KEEPING MOVING TOWARDS THE HEAT FIRST WEEK OF MARCH

With the beans and tomatoes growing rapidly, we bought this jute string that we knew we would need to tie them all up to the climbing frames. Its particularly important for the beans that seem to produce more the higher they are able to climb. Winding the string was a quiet pleasant occupation that made a nice change from the noise of 55 students we had last week!

These are the beans and tomatoes that we used this string to tie up - another very calming job.

Normally when we are winding string we put it over a chair (or two) to stop it getting too tangled. Three of our volunteers took a more innovative approach to do the winding and hung the hank of string over the handles of one of our load carriers.

Unfortunately it still wasn't possible to avoid some tangles and they couldn't do all the winding before worked stopped. So here it is in the bike basket of one of the volunteers so they can do 'homework' - winding it all up ready to bring in later in the week!

Another job we started this week was clearing all the undergrowth from these trees in Le Jardin orchard. Some of the trees have got very tall and other have died so it was a slow job.

Taking out the dead trees will provide more space and light for the existing trees. We intend to plant various other bushes and plants which will provide different sorts of food at different levels in the forest - like a permaculture food forest. Although we haven't worked out the details yet - like what plants we are going to grow.

Last week we had this coconut fibre delivered. Someone reminded me it is also called 'coco peat', as it is used as a more sustainable product than actual peat, which is dug up from peat bogs and is a non renewable resource. Peat was an essential material for plant nurseries in Europe as it was used to grow seedlings. With 'coco peat' being exported all over the world this has led to it becoming much more expensive here in India. I can remember the days when the string factories would be happy to give it away because they couldn't sell it anywhere. Now as an export item it is very valuable.

We put a lot of it in the chicken house as it is very absorbent and thus keeps the house dry and also absorbs a lot of the smell.

We also put some in all the nest boxes.

This led to much squawking from some of the chickens that ran out into the yard, leaving the rest to sit on top of each other in one of the nest boxes. I presume they will have sorted themselves out by tomorrow and will be more comfortable!

With the increasing heat more and more pineapples are starting to grow like these two plants in the Prayog garden. In the sun they seem to sparkle like Christmas decorations.