Bigger Better Pantry

The soil test results are back and the good news is that the soil acidity is decreasing and the organic matter in the soil remains at a very healthy level. Unfortunately the available nutrients has not increased which I was surprised about as the CEC has increased.
The CEC is a measure of the soil's ability to store and exchange nutrients with plants. What this suggests to me is that the biodynamic practices are improving the soil such that it has become a larger potential store and more freely accessible store of nutrients, but that the nutrients are not there.
Or to put it another way, I've been making a bigger and better pantry, but now I've got to stock it up!
This is a relatively good position to be in, so I was inspired this morning to go out and transplant many of the small silverbeets and cabbages into newer beds and give them a good feeding. Previously I haven't been keen to do this as I thought the chook manure would be sufficient, but the soil tests indicate that a bit of extra feeding wouldn't go astray.
As the weather warms up, I'm expecting to bring to town some Spring greens.
Of course I'll have to keep the wallabies out! It only took a week for the wallabies to realise that the pup was no longer in the garden.

Soil Goodies

This week we spent a bit of time focusing on the soil. We put out some of the special biodynamic preparations (horn manure and horn silica) which are stirred by hand for an hour and then put out over the whole paddock with a hand-made rye grass brush. It's a very pleasant job with plenty of time for contemplation, appreciating the progress so far and envisioning the changes to come.
At the other end of the scale, I took soil samples from the centre of each bed (that hasn't had the chooks on it within the last two months) and sent off an averaged sample to the laboratory for testing. I'll let you know of the results when they come back.

Skin Cream for Trees

This week I got inspired to put out some Biodynamic Tree Paste. It's made of cow manure, clay and crusher dust, and it is smeared onto the trunks and stems of the trees. Ideally I would have put it on before the trees had started sprouting again, but better late than never.
Practically speaking the paste is good because it fills in cracks that insects and fungus can hide in. It provides some nutrition to the plants. And gets you to pay some up-close attention to each plant which is easy to let slip! In particular I noticed that one of the trees had been damaged by the high winds a while ago and so i taped it up and smeared some paste over to let it heal.