I started a new job last week, another wonderful gardening job. It's on a beautiful piece of land with the most gorgeous natural pool I have seen. There was a very overgrown vegetable plot on the land and my first job, was to resurrect it. Amazingly there were lots of veg still growing beneath the tall grass. It gets watered daily, which is great, by a drip system that was put in place a while back, but it had been left to go somewhat wild.
Now I love a wild garden, but you have to be able to access it. My first priority was to make a pathway, which took me over an hour to do. I didn't want to use a strimmer, as wasn't sure what was growing underneath, so I cut it all back by hand, using some garden shears. That way I could see what I was dealing with and not damage any plants that may need to be transplanted. You can see from the phot above, how overgrown it was, the veg were all buried beneath the tall dead grass.
I started early morning, as the days are really heating up over here. The phot above, you can see clearly the pathway that I cut down and the beginning of the plants I began to excavate. There were plenty of surprises to be found, as I carefully cut away the tall grass. There was also an abundance of Mullein growing, I tried to keep most of it, but some of it I had to remove as it was hindering some of the vegetables that were trying to grow.
Like this Courgette plant, that I encouraged upright with my hand, it was completely buried underneath, but in great condition non the less. I literally just chopped and dropped, as I didn't want to leave any precious soil uncovered. It's so important to always protect the soil and in the summer, you really want to use mulch to help retain the moisture and nutrients. To grow good food, you need to have good soil. So the aim is to really keep protecting and feeding the soil. Soil health, is wealth.
I managed to find and uncover some Tomatoes, Peppers, Mint, Melon, more Courgette and some potatoes. Which you can see in the phot above. Continuing to chop and drop as I went along. There is also some Chard, Artichoke and Cabbage growing, which will soon come to the end. My job is to now maintain the vegetable plot and some of the surrounding land, that needs some TLC. It's paid work and I also get to take home some veg and also strawberries, which I found growing as well.
Probably the highlight though, is getting to jump into the natural pool, when I finish work. Which after a hot day of manual labour, was divine. Most of my work now, is on the land, watering it, looking after it, growing food on it. Feeling pretty lucky that I get aid to do something I really enjoy. It hasn't really left much time for me to plant much on the land I live on, but I do get to enjoy the food I grow in the three gardens I work in.
