A South Australian Veggie Patch

by Julie
(Hammond, South Australia)

Taken early Dec 2009

Hammond is a ghost town that sits smack bang on the middle of the Willochra Plains...and it is also North of Goyders Line. Both of these facts make growing veggies an ongoing battle...but each season we manage to work out another strategy, and the veggies and fruit trees are going pretty well now.
We are now adding hessian to the whole boundary fence to try and ease the impact of the hot gales. The shadecloth covers the entire garden/orchard and it's removed once the temps regularly stay below 35 or so. We see many many days of temps between 40 and 50C, and many days of gale force winds ( and dust storms). I'm actually surprised at how well everything has survived this season, so we must be doing some stuff right.