Flourishing Today

 This is the recycled gutter garden that we built earlier this year with the Bok Choy flowering and attracting lots of bees. Hopefully they will self-seed into the gardens around them and we have enjoyed being able to pick fresh leaves every day for weeks and weeks. The native violets also attract bees and as the thyme grows bigger it will too. The lettuces and strawberries are also doing well, although that may change as the weather gets warmer.

  

We currently have a garden full of self seeded nasturiums, which we are leaving in place as much as possible as they are great nitrogen fixing plants and the bees and butterflies love them. If we do need to pull any out we chop and drop them straight onto the mulch to feed the soil and other plants. Three of the four grape vines now have leaves on them and bunches of grapes starting and the pepino bush also has lots of flowers and fruit. The mulberry tree is also covered in fruit and I can see that mulberry tree seedling are also growing beneath the tree which means I will be able to give some more plants away which I love to do,



Another quick harvest of white sweet potatoes, they are so delicious and much easier to grow here than potatoes we really love them. They still retain a great taste and texture even when they are huge and can be used in so many dishes. As well the leaves can be eaten and the bees love the flowers, win win!

Sweet Potatoes Today

 

 

 Andy went searching for sweet potatoes today, found two small ones and then these rather large ones! The large one weighed 6.6 kilos so altogether today we picked 10 kilos of sweet potatoes.They should last us for a while and I foresee a lot of new recipes and ways to cook sweet potatoes will need to be learned.

Bananas, Herb Spirals and Sheet Mulching

We removed one of the original fridges that we had used as a no-dig garden from the beginning as it was too rusty. We then decided that we would transplant the two banana plants which were struggling to grow beside the pool and put them in this space. This puts them back near the original banana plant and as we now know that they like to grow in clumps, close together, we hope that this will see them flourish. As well we have learnt now that they need a lot of food so we used compost, wood ash, chicken manure.potash and pea straw when we planted them and watered them thoroughly. We found some really useful articles online and you can read them here, here and here.

When we removed the old fridge I was then able to lift up the pavers beneath it and start a second herb spiral. Whilst doing this I was very pleased to be able to harvest another 4 kilos of sweet potatoes.This will need to be completed more slowly than the first one as I am not on holidays, but I hope to get it built in the next week or two.

Finally we also used a huge pile of cardboard that I had collected and a pile of free mulch to extend the area of lawn that has been sheet mulched on the nature strip. We managed to get to the edge of our property and will need to start collecting boxes again.