A few weeks later

I haven't been around for a few weeks and its amazing how quickly things grow.  One of the great pleasures of gardening.  Amazingly, we haven't lost a single seedling with this planting, so it must be a cosy little climate for them.  In my absence, Shaun has been watering them with some worm juice alternated with seaweed, so they must love that too.  Now that this area is coming along, we are making plans for the next patch.  We can start with sweet corn soon, which we'll plant with a bit of chook food.  The girls will love it.

A new resident

Though this fellow has probably been around a lot longer than we have, we were very excited to meet him.

Veggie Garden goes in

We brought up some raised garden beds from our last home and it was time to get them in place and start planting.  We'd had the chickens scratching around and fertilising for about four months and so we fenced them out and got cracking.  We have 10 girls now and they were a little put out at being pushed out, and once they saw the delicious things that were going in, were keen to be part of it.

Swale update

After we planted the four swales, one for nuts, one for avocados, one for tropical fruit and the last for citrus, we sowed in a winter green manure crop of oats and wooly pod vetch.  Its had several months to grow and is now starting to look good.  We'll be chopping and dropping soon to put some additional nutrients into the soil in the orchard.  The swales have been doing thier job of collecting and slowing down water on the slope as well.