Shelter belts

I can't bear to discuss the election. The news is so awful and I am disgusted with a significant percentage of my fellow New Zealanders. Oh. Oops I am discussing it. Two more details then. Firstly, where are the brain cells of the green voters of West Coast-Tasman? 1800 of them gave their candidate vote to Kevin Hague, the green party candidate who was likely to get in on the party list anyway but who had no show of winning the electorate seat. And by what margin did the Labour candidate lose to the National candidate? 935 votes. Secondly, even worse than National winning the election, they are dependent on the ACT party for a majority in parliament. Act only got 3.6% of the vote and yet they are in parliament (5 of them) because Rodney Hide won Epsom. People of Epsom, hang your heads in shame. I suspect the ACT party have some quite intelligent members, just incredibly selfish ones.

So eventually, some time round lunchtime, the fog of my gloom began to lift. The chooks are now back in the mended Poultry Palace which is now living up the north-west corner of the section. The feijoa trees are in the chook run and hopefully they all enjoy the experience.

Yesterday I transplanted my two bay trees from pots into the new garden space which used to be the chook run. I planted some beans and made a bamboo teepee for them to climb up. I planted a zucchini and some lettuces and three kale and some anise hyssop, garlic chives and borage. I covered the soil around the zucchini with grass clippings.

One of the blueberries looks quite unhappy. I've weeded the blueberry bed and covered that with grass clippings and watered it with seaweed brew. Tonight I added the ammonia-sulphate (I think) which I got from the garden a while back. The garden beside it is going yellow on the edges, even of the thyme. So I'm believing Linda Woodrow (the goddess) more and more that mulching with woodchip is bad for plants which like nitrogen. So more grass clippings all over that and then seaweed brew on top. I added chopped up comfrey and some sheep poo and more water to the remaining brew. It can pootle on making me liquid fertiliser for a while yet. Exactly as long as it takes for me to find more seaweed I expect.

The new garden in the old chook spot is very exposed to the wind. So I bought 10 metres of shade cloth and Favourite Handyman made two windbreak fences for the garden. One on the west side and one on the east. He is truly very wonderful, my Favourite Handyman. I also bought punnets of marigolds, alyssum, rainbow chard and great lakes lettuces to plant out in the new garden. Too windy to plant today but they can wait.

Last night we went down to the beach with friends and ate and drank round the camp fire while we watched their fireworks. It was a lovely evening and I'm keen on repeating it often this summer, though obviously without the fireworks.

a weekend of promise

It's gorgeous here this morning, the beginning of a beautiful (though cold) weekend. Last night we let off fireworks which was fun and today I hope we will repair and relocate the chook run to around the fruit trees at the top corner of the back lawn. Then I'll be planting out my lovely new 10sqm garden.

Even more importantly, we'll be voting. Go left New Zealand! I shudder to think what a National government would do to our most vulnerable (not to mention their ignorant and misguided policies on other aspects of our economy and society) in a recession.

Eight minutes in the garden

Better than no minutes in the garden. And this is what I did in that eight minutes, today. Killed four white butterfly caterpillars and one slug. Moved a container of thyme and feverfew into the porch where I'm expecting it will be protected from frost. I want to fill the empty end of the container with coriander, plus plant a pot of coriander on the kitchen windowsill and see which, if any, works at this time of year.

I moved two of the logs which were once trees in front of the garage and then logs in front of the garage awaiting a new life. The area which had one of the zucchini plants over summer is partly dug up and I've used the two logs to square the space off from the lawn. It is bordered on the other sides by the fence and by my summer 07-08 raised bed. The photo above, taken about a fortnight ago, shows the area - it's the corner made by Fionn's head and elbow. I need to do some digging and weeding and then I'll put garlic and shallots in this space. It already has some bokashi buried in it.

My main garden goals for next summer are to do with carrots and onions, neither of which were successful for me last year. We eat huge quantities of carrots and onions and would really benefit from growing our own, thus reducing pesticide load and financial costs.