in the garden

It's precious these days, time to plant seedlings. Brighid (21 months) simply pulls them out to inspect if she sees me planting. I remind myself daily that next summer she will understand and we won't have this difficulty. I remind myself through gritted teeth.

So Favourite Handyman, (wonderful Favourite Handyman) put her to bed this evening while I was planting. Two tomatoes, 12 marigolds, 6 alyssum, a large pot of beneficial insect blend (mostly phacelia and a bit of buckwheat by the looks of the seedlings so far). I see that we have lots of watercress sprouting through the old chook run and now a few pea shoots, presumably from the pea straw mulch. The chooks mustn't have fancied old dry peas. Why ever not?

Then I found a shallow pot and sowed more rocket seed. We've been eating rocket most days and the way that it is edible within 2-3 weeks of sowing is very satisfying. I don't bother putting it in the actual garden as the yield out of a smallish pot is very good and it is particularly convenient to have the pot just by the back door for ease of making sandwiches.

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.

Finding room

Grandparents day at Fionn's school was yesterday. After a mad flurry of cleaning and tidying, my parents arrived on Tuesday evening to a house that was cleaner and tidier than usual. I couldn't make any grander claims. The grandparents' event was much enjoyed by all and a lovely community thing I think.

Yesterday I popped down to the garden centre to buy some spinach seedlings for Dad. Somehow I ended up buying a marjoram plant (my second lot of marjoram seed has failed to prosper and I can't wait forever to make marjoram toppings for our pizzas) and six cavolo nero plants. I love this name for what is also known as 'palm tree cabbage' and as 'lacinato kale'. My seeds still haven't arrived from Koanga so these fairly well established seedlings are very welcome. It's great to see our local garden centre branching out in the range of seedlings it offers.

Of course I only wondered afterwards where exactly I would put the cavolo nero. The idea was to put winter greens where the chook house currently is in Febuary. But I do need to home some more greens well before then. I guess the edges of the potatoes where I planned to put herbs and beans may also have to fit in some brassicas after all.

I bought the latest Organics NZ magazine this afternoon. I read the article on herbs for hormonal health with some interest. It is written by Sandra Clair who is the owner of the highly regarded herbal tea and creams business Artemis. She mentions in the Organics NZ article that calendula is a very good balancing herb for women. Which could mean almost anything and why I wonder about making this myself when I have yet to use any of our calendula for making eczema cream in the last two years I don't know. But indeed I do wonder. So I bought one of her teas at the health food shop today and maybe one day I'll get to experiment with my own concoctions.

I've started another bread experiment (yesterday) after reading up a link on on of Joanna's recent posts. I hope this no knead bread lark is forgiving as I forgot to go home and make it this afternoon and it is now going to wait until tomorrow before I do the final steps. I'm interested in the recommendation to use standard (weak gluten) flour rather than bread grade. From one angle, standard grade bread is cheaper than bread grade. From another, I could use this recipe for making bread from low gluten flours like the ones I've found from a grower called Terrace Farm.

I should go and be a parent now.

Things I wonder

Madeleine Bunting wrote an excellent piece on the adoption of breast cancer as a kind of commercial commodity in a recent Guardian Weekly. I read it in the paper version but can't find it online. She noteed the hoopla surrounding breast cancer week in the UK, with pink ribbons, pink t-shirts and other high profile pink paraphernalia. She also noted the total silence on the possible causes of breast cancer. Those hormone disrupting plastics, food additives and other commodity based suspects can't be packaged up and sold as a PR feel-good advertising package.

So it was with some loathing today that I noticed that in our local supermarket we currently have a double layered advertising caboodle in the bulk foods section. Alison Holst, who has guided thousands of New Zealanders through their early and later days in the kitchen, currently has her name to most of the bulk foods section in 'New World'. No doubt she gets paid handsomely for having her motherly face plastered over the top of containers of scroggin and pine nuts up and down New Zealand. Today it was all through the lens of pink. All the labelling and display posters had been changed to pink and even the bulk foods bags are currently pink. I bought pink Tim Tams earlier this month and thus gave the breast cancer charity ten cents to their worthy cause. Some might suggest that Tim Tams are the kind of processed food that people anxious to reduce their cancer vulnerability would do well to avoid.

So I do hope that all this fundraising and awareness raising saves some lives. But I'm also with Madeline Bunting - the packaging is rather suspect.

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I wonder what the point of my carefully made meal plan and prudent food shopping this morning was. Given that I worked late and ended up buying fish and chips for tonight's dinner. $54 at the supermarket for food which should last us until next Tuesday/Wednesday, apart from another milk trip. $19 at the chippie for food which filled us without laudable nutrition for one meal only. Tomorrow is black pudding, baked beans, veges, rice. I'm thinking I should cook it in the morning. If we have another late arrival home, we can eat the pre-made dinner cold.

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The chooks are trying to roost in their new day home. They do look funny falling off the pungas. Favourite Handyman is going to adapt a saw horse for their portable roost. The odd chook is still odd. Today's egg was shell-less and barely recognisable as an egg. FH suggested killing her now as the books and our learned chook-owning friends suggest she is egg-bound and will most likely die anyway. I guess that is forward planning. Of a kind. She seems quite happy, just underperforming egg-wise.

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Some of the remaining leeks are going to seed. Leek seed heads are so very beautiful - I'm definitely letting at least one grow to it's full glory. My parents arrived here this evening and I proudly showed them round our section. They are quite bemused by our training of wild blackberry. I have quite a few germinated sunflowers now. And two beans. Progress on transplanting kale and lettuces yesterday has been undermined by Brighid who thinks seedling pots are to be emptied, filled and moved around with like sandpit toys. We're not getting on well in gardening terms at the moment, my daughter and I.

Gardening Monday

'Labour Weekend' in New Zealand is in the latter part of October each year and is the traditional time to plant tomatoes, pumpkins, beans and other frost tender plants. People where I live often wait a bit longer as Spring is slow to kick off here. I've planted a couple of tomato plants outside but am in no hurry to finish planting. I planted two pumpkins this afternoon and about 65 onions. Then the children and I transplanted lettuce and kale seedlings into pots. They need to get bigger before they can go into the garden.

I've also permanantly lifted the roofing iron from the compost experiment out the front. I'd layered horse poo and pea straw and fabric scraps and shredded paper and then put roofing iron over it all and weighted it down with bricks. There are worms in there so some activity but actually it was too dry in there and so not huge break down. I watered the newly exposed pile with seaweed brew this morning and no doubt it will rain several times this week. The zucchini seedling I have earmarked for this spot is not big enough to transplant yet but most likely will be in a week's time.

I've used last year's strawberry protection frame (made of wire mesh) to go over the top of my rocket seedlings and the big pot which houses my calla lilly. Brighid caused merry havoc with these pots earlier and was furious when I put them out of her grasp.

Favourite Handyman made a splendid contraption for the chooks today. A large (perhaps two metres in diameter) circle of wire mesh with two bamboo poles crossed and attached over the top to lift it by. Then we pegged shade cloth over the top. We moved it (and very light it is too) to Brighid's Forest (small patch of pungas and a cabbage tree) and then put the chooks in there to feast on the long grass and weeds surrounding the trees. Great scheme though I'm about to discover how to get them out soon... I put some water in a bucket inside the circle for them and in summer could easily make a laying box to pop in there and then they could live there for a few weeks. But at the moment the idea is that they live there in the daytime only. I do appreciate not having foxes in New Zealand - it does make housing chooks much easier.

Of course the term "Labour weekend" is a stupid fallacy. It is supposedly a celebration of good working conditions in New Zealand or something like that. But it was deliberately divorced timewise from the traditional May Day labour movement celebrations which are found all over the world. Robbing it of it's political and historical context. The West Coast is the birth place of the union movement and we have celebrations relating to this at Blackball on or around 1 May.

On the subject of politics, I heard Kim Hill running the election debate last night. You'll be able to find it if you look on the National Radio menu. I am a huge and longstanding Kim Hill fan. It's a great incentive to cook on a Sunday night if I get to hear Kim Hill handle our politicians with skill and verve like last night. My favourite line was after Jim Anderton spoke and went something very similar to: "That's the great thing about having Jim Anderton on this debate. It's like going on an archaeological dig."

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.

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.

carrots amd banks

I have some carrot seedlings.

This is progress.

I also have radish seedlings but they are easy peasy. Carrots are both yummy and difficult to grow. Fingers crossed.

I transplanted chamomile seedlings this morning.

The chook run has indeed dried out and lost its boggy aspect. Big rain predicted for tonight but hopefully the cover will suffice to keep the run mostly dry.

I think I should read The Grapes of Wrath. Still have my head in a spin over the bailouts.
My socialist mate tonight reckons that the current events are healthy and that renationalisation of banks is a good outcome. I'm adding his thoughts to my pondering bowl.

planting

Today dawned partially rain free. Thunder and lightning free so perfect for getting outside. While Favourite Handyman wired up a rain and shade cover for the next third of the poultry palace chook run, I sowed carrots. Touchon and White Belgian. I also transplanted perennial onions in between. They were the ones I had ignored in the seedling tray after transplanting most into a biggish planter box about a month ago. I used egg shells around the carrot rows in an attempt to ward off my number one two and three foe, slugs.

I transplanted three lettuces (more eggshell) and eight borage plants. I sowed sorrel and beetroot direct.

We tried out shelling the chestnuts today. Turns out they are all mouldy. So they're on the compost heap now and I'll endeavour to get some from my rellies next Autumn.

My sister is staying with us. She tells a great story. She tells a great children's story as well and is being exploited shamelessly to babysit while I be a screen zombie right now. She is also vegan and so tonight I pulled out the curry ingredient jars and the coconut cream and made pumpkin curry. Worked well and I'm planning on more vege curries in the near future.

The local film festival starts tomorrow. I need to chase up our babysitter so we can catch ourselves some big screen kulcha.

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.

Germination

I have six parsley seedlings. Parsley can take a long time to germinate and I often find the germination rate is not fantastic. Two plants (I have the giant Italina flat leaf variety) are enough to see us through the year. Last year I had too much from my enormous plants and gave heaps away. This year I am putting parsley in hummus every week and finding two plants perfect for a fresh supply of medium aged leaves. It seems to grow even in winter.

I also have tomato and basil and lettuce seedlings, a few of which have reached the two true leaves stage. I'll be keeping them inside quite a while longer. Quite apart from the risk of frosts and the endless rain still keeping the gardens in a bog-like state, the slug population is still too sizeable. There are many more to be found and fed to the chooks yet. Once the weather dries up I can start using the beer traps as well.

My potatoes are sprouting nicely. They'll be staying in the shed for a while yet. No point planting them in a bog.

The onions are doing fine in their new plastic medium sized home. I think I'll leave them there for at least another month. I've changed my plans for where the chooks and the spuds and the onions are going yet again. I think I'll keep the poultry palace where it is for six months and put the potatoes in their initial spot (which they've moved in and out of in my mind about six times now). They're going where the tobacco went last year. This is the spot which will become a glasshouse, probably in Summer 2009-10. The chooks will move up to this spot after potato harvest, probably about February.

Saw Raelene the wonderful yesterday. I'm going out to her place to clean out her chook house later this week. More compost. Mmmmmmmmmm can't ever have enough of the fabulous compost which chook house clearings make.

Ros-from-work got chooks the same time as us. And one of her chooks has laid an egg already. Sooooooooo. Maybe we'll get our first egg soon. Round the smoko table I've been collecting tips on the best foods for encouraging egg production.

plonk it in

Oh the plans I had. Crop rotated, companion planted, not to mention an assumption that all my seeds would germinate.



I made a new raised bed on the no-dig method in January. Here it was, newly made:

Since then, the zucchini plant to the left in the photo has grown and given us many meals until two days ago it mysteriously died on the spot. One day healthy, next dead. The other zucchini plant is still producing well and provided the marrow for tonight's marrow pizza (yes really, but anchovies, olives, garlic and capers made sure of decent punchy flavour). The spindly tomato plant is still spindly and produces some but not many yellow oval tomatoes. You can just see the strawberry plant in it's tyre and bird netting to the right. I've let the runners grow and two have bedded down in the older raised bed and will be new plants for me next summer.

In the January photo, I've used newspaper and chicken manure mixed with bark - the by product of my friend Rayleen's night shelter for her chooks. Since then I've added some grass clippings, wood chip, horse brew fertiliser and seaweed fertiliser. And today I could wait no longer to put some plants in. I poured the remains of my 'garden mix' bag of soil over the bed and then planted St Brigid's anemones bulbs around the edges and then my own seedlings in two rows in the centre. I planted swiss chard and purple sprouting broccoli and feverfew and thyme. That's what I had left in my seedling growing station so why not. I opted not to plant the two pots of pak choi cos they are just an irritating slug magnet.

No car today which was good for preventing me from further purchases at the garden nursery. But tomorrow I do need to investigsate this thing called frost cloth which prevents white cabbage butterflies from laying eggs on brassicas.

The overprotective mother

It's me. Nearly every time I let babies out on their own in the garden, nasty, malevolent, hungry critters (almost definitely slugs and caterpillars) eat them. I've even lost an entire parsley plant this week and I'd never noticed a problem with predators and parsley in the past. The non-transplanted seedlings are doing fine in the seedling area though, in their little pots. I've got some up higher on the old school desk, but they're are surviving pretty well on the ground as well.

So the next transplanting round won't be until my seedlings are so well established that root bound-ness becomes their biggest issue. Not everything is germinating but the brassicas are and they are caviar to slugs as far as I can see (or chocolate ice cream or prime steak or whatever makes you salivate and tuck in fast). The other predator is my daughter - she is responsible for a number of casualties from the seedling area. I've even considered getting a playpen to put the seedlings in to protect them from her.

Missing the garden

I've written a lot of posts not about my garden of late. That's cos I've spent very little time in it this last week. I miss it. I still get to inspect it every day, just small matter of paid work interfering with longer projects. Some beer traps are working very well to collect slugs. I'm less sure about at least one and probably more of them as the one year old apprentice pulled one up, spilt the beer down her frock and then sucked thoughtfully on the glass rim as she wandered round the rest of the garden. Changed her. Sending your baby to her childminder reeking of beer isn't cool. You shouldn't do it either. As for whether she drank dead slugs, I prefer not to reflect on that.

I do have lots of tiny seedlings in pots which will be ready for transplanting in 1-2 more weeks. I've had to play the identification game (mostly based on the pictures in the Kings Seed catalogue) as I didn't label any trays or pots. I'm confident that I have mizuna and corn salad, purple sprouting broccoli and kale. I also have arugula and then there are some pots where nothing has germinated and others yet to be identified. Of course I have more swiss chard. I can never have too much swiss chard. This winter my family will eat dark green leaves every single day and never get sick.