What a fabulous place the Huon Valley is! Our crazy cool but wet and occasionally warm spring weather has morphed into crazy and cold and wet but occasionally warm summer weather, and happily the vegetable garden seems to LOVE the weather. We will be eating fresh, clean, organic fruit and vegetables throughout summer, safe in the knowledge that our excess of any one thing can be swapped with friends and neighbours for equally safe and tasty produce. We even have enough to share with the parrots, snails and insects that are already eyeing off the tender new growth. At the moment we are growing; sunflowers, spinach, snow peas, broad beans, purple climber beans, lettuce varieties x 4, tomato varieties x 6, apples, plumcots, mulberries, nashi, cherry, apricot, plum x 3, pear, beetroot, zucchini, sweetcorn, squash, runner bean, chive, spring onion, and a variety of herbs.
When we were travelling in Quebec the Wendak Indians introduced us to the Three Sisters concept. Plant a squash, corn and bean together and they will assist each other. The squash leaves keep the soil shaded and moist in summer, the corn stalk provides the support for the bean. So I planted out 15 plots of this, and I have about a 70% success rate in germination, (thanks snails for munching some of my tender sisters before they got going!!!)
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Sunflowers – Giant Russians, and beetroot and zucchini and sweetcorn and raspberries on the fence for the alpacas to enjoy.
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Broad beans, iceberg lettuce and tomatoes of varied persuasions.
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Iceberg lettuce, broad beans and my Three Sisters experiment in the right side background. And Rasberry the alpaca wondering what I am up to! Oh, and a double pink poppy just flowered.
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Apples, and chives and Sunflowers – Yellow Empress. We harvest the sunflower seeds for winter alpaca feed, and we enjoy the sun FLOWERS in the summer.
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Spring onions, and tuscan lettuce mix.
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Chives, sunflowers, and white currants.
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Red currant and Josta berry bushes, we plant them along the vegetable garden / alpaca run fence so the pacas can help themselves to their side.
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Mulberries – the tree is home to many birds, and the prunings are an alpaca favourite.
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Roses with plum and apricot trees in the background, food for our bodies and our souls.