Child of the Planet

I am well knackered. The weather this week has been pretty much perfect for the planting. It’s been sunny and still. I also hear that this week is astrally significant for the planting of fruit trees. I’ll take all the help I can ;-) I’m almost ready to plant. Spent most of the week digging large holes in the sand. I've learnt a lesson from when I planted the apple trees. These holes are much bigger.     Some rotting wood is thrown in the bottom. Below in the background in the photo on the right you can see one of the new 'spoil' sand dunes that have appeared in the garden.     I’ve been building up a store of soil in one of the front garden beds. ( read it here ) This is full of horse manure, leaves, wood chips, grass, and seaweed. The soil in the bed is chock full of worms.     Each hole is filled with soil from the raised bed. After a layer of soil, a generous dusting of ash. The hole is filled up and it’s ready for planting tomorrow.

Is it possible to grow nuts at the beach? A delivery of two walnuts, and three hazelnuts arrived yesterday. I’ve started digging massive holes in the dune that I live on, to fill with decent soil.     

Recently helped a mate clean out their mothers shed and scored some old tools and stuff. These pruning shears needed a bit of a clean up. I broke the two halves apart and dropped them into a bath of vinegar and bicarb of soda.  This cleans all the rust off The pieces come out of the bath coated with a black residue. I hit it with sandpaper on the rotary tool. Grinding stone to give the shears a bit of an edge. Screw them back together and they're ready to start lopping branches, and maybe the odd toe!

Update on this post here . We had some big swells at the beach earlier in the week and I collected a decent heap of kelp. On top of the kelp I plastered some horse manure. All of which makes this pile a worm's paradise.

First shoots of the garlic planting ( read here ) are spearing up out of the soil. Need to get the seaweed tea going

Planning on planting down in the back corner so this tree needs to have some height taken out of it.      It’s now the same size as the others that I’ve cut.

I’ve cut back a section of the ‘fallow’ raised garden ( read about the plan...  ) so I can whip up some decent soil. Couple of layers of oak leaves that I’ve collected (I hear they add calcium), and coffee grounds which are acidic so I’m hoping it balances out the oak leaves. All weighed down by layers of soil that is full of twig mulch and seaweed. Dusting of ash from fire. All wrapped up in a cardboard blanket to slow down the rain penetration and fossicking Black birds. I peel back the cardboard to apply more coffee grounds when I can score them.

After some bad luck ( read about it here ) I’m seeing a lot of new leaf growth and plenty of lemons are ripening. Each year I give them a bit of a prune, and lay down cardboard to slow down the weeds and grass. These low shoots just above the soil line need to go.