What’s the New Year going to bring at Ligaya Garden?

It’ll be a change to have the construction work and garden building finished. There’s always little things to do and seasonal jobs that need our attention but the heavy work is done (‘you’ve said that before`! mutters Marlon).

The most urgent ‘big’ job remaining is to remove the asbestos room. That needs a professional to do it but is essential to most of our plans. Then that area will be our outdoor kitchen and extension to the teaching / entertainment area. At the moment, it’s just storage space. 

We’ve pretty well got food and water under control, so we’ll let the perennials do their thing at the front and continue planting our annuals in the aquaponics bed.

The chooks will be happy too, the ground covers are pretty well established and all the climbers are climbing well out of the reach of any but the most determined chook. That means that they will be allowed out of they’re run weekly at least to forage and range as only chooks can. 

The big thrust for your’s truly will be a shift from a focus on food to a focus on energy generation. That’s right, not just efficiency but actual generation and storage. 

I’ve seen so many great ideas online over the last couple of years and I’m itching to try some of them out. Biogas, wind, solar thermal, ground storage… there’s so many of them to try and then adapt to a small block. 

We’re going to get to know our microbes better. We have a couple of microscopes around the place now. One of them is digital, so I’ll be posting what I learn as I learn it. 

By mid 2019, Jelina will be finished her PhD and saving the academic world from itself. She’s already itching to give art workshops and mentoring again. That’s her true calling. 

Marlon will finish uni and the world’s his oyster after that. He’ll be putting in much more time on the blog, making it look and respond better. I’m not graphically gifted, but he is, having inhereted that particular gene from Jelina, then working hard to make it his own. 

Athena has vowed to provide more poo and hair and to continue just loving life as only a Labrador can.

It’ll be another big year and we look forward to sharing it with you.