stone garden – Tinos Eco Lodge

Autumn Vegetable Garden

Tinos Eco Lodge — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 13:39:43 +0000

The vegetable garden is growing. We are trying to expand the garden, which comes down to hard work. Through out the last 20 years the soil was only grazed by sheep and not cultivated at all. Which results to a nutrition rich, well layered soil, that is unfortunately hard as rock. So a lot of digging and plowing has to be done in order to get a fluffy well structured soil. We enrich the soil with a good layer of humus that we find under the oak trees Valonian Oak (Quercus ithaburensis ssp. macrolepis), in order to get it even more fluffy, well drained and attract earth worms. Also we found out that the old stone stables contain a 30-50cm thick layer of chicken and pig manure that has transformed over the years in to a very nice fertilizer.

Lettuce with nice thick layer of humus and leafs

Terrace Level 1 with Brussels Sprouts

Planting Caper

A lot of rocks have to be collected which gives us new material for small garden walls. They come in very handy as we try to expand also on the slopes in front of the stone walls. So that we have like three levels of planting terraces. Like this the rain water can slowly soak in to the ground with very little runoff.

We are planting a lot of winter vegetables like Cabbage, Carrots, Spinach, Broccoli, Red Cabbage, Lettuce and other Salad varieties. The days are still warm with about 26 C so that most of the Summer vegetables like Tomatoes, Aubergines and Paprikas are keeping up a nice yield.

Xerolithies – Dry stone walls

Tinos Eco Lodge — Sat, 16 May 2015 13:46:47 +0000

The dry stone walls that can be found all over the island and have been supporting the terraced slopes for centuries are under threat! The fields are abandoned as they are no longer being cultivated and their walls are collapsing because there is no one to maintain them. There used to be a rule that the neighbour from above is responsible for maintaining the stone walls below. So here we are fixing our stone walls on the border with the neighbour, which have been down for the last 4 decades!

Stone plates

Tinos Eco Lodge — Sat, 11 Apr 2015 08:01:50 +0000

We started our first expierience with laying stone plates. First attempt was to lay them in mud with this simple but time consuming technic we realized a pathaway and an sitting area under the mulberry tree at the small house. The second technic was to lay them into mortar. Its quiet a bit faster and much easier to level them to each other.