Yet more Autumn garden pictures

Globe artichoke. This is in the raised bed I made last year from seaweed, horse poo and home made compost.

One of the compost heaps.

Wet west coast garden wilderness. I was entranced by Enid Blyton's books as a child, including the ones set on rather idyllic farms which were full of diverse animals and a zillion years from the monoculture of most of our farms today. The wild area out the front with the big climbing tree takes me back to those early reading days of magical discoveries. But it is the flax which also marks the scene out as distinctively New Zealand.

This is the horse poo enriched wilderness. Eleven months ago I created a new garden here on rather barren soil by layering horse poo and pea straw thickly along an area about 3 x 1.5 metres. Then I planted spring bulbs and later, pumpkins and sunflowers. The manure and pea straw certainly helped all those dormant weed seeds!

more and more Autumn garden pictures

Rua potato flowers. Useful that these are out the front away from Brighid as the flowers and fruit are poisonous.

The rampant yams. I hope these taste utterly divine. I planted them last August or so and don't get to harvest them until this July, so they are using up a lot of space over a very long period of time. In the background is part of our firewood for this winter. I find looking at it very satisfying.

Radiccio turning deep red. Rocket beside it.

My only pumpkin harvest. I cut it this evening. It hasn't had intense sun so may not be full of flavour. At the very least, I can cook it up for the chooks.

more Autumn pictures

The feijoas inside Poultry Palace. No flowers this season, but they have grown quite a bit since they have been inside the chook run. Come Spring, I think we will move the Palace and see how the feijoas get on then.

The rampant garden. This is mostly mint and nasturtiums, but the convulvulus in there is rather less welcome.

Chilli peppers. Just starting to turn orange. Probably time to harvest some this weekend.

My favourite kale, cavolo nero, also known as tuscan kale and lacinato kale. I first saw this in a gardening magazine, towering over cottage garden flowers and was captivated. The blue-green colour is lovely and the shape quite different to curly kale. I planted this one in early summer and have been killing caterpillars from it as much as possible, saving it for winter use. I learnt after last year not planting my winter brassicas until Autumn. When growth was very limited, I started to see why neighbours had grown their silverbeet all summer and kept huge specimens for winter eating.

Autumn pictures

Our first home grown cabbage.

Successful broccoli!

Curly kale and marigolds. We've had fewer caterpillars on this kale and I've seen hoverflies on it. I wonder if the marigolds on this side and the phacelia on the other side helped.

The old chook run garden last weekend. The edging at the foreground is thyme. Most of this garden, now the tomatoes are out, is kale, silverbeet, perpetual spinach, celery and bay trees, all for the coming winter. There are Maori potatoes and a chilli pepper plant in there as well. The draped shade cloth in the background is our temporary chook run for daytime use.

year of the climber

Last year was the year of the chooks and a very successful one I think. I learnt a lot and we ate vegetables, herbs and eggs from our garden in increasing quantities.

This year is, I suspect, going to be the year of the climber. I'm still interested in growing as much food as possible, but I've come to the conclusion that flowers are welcome and indeed needed across the fences and the sides of the house. I once thought the climbers would be beans and peas but after two years of very average to poor performances from peas and beans, I think roses and clematis deserve a go instead.

Tonight I gave some time to my little clematis this evening. I pulled the rampant nasturtiums away from it, weeded, watered with my liquid fertiliser brew (mostly seaweed and comfrey) and mulched with pea straw. I retrained the clematis vine which had been vining through the nasturtium to go up the bamboo, with the help of the twine recycled from the bale of pea straw.

I stared through the fence to look at my neighbours' beautiful roses and noticed that they use a dark green rigid mesh (looks like plastic coated wire) to train their roses up. I'll be pricing that down at the garden shop this weekend. As well as putting some up for the clematis, I want some against the house. My pink rose cutting (the one I struck myself) is looking happy so far and I have plans to put more roses in against the house. The house is made of bricks and I think roses growing up against it will look wonderful. Of course, I'll be putting garlic in around each one this coming winter.

In the punga raised bed is my first rose (apart from the ones in front of the lounge which were here when we bought the house) - a Dublin Bay climber. The punga raised bed is otherwise currently swamped by yams. I hope there are some tubers underneath come winter. The foliage is impressive, but not edible. But perhaps once the yams are out I could shift the white rose from the front of the house - the one which rambles and swamps everything else and flops onto the driveway and threatens to puncture the car tyres - into the punga garden where it can flop all over the punga logs and generally spread everywhere. I would still plant vegetables, or herbs at least, around the roses. Maybe carrots would like it in there with them? Maybe 2009 will be the year in which I successfully grow carrots for the first time ever?

I'm still undecided about my yellow banksia climbing rose. It's the yellow thing. I bought it for the front and I'm rethinking the front and moving towards stately tall things and perhaps a bush rose with garlic around it, but not a bold yellow climber after all. Which means the yellow goes somewhere out the back. White, soft pinks and bold reds, really bold reds, I do. But yellow, hmmm less often. Perhaps it could go where the last tiny kale seedling died, beside the rhubarb. Then it wouldn't be in the same eyeframe as my pink rose. Although as I type I'm thinking that two years running a tomato did very poorly in that spot and then the kale died. Perhaps it isn't the place to put a $17 rose. Seventeen dollars might not be super expensive in terms of roses, but it is pretty flash on my scale.

I'm also thinking flowers because the bulb catalogues and advertisements are out now. Every year I imagine that despite a straightened budget that year, the next I might splash out on hundreds of dollars of bulbs and have totally gorgeous profusion. This year is no exception. But I always always allow myself a few new bulbs each Autumn. Last year I left the freesias in the ground amongst the herbs down one side of the house. I got annoyed with the few bulbs which came up along the back of the house as they looked silly in isolation and dumped them on the compost. I gave up on planting special expensive canna lilies as Brighid ripped my one and only out last year and hid it somewhere where it has not grown. I've left the bluebells from last year in along the front of our bedroom and am hopeful that they will come up even more plentiful this year. I think I will get some more for that garden as I ultimately want a thick carpet of spring bloom there. I've already bought some yellow freesias - I planned to plant them around the yellow banksia rose.

Daffodils, which I always assumed were dead easy to grow, haven't done well at this house. Today I read that slugs love daffodil bulbs. I expect that explains the problem. I guess I could raise them in pots (where I can control the slug population fairly well) and transplant in spring.

Tulips are totally and utterly gorgeous and I'd love hundreds of them. I've had mixed success with them here.

I have found a catalogue with snowdrops in it. I've not seen them at the garden shop in the last three years that I've been gardening on the coast, but I have missed them. They were the first sign of imminent spring in the garden of my childhood. Onionweed provides a similar looking, albeit smelly, alternative, but I do fancy the 'real thing'.

On the vege front, the kale and silverbeet is looking well. I am about to cull one poorly tomato and plant some more winter veg. Brighid sat on the cabbages in the weekend so I'm not yet sure if they will survive the ravages of the fat bottomed nappy girl. We are eating our own tomatoes and the beetroot seedlings are perhaps a week off transplanting. The new rhubarb is looking sickly but I figure that often the old leaves die off and just when despair looms very close, new leaves appear.

flowers and tomatoes

I did finish weeding the watercress out and I dug that end of the old chook run over, removing the dead zucchini along the way. I've now planted the rest of the tomato plants in the new space. They may be too late going in, but I think it's worth trying.

Last night I had admired some beautiful flowers in my friend's garden and this afternoon she brought some bulbs (in plant and flower) around for me. Very very lovely. They are now living in the corner of the potato patch, which is a space where we can see and admire them often. I don't know their name yet.

Although one zucchini has died the other, planted out the front quite a while ago, is doing wonderfully and I think we will be eating zucchini by the end of this week.

I planted out the rest of my sunflower seedlings this evening. They are out the front in my yellow garden. The yellow garden is all weeds at the back (too much to attempt at once and that is still our dumping ground for large tree clippings and rose prunings) and is also sporting a riot of orange nasturtiums. I must put them in a salad soon. The pumpkins are also in the yellow garden and they are doing rather averagely. My explanation so far is that they need deep compost and do not have it. Underneath the thinnish layer of horse manure and pea straw which has been settling down and baking compost all winter, the soil is not very rich and is mostly taken up with large tree roots.

Today is Westland Anniversary Day so we were all home which is how I got to escape alone into the garden. I do appreciate it. I also made bread and turned traffic light peppers (red/yellow/green peppers in a plastic pack - yes green God I have sinned) and baked beans into something that looked exactly like that but made me feel like we weren't having beans on toast for the millionth time. I still had some garlic butter mix left over from the garlic bread I made up last night and that went on the toast with the traffic light beans most satisfactorily.

No cooked beans or gingerbread so far nor is it particularly likely. I am reading a book Margaret Mahy which I'm enjoying and being inspired re: children's literature. Favourite Handyman has spent much of the day reading The Faraway Tree to Fionn. Ah, Enid Blyton. My childhood friend. Great to see my son making friends with her as well.

digging

I am going to have to dig. The old chook run is not ready for the no dig method. I spent a chunk of yesterday weeding the watercress out. I may try watercress in the compost but I am not putting it in the chook run ever again. It is all going to have to come out as I can see that the root structure lends itself to world domination.

Once the watercress is all out, I am going to dig some of the old chook run over. The zucchini is looking quite sick and I suspect it has caught something fungal. I recall from somewhere (Linda the Goddess probably) that zucchinis are prone to fungal things which often make them die. The beans all rotted in the ground instead of germinating, doubtless due to the rainfall sufficient to build a large lake with that we've had over the last fortnight. The marigolds are doing fine but the alyssum has succumbed to the elements and will be compost sooner rather than later.

The problem which I want to dig away is that although the chooks ate and killed the grass beneath the mulch, that was not long enough ago for the roots to have turned back into soil. Add to that the high rainfall and there is an almost impenetrable layer just less than ten centimetres down which is thick tangled muddy dead grass roots. I figure if I turn that over, the aeration and the mixing in of the straw will be helpful.

And if that doesn't quite work, then surely I'll learn some more things in the process.

In other news, we've been gadding about our community enjoying the company of good friends and celebrating the late but hopefully here-to-stay arrival of summer here in smallwettown.

I've been making the no knead bread at least once a week and often more. 3 cups of plain flour, 1/4 t yeast, 1 and 1/4 t salt, 300ml warm water. Mix and cover with a plate and leave in hot water cupboard for 15+ hours. Then put on floured bench and fold over three times and put the bowl on top of it for 15 minutes. Then sprinkle a clean tea towel with polenta and put the dough on one side and cover with the other. Leave for two hours. Oven to 230 degrees celsius. and casserole dish and lid in - this 1.5 hours into the 2 hour resting part. After 30 minutes, the dough can go in the very hot casserole dish. Cook with lid on 30 minutes and then another 5-10 minutes with lid off.

This bread has a thick crust but is very yummy and keeps well into the next day. It is also very cheap to make. I have yet to work out the cost of cooking so I can be confident of exactly how cheap. But given it takes almost no baking-work time, I think it is a great choice for cash strapped families to make their own bread even when they are short of time.

Today I am either going to hide and read all day or hide and garden in the rain all day or I am going to make gingerbread cake and more bread (resting now) and soak and cook lots of beans. I can't do anything about the many tins of tomatoes we use until January when I'll be cooking up a storm on the days I'm not drinking instead. But I can do something about the many cans of beans we use by cooking lots of beans from scratch and then freezing them. Surely I can?

I've got some good books though...

a whole barrowload

We went for a walk allong the beach after dinner this evening. Sin ce our fireworks evening on the beach in the weekend Fionn, who is usually not at all keen on the beach, is now enthusiastic.

We collected lots of fireworks packaging and broken beer bottle glass for the rubbish bin. The most wonderful find was a huge piece of kelp. About two metres long and big branches 40cm wide. I went back home for the wheelbarrow and it just fitted in. We walked back with the barrow piled high with nutritional bounty for the garden.

I tried the same no knead recipe with kibbled rye which I found in the cupboard. 1 C plain flour, 1 C high grade flour, 1 C kibbled rye, mixed with 1/4 t yeast, 1 + 1/4 t salt and 300ml warm water. Leave in warm place about 20 hours. Then fold over 3 times and leave to stand with bowl on top for 15 minutes. Then sprinkle a clean teatowel with polenta and put dough on one side in ball shape and cover with rest of teatowel. Leave to rise for 2 hours. 1.5 hours into last rising, heat lidded casserole in oven at 230 celsius. Cook for 30 minutes with lid on and 5-10 further minutes with lid off.

The kibbled rye experiment was successful. My next experiment will be doubling the recipe to make a larger loaf.

I transplanted six Great Lakes lettuces tonight. I bought these from our garden centre once I realised we suddenly had space to fill after the big wind. They are traditional crunchy heading lettuces which is what we missed last summer.

A Perfect Day

Sunshine all day. All four of us together all day. Poached eggs for breakfast. Home made bread, barbequed-outside-over the wee open fire-sausages, pea and silverbeet pasta, home made pesto for dinner. Sausage sizzle lunch at the Totara Flat garden extravaganza. Ice creams on the way home. Children riding bikes, playing in tents and helping to gather grass clippings. We all fell asleep before eight after reading parts of a children's encyclopedia which belonged to Fionn's grandad many years ago - old planes are still fascinating to my five year old.

The bits in the middles also wonderful to me...

The chooks spent the day clearing up another spot on the lawn/garden. This time around one of our feijoa trees. In the evening, once they were back in Poultry Palace, Favourite Handyman and I moved our temporary enclosure again ready for tomorrow. I am still thinking and hopefully on the way to learning more about the best environment for our fruit trees. The grass around them clogs and threatens to strangle them on regular occasion. I don't want to be spraying around it (heaven forbid) and I didn't think they should have lots of plants close to them. But the grass (quite weedy lawn at that) must be using some nutrients and so perhaps it is better to grow herbs around the fruit trees. I could put the chooks in for an extended period with lots of pea straw mulch and they would weed and fertilise for me. Then more thick mulch and some herbs? I have no attachment to lawn and the place where the fruit trees are is deliberately not set up as intensive children running space. The trees are north of the sandpit and they tend to run round south of the sandpit. So ideas on companion plants for feijoas and blackcurrants are most welcome. The way the weeds keep coming through in my blueberry bed, I'm wondering if the soil would be best filled (i.e. with deliberately planted, welcome plants) round the blueberries as well.

The Totara Flat garden extravaganza was a lovely hour or so in a small and friendly community. We didn't want to buy lots (though it would have been possible - they had lots of lovely big trees and plants) but are very pleased with our tiny chilli plant. I didn't bother with buying chilli seeds when I knew we had no need for more than one chilli plant. A friend at the extravaganza was giving away Maori seed potatoes and we now have five tiny Maori potatoes ready to plant this week.

Back home I got stuck into making a home for my Maori potatoes - the sunny edge of the oldest compost pile, which we have been steadily using up in the garden. The edges of our compost pile our thickly bordered with onion weed and I set to digging up the remaining weeds on the north facing border. Brighid helped too. Sometimes you just have to quite worrying about compacting the soil, because it is too late. I guess her 13+ kilos is less injurious than my 13+++++ kilos on the soil. We found snails which had such strong shells that the chooks couldn't break them, slugs which they certainly could wolf up easily and a volume of worms which a) delighted me and b) led me to think that we really do have a worm farm here, just not one in a special wooden or plastic container. So the potatoes will go in there tomorrow.

My Red Rascal potatoes are peeking through the ground in lots of places.

The rocket is ready to eat and some went into the home made pesto, together with home grown basil (first of the season) and home grown parsley.

Our mint is rampant, in an area where it has express permission to do so - indeed to out-invade the wandering jew and the onion weed. After a friend told me about eating lovely mint pesto recently, I think I'll be trying that out soon.

I now have four bean plants. Not quite ready to plant out, and I'm thinking I'll make lemonade bottle collars for them as slug protection when they do go out into the garden. They are living on the study and kitchen windowsills for the moment. Tomorrow is a lunarly good day to transplant tomatoes and zucchinis so I hope the weather is obliging. I've got room for 2-3 more tomatoes to go into the garden and the remainder will go into pots.

This morning Favourite Handyman pruned the tree which overhangs our garden from the neighbour's place and was blocking quite a bit of morning sun from our yams and garlic. Now it still looks balanced and provides pretty foliage for our neighbour, but is nowhere near as thick as before.

This afternoon FH mowed the front lawn on the property (much to the relief no doubt of some of our neighbours who are lovely people and also people who may value a spot of tidiness over our various pumpkin and blackberry experiments) and then planted two red flaxes.

I've officially stopped planning for Autumn leeks. When the envelope from Koanga Gardens arrived on Friday, I was walking up the drive from the letterbox wondering exactly where to put the leek seedlings and realising that there really was nowhere (except maybe a bit of room where my Maori potatoes are now going) for them to live. So when I opened the envelope and found they were out of leeks for the season, it all seemed to work out for the best.

Koanga had also run out of the marigold "Naughty Marietta" and sent an unusual substitute: Marigold Inca. Apparently the flowers on this are "insignificant" and it instead is useful as a quickly grown shelter crop (grows in tree form, similarly to sunflowers and is 2 metres tall) and also as a compost crop, providing good carbon with it's woody stems. Just as well I wasn't relying on Naughty Marietta for a very particular spot in a 'just so' flower bed. I think Inca will be an interesting experiment and eventually I'm going to interplant it with sunflowers out the front. I sowed some this afternoon, together with some "Marigold Jolly Jester" which I still had from last season. I've put them inside the tool shed to grow in the protected sun - last year it took me ages and ages to get some marigolds to thrive from seed and I suspect slugs were involved in many of the plant losses.

The home made bread was the second go at this recipe. Thanks for the link at the end of your recent bread post Joanna. I'd not been blogging and bread making back when it was originally posted but the ease of making this bread is something wonderful! It got rave reviews round the table tonight. I've just noticed Joanna has a post on two other no knead recipes and I'll be giving them a go in the near future.

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.

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

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.

Onion weed

I gathered an armful of onion weed this morning and cleaned and prepared it (like spring onions, chop off roots and about half of the green part, rest to be used) and put it in the roasting tray with some huge winter carrots from my Dad's garden and some celery from my garden. I drizzled them with oil and let it cook at 150 celsius for about 60 minutes. The roasting tray was quite full and the veges wet from being cleaned so they half steamed and half roasted. Then I whizzed the mix up in the food processor and wondered what I might do with it next.

Next I played round with broccoli pesto after seeing a recipe online which I didn't actually follow because I have banned myself from the computer for all but 20 minutes in the evening. But mine was similar except I used parsley for the non-broccoli green.

Tonight I cooked pasta and then sauteed some anchovies in a pan and added the onion weed/celery/carrots mixture and a bit of tomato sauce. I mixed that with the cooked pasta and then topped each plate with the broccoli pesto. It tasted nice. Not likely to win any awards and certainly not restaurant fare on aesthetics, but "Thank you Mummy, I like this" from the boy who was very doubtful throughout the cooking part did very nicely for applause.

We got our first egg on Saturday and then two yesterday and two today. The run is too wet for them though - increased vulnerability to disease. So we will stake the run into the ground and add plastic to keep it dry. We are now talking about building the glasshouse this summer and making that their winter home while I plant winter veges into the current run spot. Then swap over in summer so the glasshouse can grow tomatoes.

I gave my Dad two sub arctic oregon tomato seedlings which I had grown on Saturday. Mum and Dad were over to watch Fionn's final in the rugby league. Hoki dared to beat us once this season and they paid for that on Saturday. Those little 5 and 6 year old boys and girls in Fionn's team thrashed Hoki soundly. I never thought I'd be a sporting girl, but Saturday was full on excitement. Well well well.

Back to gardening. I also gave Dad some of my pumpkin and zucchini seeds. The climate in his garden is quite different to here and it will be interesting to compare results. My neighbour was talking about the article on heirloom tomato varieties and health benefits in the weekend but didn't know where she could buy seeds or plants. I lent her my Kings Seeds catalogue. Spreading the word on genuine food diversity one friend at a time.

Yesterday was the local Lions fertiliser fundraiser. I joined the queue for sheep manure, blood and bone and powedered sheep manure. I didn't want superphosphate, but happy to put the other things on my garden.

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.

yams, peas, onions, broccoli, calendula

This afternoon Fionn and I planted the yams. They all fitted in the punga raised bed with the garlic which has left me some room in the other garlic bed for more swiss chard and some lettuce in a few more weeks.

As I planted, I removed any weeds. Including the germinated pea shoots from two weeks ago. But perhaps my foolishness was a little fortuitous as I then consulted my companion planting guide and found that peas do not like growing near garlic, onions or shallots. Oops. Scarce is the garden bed at my house without one of these alliums at the moment. So I've planted peas amongst the freesias and pansies and hope to fit the crop in before it is time to fill it with perennial herbs.

I transplanted some calendulas.

I transplanted my red brunswick onion seedlings from their tiny propagator trays to a larger planter box. Then I placed our long cloche from last year over the top and put them in a sheltered spot outside. I won't plant them into the garden for another month, perhaps longer. Last year I sowed these seeds direct into the garden and the blackbirds, who are very hungry and always fossicking in my garden at this time of year, ate all bar one seed.

I transplanted four broccoli seedlings. I have another two to plant out once we've harvested some leeks and thus made room. Leek and spud soup dinner likelihood this week is very high.

I fancy planting more seeds - I have no shortage of packets of seed - but there is the vexed question of where to plant them out. I have spaces put aside for zucchini, pumpkins and tomatoes, for the onions and with them will go carrots (fingers crossed) and beetroot. Lettuces and herbs will squash in somewhere I'm sure (hope). There won't be more room for more than that until summer when higher and longer sun will make some currently shady spots viable.

Got my blog back

and very relieved I am about it too.

Where on earth to start?

Beans. I got a big order of beans and pulses from Piko Organics this week. Half of which is stored beautifully in glass preserving jars and the other half is still in the cardboard box. I did use some to make Black Bean soup today though. Black Bean soup (the recipe is here somewhere if you check out the recipe label on this blog) is one of my favourite things because it tastes a bit sophisticated (lime and coriander on top and sherry in it - may sound very ordinary to you but it aint sausages) and it is good because no methane emitting animal meat. Though we do spoon sour cream on top. Once I've got over the cost of red peppers in soup making season and got two meals out of the recipe, then it gets quite good budget points.

Today Favourite Handyman worked on the poultry palace. Delivery to smalltown is less than 13 days away now.

The sun shone today and yesterday. This is a first for a long time and a seriously utterly wonderful thing.

I've been re-reading Companion Planting in New Zealand by Brenda Little. I really need to buy my own copy because in the interim since I last had it out of the library, I've put brassicas, garlic and strawberries together. Turns out brassicas and strawberries really hate garlic and suffer in performance in it's presence. When the soil dries out a bit, I'll be transplanting the strawberries into a new bed and complementing it with borage. When I've grown the borage. I've got just two tiny kale plants left there which can go but I narrowly missed planting four broccoli plants with the garlic. The book didn't comment on yams. I'm going to put yams in with both my garlic beds. Only time will tell.

My potatoes are sprouting nicely. Just homeless until I find a pile of cheap buckets. Their original spot has been re-assigned to onions and carrots and chamomile.

I have lots of spring bulb foliage up but no flowers yet. Though the flower stems are up on the freesias and starting to come up on something else unidentified but possibly a crocus (or a bluebell).

Flowers are out on some onion weed. Onion weed is up in chunks of the lawn around the compost and our biggest tree. I used my dried onion weed in the stuffed pumpkin meal I made last weekend. I think drying it first might be the way to go as it yields little flavour for it's size when thrown in raw.

Favourite Handyman made me an excellent cloche today. It is an old vegetable box (strong transparent plastic) for a fridge which came with some toys for the children. They never put toys in their boxes anyway so it's mine thank you. FH drilled holes in the base (which is now the roof of the cloche) for ventilation and now it is protecting one of my spinach seedlings with the idea that it will be warmer and grow faster.

Tomorrow I might sow seeds. Better go and find out if that is lunarly suitable. Which will most likely determine whether I am lunar follower or not. But less likely to stop me sowing seeds if it is Sunday and the sun is shining and no one has an earache or broken bone.

Where to fit it all?

The vegetables that is.

My onion seedlings have germinated well and now I am left with the small issue of where to plant them (not yet but at some point in the medium term). In the shower yesterday I decided that they could go in the bed earmarked for the potatoes and the potatoes could go in buckets and perhaps in a few marginal spots around and about. I problem solve well in the shower in my opinion. Once upon a time I used to plan my work day in the shower. Now work doesn't get a look in beside the garden.

The new hot fashion item on the vegetable scene seems to be ullocas or earth gems. I have almost definitely spelt ullocas incorrectly but have no text in the house to check it against. They are like colourful potatoes and are from South America. I want to grow them of course but there really is no room. One day there will be but until then I can only create so much new garden each year.

I got out Companion Planting in New Zealand from the library for the fifth or so time today. Which is where I discovered that garlic and strawberries and brocolli all hate each other. No prizes for guessing what I've got hanging out together in one of my garden patches. Perhaps I should purchase the book for consistent reference.

Today I ordered three brown shaver point of lay hens for delivery to our small town on 22 August. 2008 that is. Words are inadequate for my pleasure at this. Now we have to finish the poultry palace before the 22nd, but that is quite do-able.

I've been pulling entire swiss chard plants out instead of harvesting leaf by leaf lately in a bid to free up room for the brocolli.

It's the dog eared end of winter and we're out of wood. Out of beech and oregon anyway. We still have some kiln dried pine offcuts from the mill but they burn too fast, certainly for overnight warmth. Great kindling though. So we're burning coal, like bad citizens and like many if not most people in our small town. It is a lot cheaper and it also has a deadline. After 2010, Solid Energy will not be supplying coal for residential use. Better we send it to China of course than retain the ability to keep New Zealanders warm. Apparently they are different kinds/grades of coal but I remain unconvinced. Then I think of the Green Party's opposition to coal mining and my issues with that in terms of local employment and then my head spins too too fast. It is true that low income households in our town, many of whom live in poorly insulated rental accomodation, would not be able to afford to buy wood for the whole winter. Oil prices are of course impacting on wood and coal prices.

I've been blogging for a year now. It was the school gala on Saturday and I remember that last year's gala was about third post. I've stuck at it for an entire year! Not completely surprising given my penchant for waffle - blogging is another outlet for my endless stream of babble.

Pumpkin Musquee de Provence

I've ordered seeds of this pumpkin and a google showed me this is what I could expect. Definitely something to look forward to.

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.