The plot thickens - literally!

Well. Hope all are well and not too worried by the flu outbreak. It is a good reminder that we may as a species think we have 'conquered' the wild beasts, but the smallest microbes can outwit us still! A gentle way of working with your body to support it through this is with homeopathy, and/or flower essences, the Bach flower essences or Perelandra essences work extremely well, and if you use kinesiology you can help yourself and others.

A nice link for you is to the Sheng Zhen form of healing QiGong. You can do this at home courtesy of the Sheng Zhen Society video on YouTube here

Anyway, back to the garden!

I left you as I had just started to tackle developing the 90 x 5ft bed in my garden plan. W- e- l- l. I may have zipped through the other smaller beds, but I kid you not, double digging the first 10 ft of this bed, took me forever. Days. It seemed that no matter how hard I worked, turning over the virgin sod, piling it up in the center to make a raised bed including the vegetation to rot down, whenever I measured, which was often, I still needed to dig more feet to get to the 10 ft mark. And I was tired. And I didn't want to do it, it was bloody hard work!

I couldn't think how I was going to ever prepare this massive bed, it was a joke, what was I thinking??? I was a failure and a wimp. Old. Tired. Heck arthritis was a problem. The pits.

Then I got to thinking and connecting in (finally!).

What had worked so well last year? Why had I started this in the first place? To slavishly follow the holy grail of neat beds, and rows of tidy well behaved veggies? Heck no! My veggies are waiting to be wild, muscling in with the wild plants and claiming their space and existence, their rude wild health, and then get with their mates to set that into seed for the next generations and on!

So what on earth was I doing ?

Right then I 'happened' again on Masanobu Fukuoka and his no dig method. Rapidly availing myself of the fabulous resources of the Holistic Agriculture Library, in Tasmania, Australia (link listed on the right), where you can download a copy of his out of print works, I was re-energized, and re-booted into action.

What was I doing with that huge pile of sycamore leaves gently rotting on the compost heap?

Bingo. The rest of the 90 ft was simply covered in a 1 ft layer of not quite rotted leaves, and that my friends, is what I have planted. The entire rest of the 80 ft bed took me about 3 hours!

The other 60 ft bed followed in the next 2. Could it really be that simple?

Well that is the experiment.

According to my plan, the 90ft is divided up into sections, one slightly larger than the others for potatoes, and the rest planted to a variety of root vegetables and beans, corn, spinach etc.

Some are being raised in flats, and some sown straight under the mulch in little balls of mud to get them started.

So far, (lost my download cord for pics), the potatoes are poking their leaves up through the mulch perfectly, AND I only have to water every three days. I checked. It's gorgeously damp and warm under there, but airy through the leaves. As far as I can tell, near perfect germination and growing conditions!

I can't tell you how excited I am to see those potatoes!

The other 'normal' beds have been sown and covered with a light layer of mulch and hay that I cut from the grass you saw. And that is another great discovery, I bought a really great scythe.

It is as tall as me and cuts through the grass wonderfully with no noise, and very little effort. It's actually very calming, as demonstrated by another video link for you which I recommend before bed, better than warm milk! Scythe to sleep .

More later, enjoy the wonderful spring!