Fast and dirty… and just to enjoy some of what our gardening efforts are bringing into being. There’s much more growing – luckily without or with much less of our manipulations.
Sending ahead that I will mention many names of people and plants and leave many unnamed also. When I walk through the garden I see stories connecting people, plant people and places – what you made happen, how you got here and what connections you weaved. Many of them are not photographable and would also make these notes longer than they already are. But you know who you are and that your presence is here, I hope.
Let’s start with the greenhouses – cause most of the new plants have spent more or less time here. The second greenhouse is standing – low but stable. The sunken hugelculture bed filled with fallen wood, seaweed, autumn leaves, sod and compost is feeding tomatoes, basil and tulsi. I said I’d name the tomato plants after ingrid, mihaela, paula and felix to honour their care work but considering the many names that plants receive without asking, I now silently call the tent after you.
Lucy – your vierlaender platte hamburgian heirloom tomato seeds have turned into healthy looking people carrying voluptuously shaped fruit.
It’s already a couple of weeks ago that I took all the pictures – imagine everything 2 weeks lusher, greener, bigger, voloptiouser…
Cucamelon babies – just including them because they’re so cute. And this fungal dill visitor, for the same reason.
The valerian we kidnapped and transplanted with melissa, rebekkah, mathieu and mihaela look happy and are cohabitating the ‘wet ditch’ together with the marshmallow.
horseradish from epp’s grandmother’s garden.
elecampane which we kidnapped from Ainazi, sumu.
This is one of my favourite sites, milda, the strange sod hill where yarrow and horsetail share the space with broccoli and burdock.
But also a dedicated burdock (and yellow dock) bed. Hoping for easy root harvests.
The semi-sphere (or big C in my head) which we dug last spring with martin, anna, christoph, epp and madlen. It’s alive and nurturing some perennials but the soil needs more food to give food. That’s for autumn and next year.
mint from cuttings from jean-felix’s garden at paf
Remember the ‘wild square’? It’s a flower and insect haven now. Currently much visited by these pretty beetles which have fallen in upsidedown narcotic love with red clover. Apart from various clovers and buckwheat not so many of the seeds we’ve sown last year survived (though some of last years dormant seeds came up now), but it’s been populated by lots of wild herbs and a thousand yarrows which are taking over quite aggressively – or successfully? efficiently? progressively? since the grass had been weakened. And maybe more dormant seeds wake up next spring
The wild field is guarded by some strawberries which we got gifted from our neighbor and former director of the school, Uelle. We planted them last fall straight into the sandy soil of coastal Massiaru, without any additions to make it more fertile, and they turn sun and sand into sweetness and juice.
The new field. With the latest addition of the 4-suits-beds that nicolas, sophia and luke shovelled.
Many of us have dropped some sweat here. Good for mineral supply. Ingrid and birgit, you have probably had skin contact with most of the soil here. The orderly rows on the right are potatoes from a neighbor that we grow. The flowers are on and we can start harvesting soon.
black and yellow zucchini, butternut squash, hokkaido growing at fast pace. They look so neat now. Let’s see how much of the meadow they’ll conquer.
the brassica balls with brussel sprouts, broccoli, kohlrabi, various kales, calendula, catnip, marigolds, feverfew
The abundant bathua or goosefoot or lamb’s quarters – it pops up unasked even at the beaches sometimes – and provides leafy greens so much easier than any cultivated spinach or salad. We keep uprooting them and they keep rerooting.
sunflower tree mothers and their broad bean children
every now and then we sprout some of the grains and pulses we eat. Here’s how lentil (left) and chickpea (right) plants look like.
shiso seeds, you brought along sumu, growing a 2nd generation here.
Beans, oats and linseed
Epp, the lavender babies are doing alright
aromatics donut with rosemary, thyme, sage, lavender…
mallow, mullein, motherwort, mugwort – no m-intention
Paula, I eventually found that what we had translated to family tree seems to be called sweetberry honeysuckle (among other names) in English. Neighbouring hemp, bee balm, skullcap.
The hemp seeds – also linseeds and oats – come from an Estonian farm that sells them for food. It’s so much cheaper to get seeds, grains, pulses when they’re marketed as food instead of gardening goods. And it’s sometimes also easier to trace where they come from.
paula’s architecture with chamomile, clary sage, salad burnet, garlic chives, marigold, calendula
And finally the mulleins we got from neighbor’s field are flowering, ingrid! Maybe the stone circle – a result from rebekkian & melissean stone parties- invoked a home worth inhabiting. Last year non of the ones we had transplanted or protected from cutting or being overgrown made it to adolescence.
Further experimenting with molehill planting. Marigold and catnip – our helpers in negotiating space with moles and mosquitos.
sweet woodruff and horsetail residing under aronia
overgrowing altars
and it looks that sirje is now on our side – we have more and more uncut meadow where lots of herbs grow and the bees and bugs love it too
last year piret, a neighbour, brought a little strawberry along. There is a small ant empire living in its roots. And it grows super sweet little berries
a little thyme island in the orchard
the artemisia family residency with roman wormwood, southernwood, mugwort and common wormwood – which grows from another cutting that jan brought along from jean-felix’s garden
echinacea babies under jasmin shadow
heavy headed peonies
a rowan kidnap from kabli forest – on the garden edge for protection
random potato emergence. Birgit, the second compost you created came in magically. We threw the potatoes that didn’t fit on the field here to compost them but they had different ideas.
martin, the compost bay-bies are doing great. The first proper compost is blackening and we’re already using it on the beds.
ben and manuela, the comfrey kidnap was a success – it’s low now cause I cut it to make fertiliser but it’s a little hedge already.
manuela – 7 blauglockenbaums! They grow so fast, they’re double this size today already. Let’s send some to berno for the reforestation project in portugal.
keeping gifts from friends alife. purple basil that sumu brought along from riga market and oxalis triangularis spela is handing on over geographies. Funny your presences coincide in this way here.
And after many discussion where and how to build the herb kitchen – here we go:
With lots of love put in by many passing by hands
Finishing with an aerial view on the greenhouses to remember sophia’s and luke’s painting actions for the solar panels which will be installed here