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June 2007: a walk around the
house
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Early June has brought snow to the higher areas
of our neighbourhood. |
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After a few days the snow has melted. Only
Esperance Peak in the distance is left with a white cap. |
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The chooks are old enough to free range
now. We
don't close the run at all any more. |
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We start building a second smaller orchard. There
are just too many heritage apple varieties available from Bob
Magnus! |
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This paddock behind the house was full of bracken.
We slashed the bracken. Grass now grows from the seeds in the hay we
feed. |
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The wallabies started to feed on the olives. We
doubled up the grow tubes to protect the lower branches of the
olives. |
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June 2007 in the kitchen garden |
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The new bed is filled with pony manure |
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A new terraced bed gives us room for a lot of strawberries. We also plant a
row of aqua dulce broad beans. The aqua dulce broad beans grow higher than the
other bush broad bean varieties and have to be tied to wires for support. A huge
mistake: we feed them with ash from the woodstove, way too much ash though.
The ash burns the leaves and only half of the plants survive!
A major change in the garden: from now on we will organize all garden beds in
"rotations". Yearly rotations of all plants greatly benefit plant
and soil health. See the rotation page for
details. |
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Broad beans before the "ash treatment" |
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Globe artichoke |
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Tomatoes in June! Eventually the last ones
freeze and split and end up in the compost. |
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Dfferent kinds of lettuces and spring onions
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Radish |
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Spinach |
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Celery |
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Sugar loaf cabbage |
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Leek, but should be planted further apart
for better results. |
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Five more garden beds in terraces. |
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June 2007 in the orchard
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Our apple trees are now two years old. We planted them when they were one
year old. They have not been pruned as yet. The two photos show how they
have developed horizontal and vertical branches. |
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On the left: we are extending the original orchard by two more 23 metre
long rows. We will soon plant even more fruit trees!
On the right: we have already pruned these pears, plums and cherries.
We try to create an open vase like shape in these trees which are not
trained to wires, but are also mostly grafted on dwarf root stock.
One year has passed during which we watered by hand. We now plan to
have a bore drilled. Hand watering is very time consuming and we won't
have enough grey water anyway to supply all the new trees we will plant
soon.
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