How it all began

My husband, two friends and I have decided to grow some vegetables together. Our friends - Liz and Jason - have 2.5 acres of land, and a goodly chunk of it was contained in large poly-tunnels. They decided that it would be too much work for just the two of them, so invited us in on the project.

In order to create our herbivore's utopia, Liz and I began by sending the men out to do some demolition on the broken bits of poly-tunnel, creating an open area which will eventually become the orchard, and possible rooting ground for a pet pig.

Then Liz created a detailed plan of what we were planting where - one quarter of the space will be sprayed off and left to rest under black plastic; one quarter will be where we dump the manure, and eventually will become a permenant bed for asparagus, rhubarb, and various herb shrubs; one quarter will be beds for things that take a lot of space - such as pumpkins - and the last quarter will be the rows of veg.

Liz and I are keen on the idea of companion cropping, where you plant various herbs and flowers between crop rows to encourage beneficial insects, and discourage pests. Liz took a guide to this away and drew up our planting scheme for the veg rows.

Tareka and I went over today to begin the preparation. We had the vague plan that we would uncover a section at a time (it's all covered with black plastic to retard weed growth), irrigate and plant.
We didn't realise quite how dry the soil was, so we set about fiddling with the irrigation system in order to wet the soil enough to plant into.

The irrigation system did not take kindly to the tweakings of an untrained hand, and promptly popped a pipe.

Tareka discussed the issue with Liz and she and Jason will look into the irrigation system over the coming week, so Tareka and I can get stuck into some planting as soon as possible.

Once the beds can be prepared, we will be planting cabbage, silver beet and cauliflower. It's midwinter over here, so brassicas are the order of the day.



As you can see, baby Mapera was assisting Daddy by eating all the unwanted soil!