Interview With A Gardener - Me, The HoneyBee!
So I suddenly realized, I interview all these other people about their gardens, how they start off things, their favorite plants, but have never said how I do things! Silly me.
So, as it is my birthday soon, why not, so, without further ado, here is interview with a HoneyBee.
What is my favourite thing to grow?
Bits of everything really, I do have a soft spot for natives and fruiting plants.
What do I find most rewarding to grow?
Anything edible, I find it extremely satisfying harvesting my own produce, although I tend to eat more of it than comes in the house.
What first inspired me to get into gardening?
My mum has always had an amazing garden, no matter where we have lived, and a lot of the times, especially as I grew older I would help create them. Then, it was my mum who told me I should get an apprenticeship in horticulture, and she was right, to this day it is my happy place, helping people with plants, finding new ones and creating my own masterpiece.
What is one tip I'd like to give a fellow green thumb?
Keep on trialing different things, reach out for help, or inspiration. Also get yourself some decent tools, especially secateurs, they don't have to be the most expensive, but go quality. I have had my Felco's for the last 15 years, and I love my Fiskars.
What is the most useful tool or accessory I have?
My hands and my secateurs, I pull a lot of things by hand, especially my grass, which I dislike with a passion, but I love my secateurs, they just make life easier.
How do I decide what to grow?
I try plan, but I have about 30 of them, all different, so generally it's what ever takes my fancy when I see it, this means I end up with a lot of different plants but I love them all!
Can I tell you a bit about my garden?
At the moment my garden, to me feels like it's a tad in shambles. There has been a lot of cleaning and clearing. I have a 1012m2 block, fairly evenly distributed between front and back. When we moved in it had been left to go a tad wild, lots and lots of weeds, sheds falling down, plants overgrown and not thriving, so a lot of this last year has been getting everything back to health and reasonable sizes. There are many roses out the front, which have taken a lot to get back to looking nice, many bags of compost, fertilizers, manures, and clay, but still, I have lost a few.
The established fruit trees fruit trees were heavily overgrown, with huge chunks of deadwood that needed to be removed. There's also a chonky palm that still needs many more dead fronds removed.
I have put a lot of time and care in though, and it is coming back to life, with many insects, geckos, skinks, birds and bees now calling our garden home once again. The frangipani is coming back to life, the mulberry fruited excessively this season, the native frangipani flowered prolifically, and my fruit trees have given it a go a bearing this year, even my poor citrus, who everyone thought was a lost cause!
My grape fruited heavily this year, producing amazingly tasty fruits (bit heavy on seeds), although the wasps and my bees got to most of them before we did. Next year bagging will be essential, although, we will still leave some for the wildlife.
I've also started building and installing fence panels made form old pallets off a local property, to define a few areas, like my pending veggie garden, and chicken area, to protect them from trampling paws.
There is much to still do, but each day I will give it my all.
Tell us a bit about myself?
Now in my 30's (ugh), my wife and I relocated back down to the south west in March 2024 after selling our Perth property with our many many animals. It has been quite a journey. The house was built in 1961, with one family prior, so there has been much renovation, but it has a wonderful blank canvas of a garden, so this will keep me happily busy.
We have a few chickens, which we have raised from day old's, a beehive, which this coming season, should start producing harvestable honey, and a couple of fruit trees; figs, banana, apricot, nectarine, grape, mulberries, ice-cream bean, but I plan on adding heavily to this list, creating almost a food forest effect.
We both love adventure, but I love the bush and outdoors, each spring into early summer, heading out trying to find as many types of native bee as possible, and then in winter doing the same, but with fungi! As it turns out, my new garden is a haven for both!
What do I find my most useful resource?
I do love books still, and have a decent range of gardening, bee, and fungi books. However there are some fabulous resources and groups on Facebook:
. BUG - Bunbury Urban Growers
. Native Bees of Western Australia
. Bee Aware of Your Native Bees
. Western Australian Fungi
Also podcasts! I rarely listen to music anymore instead tuning in to All The Dirt, Bees With Ben, and Mushroom Revival, and anything else bee related.
How do I control weeds?
Honestly, I rarely do. They make a great source of food for my honey bees, and the native bees that share our home. If I must, I will try hand pull, only in severely extreme cases using chemicals, but I will try use the least toxic one as possible. To me, a weed is just a plant growing in an undesirable place.
How do I start seeds?
I will generally just throw them into the garden and hope for the best with things like flowers. My vegetables I will sow directly where I want them, after improving the soil or potting mixes with mushroom compost and manures.
Anything else I would like to share?
Never give up, you will loose a few plants along the way, but you will find what succeeds, listen to the land, listen to your soil.
Also kerbside collection has many treasures, I have found many bird baths, pots, and obelisks, all from the side of the road, most able to go straight into my own garden, nothing needed.
What is my all time favourite plant?
Ooooo, I don't think I have one, I am extremely fond of natives and fruiting trees/plants, and have an extensive bucket list of both.
So that's me, interview with the Honeybee.
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