Earlier in the week three quarters of an hour was spent clearing the spring flush of weeds out from one of the rose garden beds. There’s a lot of plant growth this month, but not a whole bunch of produce to consume. Even some of the stored stuff has reached beyond the time when it needs to get back in the ground. Anyone who has ever put their finger into a large winter stored zucchini (courgette) and experienced a sudden gush of water, will know what I mean. Even stoic thick skinned pumpkins will sprout furry looking moulds. Probably inedible. Potatoes start shrivelling and produce weird looking eyes. Basically, in traditional times, October (or April in the upside down northern hemisphere) would be the month you’d starve to death, or as I say about broody hens: lose a lot of condition.
Thank Gawd for the shops and produce brought in from far distant warmer lands! So despite the lack of edible stuff growing here, starving is not a risk at least this year. However, the thought got the old brain wondering about the cycles of the food which we grow here. What better way to present it all, than a natty Gantt chart. Here it is:
I’ve probably forgotten some edibles, like kale, leeks and chives, and oh my, the kiwi fruit and tree nut crops. The forest critter predation on those last two is unrelenting and probably deserves a bullet or four, although sadly I’m not allowed to do so. I’m sure the almonds, chestnuts and hazelnuts they’ve enjoyed to date were superb. Also, we grow all sorts of herbs which are too numerous to mention. It’s funny though, my lunch today was in synch with the chart because it included: Green Mustard + Rocket + Herbs + A couple of fried eggs + Tasty Cheddar Cheese. Stodge was provided by way of some freshly baked chunks of oven warm bread slathered with peanut butter and homemade jam. Yes, the meal of champions, and I was in need of the energy refresh because I’d been jack hammering away at a large boulder for hours beforehand. By the late lunch hour of 2:00pm, I was a tad hungry.
Having been at this growing business for almost two decades, you learn a thing or two. The climate here is just a little bit too cold for bread wheat, which is a bit of a bummer because I actually enjoy home made fresh loaves. Oh well, quality high protein flour can at least be purchased in decent quantities at a reasonable price. The plan this summer is to try some buckwheat. And maybe oats in future years.
You have to be onto a lot of stuff though. Being a canny and resourceful bloke I know that buckwheat seeds have to adapt to the day length, so I sourced them from the island state way to the south of here. Hopefully they’re cold adapted too, but we’ll find out. For all of the other plants, we produce plenty of our own seeds, and some of these edibles have possibly become a bit weedy – which is a good thing in my books. Working out how to do all this stuff year in and year out, is not as simple as the average dilettante may believe.
We’re learning all of the time, and then refining the systems to incorporate the new knowledge. Right now when we’d otherwise be going hungry, many of the garden beds are being prepared for the summer growing season. Then the inevitable weeding keeps two people more than in need of a decent feed. But when you get systems right, it’s a thing of beauty. A few weeks ago radish seeds were started in the greenhouse, and they’re looking good and now ready to harvest:
The spicy bulbs get chucked into fresh garden salads, and the leaves make an awesome pesto. Few plants germinate then grow fast in cool soil like radish, which surprises me that it is not more widely consumed. Interestingly, that entire long raised garden bed enjoys only 10L / 2.6 Gallons of water per day. Doesn’t need any more than that. People love intensive gardening and all power to them and stuff, but look at the decent spacing between each plant in the above photo. Nice if you have the room, but more spacing does tend to grow less stressed out plants which are simply hardier and less demanding. I wouldn’t have believed that claim two decades ago, but the experiment has been run, and the results are in.
Trying to get new plants from old is not as simple as people would believe either, and it’s different for every species. We’ve recently been creating two large garden beds close to the house so as to grow edible plants and let them naturally form seed which we can collect. You need a lot of room to do that activity, and sadly those same plants have to be rotated to new soil each year as well. Crop rotation being a real thing. It’s all a bit of a challenge for the brain, but we’re up for that.
Another way to get new plants is to clone them. One of my favourite fruits is the sub-tropical Babaco, which can only survive the winter here in the unheated greenhouse, and even then by early spring, it looks very ill. It’s probably the only sub-tropical plant which can over-winter here, although a few of the chilli’s are also struggling through. Anyway, the fruit is awesome but the seeds are sterile so it has to be grown from cuttings. Some plants are easy to do that, others, not so much. We took some decent looking shoots off the Babaco, and banged them in the ground – and they seem to be growing!
It’s a good thing thing that they’re growing too, because the originating plant from whence they came, may not fruit beyond this year. We’ve also begun several cuttings of the best producing grape vine. The grape enclosure has about ten different varieties of multi purpose table and wine grapes, and a few of them suffer from a fungus, probably because they’ve been grown out of their usual climate zone. Unsurprisingly the best performing variety was sourced from a local garden where it was brought to the country from Italy (presumably the northern hillier country) almost a century and half a go. A good gardener has to develop some ruthlessness and pull out the non-performing plants and replace them with something that does work, and if those fun-guy ridden vines don’t recover, they’re out.
Fortunately we’re not subsistence farming at this location as we can purchase extra food grown elsewhere! But, if in this lean month when possibly facing future grim realities, those pesky kiwi fruit and nut crop munching forest critters would be starting to look like a meal. And given what they’re eating, they’d probably taste pretty good too. Fortunately for them that there are markets, shops and wholesale suppliers of food!
This week the terrace with the Globe artichokes was prepared for the summer growing season. Over winter I’d let the soil become a bit weedy so as to assist with the still yet to be fully sorted out matter of: crop rotation cycles.
We both estimated that it would take twenty minutes to weed those two long rows. Turned out that it was closer to two or three hours of work. We’d discovered heaps of seedling vegetables (Russian kale, Silverbeet and Green mustard) and had to move all of those.
A trailer load of compost + something from the sea + garden lime + gypsum + blood and bone meal, was mixed up and chucked onto the garden beds:
The garden beds look pretty neat and ready for whatever the growing season brings. The Globe artichokes need to be moved out of that bed, but they apparently transplant quite easily.
We’re not 100% sure what we’ll grow in the wider of the two beds, and it may be a mix of corn and buckwheat. The narrower bed received all of the volunteer self seeded vegetables, most of which have survived the relocation process.
The new path below the house project continued this week. The path surface received four trailer loads of crushed rock with lime.
Alert readers will realise that the lime placed upon the many paths and surfaces around the land, go a long way towards fertilising the entire property, albeit on a very slow basis.
A few weeks ago a goodly load of large rocks were brought uphill and dumped at the other end of this new path.
But firstly the area between the two large house water tanks needed to be fixed up. Whenever there is a very large storm, which can exceed four inches of rain in an hour, or involve stupendous amounts of ice from crazy hail storms (hope never to see that again), the soil between the two tanks gets washed away.
A strong rock wall was created at the bottom with three successive points of failure. It is after all a steep emergency water spillway. A spoon drain was dug into the path to direct water away from the tanks. And cement was added between the water tanks where the erosion is always the worst. Will it all be enough? We’ll find out sooner or later. But it is better than what was there.
Once completed, the rock wall on the downhill side of that emergency spillway, was strengthened with larger rocks which should further reduce the impact of the water.
Eventually three more trailer loads of crushed rock with lime were placed on the path surface. There’s probably another two loads to chuck down, and that will be the entire project completed!
Observant readers may ask the hard question, what is the grey metal rounded thing on the left hand side of the above photo. That is the fire protection screen for the house water pump. The purpose is to shield the electric water pump from radiant heat, and there are two layers of metal protection. It’s probably ideal if the water pump continues to stay cool and operate during a bushfire so best if it doesn’t overheat and cut out.
Looking at path from the other end, you can see the sloping garden beds where we’ll do the seed production for edible plants.
And because not enough work was done this week, I began breaking apart a boulder into very large rocks.
Three hours of hard work produced seven large rocks which will be useful in a yet to be begun new path project up above the house.
Turns out, the boulder was much bigger than it appeared at about three foot thick.
The apricots continue to swell in size, and hopefully it is a good year for the fruit.
Alarmed readers need not fear, the many parrots living on the farm will happily thin the trees – for free!
With the warmth this week, and the rain the previous one, the fern fronds are positively jumping out of the ground!
Oh yeah, on Saturday whilst heading down to the supplier to pick up another load of crushed rock with lime, I noticed a steam train at the local station. It was quite the juxtaposition to see both new and old vehicles side by side.
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 11am is 16’C (61’F). So far for this year there has been 1,009.6mm (39.7 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 1,009.0mm (39.7 inches)
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