Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Garden Organisation

I have to actually water the gardens now as the wet season comes to an end and there hasn’t been much rain to speak of.

I have realised over the year that I have spread my gardens out too much and it has required way too much work to water everything, so I am in the process of gathering the gardens together. I am nearly there, and putting in irrigations plays a huge part in it.

I think I got a bit carried away with having so much space to play with that it was too exciting :D I did have things together but some of the early stuff was put in bad places and I now have to dig these things up to move them with the rest. If I don’t, these things just don’t get watered often as they are away from the main garden area.

I have planted out the louffa’s and choko’s with the passionfruit, and plan to put in another row with passionfruit, so having four rows total beside the containers. I am unsure if I will put irrigations on these or just water these by hand, I am thinking a good soaking twice a week might be enough with enough mulch on top.

The garden around the edge of the driving circle that goes around the main garden rows is another one that doesn’t require watering every day, but I will put irrigation in this one. I have the potatoes, pigeon peas, galangal, ginger, turmeric, rosellas and bananas in it.

The main garden has all the high maintenance stuff that needs looking after all the time, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers etc and so I put the water on it most days. Thank goodness for bore water otherwise we would be screwed, but we wouldn’t live here if there wasn’t bore water, you have to have water :)

I did have a plan for the gardens at the beginning, and I have mostly stuck with it as it was a good plan, however I did stray a little on occasion and it now have to work to fix it. I am sorting out the stuff that I won’t bother with, finding the stuff that works, and meeting people who are doing the same as us and swapping seeds and ideas.

Like a lot of things in life, it is a life long journey and there is always more to learn, just because you have done something for years doesn’t mean you know it all. Sometimes you repeat the same things, the same way, without ever expanding your knowledge or learning to do things better, more efficiently. Live and learn :D

ON OTHER MATTERS

I am a chocolate addict, can’t help myself, you can keep me very happy by giving me chocolate, I have a friend who doesn’t like chocolate and I find it amazing, how could you not, though I probably eat her share in this world. Now, onto the point, “Only 3 per cent of the world's global chocolate supply is ethically certified to have been harvested without the use of forced, child, or trafficked labour.” I try and buy fair trade chocolate most of the time, don’t always and I feel guilty for it, but will from now on it really doesn’t cost much. However, we are so used to buying things so cheap that we don’t’ think about the high cost to others just so we can have a cheap chocolate bar or a $3 t-shirt.

I liked this post about plastics at The Non-Consumer Advocate, I like reading peoples thought on stuff like this.

There is also this old post at Living on a Dime about how many clothes do we need. I think we (as in we as a society) have too many clothes, too many cheap clothes (that is whole other issue) and not enough quality clothes that last the distance. Also, when do we have the time, or the occasion, to wear a room full of clothes? We have been carting around an old wardrobe that gives us about 2foot of hanging space each (we never seem to live anywhere with built-in’s), we have some drawers each and that’s it, we seem to have an adequate amount of clothes for our needs and wants.

5 comments:

  1. It is amazing isn't it, how quickly everything dried up after all that wet for so long. Lucky you to have bore water. I try to water my plants deeply only once or twice a week - it seems to help them to develop deep roots and not be so reliant on watering. Veggies like lettuces etc seem to need more frequent watering though.

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  2. We do that too, but we are on clay so need to develop our soil so that will work better. There are the high maintenance things like you said, lettuce, tomatoes etc Oh, and lots of mulch.

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  3. I am now inspired to clean out closets this weekend thanks to your link in the post! :)

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  4. I know, I feel the same way, we really don't need as much as we think :)

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  5. Garden is looking great, KJ!
    Good and timely comments about chocolate too. Hope you had a good Easter weekend.

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