feeding the food

Today I finally had a little more space to garden. At first everything looked fine and then I realised actually there was so much needing done that I didn't know where to start. Here's what I did do in the end:

1. Transplanted more purple sprouting brocolli, pak choi and swiss chard. Chilled out over the loss of more seedlings to the bold apprentice. Opted not to use the watering can after she half filled it with dirt.

2. Emptied the seaweed fertiliser over my newest (made in January) raised bed. I buried the kelp chunks in the wood chip. I read in the latest Organic NZ magazine that you should only plant legumes in wood chip mulch as it will use the ground's nitrogen stores to decompose. I figure the seaweed should help and indeed it looks like I'll be starting off with legumes in that garden rather than garlic. I was thinking strawberries and something else with them after that.

3. Decided the reason the kale is yellowing on the lower leaves in the wood chip mulched potager (such a lovely and also swanky word for veg/flower/herb garden) but is not in the punga raised bed which doesn't have wood chip on it. Woodchip eating the nitrogen. So although I'm not sure that comfrey is nitrogen rich, I know that it is generally very nutrient rich and I have large leaves out the front. So I cut them, leave them to wilt a little round the kale and then remember the wind factor this evening and buried them slightly under wood chip, still around the yellowing kale. Next lot of chicken coop clearings (mixed bark and chicken poo but I would have thought still nitrogen heavy) will go into this garden to balance the carbon-nitrogen ration out better. Should be 80:20 carbon: nitrogen from memory.

4. Filled an old potting mix bag with seed heads of a weed I have yet to identify plus some dock seed heads also - this mostly from the lawn which has needed mowing for about a month. They won't be going into my compost.

5. Cut laterals off the tomatoes, some of them huge. I had stopped this task a few weeks ago because I'd thought I'd done it for long enough. Why? They kept on growing, many at funny angels and from the base of the plant yet again. Chopped any flowers off as with the cooling weather, any growth needs to go into the last tomatoes with a viable chance of ripening.

6. I've been thinking about crop rotation. It will be much looser than I'd planned in Spring of last year. Currently I have swiss chard and brassicas together because that is where the space is - nothing fancier than that. I will put garlic in where the tomatoes currently are and something else with it. That patch had legumes last winter. The newest bed will get lupins most likely. The tobacco bed, which needs more weeding then I can face even contemplating, will give way to broad beans for winter. Not that I like them especially, but it makes sense for some of the winter legumes to be edible and perhaps this time I will make fava dip. The bed nearest the kitchen which was brassicas and swiss chard when I first planted after we moved in in October 06, then garlic and now mostly pansies and lettuces, will give way increasingly to perennial herbs. I have chives, feverfew and parsley there so far. The other herb spot is too small to suffice.

7. I learnt that caterpillars like tamarillo leaves. A lot. Killed several this evening. The feijoa tree has settled in nicely, much better than the lemon tree, which is going to need replacing by the looks of it.

8. Discussed tobacco drying with Favourite Handyman. Needs to be done very very soon. He has a plan which involves pegging the leaves to old washing line which used to be hanging in the garage at our previous home. Then hanging that in the big garden shed, and the spillover in the garage if need be. So I guess I'll go buy hundreds of pegs tomorrow. They'll get reused no problem.