green manure, new garden

My latest garden thinking project. New garden for next Spring includes the row along the back fence. Photoless until I search the photos archive on the other computer. It was a dip down the fence which was inhabited by weeds and slugs. We layered newspaper (not optimally thick but better than nothing we hope) and then put wood chip mulch from the felled branches out the front. This weekend favourite Handyman layered lawn clippings on top as my latest obsession is carbon: nitrogen balance and the lawn clippings out to add nitrogen to the carbon rich wood chip. I'll buy some lupin seed locally for that whole strip this week.

Today was Bokashi burying day and while adding yet more Bokashi to the edges of the invasive garden patch, I thought it could stand some green manure crops - time to add some competition to the mint/wandering jew/convulvulus/nasturtiums. So in the absence of having any specific green manure crop seed in the seed box, Fionn and I planted some more beneficial insect blend. Time will tell how cold sensitive it turns out to be. At least this will be en masse which is probably how it should be, not lonely plants on the edge of my vege gardens. I am starting, rather tentatively, to push back the invasive part of the invasive patch. I cleared some weeds this afternoon to dig the Bokashi in. Around the actual tree stumps is tricky as I can't dig Bokashi in because of the tree roots and they are too difficult to dig out without specialist (read: expensive) equipment. I think soon I will be ready to haul out a much larger crop of weeds and then create some kind of solution which allows for growth of new plants on top of the tree roots. I could layer newspaper and build raised bed patches around each stump. The soil itself is good, just perennial weed infested. It would be an excellent spot to have a scarecrow. Must discuss that with Fionn.

Saw Raelene the wonderful in the supermarket this afternoon. We made plans to clear out her chook house tomorrow afternoon (i.e. and pass the old bark/chicken poo mix to me in recycled chook feed sacks). She also mentioned bringing back some sheep poo from her brother's farm soon. Big excitement.