Gardening Lesson No. 1: know your soil BEFORE you buy your plants.

Well, in today’s post I wanted to introduce you to the vege garden I am (or was) planning.  I’m renting at the moment, but as there are two neat raised beds behind the garage receiving sun for most of the day, I decided I would chuck in some seeds to keep me busy over the next 6 months … good practice for when I get a more permanent vege patch. 

A couple of weeks ago I incorporated two bags of cow manure and threw in some radish, carrot and salad leaf seeds.  I also bought seeds for sunflowers, dwarf beans, lettuce, wildflowers and pumpkin and was just waiting for the Canberra weather to get a bit warmer before putting in those.  I have visions of three months from now, glass of cider in hand, smug look on face, surveying six square metres of lush, edible produce.

Now, I’m not an experienced vegetable gardener, but I do know the two easiest things to grow are radish and salad leaves.  So I knew something was wrong when after three weeks I had only a very low rate of germination and those seedlings that had come up were only tiny (less than 1cm high).  Radish should be harvestable after four weeks!  The salad leaves should be identifiable by now as rocket vs mustard!

I decide that the soil is rather sandy and needs some more structure, so off to the local garden centre to buy some compost.  Checking with the clever-lady-who-knows-everything, I explain the problem and ask which compost to buy.  To cut a painful conversation short … “Have you considered that you may have found the previous tenants’ sandpit?” Bugger.

This section of the blog will now be devoted to Plants That Thrive In Sand, or How To Convert a Sandpit into an Attractive Feature without Trucking in Loads of Topsoil.

Genetically predisposed to fungi.

I’m very depressed because Autumn’s arriving in England now and I’m missing mushroom foraging season because I’m working in Australia.  I LOVE fungi; I love coming across them in the woods; I love trying to identify them; I love how they work.  Let me tell you about how I discovered that I’m genetically predisposed to mushroom fascination…

Once upon a time, about five English Autumns ago, I signed up for a weekend botanical painting course to start learning how to do botanical paintings.  I was particularly attracted to one course with tutor Moya Davern because the subject matter would be fungi.  I mentioned the fact that I’d enrolled for this course to my Mum.  She revealed that a relative of her father had been a mycologist (studier of fungi) in South Africa in the early 20th century.  Knowing (from bitter experience) that as an academic you have to publish to justify your existence, I decided to Google this relative – Averil Bottomley – to see whether she had in fact published. 

Amazingly, what I found on an antiquarian bookseller’s site was a book by AM Bottomley called Gasteromycetes of South Africa.  I ordered the book and a few days later opened it to find botanical descriptions of mushrooms, enhanced with literary references as well as beautiful colour plate illustrations of each mushroom.  Can you just imagine how delighted I was, just about to go on a course to learn about painting fungi, to find that a relative had produced this lovely book of fungi with paintings!  I also found other publications by her: The development of South African mycology and of the mycological herbarium at Pretoria (1929); and also the delightful Intensive Mushroom-growing for the Amateur. 

Doing another Google on AM Bottomley yesterday, I found a recent article providing a historial summary of mycology in South Africa and includes reference to Averil as well as another female mycologist of the time, Dr Doidge.  This article prompted me to look into Averil’s life again.  I emailed my Mum with instruction to extract as much info as possible from my Granny on my fungi-expert relative.  Here’s her email. 

I asked Granny about Averil and it seems that she and Grandpa were second cousins.   Their mothers were sisters (Elizabeth and Isabel plus another sister Aileen who was Bob Lucas’s mother).   All three sisters shared the same grandmother who was called Granny Clark.   Granny Clark must have been a bit of a personality because I remember her being referred to throughout my childhood.   She was Grandpa’s mother’s granny.   Not a very close blood tie so it’s quite a coincidence that you share her interest in shrooms.   Another coincidence is that Averil had a seaside cottage at Anerley where Granny now lives.   Marion has managed to identify the cottage.   The cottage next door to hers was owned by a man referred to as Mr Winkworth who sounds like he might have been a lover because he promised to leave his cottage to Averil when he died.   In the end he didn’t, apparently because he forgot to write it in his will.   Averil spent long summer holidays there every year with her mother (several months a year).   Granny says she was better known for her interest in seaweed than in mycology although Granny mentioned (without any prompting) her supervisor, Dr Doidge (mentioned in the article), and said that it was always well known that Averil was a much better botanist than Dr Doidge but because her family couldn’t afford the cost she wasn’t able to take her doctorate.   Granny also said that Averil wrote books on seaweed and also a book on pruning.   Mr Winkworth was a pioneer in the cultivation of mushrooms which he sold very successfully.

It’s astonishing to me that my interest in mushrooms, which I developed with no prompting from my parents, is something I appear to have inherited. 

The way I understand is this: much as the mycelia of fungi connect different generations of the fruiting bodies of fungi just beneath the ground, so does an interest and knowledge of mushrooms perpetuate through generations of mushroom-lovers!

How To Live … Vivienne Westwood style.

There are benefits of climate change. Yes, the impacts of climate change are terrifying. But there’s also a very positive (albeit necessary) effect of our current predicament, which is that people are looking for a more localised way to live. More and more people want to work locally, make friends locally and live off the land around them.

One of the most inspiring proponents of a life lived locally is Vivienne Westwood. Vivienne believes that wherever you live you should get to know your immediate environment intimately. If you live in the city, get involved – switch off the TV, go and visit galleries, get involved in culture. If you live in the country get to know the wild flowers around you – learn their names and their habits. Westwood has written a fabulous Manifesto on the nature of being human, and art, featuring conversations between Alice, Pinocchio, Aristotle, Diogenes and others, here.

Vivienne Westwood has also started a campaign called Active Resistance. Her Active Resistance website, Get A Life, is not fully up and running yet, but its home page reads:

At the present rate of deforestation the Rainforest will be gone by 2040.

If we lose it – we won’t stop Climate Change.

Climate Change is the greatest problem faced by the human race.

The only chance we have to solve all our problems is if we see everything in the context of Climate Change and this includes culture.

We are dangerously lacking in Culture – the whole 20th century was a mistake.

Art Lovers Unite!

Food (locally grown of course!) for thought from Vivienne Westwood.

Hello!

Hello and welcome to my blog about all things botanical.  Ever since I was little, I’ve been fascinated by things that emerge from out of the ground, off the side of trees, on top of cow dung, underneath fallen logs, out of shells, from inside pods.  I can’t pass by without examining and wondering about a newly sprouted mushroom, a perfect specimen of vegetable, an unknown species of fruit, a particularly well-engineered seed, or proud-looking flower. 

I also love botanical illustration, paintings and photos – mostly to look at, but I do sometimes have a go at producing too.  Sadly, my day job is currently nothing to do with any of these things!  What I do hope is that writing this blog will be the start of a transition away from my current Office Job towards a new Earth Job.  If you love these things too, and especially if you’ve transitioned from an Office Job to an Earth Job, please get in contact. xx, J.