Wednesday, December 6, 2017

The law of increase

I remind myself from time to time that the most useful photos for me on any blog are the 'before' and 'after' or at least consecutive images of progress/growth. They give me so much visual information on what was done to get to the 'now'.
I don't normally think to take a photo of something I consider to be a mess; it's only when you have done something and think how good it looks that you remember the camera. Fortunately I have an example here of mess and redress. 


The tunnel house has this concrete path down one side that doesn't need to get wet unless I am careless with the sprinkler. In the past  I have used the space to grow extra things in pots but for the minute it is my potting area and tool shed.


In the blue butt to the right is liquid seaweed; through virtue of being topped up a lot already it is now the requisite weak tea brew and I can ladle it straight onto my plants with an old saucepan.
It is host to a cluster of hover-fly larvae, sausage shape with a thin tail swimming vigorously in a huddle. They are beneficial insects so I ignore them instead of being grossed out.


Tomatoes have strong growth, not sure how productive they will be, but if I knew that they wouldn't be the great experiment that they are. 


The bucket of comfrey drench I just leave outside the door to supplement the watering can now and again. I toss in the tomato laterals and outer leaves as I go; apparently tomatoes like their own and it is good for them. Another great experiment and a convenient way to deal with the debris immediately. I am a good housekeeper in my garden. 


The birds are desperately hungry with all the dry conditions and finding ways to access any available food source. 
This is a stack of netting scaffold, 'whipped up' by B. Nothing is ever quite whipped up. First the appropriate extra long pallet had to be garnered, once spotted; at top speed as it happened, because there was a fuel leak nearby and the fire service were closing down the road as we sped in, picked it up, and took off back home. I was the noble assistant for this project supplying enthusiasm and gratitude, if not skills. 


In place, needs a little refinement with hooking the netting on but works a treat and looks good too. 


I hate to admit how rough this compost is. However, it totally doesn't matter. I sort it through, pulling out the rubbish, bucket 1, putting aside the weeds and couch roots etc to drown, bucket 2, and then mixing through some aged sheep manure out of the plastic sack there. The manure is because it is destined for some lacklustre brassicas that are looking a bit yellow and are beginning to form heads; doubly desperate for growth.  


Oh here's the photo of the strawberries that goes with that patch. 


The little asparagus ferns are a sorry reality to my imaginings. I'm going to move the bed because the drainage isn't adequate (among other things) and in fact the little markers have become, in some part, little headstones marking where an asparagus once lived and died. 
That's a job for next spring anyway but in the meantime I have already given them a little compost and a little breathing space with some pertinent weed 
removal. 
There's an unusual verse in Mark 4 to the gist of 'To the one who has, will be given more. To the one who  doesn't have, even that will be taken away'. 
With plants you can only give according to what they have and a big plant can take a lot more than a little one. 
Anyway, I'm reluctant to say what else they will get until I have done it. I've read too many recipe comments that say "I'm going to make this tonight" which seems such a crazy thing to say, compared to say the information you would get from, "I have made this and..."


4 comments:

  1. I am struck by the care and attention you give to your plants, from feeding them with the best nutrients to creating these wonderful structures to protect and booster their growth. It's touching to see such nurture and dedication.

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    1. You are right and you would laugh if you saw my shipment from Environmental Fertilisers that arrived at the door at the door this week. Sacks and bottles of such things as biochar, fish fert. rock dust, foliar feed...I think feeding anything is my core essence for want of a better way to explain it.

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  2. That strawberry netting frame is truly a work of art, totally worth the crazy car chase to rescue the pallet before the cordon was policed. For the mean time I am sharing my strawberries with the birds, but I intend to chuck a net over them at some point.

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    1. actually i have never netted the raspberries and mum, correctly I think, has suggested that the long grass around them is sufficient screening and for the most part it is.
      One thing I'm doing a bit too well at the moment is bio-diversity. The whole section is brimming with life, it hums, so many habitats. Not sure it is what the neighbours signed up for though...

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