The new garden beds are in, filled, and planted out. The three new girls (long story behind that) are getting used to each other and being set up in the triangle coop down in the south-west yard. The back beds have been neatened up, and the paths mulched.
I'm so tired!
The garden beds are Water-Ups, and yes, it's possible to do wicking beds cheaply but I wanted the neatness, the squareness, and to find out how these ones worked.
They're not bad. I might have designed them slightly differently, but they're good and they seem solid. Will report back after a couple of seasons of weather and use! What works, what doesn't, what leaks, what degrades, what holds up!
I had a few friends assisting me in putting them together, clearing and levelling the ground, and fitting everything into place. Luckily we did, because assembling the first one was a job! By the time we got to the second one, one friend had learned enough that she worked out how to do it all by herself. Still, I'd recommend the group effort. More brains, more ideas, more thoughts.
We didn't get around to filling them – I didn't have the soil at the time and I'd only asked for their help until lunch. But it was a great morning, good company, solid workmanship, and practical people solving problems!
Need to do more group working bees. Or even social afternoons, where people can keep their hands busy and just hang out.
I filled the beds with a combination of the mulch that was delivered to my driveway (about 6 cubic metres of it), and the diggings out from the lower chook yard, which hasn't been dug out in...just about ever? Some pretty good quality chook scratchings there!
(Bonus: the guy who I got the mulch from was supposed to invoice me, but he hasn't so...free mulch? He probably saved on the tip fees.)
So it was mulch, chicken yard scratchings, then a layer of sieved compost into which the plants went.
I am indebted to the teenaged garden worker who helped shovel at least three to four of those cubes of mulch – a good kid, I've hired him before to help out. He's nearly adult now, and going to start his own business. Holy moly, they grow fast.
So far as I can tell I planted out:
CAULIFLOWER: Broccolo di Bassano
BROCCOLI: Aurora
BROCCOLI: Di Ciccio
CABBAGE: Savoy Verona Purple
SILVERBEET (Gerry from Crop Swap)
CAVOLO NERO (Gerry from Crop Swap)
BEETROOT (Detroit, various)
CABBAGE: Wombok
And some SNAKE BEANS, because the last ones did just so well, although now they have spidermites, and I really should have cut them down a week ago.
AND there's a WATERMELON hiding in the leaves! Along with a number of PUMPKINS. But pumpkins are old hat. Although one of them is a Very Cool Shape. We're going to have to start eating more pumpkins. Brett and Nici of Limestone Permaculture go through heaps of them, in salads and in soups and all kinds of things. Need to do more of those.
MANGOES are steady (and delicious), and so are the PERSIMMONS – maybe just a little underripe? But I like them on the softer side, while B1 likes them crunchy like an apple. Alas, the POMEGRANATE only had three fruit this year – one got eaten before it was ripe. The second got infected by fruit fly before I picked it. The third...is sitting on the tree, waiting for this weekend, after which it will get picked.
There's a few things waiting on the weekend to be picked other than the pomegranate– the last couple of mangoes, a cucumber or two, and I think some eggplants.
A solar battery should be installed by the end of next month. Possibly by the end of this month? One hopes so. And, damn, I need to tell the installer that we're going for the larger size. Also installed in a slightly different place to where we initially agreed.
That, or I'm going to have to move the watertank. That will be An Undertaking And A Half.
Anyway, tomorrow looms. I feel my garden isn't very impressive, but familiarity breeds contempt and comparisons only serve to make us bitter.
The goal for hosting a garden on the trail is to inspire others to growing even a little of their own food. We all need to ease ourselves off the utter dependence on the industrial food chain.
No comments:
Post a Comment