The Calm after the Storm

One of the most common questions I get from guests in the garden is “How long do you spend maintaining all this?”

Honestly, it doesn’t feel like I spend that much time in there apart from when there are building or landscaping projects going on. A major bonus of having a plan for the garden is that a lot of the jobs are related to each other in space and time, so it cuts out a lot of unnecessary meandering. I’ve mentioned before about my trip to the chickens each day involving checking out the veggie patch, all my potted plants that need water, the rain gauge, the pond, the compost is on the way and my toilet. So a fair few daily chores are checked off first thing in the morning.

There is the odd week when I’m doing the heavy labour of shovelling paths and woodchip at least three hours a day. In spring I often blitz the place to get rid of the grass, breaking up the job into sections so I feel like I’ve achieved something each day.

Aside from those times it is an hour or three a week, planting seeds, pruning trees, harvesting and making compost. Compost making and processing the harvest are probably the most time consuming jobs, and they are not every week. It is quite hard to estimate the amount of time I spend working, as I actually love just hanging out and seeing what is going on. Sometimes that results in a bit of ad hoc weeding…

One of the major permaculture principles is Observe and Interact. Only interacting once I have done copious amounts of observing. Sizing up whether I really need to make a change, or if it is my inbuilt human need to interfere with something that might look a bit odd but is functioning perfectly well.

After last weeks flurry of wood chip activity, this week has been very laid back (thankfully). We had some guests over on Tuesday for a three hour garden tour (more about that in a later post) so had to concentrate on removing trip hazards (hoses) etc. and making the house presentable.

Lou and I are constantly on the lookout for ways to replace manufactured supermarket purchases with homemade and so we’ve been experimenting with deodorant, hand moisturiser, shampoo as well as juicing a box of gifted lemonades (thank you Wendy!). Lemonades are a really sweet lemon you can drink straight from the juicer. Wendy’s prolific tree was the catalyst for me buying one – we are still waiting for our own to produce.

I also processed the second half of our ginger harvest, peeling it all, blitzing it up and freezing in ice cube trays. Of course I had to sample the product and rest with a cup of lemongrass and ginger tea afterwards.

A chunk of time this week has been sizing up some projects for the community garden – I’m not just thinking about my own place. If you live near Edgeworth David Community Garden in Hornsby we would love to see you there! Working bees every Wednesday and Saturday 9am to 1pm. I go on Wednesday as I try to keep some time for the kids on the weekend. The community garden is the perfect way to experiment with growing and get tips and tricks before applying your new knowledge to your own garden. Awesome for kids young and old too!