The Patch update - 2 years on

It's been nearly two years now since we started work on the Patch - our 600m2 Landshare garden at Jill's and Mike's. I thought it was time for an update on what we're growing this summer.

The central part of the garden is 8 beds of annual veggies, grown on organic principles. We only have hand watering, so the beds need to be moisture-retentive and well mulched. The perimeter is much more permaculture based, full of diverse perennials, and will continue to evolve and grow in richness and diversity year on year.

Pumpkin bed

The pumpkins (var Anna Swartz) are growing strongly in a deep mulch of seagrass over home-made compost (mostly carpet weed from the Patch with grass mowings and horse manure).

Three Sisters bed

The Three Sisters are maize, a cucurbit and a climbing bean. Growing these crops together is a Native American method of preserving soil fertility and getting three useful crops from one patch of ground.

This year I'm experimenting with growing the maize in 1.5 metre cylinders of rabbit fencing. This provides support for the tall plants on windy days and also a framework for the cucurbits (lemon cucumber and rockmelon) to scramble over.

I've chosen small, less vigorous cucurbits: big bruisers like pumpkin and zucchini tend to go berserk and crowd out the other 'sisters'.

Potato bed

We grew Desiree and Dutch Cream under a deep mulch of pea straw. We're harvesting good crops from this bed. With the weather being so dry (only 50 mm rain since the start of November) we have been able to leave the potatoes in the ground and just harvest what we need. If it ever rains properly again (!), I'll need to dig up the rest pronto before they start to sprout.

Root veg bed

root veg bed in late spring

In this bed we mostly sowed Globe beetroot, Hollow Crown parsnips and a few carrots. There was also a row of long-keeping brown onions - root veg and onions make good companions as they feed from different depths in the soil, are both light feeders and the leafy tops of the root crops provide good shade for the bare soil (I don't mulch onions these days, to avoid problems with onion rot). The beetroot have been huge and sweet enough to eat raw.

Globe beetroot

Onion and carrot bed

You can never have too many carrots. Ours were a French heirloom variety St Valery, deep orange in colour, sweet and often 30 cm long. Yummo!

St Valery carrot

We also harvested a great crop of Early Creamgold long-keeping onions and Barletta salad onions and four varieties of garlic. Half of this bed is now growing Listada di Gandia eggplants and orange capsicums.

Early Creamgold onions

Part of our garlic harvest

I've left a few carrots and onions in the ground to flower. The ladybirds, hoverflies and bees love them and they look great too.

Carrot and onion flowers in the early morning light

Amaranth and cape gooseberry bed

Amaranth produces copious amounts of grain-like seed. The plants grow to two metres and are quite drought tolerant. The flavour is a little like quinoa but the seeds are much smaller. Apparently you can pop them as a breakfast cereal. I must try this.

Amaranth

Cape gooseberries are juicy, vaguely citrus flavoured sweet berries in their own little papery 'Chinese lantern' protective hulls. They're an undemanding crop and the fruit keeps well.

Watermelon bed

This year we're growing Moon and Stars watermelons. So far I've only found a couple of tiny melons, but they tend to hide away under the foliage until they're improbably huge. Last year we ended up with four monster melons with sweet, juicy, dark red flesh.

This bed also has climbing beans but they seem to have been hit by some kind of virus. The leaves are distorted and the affected plants have not flowered. Must get to the bottom of this problem but I frankly haven't had time to investigate further.

Tomato bed

This bed is producing quantities of Tommy Toe, Periforme and Amish Paste tomatoes. Those Amish sure do know a thing or two about tomatoes!

Tomato bed in late December, showing sturdy bamboo frame (2 metres tall)

Permanent plantings

We have perennials all round the perimeter of the annual beds. On the west there's the comfrey bed, which also has globe artichokes, goji and chokeberries, lemon verbena, Queen Anne's Lace, lavender, rosemary and a few tree onions. There are also some borage plants, which I'm hoping will self-seed everywhere, and a couple of echiums. Our Warré beehive is also in this bed and the bees seem pretty happy there.

Bee hive amid the artichokes

On the east is the lucerne bed, which we plan to increase to 60 m2 in the autumn, to provide nitrogen-rich mulch to the annual beds and great long-lasting summer forage to the bees. The lucerne receives only natural rainfall (precious little of that this summer) but keeps going strong through the hot weather. The weeds just can't compete. There's a tricky, sandy patch where even the lucerne hasn't taken, where I'm planning to try the drought-tolerant (and strangely named) barrel medic, a legume related to lucerne but allegedly even tougher.

On the south side there are a few flood- and drought-battered lavender bushes and a fig tree. This area needs improvement and a few creative ideas.

On the north side is our wattle windbreak which is starting to bush up now after a tough start in life. There will also be coastal rosemary and saltbush in the windbreak, and in the lee of that there will be a Hügelkultur mound which will hopefully be home to acid-lovers like blueberries and strawberries next year. A swale should help to hydrate this area and should become home to some of the frogs and lizards which are plentiful in the garden.

I just need the hot, dry weather to break so that digging a 12-metre long, metre-wide and half-metre deep swale by hand is less of a daunting prospect!

Edges, boundaries and paths

Cultivating the Patch is throwing up interesting questions about edges, boundaries and paths. It's a rectangle of land with minimal boundaries: a large-mesh wire fence on the north and east separating it from the neighbours' properties; a 2 metre wooden fence on the south separating it from the school oval and no boundary on the west other than Jill's and Mike's vineyard.

On the minus side, that means that there's little to block the passage of wind, rabbits and the occasional errant dog. On the plus side, there are none of the issues with shade that we have to deal with in our home garden, caused by mature trees in our and our neighbours' yards, and of course our 2-storey house. The Patch was really a horticultural blank slate.

The Patch - June 2011

Faced with a nice big block of land to grow stuff on, my tendency (and I suspect I'm not alone in this) is to think of growing space, not access, and to begrudge any land dedicated to paths and barriers.

But paths and barriers are necessary. Foot and wheelbarrow traffic compacts soil, so you don't want to walk on land you're going to grow plants in. Aggressive running grasses and other tough running weeds (we're 'blessed' with kikuyu and blanket/carpet weed) would quickly overrun the cultivated land without well-defined borders that can be 'patrolled' for incursions.

I've tried to build some Permaculture principles into how I tackle the issue of barriers – the Patch is defined to the east and west by borders of deep-rooted, perennial plants – primarily comfrey and lucerne, which resist the encroachment of running weeds, provide useful nutrients and mulch to the garden and require little maintenance or irrigation.

To the north, a wattle border will eventually be about 2 metres high and diversified with sheokes, blueberries, etc. to provide shelter from hot northerlies, mulch and enrichment for the garden and some fruit for us.

I'm happy with how those solutions are evolving, but within the garden I feel the need for permanent paths, borders and subdivisions, and I'm not entirely happy with what I've done so far in that regard. One of the issues is the tension between the Permaculture approach I've recently learned – which values edge, diversity and curvilinear forms – and the traditional European organic gardener's approach, which wants straight lines and rectangular beds. There are advantages to both approaches and I haven't yet found a balance which works for us.

The two weeks I spent at Milkwood Permaculture in NSW brought home to me that there is scope for both approaches within an enterprise which is inspired by Permaculture principles. On the one hand they have a nascent forest garden which in years to come will probably be intensely productive with little ongoing maintenance; on the other hand most of their food in these early years is produced in a very traditional looking, labour-intensive organic market garden.

The Patch update

It's been a little over six months since Susan and I started work on the Patch - our Landshare garden at Jill's and Mike's place. Here's a pictorial update on how things are going.

June 2011

December 2011

All in all, we're pretty pleased with the transformation from former horse paddock to productive vegie garden. The main problem was that I was away in Europe for the critical period mid-September to end October. Won't do that again.

Potato bed

Potato bed

The potato bed has produced a good crop of Pontiacs and the Dutch Creams are still going strong. This bed hasn't been watered since September and yet it's full of lovely, moist, worm-filled humus made from seagrass, mushroom compost, pea straw and home-made compost.
A second batch of Pontiacs has just been planted out and covered with compost made on site. The pea straw bales are breaking down quite fast (with the help of some hungry mice) - by the end of the summer I think some will just be shapeless mounds of straw.

Grain bed (not!)

Amaranth

The next bed was intended as a grain and pulse bed: amaranth, chia, quinoa, chickpea and linseed were sown in November. This was an experiment as I thought conditions might already be too warm, at least for the quinoa and chia. Looks like I was right: only the amaranth came up in worthwhile numbers, with a few chickpeas. An additional problem was watering: with only one or two visits a week and only hand watering, it was impossible to keep the seed bed moist. Lesson learned: any sowing of fine seed needs to coincide with decent rain. We got a nice crop of self-sown mallow, though!
I'm trying again with sunflowers, having enriched the soil with our home-made compost. Unenriched parts of the bed will be used for buckwheat and another green manure crop.

Watermelon and solanum bed

Eggplants, capsicums and watermelons

I divided this bed in half for ease of access - all watering at the Patch is by hand with a watering can. After a green manure crop, this bed was further enriched by the addition of 1.5 m3 of mushroom compost: I'm aiming for a rich, moisture-retentive soil. I think I walked 20 km with that wheelbarrow, as it's a couple of hundred metres from the driveway to the Patch.
Two rows of eggplants will hopefully provide shade for watermelon foliage and roots in hot weather.
I've never grown watermelons before but thought I would give them a try in this sunny position. I'm fairly sure we won't be short of eggplants come autumn - 16 plants may have been slight overkill. Not sure what else I'm going to put in here, possibly some autumn brassicas or leeks.

Three Sisters bed

Three Sisters: maize, beans, pumpkin

The Three Sisters system of symbiotic cultivation comes from South America: maize, climbing beans and cucurbits (in this case, Anna Schwartz pumpkin) are grown together. The beans enrich the soil with nitrogen and bind together the maize stalks, preventing wind damage; the large cucurbit leaves shade the soil, helping to keep it moist for the maize; the maize provides a frame for the beans to climb up. I've been sowing the maize in 1-metre blocks every 2-3 weeks and 4-5 beans a metre on the south side of the blocks.

Then there's a row of capsicums which were left over seedlings from our other garden. I guess they'll have to be the fourth sister.

Lucerne and wildflower strip

Lucerne and wildflower strip - decorative and useful

This 20 x 1 metre strip of lucerne interspersed with Queen Anne's Lace and California poppies has turned out really well. So much so that I've decided to make it 2 metres wide in the autumn. The flowers attract beneficial insects and the lucerne will provide mulch for the vegie beds. Looks great, too.
This bed hasn't been watered since early September.

Comfrey strip

Comfrey (Bocking 14)

20 comfrey plants were planted in a 20-metre strip back in July. All are doing well. I try to give them some supplementary water in hot weather, but they largely fend for themselves. I chose the non-weedy Bocking 14 variety from Diggers Club.

People have been puzzled why I'm producing semi-industrial quantities of comfrey. It mines the subsoil for minerals, then makes these available as its leaves break down. It's great as a compost activator, as a soil-enriching mulch and as comfrey tea (now brewing) - a nutritious but extremely smelly liquid fertiliser. The flowers will be good for bees (when we get some, but that's another story), and I see ladybirds and assassin bugs hanging out around them too.

Compost bays

Next batch of green stuff ready for composting

The four-bay compost system (such opulence! such luxury!) was built from old timber from Jill's and Mike's woodshed. It's working really well, but had to be lined with heavy-duty weedmat and old carpet, as the thuggish kikuyu grass from the neighbouring school oval was determined to get in on the act.

Lovely compost - once was weeds, cardboard and chook poo

We've just produced and used our first batch of lovely crumbly compost using the cold-composting method. Now the blanket weed I dug up in July is being hot-composted. Despite dire mutterings from locals about the stuff being indestructible, this is going a treat. If it once lived, you can compost it.

That's about it for now. I'm hoping a Permaculture Design Certificate in February will give me some more inspiration. Also we're doing a bee-keeping course in April as we think our Patch is a bit of a bee-desert, being surrounded mostly by acres of well-mown grass. If we want pollination, we'll have to provide the pollinators and plenty of bee tucker.

Happy New Year and happy gardening in 2012!

Sharing the land

It's time to tell you about a plan that we've been hatching with Jill and Mike Pring.

Jill and Mike have some under-utilised land in their back yard, and kindly invited Susan and me to cultivate it under a landshare agreement. Anyone who knows me won't be surprised that I leaped at the chance, and Susan is really excited at having the chance to create a vegie garden from scratch.

So, what's a landshare agreement?

In a nutshell, people with more land than they can use get together with people who would like more land to grow produce on. Both parties are protected by a contract which formalises what they can expect of each other. You can find lots more info at http://www.landshareaustralia.com.au/

In our case, the land in question is about 250 m2 of grass and carpet weed behind Jill's and Mike's grapevines.

A blank canvas

We're itching to start growing stuff, but I'm determined to be methodical and get the new garden (christened 'The Patch' as 'The-New-Vegie-Garden-at-Jill-and-Mike's-Place' proved too much of a mouthful) off to the best possible start.

The Patch looks very promising, with a gentle, north-facing slope. My initial excavations for the compost bays have revealed a deep, sandy loam soil.

Speaking of compost bays, we've been able to make use of the extensive Pring family woodpile and are constructing an opulent four-bay compost system, with each bay able to contain a little over 1 m3 of compost. Luxury!

A post hole auger is really handy

These old weatherboards will do the job

We also have plans for a water tank and a smallish timber shed, as well as a bathtub worm farm.

I've planned a four-bed organic vegie garden. Permanent strip plantings of comfrey and lucerne will eventually provide most of our mulch needs (I hope), and a windbreak of indigenous wattles on the north side will slow down the fierce summer winds and provide more organic mulch. Rosemary and lavender bushes will help to attract beneficial insects.

Here's the plan:

The Patch

The Patch has to be fairly low-maintenance, as it might only get attention once a week. I've given that a lot of thought, but I don't doubt that it will be a learning experience with much trial and error. Stay tuned ...