A two week visit in February, and made the first steps towards establishing the veg patch. I've chosen the widest terrace and using the space between a large olive and carob tree, there is room for about 50 square metres of beds plus, at a later stage, about 10 linear metres for asparagus. Plans are for an "Indian garden", as in native American, further along past the big carob, rotating pumpkin, corn and beans. This would add a further 20 square meters or so.
There was also a smaller carob right in the middle of my chosen area. Feeling bad about it, but without seeing much alternative, I cut it down. There are some much bigger and finer examples on the land of this handsome but, I suspect for my purposes, rather useless tree. I once gathered half a dozen sacks of carob to take to the co-operative (it's used as pig fodder), and got enough pesetas for a small round of drinks. If anyone has any ideas what can be done with carob, other than making compost, mulch or not-chocolate, I'd be interested to hear.
I set out to prepare two thirds of the bed area, the bit I'm hoping to grow something on in September. I had thought of working it over with a fork and sowing green manure, but given the wiry tangle of grass and wild asparagus covering the ground, decided that sheet mulching was a better idea. A lot of work but hopefully fulfills 4 functions: getting rid of the perennial weeds, adding some organic matter, increasing the earthworm population and, given the amount of pine needles involved, nudging the soil pH downwards. In theory. We'll see in 6 month's time how well it has worked.
Anyway, once done with the obstacle in the middle and various stumps of ancient lemon trees from the times the land was irrigated for citrus, the real work started. Given the amount of schlepping involved, I decided to only do the beds, covering the paths with cardboard and some grass to make it look less ugly. Having tracked down a source of free horse manure - moltes gràcies Joaquín - I got 2 loads, in polythene bags in the back of the hire-car, in all about 250kg. I have read that around 2,5kg to the square meter is enough, but that seems to be spreading it very thin. Only doing 2/3 of the veg patch, I ended up using more like 7kg to the square meter.
Next the weed barrier. Getting what I could reach from recycling bins in the way of newspaper and cardboard, plus lots more cardboard from the back of the Eroski supermarket, I used about 4 sheets of newspaper to cover the beds and cardboard for the paths, plus the third of the patch which I didn't get to do this time (will be interesting to see if the covering alone gets rid of the grass).
The greatest bulk in the process is the mulch to cover the weed barrier. I used mainly pine needles, which form quite a mat under pines, the stuff underneath alredy quite well composted. I've heard some dismissive remarks made about pine compost, but it's there and should do a little towards lowering the pH. I also used a bit of encina (holm-oak) leaf mold, which is generally regarded as superior, bit only what I could get from the concrete driveway under some small encinas, so the bulk of it was pine. Having read that you need about a 15cm layer (Mollison, in Introduction to Permaculture), I got as much as I could, but in the end I think it was more like 10cm once it settled down.
Having finished the job in 8 days, doing a few hours every afternoon, I admired the work and took this pic. The bit on the left is only covered with cardboard to try and get rid of the grass, the plan being to only start working it in a year's time. Might try some green manure on it in the autumn. Now we just have to hope for plenty of rain over the next few months to get it all going before the summer drought. Total cost of the job: EUR 2.40 for a roll of 10 large poly bags. True I did have to make a detour of about 200m in the car, x 2, to collect the horse manure, so that adds something to the environmental impact of the op, but a minor one compared to the car journeys it was tagged on to.
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