It’s already the start of our second autumn. I looked back at last year and saw some repeated worries but also, reassuringly, some progress: I’m again already wearing what I originally thought would be my winter clothes (but I now have thermals for winter), the abundance of apples and zucchini is becoming overwhelming again (but preserving them is less daunting) and the cabbage moths’ eggs are hatching (but we had covered most beds with netting and knew to brush off their eggs). The beetroot are better this year – perhaps because we heeded advice and added a tiny bit of boron to those beds. The field tomatoes and corn are looking better, I think, so I’m still hopeful for more. At least I have some good green tomato recipes now (and know which ones to avoid). 

We realised this week that a lot more beds are growing plants well now, with soil that absorbs moisture and has more worms. All of that time (mostly Alex) spent building, turning and sifting compost, spreading gypsum and blood and bone (as a one-off measure) and planting green manure seems to have really helped. (The passing of time probably helped at least as much!) The top half of the garden still needs more time but we’re much more confident about producing vegetable boxes next season. In the meantime we have a lot of seedlings we still want to plant so we’re testing out some of the beds by leaving the green manure but planting seedlings down the sides. If the vegetables grow, we’ll cut back the green manure and if not, we’ll still have living roots in the soil. It’s far from conventional but it should work. Of course Alex’s compost piles keep multiplying which will also help build the beds up. This time a new pile appeared to destroy the thistles (which was disappointing for our neighbour’s goats who benefited the last time we cleared thistles). The pile needs to be hot enough to kill the seeds so daily temperature updates continue.

With borders to Melbourne open again we were able to show our place to some more of our family. In a happy surprise, my sister-in-law loved podding broad beans so all of the tubs of beans that have been sitting around are ready to store for planting and eating. We just need to accumulate recipes. I’d been hoping that the kids would want to weed or search for caterpillars but discovered that I need to work on my marketing. We’ll continue experimenting on friends and family in the search for crowd-pleasing agri-tourism experiences!