Everything's Apples

These gardeners battle unpredictable weather to create a biodiverse organic orchard and veggie garden

- Claire Bickle

On Queensland’s Darling Downs, 30km north of Toowoomba, lies the rural village of Hampton, home to Justin and Kylie Russell and their three children, Marley, 11, Monty, 9, and Fergus, 7. Their acre-and-a-half (0.6ha) property, Thistlebrook, was originally part of a dairy farm that was subdivided back in the 1970s.

This region on the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range is not part of subtropical Queensland. According to Justin, it receives around 35 to 45 frosts between March and October. The temperature quite often drops to -5°C and occasionally as low as a rather chilly -8°C.

Springtime is usually dry and the summer months warm to hot — and getting hotter, the Russells have observed. Rainfall is variable but the yearly average is around 1000mm.

Since the disastrous floods of 2010, the weather at Thistlebrook “has swung wildly from feast to famine, from flood to drought,” says Justin. “The flooding stripped the free-draining soil of its nutrients and it’s taken quite some time to bring it back to its previous level of fertility.”

All in all, these unpredictable weather extremes present quite a challenge to a gardener — even one as experienced and resourceful as Justin Russell.

THE LIFE AND TIMES

Although gardening is in Justin’s genes, as we shall see, he freely admits he regarded it as a bit of chore until he met and married Kylie and they bought their own quarter-acre block in 1998. Inspiration suddenly struck and the couple got serious about their patch of earth. They planted a big permaculture-designed organic veggie garden and have never looked back.