The Suburban Food Forest

This morning it was cloudy and cool – we don’t get many of those so today was the day for some hard physical labour clearing out one of the water tank beds. I had left it to go its own way, having more pressing things to take care of, but now I needed somewhere to sow spring seeds and I was running out of room.

I pulled out the nasturtiums that were covering virtually everything in the bed. (I am experimenting with these as mulch – when you pull them out the result is an enormous volume of plant matter which, if placed strategically on areas where grass is growing, should effectively cut out the light. I’ll see whether it works, or whether the grass just grows through it!). This revealed what was left underneath – some still alive chilies, a bedraggled perpetual silverbeet, and a bumper crop of warrigal greens that were growing all over the bed underneath the nasturtiums.

Since these things had done so well in this spot, I decided to leave them where they were. After pulling the warrigal greens to the side out of the way, I mulched with a thick layer of lucerne hay and shovelled three barrow-loads of garden mix from the local nursery on top. Then added a sprinkling of 5 in 1 before watering in (I am still not managing to produce enough compost quickly enough to use abundantly in the garden – another challenge to add to the list).

A quick trim of the warrigal greens, silverbeet and chillies and they will get a new lease of life. And I now have plenty of space to sow some beans and peas!

Of course the bonus of rejuvenation is harvesting the stuff that’s in the bed – although harvesting is always a little fraught as I have to rescue and re-patriate the little critters that inevitably come in with the produce!