Growing vegetables in a dry climate
We were used to a Belgian climate with a lot of rain, but here in Spain, summers are very hot with over thirty six degrees celsius and no rain. While we are slowly preparing our food forest, as we want to be as self sufficient as possible, we are also growing vegetables in a permaculture garden.
We were finishing our house until end of June and our front garden was full of waste, so we experimented with growing them in the bare soil (hard, dry, just a little bit of manure) which provides a small harvest, but not enough to survive ;-).
Experiments always give you information, regardless of the outcome, and we are very grateful to actually see how strong vegetable plants are to survive this climate. They only received some watering and managed to grow in between the existing almond trees. Several people said we were crazy and this would not be possible, but we were able to harvest some tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and zucchinis.
A Challenge
Permaculture
In July we created eight vegetable garden beds, in August we installed the poly tunnel and set up 'Wormies' our Worm Farm bathtub. In the near future we will create a permaculture garden on contour lines, step by step our land is growing into a little self sufficient paradise for ourselves and our community.
We are learning by doing. We face many challenges. We laugh, we cry, we curse, we have so much fun, we sweat, we burn, we freeze and we keep going.
