With a trip to Melbourne for Christmas celebrations, we only had two full working days this week. That said, after two weeks on the farm doing more physical work than in a long time (ever?), this was not a bad thing. It was relaxing to spend time in familiar surroundings, to be with family – and have new people to talk to!
The main achievement of the week was laying our second garden bed in about two hours, or half the time the first took. That left room for new inefficiencies in building something for our beans and peas to grow up. After carefully researching the options, we had decided that a 9-metre-long bean banjo would be cheaper than a tee-pee and more sturdy than other models. With our new rural supply store closed on Saturday we made an excursion to Bunnings in Kingston (40 minutes away with the promise of Margate’s market on the way back). Sadly, our cost-cutting led to wooden stakes that split when put into the ground.We reassessed and decided that a comparative trial of teepees (today) versus a bean banjo (for next week) would be much more interesting and, crucially for our egos, let us salvage something of the day’s plans.
Our latest challenge is now learning about how to keep plants alive. While we were in Melbourne, everything did well, especially the grass in the paddocks which is now thigh-high and beyond the capability of our ride-on mower. I do hope our mysterious man with a tractor comes sooner rather than later! But we still have some challenges. we have straggly broccoli and cauliflower seedlings that are falling over (“leggy” seems to be the technical term). Naturally the internet also has all the answers and contradictions one could ever want. We’ll assume it was a lack of light (or maybe water) while we were away and fervently hope that it’s a one-off issue! The heat (and our inexperience) led to mass seedling casualties. Beans, corn and pumpkin are thrilled but tiny delicate grassy seedlings looked more like hay by afternoon. Lesson learned.
We also found three of our potato bags (the plants) eaten one morning – but only Colibans, while the other nine were left alone. No Spuntas, Nicola’s or King Edwards for these thieves! We declared a pre-emptive war on insects and separated all the Colibans to avoid spreading. However, the plants were unchanged the next morning suggesting a false accusation. The insects were spared and blame shifted to wallabies. With 8 million on the island, we will just hope that they didn’t really enjoy the potato leaves.
