Blogspot - Interia Dezain

It's been a wet and wild June so far, here's an update on what we've been up to in market garden, forest garden and during our Regenerative Landscape Design Course.   The Market Garden  We've had the benefit of Victoria Bezhitashvili's close attention in the market garden this season where she has been cataloging the pests and diseases mainly in the vegetable beds but also on some of the perennial plants. We'll be publishing her report in the coming weeks, it's very interesting to learn of the number of organisms we share our produce with. Most of them are more or less harmless but categorized as pests and diseases as they can cause severe damage to crops.         The vegetable polycultures are bearing their first yields with dwarf beans, beetroots and kale ready for the plate. This time of year the Brassica or Cabbage Bug - Eurydema oleracea can eat a little more than they are welcome to. Around once per week this time of year we'll inspect ...

So here's what we've been up to last week :) The summer is upon us and although June is actually the wettest month of the year in our region, its often very hot and the rain falls intensely in short bursts or storms as you can see in the below clip. Surveying in Ataraxia  We've had a productive week in the gardens with some surveying in Ataraxia to mark out irrigation channels and new beds that we'll be planting out in the Autumn.   Emilce using the transit level to find contour lines for the irrigation channels.  Angela and Victoria measuring the perimeter of the area. We then pegged out the various contour lines within the area starting from the highest point and looked for a contour line every 50cm drop in elevation, i.e, we made a topographic survey of the plot with 50 cm contour interval.   After pegging out a line we clear the large shrubs from the area that will be the raised bed.  In this particular case this contour line will serve as a guidel...

It's been a productive week in the gardens with perfect growing conditions - some heavy rains in the afternoons and evenings, followed by bright and warm mornings.   We're splitting our time between the market garden and the new garden Ataraxia,  the perennial polyculture trial garden   and carrying out maintenance task such as mowing, weeding, some late herb and vegetable plantings and manually removing pest eggs such as Pieris brassicae - Large white.  Daniel found what we think are most likely a clutch of Grass Snake - Natrix natrix eggs under the mulch in one of the beds. Great to see the garden is attracting these snakes. They are good pest predators in the gardens and keep the Marsh Frogs quiet! Eggs are laid in June and July. The female may lay up to 40 leathery matt-white eggs, often choosing compost and manure heaps and the eggs measure from 23-30 mm. The hatchlings emerge in autumn.   Some of the snake eggs under the mulch (Daniel's hand...