An upside of shorter days and a lighter planting schedule is having more time for organising other parts of the garden. This week we filled in a little more of the space around the vegetable beds. The most exciting part was collecting our second batch of fruit trees: olives, lemons, avocados and more blueberries. We’re quietly confident about the blueberries – these ones like slightly acidic soil and should be fine with our cool winter (and, it seems, autumn). But the others are a bit of a gamble, especially the poor sun-loving, wind-hating avocados that until six weeks ago were enjoying life in northern New South Wales. We’ve put them beside the tunnel to give them some wind protection with wire cages to protect them from our hopping herbivores and are hoping for the best. The lemon bottlebrush plants that we thought looked unappetising might be wishing we had done the same for them.

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The herbs we’ve grown from seed have been looking increasingly sad in their pots. But I’d been procrastinating doing something because I didn’t know whether they were too wet, too cold, too shaded, or too exposed? Would planting them into the border – which is what I wanted to do – make them happier or speed up their demise? So some went into the ground, and others will move into the tunnel, while some stay outside. Surely something will survive! The loosely Mediterranean-themed section has sage, oregano, thyme, marjoram and rosemary (from cuttings from a friend, not the incredibly erratic seeds). The “herbal tea” garden has chamomile and valerian for now, accompanied by a random dill that I moved. Comfrey is dotted everywhere since we will use it for compost. The test section of broad beans looks promising so we’ll plant more all along the fence which will (hopefully) look good over winter and provide some protection for the seedlings.

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The week also saw three trucks arrive with a lot more compost and tree mulch (24 and 20 cubic metres, respectively). Alex built two more beds, bringing the total to 32 beds (240 square metres) outside the tunnel. The latest compost and mulch, along with some more cardboard and around 77 “Alex-equivalent” hours of pushing wheelbarrows, should see the rest of the vegetable beds built! We also cut down the first planting of green manure. I haven’t seen anyone else cutting it down on their knees using knives but we got it done. I’m not sure the timing was right either. But I’m certain that the answers are in one of our books or the online courses I’ve started (there have been some opportunities that were just too good to pass up). So, like everything else, we will figure it out eventually!

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