Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With Bathurst Burr and Prickly Pear
And noxious weeds all in a row!
While some ‘ostriches’ may still maintain that ‘climate change’ is a figment of Environmental Scientists’ imagination (despite being stared in the face by the factual evidence), there can be no doubt that major changes are already upon us. These are happening at a much faster rate than even the gloomiest foresaw!
The recent (current at the time of writing) uncontrollable bushfires still burning in my home state of Victoria, Australia, are the worst ever recorded. More than 200 souls have perished in the flames; over 2000 homes have been destroyed, and there are still persons not yet accounted for.
Many bodies have been so badly burned it is not possible to discern their sex without post-mortem examination. Identification will have to be determined by dental records/DNA sampling. Alas! The two missing Indonesian students have not yet been traced. Looking at pictures of the burnt out area where they were thought to be, their survival is highly unlikely.
One body of scientific opinion has stated that even if we were to stop polluting emissions this very instant, it would take 1,000 years for a return to pre-existing conditions. Perhaps less than blink in the geological time scale, but some 400 generations given our ephemeral human lives.
Fairfax Media, Australia, recently published an article positing that Australian gardens as we know them today will cease to exist. Much of the arable part of Australia has endured ten years of drought. Water resources are failing and gardens are great consumers of water. The basic premise is that climatic conditions are changing so rapidly our best-loved plants will be unable to adapt and will be lost to us.
The only annual plants which will survive are weeds. Why will this be so? Weeds usually have a short life-cycle. Germination, growth, flowering, seed formation, are rapid – in some cases occurring within two weeks. Seeds are efficiently dispersed and hold their viability for years awaiting suitable conditions.
In happier times, every 4-5 years Australian deserts might get some rain (10ml usually being enough). Within days the desert would be carpeted with wildflowers with tourists flocking to see this rare sight. This prompts us to ask the question:
What is a Weed?
Many home gardeners think of a weed as any plant which grows wherever you do not want it to grow. This fails to recognize that most wanted plants in your garden probably began their early life as weeds. Two of the world’s most useful plants began life as ‘weeds’. They are wheat – Triticum spp – (plus other cereal crops corn, barley, oats, rye, etc.) - and rice - Oryza sativa.
Now lost in the mists of time, our early ancestors somehow made the discovery that the seeds of wheat and rice were satisfying and nourishing. They could also be stored against future need.
Maybe some of the stored grains began to sprout and some ‘bright spark’ thought: ‘Why not put these into the ground? Then we would not have to travel so far to find wild stands of grains and could have a continuous supply’. This led to the age of agriculture, settlement, and the dawn of civilization as we know it today.
How is climate change likely to affect Indonesia in general and Bali in particular? This is conjecture on my part, perhaps on anybody’s part, as we truly have no way of knowing how much and in what way future weather patterns will be disrupted. We can only have opinions based on our existing body of knowledge. We do know that extreme weather conditions affect the entire globe and appear to get worse every year.
My ‘educated guess’ is that arid areas east of the Wallace Line will become even more arid, maybe to the point of desertification. The wet tropics west of this line are likely to become even wetter, perhaps to the point of areas of permanent inundation. Such events will certainly have major influences on such things as food production, population density, health, gross national product to name just a few.
Wet areas will not be without the loss of species – both flora and fauna. While many food producing plants can survive a very wet season, they cannot survive continuous water-logging (even wet rice cultivation needs a dry period). The wet tropics also have many water-loving weeds – just think of the pretty, but invasive, water hyacinth - While kangkung (water spinach) can be a very tasty addition to a meal, it can hardly be a substitute staple food.
In tandem with accelerated research into climate change, we should also be busily looking for alternative basic foods capable of feeding the world. These foods must be able to flourish in extreme conditions, whether it be too much or too little water.
Please send all your gardening questions to
E-mail: gardendoctor09@gmail.com
