2012, Gisborne. A garden of greens among the roses. Greens like mesculin lettuce, mizuna, rocket, and coriander grow quickly.
My family has moved house and garden…again!
Moving house is always a mission. Moving edible gardens takes it to a whole new level. Since beginning my food growing journey 7 years ago, I have created 8 new food gardens on rental properties, and carted countless trailer-loads of pots and compost all around Tairawhiti. If you are keen to grow food, but think it’s a waste of time while you’re renting, I wholeheartedly encourage you to give it a go anyway! Creating a garden on a rental property inherently carries the risk of loss, but I think the benefits outweigh this risk when you can sit down with your family to a fresh, home-grown meal.
Making it easier with an edible portable garden
The use of pots while renting makes sense, and the added bonus is that you can create an instant garden wherever you go! In the latest move, we had three trailer-loads of pots with a third of them retrieved from garden beds, with freshly potted up chamomile, nettle, hollyhocks, mint, sorrel, wallflowers, daylillies, gerberas, lemongrass, sorghum, phacelia and calendula. Our pea plants were about 10cm high, so we potted them up into a huge pot and planted a few calendula, viola, chamomile and poppy seedlings alongside for good measure.
What about the garlic?
Thankfully we moved in the middle of winter, so there were minimal crops in the ground apart from my beloved Garlic. When our landlord broke the news to us, I cried at the thought of having to move the garlic, thinking of all the prep work and planting we had done with our garlic beds the last two months. Only a gardener knows the feeling of having to move a staple crop like garlic. Leaving it behind was not an option, we love garlic too much. Luckily the universe had my back!
The solution started when I broke the news of our move to my friends- the look of genuine concern in their eyes when they said “What about the garlic?”. We had planted 5metres of garlic and there was no immediate place to put it at the new place. Three generous friends offered up space in their own gardens for me to plant it so we had options. The generosity continued when my friend Jo, who was visiting from Melbourne, helped me to dig up one lot and plant in a planter box, while the rest went into an old laundry sink. In hindsight the sink was not the best container as the sink hole clogged up and my garlic almost drowned!
J helping to prep the soil
The garlic stayed in pots for 3-4 weeks until we were able to get it into the ground, amidst unpacking and settling into the new place. In the end our great gardening friend John offered us a large garden patch of our own at his property to plant it out. We then spent a whole day double-digging, composting, fertilising and planting, and now I am so chuffed to say our garlic is in the ground.
Garlic all tucked in at Johns
Compost logistics
Perhaps one of the more difficult things of any edible garden move is the compost. Others don’t seem to have the same enthusiasm for shifting a heap of composting straw, vegetable scraps and manure,. Nor, the fadges of ready-to-go compost which to the untrained eye look like regular old soil. “Where do you want your..er…DIRT?” one of my friends asked with a smirk on his face as he shifted the 15th bag of compost. Ha ha yes, I see where you are going with this. The thing is, that unassuming heap of soil is the engine room of my garden, rich in millions of beneficial soil microbes that will help to give life to our edible plants.
Bagging up our autumn compost, microbes included.
It is also just a bit special to me as it is made up of crops mostly from my own garden, making my garden almost closed-loop, a goal I have been working on for years. Carbon in this compost came from my Sunflowers, Jerusalem artichokes, Magenta Spreen, and Corn all grown in lush, nutrient-rich soil. It’s understandable that I would be more than slightly attached to it. Thankfully our friends are sensitive to our needs and all compost and compost-to-be was moved without a hitch, and are now awaiting new garden beds and fruit trees to inoculate with microbe goodness.
That indescribable garden connection
What is it about saying goodbye to gardens that is so difficult? A friend and I decided that it’s the energy. A garden is a sacred space of unlimited creativity, magic and joy, constantly changing before your eyes as you co-create with nature. You anticipate how it might look, like the self-sown sweet peas that I transplanted along the sunny fence line at our old place. There I was envisioning them in spring, a huge display of them along the fence. I will not see any of that now and can only hope that the new people leave them in long enough to appreciate them. Yet it is beyond my control and the beauty of working with nature is that we can create these moments wherever we go. Yes, it is hard to let go of the beautiful spaces we create, yet they are never really taken away but come along with us to the next place. I am reminded of a great mantra to use when moving gardens – Always leave a place better than when you found it. Indeed we have and I am sure the soil, plants, fruit trees, insects, worms, bugs and bees all agree.
A patch of soil to call our own
So we have now landed on anotherl property, which is a beautifully peaceful property with established gardens, fruit trees and friendly birds and…. it is another rental. I am looking forward to adding to the magic that already exists here and setting up some edible garden beds.
This move has given us the push to find our own place in the sun, and we will continue to seek out a large urban patch to call our own and set up ‘permanent gardens’. Until then we will be designing and planting new edible gardens at the new place, and I encourage you to do the same. Go forth and plant wherever thou shalt be!
This Spring Equinox I am excited to be joining our good friends Setha and Roddy from Setha’s Seeds for their Spring Workshop Series. I will be taking a workshop on Designing your Edible Summer Garden so if you are looking for tips on what to plant, where to plant and when to plant check out the website details and register for a weekend of learning and meeting new friends.
