Hot Weather Farming, Part 2

The brief cooler weather interlude, provided a great opportunity to work in the garden.  Planting of course was a priority. We were fortunate to have a week of evening or night rain.  While it was not a lot, a few mm’s every night makes a huge difference, and of course this meant that I did not have to water.
Clearing beds and garden clean up was also on the cooler weather agenda.  Weeding is always a regular activity and with the rain and warm weather the weeds are flourishing.  My favourite weeding tool is the stirrup hoe.

This cuts on the push and pull stroke to cover a lot of ground fast!  The thin, oscillating blade carves through tough weeds just below the soil surface, cutting in both directions. Very fast and efficient. Great for footpath area.

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Clearing beds provides an enourmous amount of material that can have many uses across the small farm or garden.  Of course poultry, particularly chooks love scratching through weeds and vegie waste and of course pigs. Adding it to the compost pile is also another excellent use of this organic matter.  However in this extremely hot summer I am also opting to use this material as mulch on other garden beds, specifically the potatoes. Potatoes need to be hilled and tend do grow long and straggly falling over paths and other vegies.

This is a spent bed of broccolini and a range of weeds.  We have already had the chooks in here having a scratch and the waterfowl, but the bed needs to be cleared to allow for other plantings.

As  you can see the potatoes plants tend to get large and fall over.  You can see the brocollini plants being used to provide extra mulch and to support the plants

 I have attached a short video demonstration. Hope you find this helpful

As I write this the temperature is in the high 30’s and still climbing with even hotter temps predicted for the rest of the week.  Back to night watering and early morning starts.  I hope you all stay sane in this hot weather.

Happy Gardening