On the weekend we harvested a huge number of tomatoes – finally they are ripening, but as usual, coming all at once. We took home about 5 kilos from the 6 plants, and another enormous zucchini. I’ve pulled out all but one of the zucchini plants now, and as the corn has finished have chopped up the spent stalks to use as mulch. We will continue the veggie patch in the same place for another year, before moving it to a more permanent spot up the hill. We will need to re-fence the patch, do some weeding as blackberries are still shooting up underneath the great leaves of the zucchini, and then plant some green manures to rejuvenate the soil as much as possible.
I added a couple of pallets to create another compost box adjacent to the single box. I dug a shallow trench to slot the pallets in, and tied them together with plastic rope found in the shed. As I turned over the heap into the new box I discovered it had all dried out and was worthless. There is no composting action happening at all, and no little micro-organisms, let alone worms. I’ve got to cover the mulch with a plastic sheet to keep in the moisture at our next visit and try to bring it back to life.
We have continued harvesting blackberries, but concede it over now for the season. It was a great year, with probably more than 20 kilos over 4 weeks – loads of blackberry and apple jam, at least 12 bottles of blackberry vinegar, and some blackberry sauce for ice-cream and even on porridge. We have three large zip lock bags of frozen blackberries to last through winter.
Eug finished mowing the Bloch on the weekend too, completing the last quarter and going over the southern boundary again to keep the blackberry shoots under control. I mowed the roadside which is becoming easier the more frequently it is done. It’s looking positively neat!
My Mental Bloch 