and rest.
These past few months I’ve been taking note of what the seasons are asking of me and finding ways to align my own activities with these rhythms. Looking at small and slow actions I can take for my own sake, as well as for my business, in much the same way I approach garden care.
The promise of blooms to come
As usual, there is the ideal scenario and the reality on the ground (yes, I know, sorry…)
I may not have tackled my compost by some imaginary perfect timeline, but I did it!
I failed many times in trying to protect my seeds from my nemesis the blackbird and those pesky mice, but I resowed, strengthened defences and managed to save a fair few.
The battle to save my seedlings from the truly insane snail infestation was ongoing and brutal. Yes, I may have sacrificed a bit to the garden gods this winter, but I also truly enjoyed tending to my little space, yelling at birds to get off my lawn while waving a fist at them, the abundance of radishes, herbs, spinach and silverbeet, and learning yet again what happens when I don’t tighten the mesh properly around the pot.
I gardened to the best of my abilities and learned to turn my so-called shortcomings into my method.
One of my greatest challenges of recent years has been brain fog and memory loss.
A true struggle, but also one that I’ve come to accept. And there are little garden perks that come with memory loss. Forgetting what was planted where means I get to enjoy lovely surprises. Not writing down what seed went where, means I get to play detective in my own garden.
I often say to people in my groups that I’ve swapped memory for intuition. I may not remember certain names of plants or the exact germination times of seeds, but I am very good at observation and trusting my intuition. It's become my own unique method of guiding others on their journey too.
With the weather warming up, I will be looking at my soil health again (always be looking at soil health) and grabbing seeds from my collection to joyfully scatter onto awaiting beds. Chaos gardening, my favourite! I’ll also be picking up some seedlings of summer fruits that I neglected to sow in time, and without a doubt still yelling at blackbirds. Only in shorts and a wide-brim hat this time.
Tell me about your Warin garden- how have you been preparing for Poorneet season? What exciting buds are popping up in your space?
Make me envious of your successes! 😍