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vegetable
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05/01/2020
Planting seedlings
I took this photo after planting about a hundred seedlings in a newly fenced and prepared veggie patch at my Dad’s old place south of Hobart. Our veggie patch has three tiered beds so far. The other half is shadowed by the fence in winter, so we won’t plant anything on that side until the sun gets higher in spring. We turned through our composted food scraps and manure from roadside stalls to prepare the soil and added straw mulch after planting the seedlings. Before lockdown, I only came down here for a couple of nights each week and it wouldn’t have been practical to put in a veggie patch, with all the tending it requires. But after a couple of weeks settling into the place in lockdown my boyfriend and I got a permacultural itch. We got the seedlings from a local place called Dave’s Organic Seedlings. Dave had been under the pump since lockdown started, and so our assortment of seedlings was whatever he had left (may have an excessive amount of cabbages). I think lots of people had the same idea as us. In fact, it felt more like an urge than idea. Something primal in us needed to work with the soil, and to feel more self-sufficient. At the same time, not knowing how long lockdown would last, planting the seedlings made me feel even more locked down, like we’d bound ourselves to this patch (getting three chooks probably didn’t help either). But for now, it’s comforting to watch them grow.