Vegetable garden progress

The strawberry plants have began to flower, and the peas and beans are doing well. I harvested the bamboo sticks for the runner beans from the forrest nearby!

Vegetable garden coming to life

The 90+ strawberry plants are doing very well; the plastic covering helps keep the moisture in, stops weeds and grass from growing. This arrangement, with raised beds, helps keeps the fruit out of the dirt.

In the fore-ground we can see the peas, broad beans and running beans sprouting up nicely. 

Strawberries planted

Season for 'Diguenes'

Diguenes are a parasitic fungus that grow on 'coigues', 'hualles' and 'robles' - native trees in the south of Chile. They have a texture similar to mushrooms but the taste is very different. My Chilean family go nuts for these forrest treats, which appear after Chilean Independance Day (18th Sep), through to the start of summer. We are lucky to live in an area that has such an abundant supply!

They can be eaten alone but most people add them to a salad or even fry them in a little oil and make Empanadas de Diguenes (small pies). 

Sowing seed

Finally, runner beans, broad beans and peas have been sown! As per local tradition, I've been waiting for a full moon - apparently this has an impact on the size of the produce - go figure!

The first bed in the right of the picture has the runner beans; a drainage trough/walk way separates it from the next bed which has the broad beans and peas. Fungicide was used to kill off unwanted worms and the soil was enriched with a furtilizer mix.

'Ulmos' trees in flower

The bright yellow bloom of the Ulmo tree is a sure sign that winter is definitely over, and warm days ahead. In fact it reached 20c today, a perfect day for the '18' Independence of Chile celebrations.

Ready to Lime

The vegetable garden has now been fully dug over and is now ready to lime - being close to a volcano, the soil is quiet acidic! However, it should be ready to start sowing the first crop by the end of September.