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If you think it's a bit warm here in SE England at the moment. Just spare a thought for "Our Reporting Team in the Med", Mary and Simon Wallace - Telexing-in their copy from the lovely, if somewhat dry, island of Gozo.
Gozo Growing #11 – The heat is on….
With daytime temperatures regularly reaching 30°c, it’s fair to say that summer has officially arrived here on Gozo.
This year, we’ve been experimenting with extra layers of mulch and homemade compost on all our no-dig beds. We are also using some recycled plastic bottles as simple, portable, DIY bottle drip watering devices. Our focus is on finding ways to best keep veggies cropping over the summer and ensure our young fruit trees (mainly almonds, pomegranates, mulberry and olives) make it through this tough part of the growing year.
We have been working on ways to provide greater levels of daytime shade. This has been achieved by making our own screens (all 15 of them) using the freely available giant reed (arundo donax). Each screen is positioned on the west and south-facing sides of our mulched beds. This ensures plants receive the early morning sun and benefit from the afternoon shade created by the screens by reducing the worst effects of the hot afternoon sun. The screens also lessen the impact of the dry, dusty southerly winds. In between the screens, we have planted native Tree Mallow, Fennel and self-sown Crown Daisies to offer further shade, wind protection and provide attractive pollinator stop-over sites (Air Bee ‘n’ Bee!).
The 1.5 litre recycled plastic water bottles have a series of holes drilled close to the cap. These have proved time-saving, easy to site and a good way to use up our saved grey water or to apply liquid nettle feed. Within the beds, the bottles slowly release the water close to the stems/roots of mulched plants, with less evaporation or accidental water splash onto the lower leaves, which can result in sun/leaf burn or powdery mildew (for which we usually apply a mist spray on any infected leaves using a 40 parts milk: 60 parts water mixture).
This year we are growing six varieties of tomatoes including; ‘Purple Russian’, ‘Black Krim’; ‘Vintage Wine’; ‘Smaker?’; ‘Pink Brandy Wine’ and ‘Red Berry’ along with climbing Borlotti Beans, French beans, Aubergines, Squash, Sweet / Chilli Peppers, Red Orach, Onions and Garlic (both now harvested), Malabar Spinach, Yellow Beetroot and Black Kale (the last two are grown in the shade under our olive trees). I’ve also planted some flowering plants such Aloe Vera, White Hedge Nettle, Sulla, a bright red legume grown for fodder and regularly sow sunflowers of all sizes and colours, because the bees love the flowers and the chickens love the seeds.
In the countryside, the harvest is now almost over and hay bales can be seen across the patchwork of small fields. Capers are now in full bloom, along with Mediterranean Thyme, Wild Artichoke, Fennel, Wild Carrot and the large yellow flowers of the Prickly Pear- all of these are frequently visited by honeybees and many other pollinators. One less welcome summer visitor, particularly in the early evening, are mosquitos, but fortunately, we have a good number of bats that emerge each evening around dusk to feast on them.
We wish everyone a successful summer growing season, and if you do have any spare time to sit down and read, might I suggest ‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers – described as ‘the best novel ever written about trees…’
Simon & Mary, Gozo (the hot rock)
June 2021
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