Well, the front garden transformation is moving along slowly. We've gone from this, to the photo above (which I will point out is taken from the other end of the garden), in less than two months. I posted my plan here, in case you want to have a look, although I have made a few modifications, which I shall comment on throughout this post.
Firstly though, here are the tiny corn seedlings I planted a month ago, haven't they grown? I really really need to plant the next lot, don't I? The bush off to the left is a golden nugget pumpkin, can't wait to get some of those coming along. My mum has one that's already fruiting (do vegetables fruit?), and it certainly has an overload of pumpkins, although they're not quite as flavourful as the old Jap's that I usually plant. They are, however, decidedly smaller!
Beside that garden I've prepared two more no dig beds so far. There is room for one more that I still need to build. Basically, for these, I've put down a layer of lucerne mulch (about half a bale), covered it in some freshly cut green grass, covered that in a variety of manures/bought compost (I just can't produce my own fast enough!), then another layer of lucerne (other half of the bale) over the top. I'm giving these a few weeks (or until I get around to planting them) for the initial breakdown to start, then I'll be planting them out, probably with some more corn!
I've also managed to fit in (and find bales for) two raised strawbale beds rather than just one. The second one is filled with everything I could find, from lucerne, manure, compost, grass clippings etc etc. It's full right to the top now, but I expect it will settle quite a bit over the next few weeks. Not sure exactly what I'm going to plant here yet, but I'm sure it will be something good!
The watermelons planted in the first strawbale bed are certainly doing great! They're growing pretty fast, and starting to try to escape from the bed. Looking forward to getting some watermelons from these, yum!
While I'm waiting for the new beds to settle, I've been planting out some seeds into old punnets I had lying around. The ones on the right are rosella's, ready to go into one of the beds along the fence (which all need serious work!), the top middle are cotton plants, for down the side fence, and the one on the left is a pigeon pea. I haven't had much success so far with the pigeon peas, although I have to admit that some of the seeds I was using were older. Will have to give it another go as soon as I get organised, because they will hopefully form the bulk of our hedging at the front and sides. I really should try to get these planted out soon.
The carrot seeds I planted in the planter box next to the raspberries were a dismal failure. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get them to come up, so instead I planted out that whole side with beans. I haven't had much success with beans here, despite them usually being one of the easiest plants to grow. I suspect that the soil is lacking in something, so I'm trying it to see if they do better here, where it is all compost and bought soil. So far they seem to be.
The potatoes in the strawbale potato cages are still growing like wildfire. You can see from the link how much they have grown in just a week! However, I discovered 3 of the dreaded 28 spot ladybeetle, the enemy of all attempted potato growers, and war had to be declared before this crop was curtailed as the last lots were.
Hopefully that should do the trick! Note, nothing new was bought to do this. The netting is from the mosquito nets that hung over our bed in the shed (that we no longer need now that we have screens on the windows), held up with some garden stakes I had lying around from my last lot of tomatoes.
As I write, there is a nice steady drizzle outside. It's been going on all day. Great for the garden, waters far better than I can ever manage with the hose. Hopefully it will soak right into the ground, and get those no dig beds really breaking down. If it lets up for a bit tomorrow, I might go out and poke some seeds in somewhere, best seed sprouting weather around.
For now, though, I still have 500 words to write before I go to bed.
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