The second patch

The second patch, about 2m by 1.50m wide, has been more challenging than the first one. I don't think this ground ever had anything useful grown on it. It's pure sand, plus it was used as dumping ground for building material, rocks and stones when the house was built in 1939. Jules had it cleared from vegetation about three months ago, pure sand was left, but a  handful of resilient weeds made their way into this world in the meantime. They had to go. The other challenge for the area is its location. The patch is on the western side of the house. It's in the shade in the morning but bears the full brunt of the afternoon sun.

Many buckets of compost and chicken manure were put in. We watered down and dug in each layer at a time. Again and again with a lot of elbow grease. Half a big bag of sheep poo, then a lot of organic material from below our huge ficus, old leaves, crushed and watered before adding to the soil with a bit of worm castings to improve the quality. It got better by the hour and the soil became heavier and heavier, a strong sign that the soil was taking on the water through the organic mix we added.

A bag of soil improover was probably the most disappointing additive, a too little quantity, not at all value for money. The texture of the soil improver would not get anywhere near the beauty of our compost, chicken poo and organic matter we included. Selling this useless stuff more like a license to print money. Too expensive and only minimal improvement for the soil, a waste of effort. We decided to source soil improving material in bulk in the future. I have already organised a friend's tray back four wheel drive to be available for the shifting of materials.

We studied a few gardening books along the way to find out whether applying nearly a whole big bag of sheep manure was too much, but in the end we followed our instincts and both agreed on the time when the soil was right for planting.

This time we put in two rows of potatoes, one desiree and one ordinary variety, two rows of corriander seedlings and I sourced some other seedlings from my tomatoe pot, grown out of compost and unclear what it is, may be cucumber or pumpkin. I hope that there will be a time when I know by the first leave what plant I am actually putting into the soil. But I anticipate this moment to be a few years away.

In the end we mulched the patch again with straw and our effort looked beautiful at the time. We did this work between 9:30 and 12:30pm, but I noticed later today that the sun had taken its toll on the cucumber plants, they look pretty flat and tell me they need a lot more water. Hopefully the weather god will be kind to our project and is stays cool a few more days.

It was a great effort and it looks splendid. We are happy and have already made plans for the next weekend.
By the way the plants we planted yesterday are in good health and thriving.