Welcome to the Dirt Doctor Diary for 2009. This is where you can follow seasonal developments in the Dirt Doctor's School of Environmental Recovery Garden in Kakanui, North Otago.
Autumn
Harvest continues into late March and early Autumn. Soft summer fruits such as tomatoes and zucchinis are ripe to pick and ready for preserves and chutneys.
Scoresby dwarf tomatoes coming to crop. These are processing tomatoes grown for sauce and chutneys.
Good, robust fruit and a healthy size too!
A great number of tomatoes per vine, excellent quality even for late in the season.
Late crop zucchinis in a cover house. They are an indicator for our first frost and will collapse when it arrives.
Fardenlosa climbing beans. The bean pods ready to pick before the bean inside starts to swell.
Winter
Winter isn't the best time for growing, but it is an excellent time for garden preparation and of course the season to get your plants in the ground for spring.
Kelp is laid on beds that have finished their 3 year rotation. It will be assimilated into the soil over winter and the beds planted in potatoes again. Kelp is excellent for introducing and maintaining trace elements that are otherwise missing in the soil. Most NZ soils are deficient in copper, cobalt, magnesim, selenium, molybdenum and kelp helps restore and re-balance these deficiencies.
Note the difference here between beds chipped and left to mulch and those that are double dug and left with no cover. The mulch in this photo was from a bed of coriander, note how the structure of the soil is so much better than the bed with no cover. The bed that looks cloddy to the right will break down and get a better structure with an application of compost across the top.
Weeds left around the fennel will help protect the bulbs from rupturing in the frost. The weed understory will be used as a green manure crop when the fennel is harvested. Note that the weeds are green and soft varieties, easily assimilated by the soil.
Finally we can grow some brassicas without threat of white butterfly. Notice that the young brassicas are quite happy to be growing in amongst vigourous weeds. The weeds will benefit the soil when turned back in.
Spinach growing through Winter with garlic planted underneath. When the spinach is harvested the garlic will be in a nearly weed free bed. The spinach will achieve a premium in the early Spring market.
The beds that these broad beans are planted into have not been dug for six years, all that has happened is that post harvest the roughage has been chipped into the soil and the beans planted through the roughage. The weeds will be chipped as the beans come away in very early spring.
Improvised hot-box for broccoli and lettuce seedlings. The red fire brick in the foreground is heated on a stove or a hot element and slid under the box.
This is a baby carrot growing amongst young weeds. Carrots need to be weed free generally, but in Winter the weeds will protect the carrot from hard frosting and drying out. Weeding only needs to occur just before the carrots are overwhelmed.
Hothouse (complete with automated watering system). This house previously contained the tomato crop and is now planted in potatoes. This system of production allows you to grow related crops such as tomatoes and potatoes on a continual basis, while maintaining soil fertility.
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Remember the beans from Autumn? The chickens were let loose in the beans post harvest. They have cleaned it up so well that now the beds are ready for christmas potatoes to be planted.
Spring
The weeds start to grow faster than the crop. Time to chip hoe and mulch the green compost crop. This gives our chosen plants more light and space to grow into. Cut weeds with hoe or trowel.
The garlic is up. Gentle hand weeding now will prevent diseases in the next few weeks. Garlic does not like to be crowded by other plants.
Chipping off old crop residues and weed will create a mulch which will be absorbed by the bed in a few weeks, ready for new season planting.
Rank growth can be chipped into short lengths and left to collapse in the soil surface as a green manure crop.
Roots and stable humus help to maintain soil structure and friability.
Grass amongst the broad beans is chipped and left to collapse. The beans will quickly grow into the spaces and shade out reqgrowth. This patch of beans has not been dug for six years.
Planting Florence Fennel. Note the constant use of the quincunx pattern.
The chickens have left clean beds and a deep friable soil ready for the next crop
Stable humus and twiggy residue are the nursery for fungal hyphae.
Even docks pull out easily from the soil. This dock root is nearly as long as the fork handle.
