Mowing the Lawn vs No Dig Garden

I love to mow. I feel like Xena the Warrior Princess when I start up the engine with a confident yank. I suspect passers-by are secretly admiring my muscles when they see me start up the Masport. And afterwards, sitting in the backyard it occurs to me that admiring the short, tidy stubble is unreasonably satisfying. But, mowing in a symmetrical pattern and trimming nearby branches with zeal can lead to pedantic obsession. When you start having your cup of tea by the front door to avoid the back lawn you're desperate to mow, it's time to take stock.  When the weekly urge to mow the grass begins to grow into a deepening neurosis, you know it's time to....
Build a No-Dig Garden!!!

The only preparation is to have these things at the ready:

1. A barnyard* of poos (chook, cow, sheep, horse)
2. One big bale of hale
3. A stack of old newspapers
4. 10 or more handfuls worth of Blood and Bone

*The collective noun.

Two bags of each poo type for a strip of 4x1m leaves plenty of leftovers .

And it's all smooth sailing from there:

A more cost-efficient way to source the poo would be to head for the hills.... or a farm which would have this stuff in bountiful supply and probably at mates' rates. However, if you prefer to snuggle to the bosom of the nature-lovin city lady that is CERES, they're 10 bucks a pop at the resident nursery. 

Use some exact way of measuring out the space, e.g. taking one big stride to indicate a metre. Then, once you've worked out the area, pour three bags of black gold (sheep, cow and chook x1 each) to cover the grass (goodbye lawn, you trimmable temptress).

Lay newspapers thick (a good few week's worth of Saturday's Age should cover it). Then make them wet and soggy with the hose. 

Get yer gloves on for this bit. Bucket of Blood and Bone - handfuls of the stuff sprinkled over the top.

Cover with thick layer of hay ( I used the cheap grassy stuff, not fancy chickpea mulch). Sing 'Lay, Lady, Lay' to yourself while you do this. Replace the word 'brass' with 'grass'.

This bit gets exciting. Lay a bag of horse poo on top. This stuff we got from a farm out east. PACKED with fatty looking worms, which I didn't notice. But some resident ladies did.

 Disappoint the chooks by covering up the loot with more hay. And give it all a big soaking with the hose.

Then let it cook for a month or two. before seedlings go in. Peter Cundall and my mum reckon dolomite is also essential. They're probably right.

William Wallace

  The last place we rented was old and pre-loved, it had character, probably in need of a good scrub down. It was dark and in some rooms, a little musty. The carpet was threadbare. There was dust in compounded layers. It smelled like old ladies. In winter it was bitterly cold. What endeared us to the house was also sometimes what frustrated us. However! It did have a GLORIOUSLY neglected garden. 

 


 This would soon become the garden to get these little hands dirty. It provided a small but important purpose and fed a long-niggling inkling to garden.

In this house we had a 12 month lease and some cagey landlords. It soon became clear that they obviously had grand plans for the property - 
 1. Renovate, 2. Sell for gazillions. 

 I foolishly hoped, that that their plan might have been a little more 'restore'; a little less 'renovate'....And that, at the very least, the garden we invested in would be, in some small way maintained (along with it's marvelous tenants). 
* For the melodramatic version of these events, check out the earlier blog post 'Multiple Choice'

Nearly two years down the track and I found myself driving past the old place. An enormous auction sign squarely in the middle of the front garden. I wondered in, no-one in sight and the side gate open. 

I'm not sure why I was surprised at the state of the backyard. In place of a vegie jungle, teapot walk, towering corn stalks, ferny corners, raised bed, and overhanging apple trees was - lawn. It looked disappointingly small and BLAND. All that was needed, I scoffed to myself, was a $10,000 barbeque, maybe a 'feature wall' and the ugliness would be truly complete! 

Everything that made the garden an interesting space was gone. All the squirrelling away done by the old couple who gardened here before us for 50 odd years was raized to the ground - along with anything we might have added in our short time there. 










I reasoned soon enough - this was clearly pointless sentimentality taking hold. It didn't last long. A rectangle of lawn can, of course, be a beautiful thing, to some beholders' eyes. And it was no longer our space. Good luck to the gazillionare who would live here and gaze lovingly over their 200 square metres of kikuyu each morning. sigh.





The last thing I noticed before I left was a small but defiant little plant having pushed it's way through the choking green carpet like a photosynthetic william wallace. It was....cripes, I'm tearing up at the thought of it... a little potato plant. A leftover warrior surviving and thriving despite the annihilation of the garden. I laughed at the sight of it. What a lovely farewell treat.


Take that, landlord lawn lovers!

Stealing the Lawn Back

That's it. I'm stealing the yard back from the lawn. Nothing against him personally - I'm the first to lay down atop a flat cushion of cropped kikuyu or the belly-friendly buffalo. There is, however, a limit to how much aesthetic joy a square stretch of green grass can bring. And with double doors of glass dividing our living area from the backyard view, the opportunity to create a bit of depth and character doth present itself. (elicits Shakespeare, even!).


...(yer, i might be a wanker).




So here's a little salute to being the boss of the lawn and to making a mini-garden -

Had the urge to build. Bought a stack of bricks from a nice lady for 10 bucks.
THEN! dug the lawn up with a mattock. Two wonderful things about that:
1. Now I know what a mattock is.
2. I nearly felt like a proper farmer throwing that thing over my shoulder.

An otherwise waste of sunshine on a patch alongside the back fence!
So far I've just filled it with soil, poo and mushroom compost.
Quiz: how many garden safety hazards can you spot?

Good job, lads.
 

Aw, isn't it a fine and beautiful thing....

The beginnings of a backyard vegie jungle.

A New Backyard

The new backyard, complete with a poor man's  half-dead spinifex as centrepiece, politely complimented by the subtle overhang of the hills hoist.  

Dad tests out the new yard for saturday paperness. 

First World Problems

Two months ago, we set upon the fairly commonplace venture that is known as Moving House.

Coincidentally, I’ve also been partaking in the recent mini-trend of casually categorising our personal challenges as “first world problems” in friendly banter and I feel like I should add Moving House Stress to this list. Of course, it is so perfectly a first world problem: Choosing where we’ll look, making lists of what we’ll accept, juggling clashing inspection times, whining about the multiple bedrooms being too small… and the big one for me: deciding on the extent of garden-ness of the backyard…. What could I grow here? This is a FWP mainly because, really, I am not affected by anything as serious as having no means to provide food for my family therefore not actually needing a space to grow food. It’s really only MY generously proportioned belly I’ve got to worry about, not any needy dependents. Second, two giant supermarkets are each a 10 minute walk from my house. Elsewhere in the world someone is cooking rice on their dirt floor.

My position of privilege is an ignorant little enclosure whereby, (if I haven’t read the world news for a while) I begin to imagine there is no other problem as great as the one I have right at that moment. The HORROR! The spare room is actually smaller than a basketball court!  The driveway may only fit one of our cars! There is no longer a designated benchtop area for my garden tools and paraphernalia! OH! The Burden!!!!

The garden-ness of this new house is a little less Peter Cundell, a little more Jamie Drury. Stock-standard expanse of lawn, brick garage alongside, and finally, a small, rectangular patio which glides (un)gracefully into cement pathway leading to the timeless centrepiece that is – The Hills Hoist Clothesline.

This yard is glorious really, in its commitment to basic symmetry. The rectangle – celebrated for it’s four neat corners and ability to hold grass and concrete. If Robert Frost had ever stumbled across 2 backyards in a yellow wood his decision would be made for him here – go to the neighbour’s house. Their yard is a miniature orchard jungle!

(And so all this whining is leading us somewhere, ready?), Here it is - staring us right in the pasty white face – the ultimate FWP of moving house – My new backyard’s more boring than the neighbour’s.

Pff...it seems the only solution to all of this is to get my wellingtons on. And start digging.