A long time since I have posted here. We now have a well and so the garden is our priority this year.

This month we are planting up our vegetable seeds. We have planted a range of brassicas, with peas, beans, kale, sunflowers, chickpeas and a range of herbs.
We have got some of our seed potatoes sitting on  the side trying to get them to chit. This means that the part of the garden we will use for the potatoes will need clearning of their ground cover.
We have strimmed the garden for the first ...
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The jobs for this month in the garden are mainly based on the design of permaculture. We have been building lots of raised beds in the form of mounds, adding rotting wood and sheep dung to give the plants a better start.
We have also set up some of the watering systems for these mounds to ensure they have water over the summer. 
Seeds will be planted up at the end of this month, straight into the mounds, as the frosts should have passed by then.
We have also been adding lots of organic matter to...
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This months jobs are trying to prepare the garden for the colder weather. 
We need to get lots of dung to put onto the beds, all except for next years root bed. This will be spread across each bed and left to break down over the winter. We also need to get lots to mix in the new raised bed to allow that to break down ready for planting in the Spring. The top soil that we have had delivered is made up of clay so we also need to mix in a fine gravel for drainage. If we don't do this before plant...
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This month we have been generally tidying up the garden. We have cleared out the old Summer squash and tomatoes that have finished producing.
Digging the garden over quickly just to remove any weeds that have taken hold and digging up the last of the Summer carrots and beetroot. We do not store these, we use them as we dig them up. This is because we are able to grow them all year and they keep in the ground just fine.
We should have pruned the almond trees last month, but time ran away from u...
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All the seeds we planted have not germinated this year. We don't know why and we replanted last week but this means that we are way behind planting schedule. We are considering going to the garden centre and buying all the plants ready grown so that we can get back to the correct timings for this year. The trouble is the weather has been very windy and colder than last year. The wind makes it feel about 5 to 10 degrees colder than it actually is. We have also had a few rainy days but this cou...
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Another  month gone and basically we haven't finished one thing on the February list. We have found the pots now and today we have heard of a way to get them to Spain free of charge. So hopefully by the end of this month we should be ready to go with the watering system.
The weather here this month has been so cold...and predictions for the next week are the same. This will mean the seeds will not go in until it warms up a little at night.
We did have success with the chicks. 4 hatched on the ...
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This month we have some things that carry over from last month. We still cannot find the unglazed pots we need to set up the watering system, it is getting worrying now as we will be planting out at the beginning of March.  Also we have not had time to make the cold frames. We may get around to it this month but if not it will have to wait until the Autumn.

We are going to try and take cuttings of the grape vines to plant in the rock planters at the front of the house. We tried taking them whe...
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We are three quarters of the way through January and the list of jobs is still not completed.
We have weeded the beds ready for the new plants. Weeded the trees and the herb wheels, but still need to do the mulching. We now have a plan for the watering system using ollas. We have to find the clay pots cheap as we will need quite a lot and then buy the black piping...so this job may extend over a few months.
Most of the seeds have been planted although we do want to plant some more herbs and sa...
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This month there is so much to do in the garden here in Casinos near Valencia. The first job is to dig and clear all the vegetable beds that are going to be planted up this year.
We have 4 big beds so that we can rotate the planting each year and always have one bed fallow that we add manure to. This enables us to keep the plants free from most diseases and allows us to grow organic vegetables.

As you can see the remaining 3 beds are very over grown but it wont take many days to clear them. If ...
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