Late Summer Busy-ness

It‘s been a very busy term for us here at Tahatai. We have been learning about companion planting and the role flowers and herbs play in this. We have been watching how our planter boxes are going and have had to thin them out a lot but we will sell what we have left and put some in our gardens.

The seeds we have direct sown into the beds are getting very big and we are thinning them out on a weekly basis. We have also been caterpillar hunting because the cabbage white butterflies have been busy laying eggs. The caterpillars will eat our brassicas to stumps, so we’ve been moving them away from the gardens.

We have made our own fertiliser out of seaweed, sheep and horse poo, weeds, grass, mulch and leaves. We are checking it weekly and using it to fertilise our vegetables.

We have also been looking after our orchard as it’s not getting a lot of water, so the kids have loved going around and watering it, looking out for pests and letting us know if there is fruit on the trees.

Last week we planted some coriander from seed we saved from last year’s plants. I wonder what we will be cooking with that once it grows.