I can do it

I can do it and I will do it. It is true that our very high rainfall and short season summer make gardening challenging at times. Sometimes challenging equates to many things dying, or failing to thrive. My plans for eating our own fruit have been thwarted somewhat. The first lemon tree died and the second one has had a hard life but I do see a couple of new leaves, so still alive. The blueberries lost their berries and one of the two bushes looks very unwell. The blackcurrants are alive and have a few currants on them. They are up the best drained end of the section. The feijoas seem fine but no flowers. At least I have two this year.

So all the fruit needs to be moved to the highest end of the section. And nourished a lot. The glasshouse when we build it needs to go where the old chook run garden currently as. It needs to be raised off the ground quite a lot and have well drained (deepish shingle or bark or sawdust) paths all around it.

The garden along the back of the house grew us some lovely tomatoes last year. The part of it where I mixed in some blood and bone, lime and seaweed is growing quite well - I have a broccoli forming a head there. A head! First time in years. But the poor raspberry, even though I encircled it in seaweed, is definitely not happy. The onions are doing okay there but not fabulously. Though of course at least they are alive which is more than I could say for my onion attempts last year.

So last night I weeded and pulled out the flower bulbs which were still in the ground. I now have a blank patch of over a metre long (and perhaps 6ocm deep back to the house) with nothing in it except one tiny maori potato which has just peeked through. That could push it's way up through more soilish items though. It is time for intensive help. I think the biggest probelm over and above the wet is that the very large tree which is not far away from this garden bed has roots extending down into this garden. Deepish roots for the most part and if I raise the bed up with lots of nutrient-intensive material, I should get noticeable improvement. My fingers aren't crossed because then I can't type, but in my mind I have many things crossed.

I've got sheep poo, sheep dags ground into a soil conditioner, seaweed, blood and bone and pea straw all on hand. I'll have to check the state of the last batch of compost because it would be great if that was ready to use as well. I want to raise the soil by 10 cm and then put pea straw on top of that.

My kefir is still alive. I'm hoping that if I leave it in a coolish place (i.e not the hot water cupboard like I have been), then it will be okay to leave unstrained and unrefreshed by more milk for 2-3 days.

Why? Because we are going on holiday this weekend. Holiday. Holiday! To Karamea for two nights. I am so excited. Karamea is still on the West Coast and it still could rain but it is a very beautiful place that I have wanted to go back to (last went as a child) ever since we moved to smallwettown almost three years ago.

Fish Pie

There should be no stinting on calories in fish pie. At least, I have no plans to stint on calories in fish pie. The one I made tonight had cream cheese in the mashed potato topping (we had cream cheese but no cream. Milk not rich and exciting enough) and sauteed button and shitake mushrooms in the filling. The fish pie was a celebration of actually having some fresh fish. It is now impossible to buy locally caught fresh fish in our town, despite the fact that fishing boats do dock at our port. So a friend who was down south further today got me some "deep sea cod" in exchange for the avocadoes I gave her from my latest co-op box. It was completely divine. I don't know if it is a naughty fish to eat - most likely given it's name (and the fact it is fish!). I used a Nigella Lawson recipe as my guide. That woman knows how to use a lot of pots. And butter.

Yesterday one chook escaped. One minute in the temporary enclosure, the next in the potato patch. So they went back in the Poultry Palace, a more secure enclosure, for the day and indeed ever since. I'd better buy some tent stakes to up security for next time I let them out into their portable run. I am leaning heavily towards getting rid of all the grass around the feijoas and having thick mulch closest to the trees and herbs around the outer circle. Using the chooks as indentured labour for the job of course.

Another thing yesterday. I stopped in to a see a friend whose husband is renovating their home. Steve had replaced the wooden corner window with a modern aluminium one. Would I like the old window for glass house building? Well yes of course I would. We have a house lot of windows already, waiting to be turned into a glasshouse. But this corner window could make a cold frame on it's own without much adaptation. I'll be sending Favourite Handyman out in the weekend to have a look. Then we can start planning how to best use it.

Potatoes and feijoas

This is my 401st post. Not only do I talk too much in real life, I blog rather incessantly as well it seems.

Today I could wait no longer. We virtually live in Noah's Ark here in Spring. I cannot imagine quite when the soil will be dry enough for digging or planting. The prospective potato bed will just have to be a little compacted. I weeded the spreading buttercup and the docks which had pushed through the mulch and then planted 14 potatoes, each with a piece of comfrey leaf underneath them. I've left a gap at the back for beans and a gap at one end for herbs which I fancy and which otherwise will have no home. I had six potatoes left after this and have planted them down the bottom of the garden. It is quite wet and not at all raised there but apparently potatoes grow in most places and do good things for the soil, so an experiment worth doing.

I also cast aside concerns about compacting soil to plant the feijoa I bought earlier this month. I learnt not long ago that feijoas are very hungry so I made up a mix of sheep manure, blood and bone, potting mix and compost and dropped all that in a hole twice the size of the plant. Pea straw on top and hopefully now the other feijoa tree has a friend, they will both go forth and prosper. The top layer of weed/grass lawn which I dug out, I threw to the chooks so they can eat the greenery and feast on any worms and insects. Then they can scratch it all up and spread it round the chook run.

phew

Great things:
Favourite Handyman is back.
I still have carrot seedlings.
I have germinated kale and calendula and lettuce seedlings from the latest sowing.
The chooks are laying an egg each every day.
The tomatoes and pumpkins and zucchini are getting larger and stronger inside. Just a fortnight or so more before I can plant them out.
I have gorgeous yellow striped with red tulips in the garden.
I have irises in the garden - the yellow ones are fading and the purple ones are unfolding.
I have self seeded pansies growing out of a crack in the concrete. Beautiful yellow splotches beside the dock leaves.
The freesias and calendulas and the rest of the pansies are blooming on.
I can identify the red stemmed garlic from Northland now - I think it is called Takahue.
Although all the large leaves on the lemon tree have turned bronze and fallen off, there are new, tiny leaves appearing.

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...

Mary Washington

That's the name of the asparagus crowns I bought today. I've never grown asparagus before and now seems a perfectly reasonable time to start. The plot I had planned to put them in is not dug over and ready, so I'm going to slot them in amongst the veges in my January raised bed. I bought three for the moment, at $2 each. I haven't really got a clue how many I want but some has to be a massive improvement on none.

One day, when it stops raining (i.e. at least next month), I shall plant out the asparagus crowns and also get going creating the plot which was for asparagus but now is for cucurbits of some kind. I've been eyeing up costata romanesco zucchinis, the rampicante ones and I plan to fit some pumpkins in as well.

I meant to protect the tamarillo from wind and frost but haven't. It's still going out there, but leaning steeply sideways.

Yellow cherry guava

I had been thinking we had no fruit trees. Primarily because we have no fruit.



But I did an inventory of everything in the garden yesterday and then sketched out my plans for this coming summer and we do indeed have a number of fruit trees/bushes/plants.



blackcurrants - tamarillo - feijoa - raspberries - lemon - strawberries



Next on my list are blueberries. What do you do to raise money for fruit trees? Dealing in illegal drugs seems an extreme measure, as does begging or stealing or defrauding or making counterfeit money. I have noted however, that the NZ Gardener magazine pays out a $50 garden centre voucher for every letter they publish. Which would pay for the two blueberry plants I have chosen at our local garden nursery and for most of a yellow cherry guava.



I've neither touched nor eaten a guava but I'm not letting that put me off. Inspired by the latest NZ Gardener magazine, I looked them up at Incredible Edibles and now I want one. They fruit in winter. After the guava, I will be coveting a plum. A Damson plum tree I think. Then we should be shaping up for year round fruit in the garden. Nah nah na nah nah peak oil.

The chook house building is progressing nicely.

I planted something...

just not sure what. Thought I'd plant out the remaining seedlings from my seed raising desk (do I need a desk for garden purposes? No. I need them up HIGH away from my daughter). Come hell or highwater I would do it today. I grabbed a tray of half a dozen seedlings and headed to a bare patch in one of the garden beds. And cleared said bed carefully and then eventually noticed that one "weed" which I had pulled out was identical to the seedlings I was just about to transplant. I wondered if it was corn salad, but a scan of corn salad pictures on the net doesn't show any with tiny red blotches on them. I think otherwise it is some kind of pansy as I bought a few of them.

Looks like Spring will be full of wonder indeed.

We pulled the old strawberry plant out, leaving the new plants which had formed from runners into the next bed (the same one with the mystery seedlings newly homed in it - oh how funny to think of my careful companion planting plans last year). Then Favourite Handyman buried the Bokashi in it and I topped it with peastraw to slowly break down over winter. I had thought I'd give this spot over to a rose bush. But now I'm back fixated on edible stuff. Thinking espaliered blackberries after some more browsing in the garden centre this afternoon.

I used the last of our cherry tomatoes on a pizza this afternoon. Excellent harvest indeed. The longest producers were in a sunny sheltered spot in large black plastic tubs which also absorbed heat to keep the soil warm. I'll be using that method again next year.

rain, fruit trees, seed germination

It's raining here, meaning a lull in gardening activities. Just as it was beginning to rain on Saturday evening, after a burst of rain the day before, I decided that the feijoa and tamarillo trees absolutely had to be planted. We've only owned them in tiny pots for a month after all. I couldn't get the spade or fork into the ground until the rain came, but on Saturday evening I dug holes twice the depth of the pots, half filled them with home made compost and then planted each tree, put most of the soil back in, watered with seaweed/comfrey brew and then mulched with pea straw. Then the warm rain settled in to do its job. All this detail to remind myself that I did it properly, like the books recommend. Not sure if fh followed this procedure for the lemon tree last year - it sure is taking a while to settle in and start growing.

Seed germination hasn't been particularly high of late, including from seed packets with a better rate earlier in the season. I think the hot dry weather has dried out those little pots too fast, and am hoping that the current warm rain prompts my seeds into growth. Maybe I'll even get some success with carrots. Ha ha ha. Still haven't decided on an occasion special enough to harvest my ONE carrot out of the previous two sowings.

The beer traps are working well though. I have six set up and each has caught at least three slugs. No good setting them down in this rain, but I'll put fresh beer down when the rain stops.

The pods of my borlotti beans are going a deeper red over time. Haven't eaten any. I was growing them for drying for winter use.