Weekend gardener: it’s garlic time
Garlic
Garlic may be planted from now until the shortest day in June. Choose a sunny spot with welldrained soil and dig in compost and blood and bone. For nonanimal alternatives, dig in alfalfa pellets, sold as rabbit food, and during the growing season apply kelp or seaweed fertiliser.
Use some of your biggest cloves from last season, or buy them from a garden centre, rather than the greengrocer as one sold for consumption are often sprayed with a growth inhibitor. Plant the cloves 10cm apart about 4cm deep with the pointed end facing up. Water well and mulch with peastraw or the like.
Once the shoots emerge, feed every fortnight with a liquid fertiliser high in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
Edibles
Sow a green manure crop without delay – for maximum effect sow multiple species such as oats, mustard and lupin. Rhizobia (the soil bacteria that fix nitrogen from the roots of legumes) don’t function in cool soil, so they have only another couple of months or so to do their thing. Green manure crops should be dug into the garden in late winter/early spring.
Beetroot, carrots, lettuce, mesclun, rocket, silver beet and spinach may still be sown.
Weed soft fruit, such as raspberries, blackcurrants and gooseberries and mulch with rotted manure or compost.
Plant spring cabbages and cauliflower.
Encourage strawberry plants’ runners to root by pinning them down with a bent wire. Once the runners are established (look for the new plants’ leaves growing atop them), the new plants may be moved to a new spot should the existing bed be getting crowded.
Ornamentals
Autumn-sown sweet peas tend to be stronger than spring-sown ones. Sow now in a sheltered sunny spot in well-drained and rich soil. Sweet peas are gross feeders – so dig in plenty of compost, rotted manure and a sprinkling of lime and blood and bone (or alfalfa pellets). Also provide something for them to climb up, such as a trellis or wire-netting.
The time to start sowing new lawns or repairing old ones is approaching. Such areas should be weed-free. Fresh soil may need to be brought to give new seed a better chance of success.
The type of lawn seed needs to be investigated – does it need to be hard-wearing or do you favour the lush velvet look?. Dog owners may prefer to have avoid dog urine burns on lawns by using clover instead of grasses.
America’s southern border is haunted by death. Children die of thirst as they try to cross. Body after body is found in the mesquite scrub. Illegal immigrants are hunted mercilessly. The lucky ones are deported back to Mexico.
The first of the book’s three sections describes Cantu´ ’s experiences as an agent dealing with illegal immigrants – the Mexicans seeking better pay or reunion with family members in the US, along with the ever-present drug-runners. With electronic sensors, informants, and known trails, the ability to cross successfully into America is dramatically hindered.
Cantu´ makes the general tragedy into an individual one. Incidents and encounters are swift and dramatic. Everyone has a story. The short chapters flash with personalised adrenaline.
The memoir’s second part deals with Cantu´ ’s discovery as an intelligence officer that the moral compromises he makes on a daily basis are just as surely eroding his own humanity. exploration of an arbitrary line and the conflicts of conscience it creates.
To be a border agent is to become a human bulwark against a movement of people in search of better things. Desensitisation and burn-out are both destructive. Cantu´ ’s sleep is filled with teeth-grinding nightmares. A figure of a wolf constantly hovers over him.
Cantu´ is a subtle writer. He frames contemporary events with historic precedents and he has an eye for the telling detail.
is a journalistic