Libyan Earth

Yesterday I got into the garden, lifting turf to prepare a bed about 4x15 ft. I raked it and sowed it straightaway with fenugreek I’d had soaking in a bucket for a couple of days – too long because a few of the seeds were sprouting. That’s really a kind of holding crop to put nitrogen and organic matter into the ground. I’ll probably be using a lot of it here because it’s so cheap, plentiful, suited to the climate and useful.

Then I dug another bed tonight about 1 1/2x15 ft. That’s for garlic, probably. I say probably because the garlic in the shops was actually pretty useless for eating, but a couple of days in the fridge and it was sprouting so would have made excellent seed. I’ve got about two dozen cloves in the fridge ready to plant, and went out tonight to get more, only to find the skinny perfect-for-planting garlic was off the greengrocers shelves and replace by string bags of fat imported stuff. Undeterred, I’ve broken up a couple of bulbs and put them in the fridge to see if they sprout.

The soil’s lovely to work with, soft and malleable. Lifting the turf is harder work though, it’s putting down roots.

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