There are certain times during the year when the air temperature is so mild and gentle we seem to blend into the natural environment and become part of it. It was like that yesterday. Late in the afternoon, as I was making dinner, I noticed Hanno was outside planting and watering. I grabbed my camera and went out to join him. There was no breeze, the air was neither cool nor warm, the conditions were perfect.
Just a few short weeks ago, our garden was almost bare. We stopped planting in November and have scratched a few harvests since then, but the main activity in the garden has been when we let the chook loose in there to scratch around for insect eggs and eat all the grubs and caterpillars. After that, Hanno built the soil up again with cow manure, compost, old chook manure and worm castings. When he planted the first lettuces and cucumbers in the garden a few weeks ago, they burst into life and have been feeding us for the last week or so. There is nothing better than the taste of fresh vegetables and nothing gives me a greater feeling of self reliance and confidence than walking outside in the afternoon to collect food for our dinner. It's sublime on every level.
While I was outside yesterday afternoon, I took these photos. They speak for themselves, so I'll let them tell their own story. My thanks to Hanno for providing us with such healthy, sustainable, organic food.
Welsh onions and lettuce. Click on photos to enlarge them.
Just on the other side of the fence, Heather, our salmon Faverolles chook, waits, hoping for a lettuce leaf.
From the bottom end, unseen potatoes, beetroot, lettuce rocket/arugula and cucumbers.
Lots of capsicums/peppers, dill, parsley and green onions.
Sweet potato madly growing everywhere and some ginger nextto the girl Buddha.
Whenever something is harvested, a new plant takes its place. Keeping up with succession planting is the most difficult part of this kind of vegetable production.
Tomatoes have been planted at the base of each post in this A frame. Next to them are leeks and radishes.
There is an abundance of cucumbers.
Tools of the trade always at hand, a trowel for digging planting holes, an old grapefruit knife for removing seedlings from their punnets and a bucket of seaweed tea to help with transplant shock.
From this end, radishes, parsnips, sugarloaf cabbages, leeks and tomatoes.
Welsh onion, green beans, coriander, tomatoes, parsley, dill, capsicums/peppers and zinnias.
Capsicums/peppers, parsley, dill, green beans and Welsh onions.
Lettuce and, unseen, potatoes.
Cucumbers (left), yarrow (for herb tea), bok choi, sweet potato.
Yellow passionfruit. There are black passionfruit at the other end of the trellis.
And to answer the most asked question on the blog, the upturned pots are to stop us taking an eye out on the stakes and bamboo canes, and they're also decorative - I like the look of them.
