Monday, July 7, 2008

Midwinter

Even though it is the middle of winter, we are still blessed with much greenery and growth. The first photo is of one of the pungas in Brighid's forest. Favourite Handyman planted these pungas the day our daughter was born in January 2007.The second photo is of our broad beans. These beans don't get any direct sun in winter but they are growing well enough nevertheless. We haven't staked them all but they are (hopefully) fixing nitrogen anyway and I'm sure we'll get some broad beans to eat even if they are flopping on the ground. I planted them back in March.

These swiss chard or silverbeets are growing in the shade also and seem to be doing well. This area was totally overrun by weeds and trees not too long ago and now we are eating off it. I chop some leaves off these plants each week for soups and stews.This fourth photo is beside the pungas and the silverbeet/swiss chard. I cleared it and buried bokashi in it and planted some beneficial insect blend seeds. Immediately, lots of onion weed germinated and colonised much of the area. I haven't got around to eating any onion weed yet, but I will.
Photo five is the corner of the invasive garden patch. You can see some silverbeet in the midground, our sad little attempt at a scarecrow in the background and in the foreground a wet patch where we left tyres and managed to kill the grass. I've buried bokashi in that spot and come summer we'll grow something to eat in it. It doesn't get more than a sliver of sun at the moment, but that will improve as the sun stays higher in the sky in coming months. We used the tyres for an experiment with growing potatoes last year but it wasn't successful and they are now laying around until I think of a good use for them. You have to pay to drop tyres off at the local landfill so I'll be making sure we think of a home-based use for them.

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