Episode 209. The Tightening

This is the World Organic News for the week ending 13th of  April 2020.

Jon Moore reporting!

Decarbonise the air, recarbonise the soil!

Hello listeners! We have had our local hospitals closed for two weeks and they are scheduled for a deep clean. These facilities are the centre of COVID-19 cluster here in the North West of Tasmania. The numbers are small compared to other places on the globe, so Mrs World Organic News and I are relieved these measures have been taken. Herself has been home for three weeks and as I’m classified as an essential worker because I’m in the disability sector, I’ve been out in the community. The drive to work is along back roads and work itself is isolated from the rest of town anyway so we are relatively safe. The only contact with the rest of the world is food shopping. People are doing the right thing and my hands are now almost 90% alcohol from the hand sanitiser. So we remain hopeful and carry on. I hope you all stay safe.

The rewilding of the world’s urban areas and the vistas revealed with the dispersion of smog give us all hope. To be more correct, the urban spaces haven’t been rewilded but the wildlife that was there all along is now visible. There are niches out there we have not considered but Nature finds a way to exploit any niche. What’s going on now, we can take the best of,  we can move this world to a safer place for all life. Clean air, water and, in time, soils. 

Now to what’s been going on in the soil? The past week at work, I flipped four beds and sowed carrots, silverbeet, rocket, cress, beetroot and broccoli. Work is 200 metres lower in altitude than home. As such we had one frost, worth the name, at work last winter while about a dozen bounced across our fields at home. I’ve sown at work with the hope of a mild winter. If so there’ll be food available more quickly than usual. The tomatoes are still ripening, the older silverbeet is producing and a multitude of small cultivar pumpkins and winter squash are about two weeks away from harvest. In the glasshouse the end of the cucumbers are still producing. I suspect they’ll be flipped this week.

The compost worms have finally reached a critical mass. They are now growing and reproducing nicely. Some time soon I’ll split the mass of them and start a second worm farm. The plan is to build up to five separate units and the leftover organic matter from the bed flips will feed them all. These five units will then feed the garden beds and leave sufficient over to sell as an income stream for the program.

At home we have 25 kilos (55 lbs, I’m guessing) of flossy salt on the way, to preserve the two pigs who have done such a good job renovating a half acre this past twelve months. The plan is to step up to four piglets over a six month pig tractor rotation to have the final half acre ready for summer planting. The half acre that’s about ready will go down to garlic. The pigs have removed all the blackberry shoots from where they’ve been tractoring.

The space will be filled with garden beds. Not all to veggies, most will be put to grains. Barley to start with and some spelt. Then the beds will be Fukuokaed with rye and wheat in different rotations. The new ducks will do their thing across the newish shoots to tiller them and then the ducks will be moved on. Interesting possibilities lie ahead. 

Stay safe people. The world is in an odd place at the moment, stay safe.

If you or someone you know would benefit from learning how to no-dig garden, you can send them to WorldOrganicNews.com for a free copy of my No-Dig Gardening Book. 

If someone needs a little more than that I published a video based course on Udemy last week. With Udemy’s practice of rolling, continual discounts, no one should pay much more than $10, EUR 10 or whatever your local currency is for any course on Udemy. There’s a link in the show notes. Getting to Udemy through that link means they don’t snaffle half the price out of my pocket. Thanks in advance.

You can also send people to Episode 207 where I discuss growing a quick response garden to get you growing swiftly.

Remember in this painful time, if we put in the ground work now, we can all: 

Decarbonise the air, recarbonise the soil!

Thank you all for listening and I’ll be back next week.

~~~~

LINKS

Growing a No-Dig Garden on Udemy

 

Or copy and paste this link:

https://www.udemy.com/course/no-dig-garden-course/?referralCode=7393F372D1748E4A4282

 

World Organic News

email: podcast@worldorganicnews.com

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