A Self’ish Life Part 3

A GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE vegetable patch needs healthy soil, and a good maxim to remember us that you should put back as much if not more goodness from your soil than that which you have taken out in the way of crops.

Simply put, if you grow a lot of food, then you need to replace all the vitamins and minerals that these plants have removed.

Different crops have different requirements, and it is sound practice to rotate which plants are grown where. To grow the same crop on the same area, year after year will allow diseases to build up in the soil, and will eventually deplete the soil of the very nutrients that this plant needs to flourish.

Being self-sufficient in the garden can also mean not buying in vitamins, minerals or supplements for your soil.

So what can we do to improve the it’s health?

Leaving a plot bare over winter for example is a waste, when you could grow grass or clover and dig it back into the ground in the spring. This holds the surface of the soil together – wind and water erosion will have less impact, and the goodness from the ‘winter crop’ is returned to the soil to thus improve it for the new season.

All garden waste should be composted, together with anything else from the kitchen that is relevant. We have chickens, and the dirty straw from their coops is piled on. The nitrogen from the droppings is a compost activator, and we also add in all the olive leaves that we can find.

Last year we kept on piling it high into a ‘bin’ made of three pallets, and it slowly rotted down over the winter to give us a fantastic reserve to kick start the vegetables in the spring.

As compost needs water as well as warmth, we had to resort to watering it once in a while, and we turned it over a couple of times to ensure that everything evenly ‘cooked’.

We are only a little self-sufficient, or self’ish, and when we were creating our second veg. patch we enlisted the help of a trailer-load of compost from a local compost plant. They only process natural products and at €5 for half a ton, or thereabouts, we felt that we could justify it.

We decided that the extra produce we could grow would compensate for it, and of course we would have more leaves etc for the ‘heap’.

OUR CATALAN NEIGHBOURS spray their trees several times a year, and they fertilise their land with expensive chemicals, after they have ‘herbicided’ all other life out of the ground. I sometimes wonder whether the extra kilos of olives they grow for all this extra work and expense are worth it.

Previously, the majority of the plants in my patch are bought from the local co-op as ‘plantlets’, costing very little each time.

I have sown and grown on from seeds, but it is never quite the same as taking off and buying twenty lettuce, and planting them.

The results are somehow so much more immediately visible.

That said, I have grown several crops from seed, and the satisfaction is greater and from an economic point of view, saving one’s own seed from the year before must be better.

That particular tomato that tasted so good, or those courgettes that worked so well. Fear not – if you have saved the seed, then you can have them again.

One of my neighbours tells me of a man in the village who grows his tomatoes from seeds saved each year, and his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him, so that his plants are direct descendents of plants grown 70 years ago.

To save tomato seeds, pick a good specimen that has ripened fully, and cut it in half and squeeze the seeds and pulp into a jar. Leave this jar in a warmish place for a few days, stirring it once or twice a day. It will begin to ferment and will smell pretty foul, but this is necessary to kill of any ‘baddies’ that maybe attached to the seeds.

Top the jar up with water and stir well. All the good seeds will sink to the bottom , so pour off the rest and sieve out the good ones. Dry them well, out of direct sunlight and you can them store them for up to four years.

This same method can be used for cucumber seeds, but most most other plants, the seeds merely need to be completely dry.

For more information, please visit www.realseeds.co.ukwhich has detailed instructions on more plant seeds.

? In my ‘Perello Gardening Calendar’ it informs that in July I should take great care with my irrigation, and continue to plant out tomatoes so that I may keep picking until October and November.

? I should also be preparing the land for my cauliflowers, cabbages and spinach amongst others. Not sure I feel like doing that just yet.

? I should be treating my olive trees against the mosca, and should continue to pick my pears and peaches, if I had any.

All too much like hard work – a beer and a snooze in the hammock this afternoon sound more appealing.

Manaña, maybe.

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Posted by editor on 2010-06-29 Filed under Home & Garden, July 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry