Beautiful Borders

Although it seems like an impossible task to keep the wallabies out of the garden, we're on a long-term mission to make it harder for them to see and get in. The concept is to plant a tall screen plant around the outside of the mandala. In the picture you can see baby arrowroot that have been propagated up from just three plants two years ago. In the second picture you can see that we have also planted comfrey. When large, both of these can be controlled by slashing down and will make great additions to a compost heap as well as providing an attractive screen.

Celebrity Citrus

I've been very pleased wandering around the mandala lately to see that the citrus have really got a good flush of growth on them and some are even beginning to bear fruit after only two years in the ground.
Up at Mt Royal it can get pretty cold in winter, and the young citrus weren't faring very well. I thought that it was possible they may not make it through. However after a couple of years of settling in, they seem to be about to thrive and should weather the cold much more easily.

Besides being tasty and able to store longer than stone fruit, the citrus are evergreen and so are located in the southern most parts of the mandala. This prevents them from shading out the garden in winter.

Bokashi

What is it? Well, bokashi is a great way of composting food, especially if you want to keep that bucket of compost in your kitchen from stinking.
You put your kitchen scraps into an air tight container and sprinkle some bran onto the scraps. The bran has had good microbes embedded into it which ferment the scraps. A couple of weeks after the container has been filled, you can dig the contents into the ground and they are well on their way to being broken down. This makes for a quick decomposition in the ground and a rich area in your garden.

Soil Preparation

This week turned out to be a week of soil preparation (and not so much garlic planting).
Having started with pretty typical acidic Australia soil, I've been put a moderate amount of lime onto the beds each Spring and Autumn. This is gradually bringing the acidity levels down and thus making the soil better able to store and release nutrients.
Rather than adding a large amount in one go, I've been spinning it out over several seasons to allow the soil to adjust and develop more gradually. After this addition, i'm expecting that I'll only need to add a small "maintenance" amount each year. The difference in growth has been noticeable this year as we've crossed a threshold!
We also built a compost heap which we'll use in spring. According to biodynamic practices, the first six weeks, when the compost should get hot, is the break down stage. The following few months, which is often left out, is the building back up stage. It is during this second stage that additional goodies are developed in the compost heap.

Gorgeous Garlic

It doesn't seem like long ago that we pulled up last season's garlic crop and now it's time to plant again. I saved 3kg of the best and juiciest garlic from the last crop to plant this year. We'll be planting on Tuesday, so if you'd like to be involved then get in touch... we'd love to have you there.
Cold weather seems to develop the flavour and texture of the garlic, which is just as well as we won't be harvesting this crop until November. And the garlic will see quite a few days of frost between now and then.
Hopefully the vampire population won't have built up too much before the end of the year.

Extreme Vagaries

Drought, followed by flood, followed by locusts? After the scorching weather, the rain was extremely welcome, however 300mm later and even the zucchinis are refusing to grow bigger. You can see in the picture to the left that the leeches were having a field day! With a bit of sun this coming week, we're expecting to see some rapid growth, however there will be a bit of a reduction in Imago produce until this happens.

Weeds work again

With all the hot and dry weather lately, it was really obvious to see what works well in retaining soil moisture. Beds that had lots of tall growth, including weeds, were growing thick and lushly.
Whereas where the plants were sparse, the sun had got to the ground and dried it out. So again, keeping weeds in the garden has filled a useful role. This is contrary to the usual thinking which says that weeds take water away from your crops.
Of course it now all a moot point as we've had 120mm of rain over 4 days! The dam is coming right up to the spill way again and we've got the fire going in the middle of summer to stay warm. Gotta go, the lasagna is almost ready.