Over the past fortnight we firmed up a plan to solve our soil problem by next season (we hope!). After the soil test results revealed very high sodium levels and the internet confused us we enlisted the help of an agronomist. Apparently we’re lucky because sodium is the main problem and that can be leeched out with water, and the process can be sped up with gypsum. So it can be solved fairly easily in our high rainfall environment. We’ve started by applying half of the prescribed amount of gypsum in the hope that we can reduce the salinity enough for green manure. An upside of the gypsum is that it’s also used to break up clay, which is underneath our garden beds. Hopefully after nine months, a summer and winter green manure crop and Alex’s homemade compost teas and extracts, we’ll have balanced out the soil and built up the organic matter. In the meantime we’ll try to save crops like our beans that are sad but surviving by applying blood and bone (I’ve relented) and compost teas.

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Last week we also made our first sales to Huon Valley Harvest, a stall of small farms’ produce at a local Saturday market. Although we want to focus on selling directly to customers rather than wholesale, it works well for us in this unpredictable season and it’s great to support this new social enterprise run by an enthusiastic duo. It may be the smallest expansion in history though: our first sale was four lettuce heads! It’s lucky we can drive to Huonville using electricity or we might have spent more money on fuel than we received! Still, it’s a great opportunity to practice harvesting and get some customer feedback ahead of next year’s veggie boxes.

Our second plantings of peas – after the mice started leaving the seeds alone – seem to be doing well so far, with the first harvests of plump pods last week. There are still inefficiencies to iron out. Just adding more rows of string to the trellises and tightening the existing strings somehow took two hours! Unsurprisingly, it’s faster if keep ahead of the peas and don’t need to try to delicately weave plants through as I go along. Harvesting also takes far too long but I am at least getting better at identifying the peas that are ready. Ebbi has helped by gobbling up samples during the quality reassurance process. Still, the kind words of a former colleague keep circulating in my mind: even if our move didn’t lower the productivity of my former workplace it has definitely lowered that of Australian agriculture!

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Aside from this we continued harvesting and storing garlic, propagating, sowing and transplanting and, of course, making compost. As the season progresses, more types of ladybirds have arrived (with different spots), as well as flies that bite and a new type of flying insect that I need to identify as friend or foe. It’s hard to believe we already have to think about planting for winter. Actually, the brussels sprouts are already overdue and I think we need to order garlic!

Although the compost has been a debacle, we’ve learned a lot this year, and not only about compost! I’m still waiting for the learning curve to flatten out a little. But I’m quietly confident we can see better results by winter if we make better use of the polytunnel and ensure plants like kale are tall before the days become too short. And I’m optimistic that by avoiding all sprays, never tilling the soil and planting a diverse range of plants around the beds we’ve laid the foundations for greater biodiversity that will reward us next year. Let’s see!