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.