I don’t hate rats. I just don’t want one living in my compost bins (bins! ha! Because despite my previous compost anxiety I’m doing pretty well on the compost front. I’m even at the stage of trundling up and down my street with the wheelbarrow scooping leaves out of the gutters for my piles and weaving new bins as needed out of scavenged chicken wire and tomato stakes…)
Anyway, I don’t feel the need to kill it; I even admire the clever neatness of the tunnels it has made, and, as I think Lynda Hallinan* pointed out recently, a rat in a compost bin means that the compost is warm in the middle - and that’s actually a good thing. Except I want to use some of my lovely, wormy compost and I don’t really want to put my fork through a rat when I open up the bin. So I’m not sure what to do. I’ve taken the top off the bin so that the local cats can get in and have a sniff and hopefully the rain will make the bin a lot less cosy. But I’m probably just going to have to tuck my pants into my gumboots, take the sides off, harden up and just stick the fork in and stir.
*I think it was in one of her Get Growing Campaign emails. They’re pretty useful and it’s nice feeling like part of a movement of local gardeners ripping up the lawn to plant vegetables. And I’m very responsive to emails which arrive on Friday night with a list of jobs to do in the garden right now. That’s how the garlic finally got planted!
Earlier today I was fretting a bit about how little I’d been inclined to post recently. But it’s just occured to me, after looking back at my earlier posts, that I’ve more or less moved into the space I was trying to get to in the first place. We now eat something from our garden most days and it’s been months since I read anything about the oil crash.
I’m still worried, but I’m not overwhelmed. Petrol here will be going over $2 a litre soon and yet I don’t feel panicked by that. How can I? My dad ate a peach from my sad little garden today. My sad, neglected little garden is still producing food! Besides zucchini that is…
If you are being lazy about using your creative intelligence, natural forces will work their hardest to overwhelm and undermine your inadequate design.
Linda Woodrow, The Permaculture Home Garden.
I put my compost bin in a stupid place so now I have to wheelbarrow the compost up a flight of concrete stairs to the new garden beds. A good permaculture design is all about making the various elements in the garden work together harmoniously in order to reduce the hard work.
The best place for the compost bin is where the compost is to be used.
To be fair to myself though, the compost bin placement worked in my original plan. Alas, my beautiful circle garden is not going to happen as the space has been taken over by my children. Which is ok, because it’s ultimately less effort to build a new garden in a slightly different place than it would be to try and keep the children’s games out of an area they naturally are drawn to.
I love summer. I’m so happy every day when I’m down in my garden. Oh, except this morning. I was sad this morning when I found one of my nicest sunflowers had been ripped out by the wind (which is the big hazard when gardening in Wellington…) This one in the picture is an heirloom variety from Koanga Gardens. I wish I could remember exactly what type but I didn’t write it down. Bad gardener… I have three different garden journals now too, so no excuse really.
So, progress. I think it’s looking pretty good. A bit of a hodgepodge, but I’m learning a lot as I go. We’ve cleared almost all the rubbish now. Well, I thought so and then my husband found a rusty set of hedge clippers this afternoon - left under the hedge where a previous gardender had obviously been defeated.
This is what it all looks like now:
p.s. The way to get my small children to eat my garden produce is to grate it up and hide it in chocolate cake. And not gloat about it when they eat it. Within their hearing range.
From this:
to this: (in just three weeks)
I’ve just come home from a ten-day holiday and I’m a little amazed. Nothing that grew in my garden last year even came close to this. In fact, it’s because everything I grew last year was so stunted that I ignored all the spacing guidelines in my books and crammed everthing in like this. In my head, as I was planting, I was thinking “no way is that book right, this (hands spaced as wide as a stunted cherry tomato plant) is how much space a tomato plant needs”. How was I to know that a combination of good soil, lots of sun, careful watering and liquid seaweed feed would produce this jungle? You can’t even tell what’s in there.
If I were a more experienced gardener I’d know what to do about this mess, but I don’t. Know, that is. I think I’ll just leave it and see what happens. At the very least there will be enough for a nice compost pile in the Autumn. However, now I that I do know the wrong way to do it, I’ll be much more organised next year and plant everything properly spaced and according to the planting plan I will design.
No, really.
I pose it as a question, but I’ve actually decided I’m going to dig up the beds I’ve already constructed and lay out a seven circle mandala a la Linda Woodrow. Mine’s going to be rather smaller than her plans though (the circles will be 1.2 m in diameter rather than 4) and there will be no chook dome (yet…).
This link will give you a better idea of what it might look like. Mine won’t look anywhere this neat though, that’s guaranteed! I’m not intending to raze my garden and lay it out all at once. I’ve a more haphazard approach in mind.
My garden has been flattened by gale-force winds and hail. All day long I paced between the windows, trying to get the best view through the wind and rain of what might be left intact. Late in the afternoon I was able to pop out and have a look around. All my tomato plants have been destroyed, a courgette is looking pretty sad, the lettuces have windburn, the only sunflower to have been doing well is now horizontal and it looks like about half the plums have been scattered over the bottom of the section.
Oh well. I’ve more seedlings growing inside and in the time since I planted my beds I’ve come up with some better plans. I’m going to busy this weekend. That’s if the weather improves!
