Good quality compost is crucial for the growing principles we’re trying to follow and so building our composing system this week was an important mini milestone. At the beginning we needed truckloads (literally) of compost to build the garden beds but we want to minimise “imports” to the farm so that it’s more sustainable. Alex’s drive to minimise work, together with his love of YouTube, found us a design that generates compost full of microbes and fungus but doesn’t require turning, which is a lot of work. (There’s an enthusiastic explanation of the “Johnson-Su bioreactor” in an interview by Curtis Stone and a drier explanation by the inventor.) Our version is an adaptation of the original design but hopefully retains enough of the key principles that it still works. Time will tell.

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After two more cardboard-collecting trips and some wheelbarrow-pushing (by Alex) we finished also the week with three more garden beds, taking us to a total of 48 beds (360m2) outside the tunnel. That leaves “just” 25 to go! I’m still working on the plans for next season and fretting over the seedlings that appear to have stopped growing. Now we have trays of Chinese cabbage seedlings in four different locations to see whether light or warmth is more important. The ones that we carry in and out of our laundry daily appear happiest – as they should be given the attention they’re given! It’s not scaleable but is at least a way of making sure we get a crop. Still, even some of those fell prey to a hungry insect. The days are still becoming noticeably shorter and cooler but we’ll keep planting what Tasmanian gardening legend Peter Cundall includes in his planting guide for May, just with fingers crossed and expectations lowered.