what this is all about....

We met as Ph.D. students 16 years ago and from that time we knew we'd buy a piece of land somewhere, someday and build an eco-house and grow a big food garden and eat well together. Along the way, we have belonged to 3 community gardens, 2 in Australia and 1 in Seattle where we lived for a year.
In 1999, we bought our dream piece of land in Tasmania. It is 8 acres of ancient creek-bottom - sandy-silt with a reasonable amount of organic matter - that had been grazed by cattle for the previous 25 years.
We built 2 temporary gardens on this land while we were building our strawbale, passive-solar house. Both of these were not very successful probably because we were still quite inexperienced gardeners. Eventually, we settled on the site, just to the east of our house, of our orchard and garden. We planted our trees, fenced them in with an almost-possum-proof fence and planted vegetables in a few raised beds at the northern end (this is the southern hemisphere).
Over the years, our vegetable garden has grown to about 400 square metres. Late in 2007, we decided that we needed to expand the vegetable section. So, we moved trees in the winter of 2008 and cleared an opening in the middle of the orchard (the picture shows the setup as it is right now) that we could cultivate with our newly aquired BCS two-wheel tractor (more on this later).

preparing the ground, germinating seeds

It's early spring in Tasmania. The almond, apricots and peaches have blossomed and set fruit and the quinces, pears and most of the apples are blossoming now. We decided that we needed more room for growing our vegetables so, over the winter, we moved a few of our fruit trees to open up the centre of the orchard for market-garden-style plantings in addition to the raised beds that we have used in previous years. This allows us to use my favourite toy - the BCS two-wheel tractor - and hopefully save my back in the long run. For those who don't know, this is a walk-behind tractor with a power take off that allows different implements to be fitted. We have the rotary hoe and mulching slasher. Both of these are 80 cm wide so that we can till, grow and mow the same width beds.


Using the tractor, I broke the turf last autumn and planted a green manure blend of oats, lupins, peas and broad/fava beans.


I have just now, as the flowers on the peas showed their beautiful purples, slashed them and tilled them in shallowly.
I think after about one week, I'll till again and use the ridger to form the beds for our main spring and summer plantings.