On the home front we have started planting our first round of vegetables: capsicums, zucchini, eggplant and sweet potato, in areas we have been preparing for a few months.

We use a rotary hoe, which is going around slowly so that little damage is done to the soil structure. If we do this early enough, the soil has time to compost the organic matter (grass and legumes) in the soil with the help of more rain.

After this is done I usually spray a biodynamic preparation onto the soil, late in the afternoon, called Prepared 500, which help the soil break down organic matter into humus, and give the soil structure. We did this two to three times this wet season so when the rainy season is over, it didn't take a lot of time to get the soil ready for planting.

If we don't do this during the season (sometimes there is just one big long wet with no dry breaks) we can have grass and legumes six feet high and then it takes a long time and a lot of diesel to work it into the soil. Too much organic matter at once is not a good idea also.

When the wet season was over, the soil had dried out enough, it didn't take us long to get the ground ready for planting. I put on about 1 tonne per acre of rock dust (we use Min Plus (the same product we sell in Neils Organics) and a side dressing of Katek composted poultry manure before planting.