The passionfruit was planted on Sunday. Lets see how long it takes to create the "roof" of the dome. I'm wondering if there is such a thing as a subtropical grape? Maybe it could share the space with the passionfruit. I also planted 20 acacias on Sunday - fimbriata and melanoxylon. I'm hoping they grow like weeds for me to turn into mulch.
I'm harvesting fat broad beans, little cabbages, and tiny leeks. The leeks look more like shallots. Still - that's an improvement on last years effort when they didn't survive transplanting! Maybe next year I'll get it closer to right. Strawberries and mulberries and cape gooseberries are there if I'm faster than the kids. Fennel and kohlrabi, turnips, silverbeet, warrigul greens, plenty of herbs. I can't wait until my fruit trees reach maturity and I get fruit too. The nectarine is full of promise. I must put bird netting over it in the next few days or they might beat me to it.
The big compost pile is almost 4 months old now and has reduced by 50% in volume from when it was completed, so I started to pull it apart over the weekend. It's a bit of a disappointment. There are bits in the middle that are well composted but also areas that are dry and the vines haven't broken down at all. After seeing Purple Pear's reply to the Ant topic I had an aha! moment. I never watered my compost pile apart from when I built it. The ones I've done before have been in plastic compost bins so they've kept wetter. I assumed that being open to the rain would be enough, but obviously it wasn't. I always wondered why you would cover an open heap and now I realize that it is to keep the water IN not OUT. I've put the 2 plastic bins back into use down beside the mandala beds and have filled them with some of the better rotted stuff and some of the not so well rotted stuff, and added some compost worms, watered them well, and gave them a generous splash of molasses. I hope that restarts the biology and they compost down a bit more.
Then I went and watered the other compost pile that I have just finished. It has layers of mushy compost and one of site soil (left over from the recent landscaping) in between the green leafy stuff and the cardboard and the cow poo, so hopefully that'll hold some moisture better than the last one. There's a real art to this compost making - each mix is that bit different to the next. I can't wait to get started on the next one now. Plenty of purple top weeds waiting to go in... I need to visit my mate with the cows and get more cow poo first though.
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