A work in progress

If I only showed you the finished results you might find this garden a bit ho hum.  But the thrilling action shots of weeding. Now that can’t be missed.

Here are the before and during shots of the steep pool garden bank.

The only happy things in this entire area are the eragrostis curvula grasses bravely holding on. And Artur.

He couldn’t believe his luck. A nice soft place in the sun to snooze. With his preferred human within reach.

But he kept lying in the exact spots where I needed to weed. Most irksome. But luckily the sun came over the mountain top by 10am and it was too warm for the fur coated one to pester me.

He was forced to slink off into the shade and I could get on with endless weeding and building a mighty pile of dead annual grasses for the compost heap. I’m getting there. But I really need to create some good mulch if I’m to avoid this annual grass invasion.

But the heat defeated me too.

It was hot today. So I popped up to the top potager to pick a kilo of cherries and made a batch of cherry and apple syrup.

That kept me indoors for half an hour.  But my visit to the top vegetable garden reminded me that there was a lot to do up there.

So I took all my toys up the steep steps and started to weed. First the asparagus bed which is now set for the season.  And then I watered all the cabbages using my new gravity feed system from the water tank.

I’m going to have to come up with some solution for dropping the hose into a half full tank for the next watering. I can only use the small circular opening for now.

The good news is that the soil underneath the mulch I put down between the potato beds is fine, healthy and moist.

So I planted a row of cabbages in between.

That simple sentence belies just how fiddly that was. I had to build the butterfly proof netting first. Lots of plodding back and forth from the tool kit to the shed to the top potager.   And down to the shed to retrieve the cabbage.

I’ve planted kale and summer cabbages here.  But tomorrow I need to finish one bit of the netting at the far end. There is a slight tear in the fabric. And I have learned to my cost just how tenacious those butterflies are when they want to lay their eggs. They will fit in any tiny space.