Tim's Blog

I am just back again from Tasmania, my fourth trip in just over a year. Yes, we do travel a great deal and burning all that fuel and adding more CO2 and other pollutants to the atmosphere could be a problem, except for the following:

• I always by carbon offsets
• I have spent much of my life working in carbon-positive farm forestry, quarry rehabilitation and large-scale or on-farm revegetation projects
• Much of our work at TM Organics is convincing people or training them to adopt organic practices – with very positive outcomes for soil carbon sequestration, reduction in use of energy dense farm inputs
• Other aspects of my life are organised around a fairly non-consumptive, low impact, self-sufficient lifestyle

In Tasmania I was again greatly impressed by the natural environment and abundant water. Indeed 2009 was the wettest winter on record!

I was even more impressed over the last few visits to see that home vegetable gardening and small scale commercial gardening skills are alive and well in Tasmania. Interest in home vegetable, fruit and herb production is growing again around Australia and the world, but the art and science of small-scale production is never better than in Tasmania.

Several reasons come to mind.

• Tasmania does have an excellent climate for gardening. Yes winters can be cold, especially in the hilly country, but many parts of Tasmania are also moderated by maritime proximity. Also the 41st parallel of longitude is well recognised around the world (northern and southern hemisphere) as providing an excellent climate with a long frost-free and sunny growing period. In fact the lack of intensely hot summers does not severely limit gardening, other than restricting the potential for subtropical crops such as bananas.

• Perhaps because of the first point, Tasmania has a long history of keen gardeners and organic production, with top-notch producers and mentors. David Stephens and Peter Cundall spring to mind immediately, but there have been many others. Peter Abetz, Jonathan Sturm, Allen Gilbert Ian Cairns and a long list of other skilful gardeners have always delighted my on my visits to Tasmania, with their gardens that are not only productive but also highly ornamental and pleasing to the eye. Jon Sturm, by the way, is one of the few non-TMO staff who write for our website (see our horticulture and gardening stories).

• Also closely aligned to the points above, and in common with New Zealand, because of its clean air and rugged beauty, Tasmania has always attracted environmentally minded immigration. I can’t fail to connect a strong surge of environmental settlers to that nuclear-holocaust scare mongering faze of cinema that produced the film On The Beach. The film publicized the idea that Tasmania had some of the cleanest air – there being no landfall west of Tasmania until the southern tip of South America, and therefore would receive little radiation fallout in the event of a nuclear war. Building on this initial input, the reputation continued to grow. It explains in part why Tasmania and New Zealand were some of the first places in the world to have strong green parties with balance-of-power status in the parliament.

Check out the photos below of Steve Solomon’s garden to see what I mean by a productive and visually pleasing garden.

By the way, I have been contributing favourite titles from my vast collection of old-time organic garden and farming books to Steve’s online library website, www.soilandhealth.org - it is well worth a look.