PLANTING FOR THE END OF THE COOL AND BEGINNING OF THE HEAT! Third week in February 2024

This area of the garden, where we deal with nursery soil, is a hive of activity most days.  As the weather gets hotter and there is little or no rain, we tend to leave the soil out to dry in the sun rather than dry it under the keet roof.

You can see someone raking out the soil on the ground where it will be left for 24 hours.  After which it is dry enough to sieve which you can also see happening.

This is the back up work needed to get the soil ready for the microgreens growing which happens in the nursery in the background.  After the soil has been sieved it is put into trays that have to be put into the nursery where seed is put on it.  Everyday the plants are watered until they are large enough to be cut and packed and then sent off to our customers.

This is where new soil from the nursery comes from - the tops of the raised beds that have got too high. As we grow plants on the bed and each time add more compost to the soil it builds up until the top of the bed becomes curved rather than flat. Then we have to take some of the soil off the top of the bed to make it flat again. This is what the two volunteers are doing on this bed in the Seed garden. The soil goes to the soil processing area where it will be dried and sieved and then mixed with more compost and coconut fibre (if we have any) and then put in trays for the microgreens.

As it is getting noticeably hotter we planted our first hot season crop which is bassella spinach. It will be ready probably in about six weeks.

In the meantime these are the last of our cool season crop - lettuces. These need to be planted as quickly as possible so they grow into useable lettuces before the really hot weather comes and they stop growing. Lettuces won't grow once the temperature reaches 30C for a certain number of hours each day.

This is one of the beds we prepared ready for planting in Le Jardin as well as another bed in the Prayog garden and two beds in the Seed Garden.

If we still don't have enough room we will dig up one or more of the beds that still have mango ginger on them. Although then we will have to think what to do with the mango ginger because after having very good sales at the beginning it isn't moving very quickly at the moment.

This is some liquid fertilizer we made last week for the leafy vegetables we have growing in the Prayog garden. I wish I could use a picture that gives you some idea of the smell!

We watered it onto all the leafy vegetables in the Prayog garden. As its high in nitrogen its very good for these sorts of plants. With vegetables like tomatoes, brinjal and maize we can water it on while the plant is growing. Once the vegetables start coming we stop. Otherwise the plant puts all its energy into making leaves and the vegetables can turn out very small.