I sometimes wonder if proper gardeners would be appalled at how we manage our backyard.
It certainly doesn’t follow traditional guidelines. But our first and foremost rule with our backyard garden is that it can’t add stress to our lives. So we simply do what we can, when we can.
We encourage the plants we like to go to seed (“encourage” might be generous, perhaps it’s better to say we don’t bother pulling them out), and use very little pest control – the occasional puff of diatomaceous earth or a squirt of Eco-oil – thereby allowing predator numbers to build up. Most importantly, we’ve adjusted our eyes – so now we see lush, abundant growth in the beds, rather than unruly plants and weeds.
With the latest bed, we’ve tried something new again. After the chooks were moved, the soil was well watered – it can get very dry under the chicken dome, and needs rehydrating before anything else is added to it. Then we raked and watered in a bag of cow manure, a few handfuls of blood and bone, and some rock minerals (we find chicken poop alone isn’t quite enough for the plants).
We tossed large quantities of dried plant material into our handy mulcher – arrowroot leaves, fennel stalks, sunflower stalks, trimmings from the lilly pilly tree, comfrey leaves, parsley and coriander stalks (and anything else we could find), along with the dried seed heads from our finished plants – parsley, basil, coriander, chard, raab and more. The finished mulch was spread out over the bed and watered in.
Just a week later, the seedlings had started to germinate…
It’s been a month since the previous photo was taken, and this is what the bed looks like now…
Fennel and red rainbow chard seedlings have popped up en masse…
We’ll now selectively weed out what we don’t want – we’ll eat young chard or feed it to the chooks, as there’s so much of it…
The red amaranth has made a reappearance…
We moved one of the A-frames from a previous bed and threw in a handful of snake bean seeds. They’ve started climbing – not sure how they’ll cope with the approaching cool weather…
Brassicas have started to appear, which is a great thing, as I miss eating them in the hot summer months…
Chinese greens are growing, which probably means more dumplings are on the cards…
Parsley and chickweed seedlings have germinated…
I don’t remember adding purslane seed to the mulch mix, but here it is, nonetheless…
Our perennial leeks are growing in a huge clump – we didn’t get around to separating them in time, so now we’re eating young ones in place of spring onions…
. . . . .
In other garden news…
…we’re still getting a few eggplants every week…
A lovely mutant broccoli appeared in one of the beds…
Here’s a good example of permaculture in action. The broccoli leaves were covered in pests. We left them there, and soon the predators discovered them and wiped them all out. The leaves are damaged, but the edible bit of the plant is still very much intact, and our predator insects have been well-fed…
In service to the bees, we’ve let the entire bed of basil go to seed…
Our bush lemon tree is cropping twice a year…
The bishops crown chilli continues to produce – this particular plant is producing quite mild fruit, which I’m very happy about…
Our very first baby limes have appeared…
Lovely Jo sent me arrowroot tubers from her garden a couple of years ago. We planted them at the front of the garden, and they’ve grown prolifically.
Initially, we hoped to use them as shade plants, but they’re far more useful as mulch…
We’re planting more arrowroot near the back fence – it’s as easy as cutting off a tuber and sticking it in the ground…
We cut the large leaf stalks and allow them to dry, along with all the spent seed heads, and any other firm plant material that isn’t an unwanted weed. Once it’s all dry, it will go through our mulcher and become a pre-seeded “topping” for our next bed…
We’ve learnt a lot about tromboncinos this year – the two plants we managed to raise from seed grew extensively but didn’t make any fruit at all. We think that in our garden at least, the trombies need more than one point where they touch the soil – they do best when they’re given room to scramble over a bed…
…as our mutant squash has. It’s still making fruit…
Our gorgeous yellow cherry tomatoes are at the end of their run – the bugs have found them now. Thankfully, the chickens go absolutely crazy for them…
Finally, on our kitchen bench is a colander full of drying cayenne chillis from the garden – they’re deliciously hot. We pick a few every week…
How are things going in your garden? Do you have any lazy gardening tips?
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Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 