Work Done #1

Well things didn't pan out quite as planned...so I've learnt my lesson to just post an entry *after* the work is done!



The potatoes are hiding underneath those poking-out-of-the-ground-sticks, which you can see if you click on the photo. The teepee (which ended up being made out of ti-tree, including one branch a neighbour cut down just as we were looking for some, coz the bamboo had disappeared) will be home to peas and not beans, which apparently don't need a support. The beans got plonked in between the potatoes instead.
There are also half a dozen each of buttercrunch lettuce, sprouting broccoli and dill. Plus an impulse buy (to make up for the absentee-tomatoes) - a cape gooseberry. That, along with the plum, J12's blueberry bushes, the grapevine and round the corner, K8's mandarin, L6's lime, K9's lemon and a passionfruit vine are making this side of the house a real fruit bowl! And at the front is another plum tree and J11's feijoas too.
(not to mention the strawberries in the vege patch and the wild blackberry which is trying to encroach on said patch - although after falling over this morning and ending up with a butt impaled by blackberry barbs, I think I might make more of an effort to convince it to go elsewhere!!)

But right now I've got seeds to plant. Here they are, waiting to be planted into the tray. When they sprout, they'll go and meet the other plants in the garden - I might even be able to follow Woodrow's lunar planting scheme! Right now I'm just lunatic-trying-to-get-seeds-growing-as-fast-as-possible.




PLUS: one exciting discovery. Grass clippings might not be the *best* thing to dump on a patch of bare earth.....but they are better than nothing. The patch in the middle had had more than its fair share of the crop over the year, with diminishing allocations being made the further out one was to go. Underneath the fresh clippings from yesterday, I discovered.....at the outside - rock hard clay that was so dry you couldn't even break into it......and right in the middle - first of a layer of older clippings and then a layer of thick black crumbly compost-imposter. It truly looked just like the compost coming out of the purchased bag! But underneath that was the real treat. The soil was damp, you could dig it, it was crumbly and best of all it was teeming with worms.
Woodrow will be proud of me - I am converted - I believe in mulching.

This gardening thing is almost a spiritual experience huh!