Another sunrise, another new beginning. – Jonathan Lockwood Huie
This week, a cool change has been forecast. I hope summer is on it’s way out! Last Sunday, it was cooler than usual, a balmy 32 degrees. Feeling a rush of enthusiasim, I took the opportunity to finally pull out all the struggling plants left after a searing summer and put them all out of their misery.
I had so much green waste as a result and stuffing it all in the compost tumblers would have taken an age for it to break down. My last batch of compost has been tainted by the addition of some sweet potato cuttings. Instead of breaking down inside the tumbler, the robust sweet potato sprung roots and new shoots! I didn’t chop it up enough and it ended up becoming a tangled mess.
But luckily, this time I had a great solution. My dad has a fantastic petrol powered mulcher. We fired it up, fed it all through and it chomped it all up in less than an hour. Instead of a huge tangled pile of wilted capsicum, chilli, eggplant, sweet potato, spring onions and fermented watermelons, I now have a surprisingly small pile of lovely fine shredded mulch.
If you didn’t have a mulcher, you could chop all your seasons green waste up by hand using secataurs, or if you prefer hands that aren’t covered in blisters and callouses, you can run over the pile a few times with a lawnmower with the catcher on.
We shuffled a few things around, tidied up, cleared all the rubbish, swept the space clean and now I feel primed to go for the new season. Tomorrow, I will order some manure to be delivered and plan to spread it out to the last of all the remaining beds on Saturday, as it has forecast for rain next Sunday and Monday. The thought of two days of rain soaking into freshly manured and prepared veggie beds delights me no end, which is pretty hilarious considering haven’t actually planted anything yet. What can I say? I have this garden thing bad.
Even though it’s exhausting physical work, it feels fantastic to have it all done. That’s the wonderful thing about vegetable gardening, even if it is all a spectacular failure one season, the opportunity exists for you to apply all you learned and give it another go.
Come to think of it, it’s not a bad philosophy for life either.
I’ve decided to do some experimenting in our patch and try half the garden in a no dig method and the other half digging through compost and manure. I’ve just finished shredding our Jerusalem artichokes and melon vines that I’ll use as part of the layers of mulch for the no dig garden. Our block is pure sand and the compost we have put in quickly dissaptes into the ether. I’ve been trying in vain to create compost from our green waste but it’s taking far too long and there’s always more coming with constant lawn mowing, so maybe shredding the garden waste straight back into the garden is the way to go! The slightest sprinkle of rain today has got me itching to get planting but I have lots of prep work t do first
Hi TC!
Did you see Gardening Australia on Saturday night? Costa’s back! There was an excellent segment on “no dig” gardening that he set up on his verge with the help of his enthused neighbours.
You can see it here http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s3467646.htm
I’m loving the cooler weather too. Here’s hoping some of these sprinkley showers will be followed by a good old thunderstorm soon!
Cheers,
Melissa
It was my inspiration! I’ve had to modify it slightly though, I’m finding that my gardening ‘habit’ is costing me too much in the hip pocket. I did my first bed today with recycled mulch from other parts of the garden, dynamic lifter & scrapings from the chicken house. I ran out of newspaper really quickly so in went the kids art work ( when they weren’t looking!) and documents that were waiting to be shredded. I’m going to run out of sugar cane mulch soon so I think I will start using lawn clippings from the compost heap and leave the cane for the top layer to make it more aesthetically pleasing
I was ridiculously excited today to discover an abundance of worms in one of my no dig gardens! I had really noticed a serious lack of wormies over the past few weeks when I was planting out our winter vege in other parts of the garden. It can only be a good sign that the bed is healthy! There was also an abundance of caterpillars that destroyed the last of my Swiss chard, but they went to the chickens
That is wonderful news! You will have to come over next week and check my space out. All this lovely weather has had me swap the keyboard for the trowel and I have been busy planting. The veggie patch is looking really good.
Isn’t it lovely to feel cool again? To actually have some rain soak into the ground?