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Our own Jiaojiehe House:
Jiaojiehe environs:
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The original house and dividing wall are barely visible in this picture taken in May 2004.
This is the view taken from a little bit further back and slightly lower down in December 2005. Our challenge was to grow bigger and better vegetables.... Not easy in an unfamiliar climate.
In 2006, I seeded the top level with grass, we bought a pile of roses (Yuehong's favourite) and an expensive pile of annuals to kick start things. This was the view in late May. The roses near the house thrived, 75% of those near the wall found the following winter too cold:
It was naturally a completely experimental year. We went to Shibanxi for 3 weeks and came back to find the weeds half a metre tall and then we had a month in Java and the same thing happened... Then in September, the new village water project cut a huge swathe through the garden. They made such a mess of the lowest level that it had to be completely dug over to remove the large rocks left behind. I got enough out to build an extension to our middle level and a new wall to support it. The whole bottom level dropped by about 30cm as a result.
The soil is poor, it needs a regular infusion of organic matter for consistently good vegetables. We have had occasional loads of horse shit (local tourists love horse rides), alas the village donkey is no more and by and large that means my sweeping up and digging in large amounts of autumn leaves from our garden and also from around the village, something which produces some very strange looks. In 2007, we were persuaded to grow some sweet corn, it was not a great success in terms of quality. The year before, the water project had destroyed the runner beans, and now we discovered that while they have to be planted early, a combination of climate and lack of large bees means they do not crop well until mid-September. It's no great problem as the French beans do very well earlier.
We had managed to acquire a few strawberry plants back in 2006 and in 2007 frantically propagated them. At last in 2008 we had a bumper crop, but that was just before is started raining. In fact it rained so much it destroyed every tomato plant in the village.
We went to Java for a month (again) and when we came back this is what the vegetable garden (lowest level) looked like:
By now, it was taking just a couple of days to sort things after a month away and when everything eventually dried out the Autumn produced a splendid display from the roses and Yuehong's border in the lane outside in early October:
By 2009, we had an established annual routine. The hard dry winter takes its toll on our lawns which even by the end of April have hardly started to recover, although the fruit trees are in blossom:
Two weeks later, things look a lot better and greener although not all the grass has survived and some areas will have to be reseeded:
By early August a complete transition has occurred, this is a rare sunny day, most of the time it is raining and we have to fight mildew on the grass and various other forms of fungus which blight the roses and vegetables!
Because we are often out of Jiaojiehe, we have to choose our crops carefully; by and large we stick to beans, cucumbers and tomatoes which seem more tolerant of the climate and our occasional neglect. We have trees which produce plums, peaches, apples and pears in turn, naturally often at inconvenient times during our absences. This is hw we start in May..
And in what seems like no time, the area is a mass of green:
Only the roses get chemical help and they look gorgeous of course:
It's a lot of hard work, but not as much as it used to be and now we have sold our other two houses, there will be more time to relax with a cold beer and enjoy the garden. |
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Rob and Yuehong Dickinson
Email: webmaster@internationalsteam.co.uk