After a 3 week search for feral bamboo growing along the local creek lines Paul finally tracked some down a bit futher afield up in the foothills of Adelaide. "Bloody hard to find these days", he lamented to me a number of times before his search was successful. "Those councils with all their weed eradication schemes. I wonder what the Italians do when they need to build a trellis?"
I remember my Polish father doing the same thing. We lived a hundred metres from Sturt Creek, which before it was turned into a concrete drain in 1967 was a waterway filled with critters- water rats, trout, and (I swear I saw one once), platypus. My dad used to trap rabbits for dinner, foxes were everywhere and even the occassional roo would wander down from the creeks source in the Adelaide Hills.
But along with the feral animals, there were lots of weeds... nastursium, fennel, olive trees and masses of bamboo. Dad used to them to train up his cucumbers and as tomato stakes.
Paul decided to follow in this fine woggy tradition.
Heres some pics from my fact finding mission of the 16th of October.
Corn in his South-eastern plot. Way behind mine at this point, but I prefer using the hose. Drip irrigation on corn? "May you live in interesting times" Pauly.
The North western plot. I've seen more edible stuff in the Nevada desert. Apparently if you look hard enough you'll see some peas that have just germinated. The challenge starts 2nd January, not the 2nd of June matey.
The north eastern plot. A nice crop of tomato bush and silverbeet. Not too many tomato flowers to be seen, but it's early days. When tomatoes finally take off in Adelaide, they just GO. Paul did show a great deal of concern about the flower to bush ratio on his quite well advanced tomatoes. I estimated it as about 0.0
And finally... just check out the internode lengths on this tomato. A little bit too much cow shit and worm juice perhaps. I might give Paul a gentle reminder that you grow tomato bushes to eventually pick and eat those round red globey things that show up a bit later in December.
Oh I guess that if all else fails, JenkoBianco may be the last custodian of the long and noble art of bamboo trellis construction. I can see it now. After he's long gone grey (that's a joke folks), he'll be passing down his knowledge to a new cohort of people of distant Italian and Greek decent who want to re-connect with their roots.
