Papatūānuku at Work

It’s been a tiring month in our new home. We have been hauling compost and lugging soil so that our new bins will thrive over winter. Once a bin is full we’ve been planting and mulching with straw. As the irrigation isn’t turned on yet are are relying on Tawhirimatea (god of the weather) to give us rain, and thank you Tahirimatea you have certainly been providing for us. We are getting rain every week which is keeping our crops watered.

We have been so surprised by what is growing in our soil mounds. There’s kale, nasturtium, broad beans, poppies, silver beet and spinach. Whaea Clare hasn’t had to use any of our seeds because we can grow what is popping up around us.

The only thing we have been sowing is peas, which we direct sowed in the hopes that very soon we will have lots to eat. We’re also planting a pea seed crop - this lot won’t be for eating, it is solely to provide us with seed for next year. We’re doing this because we noticed the shop bought pea seeds had been treated with a chemical covering. This is done to discourage the seeds from rotting in the ground when they get planted, but that’s not the way we like to garden, we prefer not to use chemicals and let Papatūānuku do the job her own way. So we decided to produce our own seed, so we know what’s gone into them. Not to mention it’s a lot cheaper too! We used our leftover seeds from last year’s crop – we didn’t want to plant the chemically treated ones at all.