My Garden ~ clearing rubbish and weeds

My gardening work is easier now. I was looking back over my garden diary in 2000-01. I can’t believe how much has been done since we settled on this block of land. We cleared a lot of inorganic rubbish: old car and car parts; rusted barbed wire in the paddocks; house demolition rubble; cattle carcasses; old fencing materials; disused horticultural chemicals/containers; plastic and glass; disused pipes; wiring and telegraph cable and the list goes on. The stream has been cleared of fallen trees and flood debris. Swamp Cyresses and Nyssa Sylvatica have been planted in a swampy area that fed into a small sludgy dam that has since been filled in. Next we set about getting rid of weeds like pampass grass, honeysuckle, blackberry, ragwort, jasmine. Rampant growth of Kikuyu and Wandering Jew is another and an ongoing story.

The saw-tooth 500m2 polyhouse was not in commercial use when we came to this place – apparently the previous owners grew Sandersonias a few years before we came along. We’re not commercial growers – just lifestylers with home gardening opportunities to be developed over time. Anyway the place was full of weeds (we have since put weedmat down), the watering system needed to be revamped. We reclad the roof  with heavy storm-grade plastic. There is a scoria base hence the drainage is good.  I don’t know how to work a polyhouse in terms of horticulture. We have tended to use this building in part as a very big ‘plastic’ shed in which to store bales of hay made on our place.

Himself constructed wooden pens to rear calves during winter-spring months. It’s warm and dry for them as we have sawdust layer on top of the weedmat in their pens. These young animals go from the shed out into the paddocks and onto the grass as they grow bigger. 

In another section, I’ve managed to grow aubergines, beans and tomoatoes reasonably well using a dripper system for irrigation. It gets too hot for growing anything over the summer months- there’s little ventilation other than rolling up the wall sides and roof vent. Lots of learning about growing things happening here.