December - dealing with flammable stuff

So far fortunately much cushioned from the early cold that's hit pretty much all of Europe to some degree. Having finished with the pines for the time being, and strimmed a mess of tall grass and various spiny things fro the terraces, there is now the problem of a huge amount of material that is highly combustible and will be even more so in the heat of summer. The trad thing to do is burn it, but this turning of organic matter into air pollution and alkaline residue is rather anathema. However it will take years to decompose and I don't have a shredder and cannot afford one now, so some burning is just going to have to be done to get rid of the fire hazard. Most flammable is the strimmed stuff, which is also nasty and spiny, and full of grass seed, so this seems like the thing to burn. It's also light and easy to move. The pine branches are another matter - the plan is to divide into the cut branches into stuff big enough to burn in the

stove, and the twigs and needles. The latter could be spread around as long-term mulch or path surfacing (for which I've been using carritx, but have a limited amount). There's an enormous amount of this pine , so it will have to be done a little at a time. No pics of strimming and sawing, so here are a few from a walk a few hours from the house on the way to the Gap Gros lighthouse

November: wind

Since the deluge of early October it's been a pretty dry month with just the odd shower but quite a lot of wind, mostly westerly. Temperatures now down to about 10C at night, up to between 12 and 14 by day. The centre of the island, by contrast, has a range more in the region of 7 - 16, with clearer skies and without the moderating effect of the sea.

Most of the time I've had to work on the land has been clearing of one sort or another. My uphill neighbour, or rather his tenant, has given me

permission to clear pines on his land, and I've

been trying to get as much done as possible in case his landlord doesn't agree. It's a strip of olive groves all along above the house, getting colonised by pines which are now up to 25cm trunk diameter. They can be cut easily now, but if allowed to get bigger there's the danger of damaging terraces when they are felled. The olive trees are very neglected, but there is also other vegetation growing up: encinas, arbutus, mastic and lots of giant heather. By removing the pines the encinas have a chance to take over, rather than getting yet another pine wood, in this case one that would eventually overhang the house

and much of the land.

Veg doing OK, but discovered the peas I have grow much taller than indicated and flopping all over the carrots. Zuccola wins on taste and not a bad cropper either, on a par with the regon and way ahead of norli. Cut a few reeds for the next lot to try and keep them upright. Broccoli, all varieties, heading up, but the green spear and gai laan more productive than the regular calabrese. Chinese cabbages turning out mostly OK but a bit slug and caterpillar mauled. Daikon are huge and un-mauled, and cos lettuce sprouting back nicely after being cut. In the past I had followed advice of an older gardening book and always pulled up whole lettuce, but the cut and come again approach seems to work fine on this variety (Batle lechuga rubonea).

October - rain

After a little bit of rain in September the first serious deluge came in the first week of October after a week of warm, muggy weather. A front came through with electrics, wind and downpour, and the ensuing weather system spent the next week revolving more or less around the Balearics. So now the second spring is well under way, grass is growing almost fast enough to watch, insects are buzzing and all the other pests have woken up. Not just grasshoppers now, there are some rather destructive caterpillars that eat out the growing points of radishes and others eating the leaves (not cabbage whites). Also slugs, particularly on the chinese cabbages. Weeds: the main ones are wild asparagus and lords and ladies which are coming up everywhere from corms. Very decorative but still weeds when in the veg beds.

Things are growing and there has been more to harvest. The beans cropped well but now seem to be fading off, peas are going - norli turns out to be a miniature pea, tasty but a lot of work to pick. We have a good supply of lettuce, spinach, mizuna, bok choi, daikon, spring onions and coriander, with broccoli, chinese cabbage and stem lettuce looking close to ready. Trying to keep everything well mulched to protect soil from rain and wash in some organic matter, using a mix of pine needles and encina (holmoak) leaves.

Put in the first havas (broad beans) at the end of september, a bit earlier than traditionally done here. Will try some more in this month wherever there is space as they are good nitrogen fixers. With nice big seeds hopefully I can involve the kids in seeding them.

Sunlight beginning to get a bit short now. Having cleared a few of the big pines behind the house things are a bit better, and most of the beds get six hours or so of afternoon sun but the inside ends rather less. Temperatures dropping to a typical range of 14-20, but due to go a bit lower in the coming week.

first month

About 5 weeks now and some sort of start on the veg patch. Sheet mulch probably didn't have long enough to work properly, or rather process was cut off by onset of summer drought. Grass underneath seems to be dead but by no means decomposed, and wild asparagus very much alive and pushing through everywhere. Ground below is hard - loosening up the top 30cm or so involves first breaking it up with a pick-axe, then working over several times with the two-handled fork. Slow work, about one square meter an hour, including getting the masses of wiry roots and larger stones out. That leaves small stones and some reddish soil with a bit of organic matter from the sheet mulch. Much of the latter is undecomposed and re-used to mulch some of the beds not done in February. Roots, mainly of caritx (a tall clumping grass) and wild asparagus, piled up to use as mulch for perrenials. What to do with all those stones? The widespread answer in limestone country is to pile them up, so doing this at ends of beds. Started by edging beds with planks, then ran out of planks and just raked up a raised section. One bit edged with a pine log seems to work better than planking, maybe this is the way to neaten them up.

First things to go in were dwarf beans using some seed left-over from France, spring onions, carrots, and pots and trays of chinese cabbage, bok choi, lettuce and broccoli (centaur, green spear and gai laan). Followed a little later with direct sowing of daikon and beauty-heart radish, and 3 varieties of peas (oregon sugar pod, norli and zuccola). A bit more of the same over the following few weeks, plus some spinach, hon tsai tai, mizuna and a late try with parsley. Last in, today, trays of komatsuna and a few each of 2 tpes of mustard greens (green in snow and osaka purple). The green in snow was one of the few things to survive last winter in the Cevennes and was much appreciated, but a little goes a long way. With all of these I used some organic fertilizer (NPK 7-6-7) to kick start things, as such organic matter as I have added is not likely to have much food in it, being mostly leaf and pine-needle mold.

Most things grown quite well so far. Watered every day until recently when some things seemed OK with alternate days as it gets a little cooler and they get established. Using our metered water carefully, not so much involved just to get things started. Pests: no flea beetles so far, touch wood. A few grasshoppers can chomp quite a few seedlings to the ground, with a prediliction for spring onions and coriander, but that's really about all so far. Spotted one hoopoe in the patch, would love to have it as a regular but perhaps the pickings are not that great.

First thing edible was the bok choi (mei qing) ready after 35 days. Daikon thinnings nice in salad, rather like rocket, which was another one of the first things to be eaten. Basil too but that was seeded in June before moving from France. Meanwhile we've been feasting on superb tomatoes at around 70c a kilo, with peppers and aubergines at a euro odd per kilo. The standard for summer veg is a hard one to match.

Whole Carob Pods, wild, 300g £4.95

It seems one could do better than the co-op when it comes to selling carob beans. I came across this link when, after writing the last entry, I thought I should actually learn a bit more about this crop as there are a good half dozen carob trees on our land. Having tried eating them though, I suspect that they will be slow to catch on as a snack food. In Mallorca the only references I've heard to humans eating them were in the context of famine.

http://www.funkyraw.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=161

The start of a veg patch - sheet mulch

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.

Alconasser: not edible yet

The focus of this blog is the attempt to use a 2000 square meter plot of neglected land at Alconasser, on the northwest coast of Mallorca, to produce vegetables, fruit and other edible things for a family of four. The land and the house on it have been my family's holiday place for about 35 years and there have been a couple of attempts to plant fruit trees. Fortunately they haven't succeeded, or now I'd be cursing them for being in quite the wrong places. In retrospect they never stood a chance as none of us really knew anything about getting trees established in a climate where there is virtually no rain at all in the summer. This time I hope to do a bit better as we will be living there and therefore be around to do the watering.

Water is problem number one. It rains plenty, but as mentioned, not a drop in the summer. We do not have water rights but do have metered water and a 5 cubic meter tank. We have to go very easy on it in the summer due to the Mediterranean water curse: on top of no rain when plants need water to grow, the population swells with people wanting to fill swimming pools, flush loos, have long showers etc. So often there's just not enough to go round. At some stage I hope to build a tank big enough to store rainwater from the roof to see us through the summers, but in the meantime it'll probably be a few water butts and re-using grey water. And of course trying to use it in the most economical way using plastic bottle drip-feeds and lots of mulching.

Mulching introduces problem number two, the soil. It's not as bad as it could be because the land is mostly terraces and there is some soil, but it's stony, very compacted, probably very low in organic matter and nutrients, and like everything in Mallorca, calcareous. I tested one sample and it was about pH 7.3, so it could be worse in that respect, and there are plenty of pine needles around to help lower the pH. I've been reading up on sheet mulching and green manures, and hope to try a combination of these to get things started.

Problem number three is, oddly enough, lack of winter sun. The land faces WNW in terraces, and much of it is shadowed in winter by some big pine trees. In summer it gets plenty of hot sun, and bakes right through the afternoon until the sun sinks into the sea. With a little clearing I hope to get 3 hours sun on the veg patch in mid-winter and 6 hours from around the equinox. It's a lot less than my current veg patch gets, but then my current veg patch is in the Cevennes on the northern fringes of the south of France, in a frost hollow just below the ramparts of freezing central France. Last year I had reasonable winter veg, this year nearly everything, except leeks, green in snow, cavalo nero and a few bok choi was wiped out by -11C in mid-December. So Alconasser might be a bit shady in the winter but I am really excited about having a FROST - FREE VEG PATCH! No more messing about with floating mulches and other attempts to protect plants from frost. True there has been snow on the north coast of Mallorca, right down to the sea, but that was once in 35 years. The valley of Soller, 5km away, gets the odd touch of ground frost but its main crop is oranges so these are pretty light. Alconasser is out of the valley and above the coast, so I think near as never gets frost.