This last week I have been busy with my new patch, which I’m calling the Mid-levels. It’s halfway down the hill towards the dam, and the site of my new veggie garden, watered from the dam with the solar pump.
Part of moving into this place was always going to be sounding it out for possibilities, and the Mid-levels has been a gradual discovery. At first it was a cleared area on the way down to the dam which was growing very high and thick grass. We thought it looked level, but there was no way of knowing, as even pushing through the grass gave us no overview. Then Bill got in with the slasher and opened up a beautiful small paddock. It has two slender trees in it, a eucalyptus and a rainforest tree (I’ve got to get my identification happening!), and then is fringed by rainforest, box trees, and camphor laurel.
We noticed that there is a nice grassy section leading off it, featuring this enormous staghorn fern, so I spent a couple of days taking out the camphor saplings that were thick through it to open out the understory and show off the trees and ferns.
I plan to plant that section with tree ferns and rainforest plants to make a rainforest room. It’s a nice cool spot on a hot day.
Then we got the pump back working and delivering a good amount of water to this level. The vegetable garden at the house is less than optimal because of soil that is poor compared to elsewhere on the block, a steep site, an established rodent population that particularly like all types of beet (grr, can’t wait till the dog is big enough to go hunting), but mainly because it’s dependent on our house supply of rainwater. So the Mid-levels were born – fairly flat, good soil, plenty of sun, and plenty of water when the sun shines.
I had put in a few experimental plots in Winter, just to see how well cover crops (buckwheat, fenugreek, and then sunflowers and millet) would grow, so after deciding to formalise a vegetable garden there, I fenced in that approximate area. It follows the shape of the ridge rather than a geometric shape, but is roughly 15 metres square; big enough to not worry about space. In the spirit of self-sufficiency I cut the corner fenceposts from a box tree that fell during Winter.
The soil seems a good sandy loam, more clayey downhill, and hopefully will have the compromise between holding water and draining during the relentless rain that we are supposed to get. I checked the pH today, it was around 5, so I limed it, and from the trial cover crops I knew that it needs fertilising, so I put some phosphate, nitrogen and potassium in. There’s a lot of organic material there from the grass, which you can see in the picture above where I’ve piled it up to dig two beds, so I’ll dig that in when it has broken down. At the moment the compost heaps are nearly as big as the prepared beds.
I’ve put in sweetcorn, which is showing already, edamame soy beans, beet, carrot, and lettuce seeds, as well as seedlings of tomato, capsicum, eggplant, and lettuce. Now it’s time for a stocktake to sort out what still needs to be planted.