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.