Second article of the year in a series of articles about the progress of the barganews vegetable garden which was started in 2009. Readers might remember that it actually took us a good deal of time to find a decent plot of land but finally we did. It was in the right place, it had the right amount of sun, the right amount of shade and probably more importantly – a decent water supply. There was (and is) a small problem with marauding wild animals which meant we had to construct an electric fence to protect the vegetables but for the moment as spring starts once again in Barga, hungry animals are not our most pressing problem.
This is an agricultural area but would you believe that our main problem at the moment is the lack of decent manure ? There are now very few people keeping cows or any other animals for that matter, and so good quality well matured compost is hard to come by but some of this “black gold” has been found thanks to the help of Paolo Lazzarini who has once again arrived with a tractor full to overflowing with compost from his horses.
Readers might also remember that last year we had difficulty get the tractors onto the fields as they were so water logged (article here)
Once again this year we failed miserably as the ground was just too wet, stopping the tractor in its tracks.
After a couple of attempts the ground became so rutted that we have to give up and just dump the compost in the field below.
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Now this means that the it will now all have to moved up by hand and spread over the field before the large tractor arrives later on this week to deep plough both fields once again.
Not really a good start to the year really but still one thing that was realised over the past couple of years is that having a vegetable garden is just a long series of problem solving – this is just another problem to be solved.