Wild Hope Homestead

Over Labour Weekend things have suddenly progressed in the vege garden department. Don’t get too excited, there still aren’t any plants in the bed yet! The Little Fulla has been having some longer stretches of sleep plus having The Husband around on the weekend makes a big difference. The Husband has earned himself some major brownie points too.

We (mainly The Husband) added 10 bags of horse poop to the vege bed, which The Husband had picked up last week. Unfortunately, it was rather fresh. And when I say “rather” I mean, “Somebody get the pegs!” I gagged at one point, The Husband wore a dust mask and our clothes stunk from just working around the poop. I don’t think we’ll be using that poop source again in a hurry. Aside from the smell, I’m hoping it’s not going to be too weedy… In any case, it only made a thin layer when spread over the suitably large 8m x 1.6m vege bed.

I spent a while digging out the last of the weeds in the vege bed plus many of those on the side and shovelled some of the soil from the side into the vege bed. I also moved all the wood from the old vege beds so I can plant some tomatoes up against the existing wire frame and started to position some of the wood for the next vege bed, which probably ain’t gonna happen for a while.

There was still a large clump of spring onions on the side of the bed so I forked that up and put the relatively fine soil at the end of the bed where I want to plant carrots. Now, what does one do with an old, thick, flowering clump of spring onions? Throw them on the compost? Nope. Well, not yet. On closer inspection there were a number of younger, smaller spring onions in there, which I teased out and sat in a jug of water until I had finished. Then I cut off the larger buds and recently opened flowers from the clump, leaving long stems. They became a quick flower arrangement with the addition of some red Dianthus ‘Passion’ flowers. The tops of the saved spring onions were chopped off around 3 inches from the bases and any long roots trimmed off. I put the bases in a container of water on the kitchen bench. They will be planted when the vege bed is ready for them and will regrow their leaves. The spring onion tops went into the fridge for culinary purposes. Then the rest of the old spring onion clump went into the compost. That’s good mileage from an old crop.

Meanwhile, The Husband went on two driving expeditions to collect two trailer loads of compost and poured it all in the vege bed by the barrow load. What a legend. Without him I wouldn’t have had the time or energy to get the vege bed done this season. I don’t like having to pay for vege garden construction materials but since we had a giant bed to fill and no source of a large amount of well-rotted poop or ready compost, I again sucked it up and we paid $67 for 1 cubic metre of compost, or a little more. I spread it out nice and even-like throughout the bed. And behold! A vege garden awaits the plants. “Where are the plants?” I hear you ask. Well, I have been sowing some seeds…