Early Summer

Peach trees in their third year are starting to bear fruit.  

I've been away more than I've been here, with the result that all the work normally done in spring has been crammed into a few weeks.  It's also been an unseasonably cool spring, which is not a bad thing as, while there has been some rain, it's been a little below average.

Trees are all looking good.  Had some fruit from the loquat, and a number of the others (kaki, peach, plums, apples, figs) are setting.  The citrus is still a little yellow; it's a pity the septic tank is all done and drains deep into the rock (and eventually to the sea?).  The citrus orchard would be the perfect place to run a buried drain to water and feed them at the same time.  This, of course, would be illegal; rather pollute the groundwater.

Ground cover: after removing some of the Oxalis in winter, when I was here in late April the area where it had been pulled was covered with barrel medic, Medicago truncatula. This is interesting, as the barrel medic is ground-covering legume, a bit like clover, but presumably better adapted to these conditions.  In Australia it is used as a fodder crop.  It is quite low, so you can strim the grass without cutting off its flowers.  By now, beginning of June, it is all dying down.  One disadvantage is the spiny seeds if you work in sandals!

Veg garden: from this year adopting a complete no tillage approach.  For plants like curcubits and legumes which like a little looseness to the soil, I have quickly gone over with the two-handled fork before seeding, giving a slight levering action just to aerate the soil without moving it.  All weeds, other than those with seed, are laid onto the mulch, as is all cultivated plant material.  An example of how this reduces work is planting leeks after broad beans.  I cut the hava plants down to form a rough mulch, and planted the leeks in between.  They are not only ready mulched, but shaded until they start growing.  Once they've put on a little more height some straw goes on top to make a really nice thick blanket of mulch.

Drip lines: After trying a few methods, I'm currently laying them over encina (holm-oak) leaves (and whatever old mulch is still there, as long as it allows the tubing to lie flat).  The idea is that the encina leaves spread out the flow from the holes in the tubing.  I then put straw on top, covering the tubing.  This means that if you have to water during the day for some reason, the plants do not get a dose of hot water from black tubing lying in the sun.  I assume it also prolongs the life of the tubing, although HDPE does seem to be fairly UV resistant.

Last but by no means least, mulch.  With three dozen fruit trees between 0 and 3 years old, plus the veg garden, plus the herbaceous gardens, getting enough mulch is quite a challenge.  This year I found a large heap of carritx (tall, clumping grass) which had been cleared and piled up, about five minutes walk from the house.  I know it's not going to be used for anything, so I schlepped most of it.  This did for most of the pip and stone fruit trees.  For the citrus I used cypress litter and branches, from when I thinned the windbreak last autumn.  For the figs I've gathered whatever litter (mostly pine) was available nearby, and topped it off with rough mulch of whatever I've lopped to make space for the figs (pine, encina, lentisc, oleaster, carob).  For the veg garden, I collect encina leaves whenever I drive to Palma via Valldemossa and, as mentioned above, top them off with straw.  Straw is the ultimate convenience mulch for the veg garden, as it stays nicely in place (my beds require more walling up).  Six bales cover all the beds, (about 60 square meters) laid over about a dozen sacks of encina leaves. As for the non-edibles, I have quite a bit of disintegrating pine wood, which serves this purpose nicely.

By the way, if it sounds like I'm stealing leaf litter from the forest well, I am.  However I try confine my collecting to places where the leaves collect and eventually run onto a road, and then never to collect more than just the surface leaves.  What does end up on the road collects at the verge.  Here it would be very easy to pick up, but it is full of cigarette buts and discarded tissues, to say nothing of pollutants from cars.

All mulched up and ready for the heat.  The branches on top are to discourage wood-pigeons and the cat.

Looking from the veg garden up to the stone fruit and, beyond, the micro wilderness zone.

Just Garden

A minimum of effort has gone into growing things which are not of any immediate value (how much rosemary can you actually use?), but which nonetheless have a purpose.  If every element should have at least two functions, then the decorative gardens have at least four: erosion control, supression of grass, attracting pollinating insects, and looking good.  Yes, why not?  I would never put effort and resources into something that just looks good, but aesthetics do count.  These plants also have the great advantage, unlike most edible plants, of not being palatable to sheep and goats.  Many are there already, such as Cistus albidus and Arbutus unedo, and it's just a case of encouraging seedlings by weeding around them and maybe a little mulching.  Others, like Lavandula dentata and Hypericum balearicum, are native (H. balearicum is endemic) but do not grow naturally on-site.

Most of these I've propagated from cuttings, a few I've bought from garden centres.  Some, like the lavendars, I trim to get them to grow dense and in the process produce some cut and drop mulch.  Here are a few pics of the outside the fence garden in February.

Chasmanthe, which forms large corms and dies down completely int the summer.  Helps control the spread of grass.

Santolina, lavendar and Artemesia.  All are mediterranean natives and of course tolerant of summer drought.

In the foreground, the amazing giant bulb Urginia maritima which dies down in summer, also helping to control grass.  In the dryness of late summer it sends up a great spike of white flowers.  When I started "gardening" here I did not realise it was present because it was all hidden by a tangle of grass.  Since clearing some of the grass it has thrived.  The clump of grass in the background is Ampelodesmus mauretanicus, which is ubiquitous in this part of Mallorca.  It is traditionally used for basket work and improvised bedding if you sleep rough.

Winter 2012-13

Another tree-planting push, this time almost all figs.  Fortunately several of the places were prepared last year, so didn't have to dig all of them.  Mostly they went in along a rocky ridge, using natural pockets in the rock, building mini-terraces where necessary.  The hard part was protecting them against sheep - proved very necessary last summer.  In most places there was not enough depth of soil to simply drive the stakes into the gound, so I ended up with some rather crazy staying, using lengths of wire attached to rocks, pine trees or anything else reasonably solid.

Also put in a couple more oranges: a canoneta, originally from Soller, and a de la sang (blood orange), plus another hass avocado to replace one that died.  The blood orange is supposed to be a Balearic variety but, according to the label, this one comes from Sicily.  I'm having another go with that cyprus-lined lower terrace, and will try to give the trees extra food and water and just see what happens.  I suspect that my problem with citrus there might have something to do with not watering frequently enough, not feeding enough, and sheep attack.  I hope they are now properly protected against the latter.

The veg garden was this autumn was an interesting experiment in just leaving it, as I was away for most of October and the whole of November.  Rainfall was good; frequent but not torrential, and temperatures mild. In December I still had cherry tomatoes and chillies, nice fat leeks, salads and lots of bok choi.  The bok choi is amazing.  Some was planted where it gets no more than an hour and a half of sun, and it still grew back from cutting to a re-cuttable size in five weeks.  Admittedly the temperatures continued to be higher than average right through December, but I was really surprised at the growth rate given the lack of sun.  Havas also coming along nicely, seeded before departure in October and left to their own devices.

The amazing bok choi

As mentioned in the previous post, the veg garden, which is usually the scene of rather more activity, was pretty much left alone this winter.  Star of the show really has to be the bok choi; I had not realised just how much of this vegetable you can get from just one sowing.  The trick is to cut it off above the main growing point, about 5cm above the ground.  If you cut lower, it will grow multiple heads instead of one new head.  In this case it was sown in September, first cut five to six weeks later, then again in December.  To my amazement, despite being in a spot where it received barely a couple of hours direct sun at that time, it grew again in a few weeks.  A third cut in January was just as tasty as the first two.  Then, on a brief visit in February it was all flowering: lovely, tender, broccoli-like flower heads.  The stems have a rather fibrous skin, but once is removed, it is similar to stem lettuce or water chestnut.  So, four harvests from one lot of plants.

In this particular instance, I think the success is due to giving the plants a nitrogen-rich feed after each cut, repeated after heavy rains may have leached out the nitrogen.  The fertiliser in question involves zero carbon footprint, minimal effort and is sterile: human urine, diluted about 1:5 in a watering can.  Application about 1 litre (urine) per square metre.  I follow it with some plain water, but don't know if this is necessary.  I always made sure that the soil was already moist, as a potential disadvantage of urine is that it contains some salt.  It has to be less than 24 hours old, otherwise it acquires an unpeasant ammonia smell.  I never noticed any odour after using urine, either on plants or on the compost heap (it acts as a compost accelerator).

I must confess that the variety in question here is mei qing, which is an F1.  Another F1, joi choi, was far less successful and anyway less tasty (I think this one does better if it's really cold).  For this year I have a couple of open-pollinated varieties to try, bought from the Real Seed Company.  If you're curious about what to do with bok choi in the kitchen, I'll be posting some recipes on the companion blog over the next day or so.

Oxalis pes-caprae: friend or foe?

I knew that this plant, known as vinagrella in Mallorquin, was not a native but an introduction from South Africa, but I did not realise that in California and Australia it is regarded as one of the most invasive and problematic weeds.  I was also labouring under the illusion that it was a nitrogen-fixing legume, which it is not.  In Majorca it is often seen forming a dense covering under citrus trees, and seems to be encouraged by autumn ploughing.  It grows on my lowest terrace, and appears wherever the ground has been disturbed, particularly in the damper, shadier spots.

It is regarded by some as a good thing in orchards, presumably because it competes with invasive grasses.  Now that I realise it's not a legume, clover would be preferable, but probably very difficult to establish once Oxalis is there.  According to this paper,  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2802929/ , based on  field research in Menorca, Oxalis pes-caprae can increase the availability of phosphorous, which certainly sounds like a good thing.  It also appears to be a poor competitor of rye grass.  So, in the case of my land, these are the conclusions:

1. I probably can't get rid of it from where it is already established, except by solarising or sheet mulching,  so just accept it where it is growing for the moment.

2. Don't encourage it to spread to other areas, rather work on establishment of leguminous ground covers such as Medicago truncatula (already present in places) and white clover.

3. Don't do autumn ploughing.  Actually, I don't do any ploughing anyway and don't intend to.