Treasures and trials

Treasure one:
I think it is a kind of treasure. We have fruits on our Rua potatoes. I found this out as they flop on to the path and I stood on them when I was harvesting a zucchini. This is not especially common - the swellings on the roots of potatoes are not the fruit at all. They aren't even a proper tuber but I forget what they are called. Aprt from potatoes that is. Whether I will do anything fancy like collect the seed, remains to be seen. But I have that opportunity now.

Treasure two:
A full boot of poo-enriched chook house clearings from the wonderful Raelene. This will go on to an area near my blackcurrants which currently has grass and weeds but is fiddly for the lawnmower to get to. I'm going to pile up the poos and sawdust and let it kill off the vegetation underneath and nourish the soil for growing something much more wonderful than grass on.

Trial one:
I left the bags of chook poo/sawdust in the car overnight. One of those terribly useless things that happen. I couldn't safely and easily drag it through to the back without another adult around to watch Brighid. I know she does murder my plants, but I still love her enough that I don't want her killed by our drive-too-fast nieghbours. Then we all forgot later on.

The car stinks. a lot. the bags were all hot from the nitrogen when I hauled them out this morning. the car needs cleaning from top to bottom and inside every everything. note the word clean.

Trial two:
cleaning. Why is it that every time I get the kitchen approximating to civilised, I turn round and start baking bread, muffins and cooking more meals in it? I do understand at some rational level (i.e. rather hypothetical and distant from what is uppermost in my mind) that good food involves work. I just feel grizzly about it.

a change of pace

The long languid days of summer have turned into hot sticky days of school and work. I didn't even go to work today, just organised everyone else, and that alone wore me out. I'll get my stamina back some time this month I guess.

Kept my sunglasses on as I watched Fionn (6) in his new class and then watched the whole school assembly...

I even started proper mother activities like swimming lessons. I was the taxi and financial provider for them, not the actual lesson provider.

Tonight I have made lunches for everyone for tomorrow as we all hit the term time world then. I have put all the ingredients bar the hot water for spicey lamb shanks in the slow cooker. I figure the shanks can thaw out overnight and at breakfast time I will add the hot water and turn the slow cooker on. So that's tomorrow's dinner sorted. I have two loads of washing on the line ready to dry tomorrow and the nappy wash is on as I type. I've got the oats soaking in whey and water overnight (a la Sally Fallon) for tomorrow's porridge. I've got that going as a routine finally and hope that indeed the children do absorb more nutrients from the porridge with the phytates neutralised. Fionn has stopped asking me suspiciously if I've been putting kefir in the porridge because it tastes different. My children seem to be able to sniff out and reject products with kefir in them from a distance of metres.

I buried the bones from my most recent batch of chicken stock in the garden this afternoon. A friend who visited a few months ago recommended this as a way of returning nutrients to the soil and this is the first time I have made it happen. I don't know if this means that my whole garden will eventually be a graveyard or not. Maybe chicken bones rot down soonishly, but I suspect large beef bones would take longer.

Back to the subject of kefir. I got sick of the dishes and milk outlay involved in changing the kefir milk every day. So instead of several jars of kefir (old Hellmanns mayo jars of just over 800gm capacity) with the plastic lids on loosely, I put the kefir in a 2 litre jar with cling film over the top and put it in the ingredients cupboard instead of the hot water cupboard. I also got slack about the proportions and often only put as much milk in as there were grains. I only drained the kefir every second day and found this less of a hassle and less of an expense. I was using huge amounts of expensive organic milk every week on the old system. Except that today when I drained the milk off and sat down to have a kefir drink and check my email, the stuff tasted disgusting, really acidic.

So back to the drawing board, or to the hot water cupboard anyway. I've read that kefir can almost always be resurrected, except if it has turned pink or brown and my kefir has done neither of those things. I've split the grains into two old mayo jars and topped up with milk on a roughly 1:5 ratio and put the jars in the hot water cupboard. I'll be draining and adding fresh milk every day and we'll see what shape the kefir is in in a week's time.

My order of freshly milled organic flour from Terrace Farms arrived this morning. So I have rye and purple wheat and otane wheat - 20kgs in total. I can report that although brown paper bags have that enviro-aware aura, they also tear very easily. I'll have to rebag two of the four bags into plastic already. Come Wednesday and hopefully some time not at work, I'll get a rye sourdough starter going. Although I have tentatively booked in to clean my friend's chook house out then and nothing as unimportant as a food project will be allowed to get in the way of a compost project...

compost

Today our friend who works as groundsperson at our local high school delivered a trailer load of grass clippings. She is bringing another tomorrow. Wonderful for the compost.

I then realised I still hadn't moved all of the seaweed from the wheelbarrow, where it has been steeped in water for at least a fortnight. It turns out that some kind of insect larvae is now wiggling round in it. It is all dumped on the garden for the moment, and I hope we haven't unleashed some crazy breeder onto our garden environment. Presumably (and hopefully), this water-based insect will not survive on land.

Planting cavolo nero

There are organic purists out there who only put home made compost on their gardens and nothing else. Something about reducing inputs and outputs. Well I'm not one of them. I think I've laboured on this before but that's not going to stop me doing it again. Linda Woodrow, my permaculture guru, doesn't get prissy about inputs. She is enthusiastic about getting whatever you can that is of grown and not synthetic origin. So yesterday I collected more watercress from the local stream and threw it in the chook run.

I started to make room for my cavolo nero, another brassica experiment. My brassicas have mixed success and I want to give these ones excellent opportunities. So up by the potatoes I started weeding. I spread the peastraw a bit thinly over poorly weeded soil in Autumn and thus have quite a bit of work to do. Mostly I was pulling out grass and spreading buttercup and during this process I really saw how it works when permaculture books say all weeds have a purpose. Spreading buttercup is all over our section and the weed books and websites all observe it is found in wet, poorly drained soils. Linda Woodrow would say don't worry about getting rid of it by chemical means - get the soil health correct and it will reduce its presence or even disappear. Whereas the grass (this area was lawn only 14 months ago) was quite difficult to get out, the roots of the spreading buttercup lifted out quite easily with the aid of my digging fork. I could see how the root structure did actually work to break up wet compacted soil.

I half filled a bucket with sheep poo, added a handful of bood and bone, a handful of lime and topped the bucket up with home made compost. Then I spread it over my newly weeded area and folded it in with the digging fork. I would never use super phosphate or synthetic nitrogen, but as we eat conventionally farmed meat and wear conventionally farmed leather and wool, I consider the sheep poo and blood and bone to be reasonable inputs which link to our lifestyle. I had some lime (New Zealand sourced) in the shed so thought I'd throw that in as well.

Then I planted four cavolo nero plants, mulched them with peastraw and took my crazy toddler apprentice inside with me so she couldn't pull the plants out. It's raining quite hard on them as I write the following morning which is perfect timing.

peastraw, wenching dress

'Cos they're linked obviously. Well, I could be wearing a wenching dress with my gumboots as I garden? Indeed I could and will do yet.



Today I planted all of the fuchsias. They have ended up along the front of the house. I think they'll look great as they get bigger. I'll fill up the shady fence line out the back some other time. I used my own homegrown compost and felt very special.



When I went to plant out the first fuchsia, I remembered that I did have a go at using local materials as mulch instead of peastraw back in July. I weeded a strip in front of the lounge window, layered horse poo on top and then covered that with dead punga leaves, which look like bracken by this stage. Today I lifted the leaves and discovered that the horse poo had decomposed down very nicely underneath it's eiderdown. I'll be doing more of that. We have plenty of punga leaves laying around the section for free.



I sowed sunflower seeds. The variety is called Moonwalker. I transplanted one tomato plant into the garden because it was getting too tall and unwiedly for the kitchen windowsill. It hasn't been hardened off at all but it wasn't going to fare any better if it fell into the sudsy sink. I prepared a rectangular planter for sowing leek seeds and then found that they mysteriously disappeared off the face of the potting shed earth. Seeds are one thing I have very well organised I think, but ultimately nothing is immune from the Sandra chaos factor. So now there are beans slenderette in the pot instead.



I tried on my latest almost a wenching dress find. I fancy one of those deep red velvet dresses which lace up the front and have a full skirt. It would go great with my gummies. Maybe even better with work boots. I'm taken with the work boots idea after reading Chrissy's blog. I want some overalls as well but I outgrew the last pair I owned. So periodically I find something velvety and hippish in an op shop and usually it doesn't fit and sometimes it is awful. But yesterday I spied another approximation (the lace up front is always fake in my experience so far - I'll probably have to start sewing again to make the real thing) at the Camerons Community Market in amidst the fuchsias and home made raspberry jam. It fits not too badly and I'll definitely wear it. But they've tiedyed it - black over pink. Tie dying should be outlawed. It is yucky and the colour smudges and patterns make me shudder. But still, it was a long velvety dress and it did fit. So I need to order some dye to reduce the ridiculous pale pink/leaky mascara black contrast. Deep green or blood red? Maid Marian or the bloody trollope? I did look at some green clothes in a new clothes shop the other day and step backwards at some of the green shades, so battlefield red it may be.



I am solo parenting again while Favourite Handyman talks at a politics event. He is one of seven 'ordinary people' who've been asked to talk about the key issues they perceive for the upcoming national election before the candidates then speak. I could pretend that I'm home being a good mother but I'm a hopeless liar. They're grizzling and shouting and wailing from behind the toddler gate while I type. That's what happens when I think tvs are bad but forget to wash the angel wings which would enable me to serenely play trains read books change nappies feed endlessly wash clothes wash dishes make more food. The angel wings fell apart. I lost them because the house was so messy. Now I can't get any more and my children will grow up messed up and neglected. Maybe they will have some compassion. I once read the book by Vita Savkville West's son about his parents' lives and marriage. She spent a lot of time gardening and the son still wrote a whole book partly in her honour. Of course it was also about their weirdness. No such thing as a free lunch...

Poultry Friday

Collected a large bag of watercress for the chooks plus lots of slugs. Turned the latest compost heap over a bit. Just shovelled the sides up on top. Not game to attempt turning the whole thing. Although it is very wet, it is teeming with worms. I found a large sheet of old iron and laid it against the heap to reduce the amount of rain deluge.

Collected lovely aged compost from the oldest heap and heaped it up around my rhubarb.

Although Spring is slow here on the coast and I should wait 2-3 more weeks, impatience got the upper hand this afternoon. I planted out a zucchini and two pumpkins.

Threw some more barley straw into the chook run. It was sending up new green shoots from the bale - would have been hopeless straight on the garden. But the chooks do a fine job of eating the green shoots and turning it into garden or compost ready material. I tried to buy some peastraw which is best gardenwise this morning but ended up on the waitlist for the next truck delivery. Again. That stuff is like gold here. Instead I grabbed some whole maize because I thought the chooks would like it. They weren't greatly keen. Maybe too big.

Armfuls of watercress

One armful for the chooks. One armful for the compost. The chooks loved the watercress. While at the compost heap, I plunged my hand into it to see if it was warm. I wouldn't say hot, but definitely warm. Goood things are going on inside my pile of grass, chookpoo, straw. Hmm I've just remembered that I put some sawdust on it. So that will need loads of nitrogen. Watercress should do the trick though. There is plenty of watercress down by the league field and removing it from the waterways is good as eventually water weeds take all the oxygen from the stream. I must remember what Woodrow says about using it for garden paths rather than gardens.

I'm going to add many more nitrogen rich things to the strip across the back of the back garden. That was just falling away into weeds last year and we started to build it up by laying newspaper down and then wood chip on top. I added grass clippings and then planted 30 broad beans in little pockets of potting mix along the fence. The broad bean yield hasn't been amazing so far but the main result is I get to dig the broad bean plants back in for a nitrogen boost. I need to edge this piece with logs so that the grass doesn't recolonise this garden plot. I think some of my Lions fertiliser fundraiser sheep manure would be well used along here. I'll plant some more legumes - peas and astragalus milk vetch through summer and hopefully the nitrogen levels will be sufficient by autumn to plant winter silverbeet along this shady strip.

I sowed many seeds this morning. Borage, basil, coriander, lettuce, kale, astragalus milk vetch, marjoram, garlic chives, sorrel, anise hyssop, chervil and calendula. This afternoon I planted a pot of beneficial insect blend seeds, two more zucchini and a bean. I gave away four tomato plants and four pots of basil this afternoon but I still need to give away some more tomatoes before I have room to plant more than one bean.

This morning I had a quick squizz on the beach and found some seaweed. I've draped it around my broccoli plants, tucked under the mulch. Fingers crossed. Linda Woodrow says it is easy to grow broccoli, but that has not been my experience so far.

One chook looked off peak yesterday and I found the remains of a shell-less egg this afternoon. Off to research what being 'egg bound' means. My aunt mentioned it last week but I was too busy thinking I knew it all about the same chook's last illness to listen properly. I had some things to learn when I was eight, and I still have them to learn now. Listen Sandra!!

More on permaculture

Following here from questions/comments from a recent post on Linda Woodrow's Permaculture Home Garden book. Nova, there is a lot in Woodrow's book for every gardener. The things she writes about making compost and collecting compost are really helpful. I had forgotten all about her advice to collect weeds from waterways but after reading that bit again yesterday morning, I found more. We were out doing a bike and baby walk (I don't usually write about the children here, but it felt like a big deal that Fionn now has his own two wheeled bike and he rode ahead and had me pushing the pushchair quickly to keep him in sight - good exercise for us both!!). We walked past the stream that I had checked the first time I read the book and it still didn't look great - mostly gorse and blackberry down the sides and just long grass on the edges of the actual water. I saw some nasturtium beginning to spread again and remembered that nasturtium leaves are good on the compost.

I did notice that the Marist rugby field has been mown recently. I must take the car down and collect the grass clippings.

Then, via the playground we got to the other stream, the one near the rugby league field. Aha. this one has something which is either watercress or similar and there is lots of it. On the way back home I grabbed two plants and tried them out on the chooks. They love it. Woodrow says it is good to pull it out of streams because the plants ultimately rop the stream of oxygen if left to grow too much. Perfect synergy. It is raining this morning but that won't stop me putting on my gumboots after breakfast and collecting lots of grass by the rugby union field and watercress by the rugby league field.

Leanne, Woodrow talks at length about the benefits of seaweed. It has lots of minerals in it and is fantastic for your garden. You can make seaweed brew with it (put in a bucket with water and a lid and leave there for 2+ weeks. Drain off and dilute and water on to plants. Refill and repeat. Once you've done this 2-3 times, throw the original seaweed on your compost heap. Given our high rainfall here, I only do the seaweed brew method in summer. The rest of the time, the last thing my plants need is more water. So I throw some directly on the compost. I chop some and spread it on my garden. When I planted my first raspberry earlier this year, I lay a wreath of seaweed around it. The high rainfall washes it in pretty easily.

Woodrow notes that seaweed is a good source of boron and is great for broccoli. She also says that broccoli is easy to grow. Easy? Not quite my experience. So I'm planning on a seaweed gathering trip this week and will be putting some of it round my broccoli.

Last time I read Woodrow, we didn't have chooks. Then while we were planning our poultry palace, someone else is smallwettown was very attached to the library copy of Woodrow. So now we are looking again at her chook ideas and designs. The idea of circles is very appealing. I also want garden curves softening the perimeter of the section. But given the high rainfall, raising every bed at least a little bit is necessary and to do that for free or very cheaply, we need to use found logs (seriously, every storm brings up more logs on our local beach). Those logs are straight rather than circular. The nikau ones are the most beautiful. Perfectly straight, with etchings which must have been the original inspiration for carved Maori totem poles. If anyone can tell me the Maori word for totem poles, I would love to learn it.

Even without the large mandala idea, Woodrow's knowledge is infinitely applicable. She is in favour of 12 chooks in an eleven metre square patch, moved on every two weeks. You need this concentration to get the optimal poo volume apparently. We have three chooks in a ten metre square run, not moved on at all yet. They do get to free range outside a few days per week.

We have many ideas about different homes and setups for our chooks. We come up with a new one each week. The thing is that much time is needed and that is not available. That old chestnut about needing to earn a living. The latest one which is in favour is to move the current poultry palace to the west side of the house. Most of our garden is to the north, with some to the east and the front of the hous facing south. The eastern part of the section is largely unused as it is open to the traffic and thuis unsafe for Brighid. It has a small compost heap in it, the house lot of windows which await turning into a glasshouse and the remainder of the enormous pile of sand we bought for the sandpit last Christmas. Yesterday we were talking about fencing this area off and having the Poultry Palace in the middle. During the day they could be let out to fossick in the enlarged area. As it has no tender vegetable plants in it, they would pose no garden danger.

And the genie landed on us. Our neighbours and friends often think of us when they are about to throw old chicken wire out and Barry and Brenda had been doing a big clear-up on their place. Would we like some more chicken wire? Would we ever?!!!!!! They passed over two big posts and 5+ metres of really strong, high grade chicken wire. How perfect would that be for making the fence between the front of the house and the eastern boundary fence? Very perfect. Not sure when it will happen, but it is looking like a very good plan. We sent some eggs over. Later that day they asked if we would like some shade cloth which they no longer wanted. Yes please. It is the perfect size for making a sail cloth above the sandpit. In winter it is great to have full sun on the sandpit. Fionn and Brighid play in it a lot. But in summer some shade on it would be better.

Last thing yesterday I decided the blueberries needed more nutrition. I added some compost to the blueberry patch when I set it up but there is not much evidence of it now. The blackbirds have been having a field day in the blueberry patch and that is before there is any fruit. So I opened the kinpack soil conditioner which I bought from the local Lions club fertiliser fundraiser drive. This is made from sheep dags. I need to get friendly with a local sheep owner so that I can collect this kind of thing for free. I spread a layer around the blueberries but didn't bother to water. I thought rain was coming and I was right. I probably won't need to hoe it on afterwards either. The rain will damp it down a lot and the blackbirds will turn it over for me.

The goddess

Linda Woodrow. The Permaculture Home Garden.

I have read this book from cover to cover at least four times. Sadly it and I have been parted for ages as other library readers got revenge on me by keeping it out way too long just as I did. Until late last week that is when I found it on the shelf, just like the wee bear in the children's story The Bravest of Bears.

Now I am reading it again in wonder. I have so much to reflect on now that we are two years down the tracks of our gardening adventures. I'm planning a trip to the beach for more seaweed and logs this week. I haven't been seaweed hunting for a very long time. I understand more clearly the particular benefits which animal manure offers compost heaps. I am reminded yet again to use sawdust and bark with great care. I am very pleased to note that of her list of herbs which have very useful nutrients for the compost heap, I am now growing comfrey, chamomile and borage.

After I inspected my peastraw and horse poo iron covered compost heap this afternoon, I realised what I wanted to do with the strip which runs along the back wall of the house. I created this garden using bokashi compost when we first moved in. In the summer of 2007-8, we grew tomatoes, basil and marigolds along this wall. In the following autumn I planted leeks and celery and silverbeet and raspberries there. Spring bulbs have also been sprinkled along this strip. I've added home made compost, a bit of blood and bone and plenty of pea straw mulch. This summer there will be more summer crops dotted along this strip but I have no plans for growing vegetables here in winter. Instead, I think I will do as I did out the front last winter. I will lay pea straw down thickly, then pile horse poo (or sheep, depends what I have for free) on top and then finish off with another thick layer of pea straw. This will break down over winter but the surface should still be higher than before the mulch was laid. Then I will plant into the mulch in spring. The following summer I may put tomatoes there again. The brick wall and the all day sun are ideal for the tomatoes. I gather they shouldn't go in the same place two years running, but haven't read anything suggesting that a two year rotation is unwise. Whereas I understand that potatoes should be on a four year rotation and the same for brassicas.

My tomatoes will mostly be in large outdoor pots this summer. I have only a couple of spots for tomatoes in the garden beds. I notice no asparagus has shown itself so far. Maybe it has rotted in the wet. Also my garlic and shallots are turning brown at the ends which seems unusual for this time of year. I suspect that the rain has something to do with it but am not sure.

flatworms and compost

Okay I am awake at the wrong times quite a bit lately. But anyway, here is some more blathering.
This is a flatworm. We have them in our garden. I've been feeding them to the chooks every time I find them. Apparently they eat earthworms. Which makes them very bad in my books. I've also encountered a couple of yellow oval shaped flatworm type creatures in the same habitats.

I have realised with great excitement that I am going to be able to start another new compost. Given the volume of grass clippings, chook house mix and manure I've collected of late, I think I've actually made one of those fast instant heaps they talk about in compost books where you build the compost heap in one day (well ours was in a week but close enough I think). So next lawn mowing day I'll start another one with the new grass clippings and the sheep manure which I bought from the local Lions fundraiser whcih is currently still bagged up.

On Friday morning I was working quietly on extending the garden which runs alongside the back of the house. I'm only extending it by 10-20cm width-wise in most places (it is about five metres long), but that is taking a while as I dig out well established grass and perennial weeds. I am appreciating how much easier the no dig method is. I've only dug two gardens in the traditional way at this home (I've got one more to finish after this current one), but they have taken immeasurably longer than the ones we built by the raised bed no dig method. I am excited that I now have my chooks to do most of the work for future plots for me.

Planting

12 silverbeet seedlings (me)
2 cabbage trees (Favourite Handyman)
3 coriander plants (me)
3 miners' lettuce plants (me, who is frustrated by my lack of knowledge about whether or where any apostrophe should be in the name of this plant)
3 aloe vera plants (me)
2 broccoli seedlings (me)

Then I weeded the potatoes out of one my compost patches (yes really. I have learnt beyond all likelihood of forgetting not to empty unwanted potatoes onto the compost heap)

I made another compost heap with grass clippings from yesterday (well FH and the children did that bit), mouldy sawdust and chookhouse litter from my friend Raelene.

Then I worked on my third (but really my original) compost, pulling out big branches which aren't decomposing suitably quickly, shuddering at the dead mouse in there, planning the garden I am going to put in its place soon. Some of the beautifully decomposed compost from this heap went in with the cabbage trees.

I weeded some creeping buttercup and docks out of the garden which will be home to potatoes next month.

Then it rained and blew and we all scarpered inside until I found my wallet and went out and bought some aluminium sulphate for the blueberries (probably evil - didn't ask about it's organic status) and a packet of sweet corn seed.

Now I am inside, drinking beer (weekend: 4pm rule does not apply) and refusing to go near facebook. I also bought a pile of baking goodies and am about to make a trillion school lunches' worth of muffins and pasties.

Celery, onion weed, compost

I thoroughly enjoyed today. No prizes for guessing where I spent it.

I dug out three celery plants and dug up lots of onion weed. Inside I hauled out the dehydrator which I have owned since 1996 and used once before today. I have celery (including the leaves) and onion weed drying in it now. I also dried some in the oven slowly. So far, so good. My idea is to have a jar of the crumbled mix to to spoon into soups and risottos instead of stock cubes.

Then I sprinkled lime on the garden along the sunny back of the house and then I put my home made compost, beautifully dark and crumbly and full of worms, on top and then I put peastraw on top of that. That should give the soil a boost. I'll harvest some leeks next week and we will soon have enough room to plant out the six broccoli plants I bought yesterday.

Big day in the garden

Firstly, compost. A good day in my garden almost always involves compost. Brighid and I went down to the beach and collected a bucket and a box full of pine needles. Then we grabbed a suitable log from the beach for a garden project. Lots of lots of logs wash up on our beach, especially in the stormy weather we've had lately.

Back home I layered the pine needles and wood ash from the fire in one corner where I am building a wee compost heap in readiness to grow pumpkins on it in Summer. I also used some wood ash and pine needles to create another garden patch. It is the patch I had initially thought of for the asparagus as it is in one of the higher spots on our section so should offer good drainage. But I didn't prepare it in time for asparagus and I've since thought that the perennial weed free requirement of an asparagus patch means an older garden patch would be more suitable for those gorgeous green spears.

The latest garden patch does not yet have a name but it does have four sides marked by wood I've collected from the beach or been gifted by friends leaving town. I have buried bokashi in it and then layered pine needles and wood ash on top and then pea straw on top of that. I'm not sure what will go in it but there are many, too many, contenders competing for the spot in my head.

I am considering using the new patch for medicinal herbs, as I figure I don't need them super close to the house (and I had such trouble squeezing them into my last garden plan that I had to knock heaps of them off my seed ordering list). I am moving, or have moved, my culinary herbs to the garden closest to the kitchen door.

Or I could put a bush tomato and basil and other companions to tomatoes in it. Now that I've made more garden space out the front, I don't feel the need to give this new garden over to pumpkins or zucchini.

Next up, the chook home. The shelter part is all built and fabulous and today Favourite Handyman was working on the run part. Unfortunately the alkathene pipe turned out not to be strong enough for his initial plans. Have to try something else. I felt his pain and decided to go buy him some beer as a treat/solace.

When I left he was considering turning the pipe lengths into mini tunnel houses and when I got back he had made one for my January raised bed. It looks fabulous to me. Just need to buy some plastic now. My goal with this one (and we may make others yet) is to improve warmth in Spring and Autumn and give a growth boost to plants we would grow anyway. When we get the big glass house built not this summer but hopefully the one after, I'll start playing round with capsicums and chilli peppers and the like then.

I pruned as much as the secataurs would allow me off an ugly fern at the front of the house and threw the leaves over one of my compost projects as mulch. I'd like to dig it out but it looks like two dwarf trees are very well established there and they may not give up without a fight. The photo below is before I got cutting.

Then Favourite Handyman pulled out the posts and windcloth from the dead lemon tree and used it to start off the shelter fence which I'd asked for at the front of the house. The afternoon sun is good there but in order for my pumpkins and zucchinis to do well out there, we need quite a bit of shelter from the wind ripping in off the sea.

To top off a fabulous day, we all went down to the beach just before dusk and played in the foam which the surf had brought up. I am grateful for this wonderful life.

Never too wet to make compost

Teemed down with rain today. So bad I did housework in the morning. By afternoon I held no care for whether I got wet, just that I got to garden. Brighid and I went into town to collect some peastraw we'd ordered and then I spread some over the old tobacco patch and a few other patches of bare earth out the back.

The rest of the pea straw went into my new compost heap by the garage. I recycled a large parcel box (all tape removed and laid out flat) as the weed supressant. Then I piled up four large bags worth of horse manure, layered with pea straw, lots of fluff collected from the tumble drier for months, some strips of old clothing and crudely shredded paper. I didn't need to wet it down with the hose - rain did a fine job. I stacked three sheets of recycled corrugated iron over it - one on each long side and one on top, leaving each end open for air circulation. I anchored it all down with some old bricks from our 'useful one day' pile.

It might be that it's best to have some soil contact to get the aerobic action going - I've meshed together ideas from no dig gardening with compost making. So I'm thinking that I will take some soil and partly decomposed compost from one of my other heaps and add to this new one as a kind of starter.

Peastraw is hard to come by this season and has to be trucked over from Christchurch, using a significant quantity of precious fossil fuel. It is a mulch par excellence in my opinion, but I am also aware that I need to look at other mulch options which can be generated (on the scale I desire) here on the West Coast. A friend yesterday had heard that bracken works well. That should be easy enough to come by so long as I'm prepared to cut it myself.

seed list, compost

Especially for Nova.

Webbs Wonderful Lettuce
Greenfeast peas
Buttercup squash
Russian red tomato
dark green zucchini

borage
German chamomile
chervil
wild thyme

That is what I'm allowing myself to purchase for Spring. The list of my wants is much much longer. Today's attempt to plant onion seeds went bellyup with my daughter breaking the propagator.

I now have four large feed bags of horse manure at home and plenty waiting for me to collect tomorrow. I also have two bales of peastraw waiting for me at the feed shop in town. I've speculated on several ways of organising the horse manure and given the quantities I have available, I expect I'll be able to use all ideas.

Optimally, I want to add a good chunk of carbon heavy materials to the horse manure to aid good composting. So I got out my wee paper shredder this morning to turn some waste paper into shreds for the compost. And broke it. Just like that. Then I realised that I could rip up the paper into strips fairly quickly without any machine to assist me. I've binned the electric paper shredder. One less thing to have in the house.

Speaking of which, we just have far too many things in our house. I collected about 313 shoes to go to the Sallies this morning, 287 of them not matching. Then there is the soft toy menace. If you like someone, then do not buy his or her child a soft toy. They are the world's worst cluttering objects.

a grand horse poo project

I got a telephone call this evening from a friend whose teenage daughter has a horse. Said daughter has collected all the horse poo from the paddock into a pile, as per her agreement with her parents, and now they need to get rid of it. There is a trailer load at least apparently.

Never one to say no to a compost opportunity, I've arranged to go out with large sacks tomorrow and take what we want. At this time of the year, I wouldn't expect lots of weed seeds, which can be a problem with horse poo.

This sounds like a lot more horse poo than we've had before. I'm going to need to get some pea straw to mix with it. I've also been thinking about putting corrugated iron on top to heat it up more (and keep the dogs out of it). Corrugated iron (we have some cast off old stuff in our ready to reuse gifts pile) has sharp edges so no good building a compost heap with where the children can get hurt on it.

So the current (expanding into a grand) plan is to turn more of the area outside the garage into garden this way. I could use the tyres from last week's photo to make makeshift paths and then lay horse poo and peastraw over the rest of the lawn and then lay corrugated iron on top and then put big rocks on top of that. We could have a bumper pumpkin harvest this year. A reputation as an obsessed gardener who recycles many things is highly beneficial...

Blueberries and seaweed

After a week of thunder, lightning, hail and endless rain, it all stopped today. Very cold, but I own warm clothes and strode out into the garden this afternoon without any care for the state of the house. I planted the two blueberry plants I bought earlier this week. I bought two varieties: 'Blueberry Powder Blue' and 'Blueberry Rahi'. I had to buy two because these are rabbiteye types and require cross-pollination. The plentiful worm activity in the soil when I was planting the blueberries was very encouraging.

I then dug out the last of the tobacco plants and tipped the bags of seaweed I've been collecting over the last week over the vacated garden patch. Using loppers and scissors I chopped all the seaweed into pieces of about 10cm or less and left them scattered over the patch. Given the huge volume of rain we've received of late and will likely receive in coming weeks, I preferred to leave the seaweed to rot in like this rather than make a seaweed brew.

I've been reading that wood ash is very alkaline. Which particularly interests me because pine needles are quite acidic. So I'm thinking of collecting some more pine needles from the local rugby field sideline this week and layering them with the wood ash on my new compost spot. I will then top it with Raelene's discarded chook litter from her hen house.

Unless the weather improves and the roads to take Fionn to his grandparents' home open, tomorrow we will be killing, plucking and gutting two roosters. Other times I have put the feathers on the compost, turned the bones to stock (and eaten the meat obviously) and then placed the used bones in the rubbish bag alongside the various bits I gut from each bird. I am wondering whether we should toughen up a little more and bury those innards in the garden. They would probably do something good for the soil. The back garden is fenced off from local dogs and NZ doesn't have foxes, so there should be no risk of it all being dug up again. Wonder how deep I'd have to bury it...

sunshine and seaweed

Today was Saturday, the sun shone and no one in our house was sick. Such a combination, we have not experienced for many many weeks and thus we abandoned the house jobs and went to the beach this afternoon. We collected three supermarket bags of seaweed and then went for a walk up a hill to look out over the township. Interesting how looking down on a town shows quite different shapes to walking through it.

First thing this morning we received two trailer loads of wood. Beech and Eucalyptus, cut up and semi dry. The teenage son of a work colleague had cut this wood up himself and was selling it to raise money. This wood is, hopefully, the beginning of our project to collect wood a year ahead of when we need to use it.

Gardening in the rain

Undeterred by rain, this morning I gathered up a barrowload of debris leftover from the last firewood delivery and spread it over my latest garden patch, the one which I covered in horse manure earlier this week. That should provide a good dose of carbon to counter the nitrogen-rich horse manure. It will also be quite slow to decompose in part as there are some wee sticks of wood amongst the finer shavings. I recall reading in a NZ Organics magazine article that this is good for the structure of the soil. I guess it mimics natural forest conditions somewhat.

preparing for herbs

Today I dug some more Bokashi in. I have no photographs so unlikely to be of interest as anything more than my gardening notes for next year.

When we moved in there were huge ugly overgrown bushes which had probably been planted 30 years before and never well managed. They blocked out lots of light along the side garden near the kitchen. We cut the down and put the punga raised bed on top of the site. Since then the tropicanna lilies which looked all but dead along the fence line have started to bloom. I buried bokashi on one side of them last year which must also have helped.

So today I buried bokashi on the other side of the lilies and was pleased to see good fat healthy worms already processing the soil. This spot will be for some of my herbs - as I want no less than 12 new ones next year, I'm always on the lookout for more easy gardening options to site them.