Huge progress

With only 3 weeks to go until we run our CIT course, which will feature a tour of the permaculture garden, I have been hugely focused on getting the garden into shape (luckily Bruce has too, he did a fantastic job of mowing the entire back yard). Jobs that had been on the 'to do' list for more than a year were to complete the edge guild around the second mandala and set up a fence to grow berries around that part of the garden.

The Permaculture Home Garden contains little advice on how to set up the 1-metre edge strip, so my approach has been to just dig up the grass or weeds, lay them on the soil (to give the worms something to digest), add a dripper hose, cover the lot with a thick layer of wet newspaper and then pile copious amounts of straw on top of the paper. I've got this process down to a fine art, and by putting the newspaper into a wheelbarrow of water (rather than laying it down and then wetting it), I can even do this on a windy day, which is just as well, since last weekend was horribly windy. Amazingly, I managed to rope in my teenaged daughter to help with laying down the wet newspaper (a major achievement, given her aversion to anything concerning soil!), and the edge guild of mandala 2 is now complete.

Here are some photos of manadala 2, the forest of peas that I mentioned in my last blog (finally producing actual peas), and a couple of asparagus plants - we actually had enough to make asparagus soup recently).

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Comments

[Dee]

Hello,

I just wanted to say hi. I begin the measuring for my first mandala in the morn.

I was a laid back mum/ student from Yackandanah 1 month ago - now I cant talk of anything but my chook dome & Guild planting. My downtime is spent picking up cow poo & begging scraps for my still scrawny compost (lasagne method I'm thinking) - all that & I'm happily spending Friday note chasing down other "Permaculture Home Garden" converts. Life couldnt be better.

Thank you for your blog & your pictures - they are very inspiring.

Very, very proud to be a Victorian.

Thanks,
Dee