Watch as we turn our lawn into a food garden #5: Phase 1 complete!
Last night we made two trellises for climbing vegetables. Then, we planted out the last garden with broad beans, salad greens, sugar snap peas, snow peas, and sweet peas - the sweet peas aren't edible, but they're so pretty and smell delightful.
Aside from providing some food, the peas and broad beans are nitrogen fixers. Legumes like these have bacteria living in their roots, which take nitrogen in gas form from the atmosphere and convert it into a form that can be utilised by plants. You can find a more detailed description of the process here.
When the peas and beans have finished fruiting, we'll dig them back into the soil to feed nitrogen to the next crop, which will include corn - a nitrogen-lover.
As soon as we'd finished sowing seeds and mulching last night, it began to rain heavily. Perfect timing. And it's not meant to rain again for another week or so, which is good because if legumes get too wet before they germinate, they can rot in the ground.
All that's left to do with these gardens now is a little regular work to keep the weeds at bay and a weekly application of seaweed emulsion to keep everything happy. Other than that, we'll just be enjoying watching everything grow!
The garden a bit over a week ago:
The garden this morning:
that looks wonderful! Is it kind of late for starting to plant? Or maybe you are in the southern hemisphere? ;-)
Thank you! Yep, we're in Australia.