Autumn Vegetable Garden

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.

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.