This summer has been wet and miserable, and things that normally do well in my garden, such as tomatoes and capsicums, haven't thrived. However, we do have masses of zucchini, basil and parsley (which we have been turning into delicious soup), and an excess of potatoes. Also, the edge strip in mandala 2 is looking very pretty, with lots of different flowers in bloom.
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The thai basil, which I grow in the pond in mandala 2, is also thriving.
We've had a fantastic berry harvest this year, thanks to all the rain (last year all we got were a few late raspberries). Because we have so many different types of berry - blackberries, blueberries, loganberries, jostaberries, raspberries, strawberries, silvanberries and tayberries - they produce over a long period. Here are some growing around Mandala 2, and some I picked last week.
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With all the rain we've had, and now a few weeks of sun, the garden is looking fabulous. Here is the middle circle of mandala 2 (with a view of our recent renovations - a new verandah and double glazed windows). There are lots of strawberries tucked in among the natives in this circle, and this year they've been very productive.
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The herbs have also done well this spring. Here is the thyme that's growing in the edge guild of mandala 1, with the berry fence and a hedge of native shrubs in the background.
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With all the rain we've had, the garden is looking fantastic (although the driveway from the gate to the house is falling apart, and my little Yaris is struggling to cope). In previous years we haven't been too successful with watermelons, but this year one circle (in Mandala 2) produced 4 enormous ones. Here are our Korean WOOFERS with one of the watermelons.
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After weeks of not being able to garden thanks to the hot, windy weather, we finally had rain (over 80 mm already!) and cool temperatures over the Xmas break. The garden is looking better already, and we should soon have plenty of tomatoes, zuchinnis, cucumbers, peppers and aubergines.
I've been trying to buy less food and eat more from the garden. That's been difficult, given that the only edible things we have at the moment are herbs, snow peas, a few berries and some spinach. However, for Xmas lunch I made rice paper rolls, which included our own Thai basil (planted years ago in the pond but never used), mint and snow peas. Here are some photos (click on the photos to enlarge the images):
The edge of the pond (an old bath tub) in Mandala 2, with the basil tucked in among the reeds.
A circle in Mandala 1, with tomatoes, cucumber, some corn and lots of potatoes at the back.
A similar circle in Mandala 2, but with lots of sunflowers (from seeds left over from the chook feed).
A healthy looking dwarf nectarine, planted this year in the edge strip around Mandala 1.
A pathetic blueberry, planted about 3 years ago in the edge strip around Mandala 1. The berry fence around the outside of Mandala 1.
The berries were looking great a few weeks ago, but got too hot and dry.
The comments have been coming thick and fast recently. Thanks to all who have commented, and particular thanks to Nick for providing a copy of Robert's plans for building a geodesic dome, I was beginning to think that I'd need to go out and measure the domes in the garden to get the dimensions.
Meanwhile, the garden is absolutely bursting with cabbages, broccoli, cauliflowers and feral parsley. Bruce took these lovely shots of a couple of circles in mandala 2:
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The garden has been a bit depressing lately, because it's so dry and dusty, and the extreme heat has made it unpleasant to work outside for long. Also, with everything being so dry, it's been hard to find enough mulch to throw into the main dome for the chooks to turn over. This weekend, we decided on a change of plan. For the past couple of years, we've been moving the main dome round two mandalas, keeping it on each circle for about two weeks. We've also had another dome, donated by a friend, which has been sitting near the pumpkin patch. Now we've decided instead to put a dome on each mandala, and move them once a month instead of every two weeks. I'm not sure whether this will actually be more effective, but it seemed a good idea at the time!
In spite of the heat and drought, mandala 2 is still producing amazing tomatoes, zucchinis and cucumbers. Here are some of the tomatoes:
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The Permaculture Home Garden suggests planting a miniature fruit tree behind each of the circles in the mandala - in the 1-metre strip around the edge of the mandala. The book recommends selecting varieties that fruit at different times, sequenced in such a way that, as the chooks move from one circle to another, they arrive at just the right time to feast on any fallen fruit. That sort of synchronisation is beyond me, but I have planted a dwarf nectarine and several feijoas around mandala 1, and a dwarf lemon and more feijoas around mandala 2. The nectarine is several years old and has never produced anything of note, but this year it finally came good (probably because Bruce went to the trouble of netting it) - here is a photo of this year's harvest:
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I was delighted to read Naomi's comments about the blog. In response to her questions, I would say that if the chooks need to be in a place that doesn't get much sun, it's better to grow the veggies elsewhere, then just dig out the chook pen a couple of times a year and put the soil onto the veggie patch. If you have a small area in the sun, another approach might be to just have a few chooks in a small dome (ours is the largest size, you can make one for just a couple of birds).
We don't let our chooks out of the dome, but they seem happy there, especially when we move the dome onto a new circle, which gives them access to fresh greenery and insects. Before we started the dome system, our veggie garden was a large, enclosed rectangle, and the chooks were free range. They roamed about the garden (ignoring and ignored by the dogs and cat) and went into the chook house quite happily at night, but did spend a lot of time attempting to get into the veggie garden.
Lots of photos in this post. After a couple of weeks of intermittent rain the garden is flourishing, particularly the cabbages, which are huge. The green drumhead cabbages are particularly huge; we also have red drumheads and green sugarloaf cabbages. As there is only a certain amount of cabbage one family can eat, we've been giving a lot away to friends and workmates. Here are some of the sugarloaf cabbages.
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The middle circles of each mandala are also looking good:
and the corn and cucumbers I planted a few weeks ago in Mandala 2 are doing well:
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