Gardening with piggies

It's that time of the month again! The worn out one. But nice worn out. The worn out that means you have done something. On saturday we were back at Occombe for the One Planet Food Project volunteer day.

We have fewer pictures this month. Most of our jobs were of the necessary but unglamorous variety: mucking, weeding, mulching.

Our first job was in the herb plots. We all got together sorting and laying out the herbs ready to go into the soil. We met two new volunteers and chatted with them about the herbs. In Torbay on placements they are from Colombia and Germany. So we had some explaining to do about herbs in British food and swapped some tips. Thyme tea, for instance, to ward off a cold.

After the herbs Stephen and I broke off to fetch wheel barrow after wheel barrow full of poop. It was time to muck the fruit. On the fresh mulch we sowed some poached egg plants which will hopefully look lovely up between the blackcurrants and strawberries. Good for bees too.

Then it was all together again for the weeding. Lots of weeding. By the beds, by the willow, every place there were weeds. We didn't waste them though. The pigs at the top of the field where getting fat off our hard work. And I got very excited because I got to feed the piggies.


After we weeded we put down another layer of mulch, wood chips in this case, to suppress anything we may have missed or anything that thinks they can make a go of it now. I practised my raking around the willow. On the other side of the living fence though a wild flower bed was being prepared.

After the fresh compost was put down we walked over it to pat it down and then chucked on some wild flower seeds mixed with sand. It will be fun to see what pops up.