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!

Summer solstice planting

It's Summer Solstice here today, the longest day and a beautiful summer's one, the kind which make you feel like summer could last forever. Perhaps here, it is a day which reminds me that summer hasn't finished already, or forgotten to start. Three days ago we had the fire on.

Last year we went to the beach to watch the sun. This year asthma boy is in bed early and we are not feeling so festive. Our friend in Auckland who was undergoing a bone marrow transplant died. I am struggling to come to grips with how much loss there is in the world. I feel blessed and lucky that I have Favourite Handyman and Fionn and Brighid. I guess we are lucky to have friends and the more friends and family we have, the more exposed to loss we are. That does make me feel more zen. But still sad for our friend's little daughter, four years old. Her Dad won't see her start school, or play soccer or do ballet or grumble over her first boyfriend.

Yes I am turning into my mother!! When I was at university, Mum would write letters to me which included details of who had had what operations and who had died at church. Not in the middle of Mass, you understand. Just in between. Now I blog the tips of my grief. And torture a wider audience.

Onto planting. Favourite Handyman and I filled up the new raised bed and I have planted 12 Rua potatoes in it. Around the edge and in the middle I also sowed calendula seeds. This garden is part of yellow garden area which I started planning almost a year ago. There are wild orange nasturtiums there already so my dwarf mixed colours (orange, yellow, lemon are what I've seen so far in other plantings) will fit in nicely.

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.

Piccy time

Out the front. The beginnings of my yellow garden.
The herb and flowers strip near the kitchen. Chives, pansies, aloe vera, parsley and freesias.

You wanna be our neighbours? I abandoned the potatoes in tyres project and piled all these up to take to a friend's. Only they haven't quite got there yet. There is a lot growing around the chaos though - bay trees, a lemon, garlic, strawberries, miner's lettuce, spinach, calendula, onions, borage, silverbeet and chamomile.
Mint good, silverbeet good, wandering dew not so good. Getting there though. This area was overgrown invasive trees two years ago. At the top of the photo you can see the wandering dew peeking over from the neighbours. That source of roots and seeds isn't going to disappear any time soon. Lovely neighbours though.

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.

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...

My garden today

photos!!

The punga raised bed. The unknown brassica blew over in the big winds last week. The blank areas all have garlic underneath. The kitchen path garden. This was all stones when we arrived. Since then we've eaten broccoli, swiss chard and garlic from it. Currently it has lettuces, pansies, feverfew, chives, parsley and freesias. A bit scrappy looking at the moment, but it is winter and hopefully by next year I'll have more perennial herbs in here.
Work still to be done. This is another view of what will be my yellow garden. That is the garage in the background. There was all trees and no sunlight here last winter. The fence needs to come down, the green foliage at the front is of a rampant tree and it needs to be kept in check. Just behind the fence I have planted spring bulbs and you can just make out the pea straw over horse manure which I layed down a couple of months ago. Pumpkins there this summer I hope. The stack of wood against the garage will all go on building projects round the garden in time. There is still a lot to do here and I've no intention of spending big bucks getting a quick fix. I don't plan on any lawn outside the garage in time, so building good paths for access to the garden as I create it is important.

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.

garden

In the picture at the top of my blog, you can see a pile of logs beside the wheelbarrow. That pile has now been used all over the garden as borders for raised beds. Finished using all but the tiny scrappy logs today. Then I dumped eight bags of horse poo on top of my front of the garage garden which I started a few months ago. So now it is layers of newspaper, river sand, chicken and straw mixture, grass clippings and horse poo. It needs some more carbon, which will arrive in the form of peastraw on Wednesday and perhaps some bark if I can find some round the property (I am sure there is a box of it somewhere unless I've already used it up). But now it has the logs around it, it is looking much more proper garden plot-like. This is part of the area I've proposed as my yellow garden, because in summer, the sun casts it's late-in-the-day rays across this area and everything glows a little golden.

Actual vegetable plants won't go in this garden patch until October or November. I had been thinking zucchinis for this spot, but they seem to cope with less rich soil than this will be, so I've also thought of trying the classic corn-squash-beans combination which I've read of in several books and articles. This spot may be a bit windy for corn unless I set up some shelter cloth. I probably should set up some shelter cloth no matter what goes there.

Flax is impossible to cut with loppers. What do I need to use? What did Maori use pre-European tools? Or perhaps they just pulled it from the base. Didn't try that.

I did plant the shallots as per yesterday's goals. But no progress on the indoor herbs and veg.

driveway weeds

The photo above is about six weeks old but nothing significant has changed for the purpose of today's post.To the right of the new garden patch, you can see a thin concrete verge and then lots of weeds growing up through the gravel driveway. Before we lived here, these weeds were controlled by 'Round Up', or glyco-phosphate. We don't do weed spraying and as the weeds haven't grown horribly high, we've not been much bothered.

But today we stopped from our trip to the letterbox (highlight of the chickenpoxed day for Fionn - at least it seems I don't have chickenpox and my flu has receded to a cold) and had another good look. The weeds and weed seeds from the gravel are going to jump into my new garden patch at ridiculous rates if I don't control them. So I started to rip them out - quite easy when they are growing in gravel. I have plenty more weeding to do but have an idea about longer term management.

Competition. The weeds need something else using up their space. My idea for cheap, easy, fragrant and usable is creeping herbs. Thyme would grow amongst the stones no problem, and I think oregano would as well. And I have seeds for both already. So if I can keep weeding over winter and then raise herbs in seedling pots, then in Summer we'll see how experiment 185 goes.

The compost obsession

I never believed Linda Woodrow (and a host of other gardening books) when I first read that it's all about compost.

That was then, before I got my head round gardening in the same place for more than one year. Now I am obsessed with compost. A wonderful friend from Auckland came to visit this afternoon and of course we were talking about gardening. She asked if I had a compost. Just one?!? It was a long answer, involving various manures, seaweed, comfrey, lawn clippings and leaf mould (I might have that last word wrong. There is, I think, a special word for composts made entirely of leaves).

The new garden bed I created this week and reported on here, cost me $18 to make. $16 worth of pea straw and $2 worth of horse manure. Which is pretty good value for the size I made. Not content with that, I've started a new garden bed quite close to it and have the goal of creating it without spending any money. Yesterday I laid out lots of newspapers, passed on to me by my cousin. Then I put some fine river sand on it, left over from when we filled the sandpit at Christmas. Today the children and I headed to Rapahoe, which looks like this:

It has also had some super high tides lately I suspect, which have brought up lots of kelp. It took very little walking to fill the equivalent of five supermarket plastic bags. Back home I tipped out one large horse feed bag's worth of mixed bark and chicken poo on top of the sand and then put half of the seaweed on top of that. The rest of the seaweed went on my main, oldest compost site.

Later in the day I drove to the local rugby grounds near our house qand filled up an enormous IKEA bag with semi-composted grass clippings. That went on top of the seaweed and I think I'm about half way to the height I want that bed to be. I still have one more bag of chicken poo mix which will go on top and then another, thicker layer of grass clippings. Being a slothful person inside, I have several months' worth of fluff from the tumble drier sitting in a container on top of the drier. That can go on the pile just before something heavy so it doesn't blow away.

I'm getting comfrey leaves ready for cutting and composting or digging straight in the garden every week from one plant. The second is starting to grow better now. Not much sign of it getting invasive yet. I'd find it quite convenient if my comfrey grew madly and spread.

Productive poo

After last night's decision, this morning I took two barrow loads of beautiful compost out of the horse poo compost heap (would be about six months old) and layered it thickly in one corner of the yellow garden site. Not that it is a yellow garden at all at the moment, but I did decide early in February that yellow is it's destiny. It is a small patch, about 0.5 metre by one metre, in between the large tree and the flax to the right of the photo in yesterday's post. I then filled it up with flower bulbs lifted from previous years.

Not content with that, Brighid and I drove south for ten minutes and bought up every bag of horse poo we found for sale on the roadside. Just seven chock-filled supermarket bags today. Then when we got back I spread one bale of peastraw across the ground, fairly thickly, to make a wide path shape towards the Spring bulbs patch. The I tipped four bags of horse poo on top and spread it across the straw. After that, I layered the second bale of peastraw over the top. That should rot down nicely over winter.

I tipped the rest of the horse poo into my horse poo compost site and then added the remains of another bale of peastraw on top. Still hankering to go beachcombing for kelp further north (the beach very close to us doesn't yield much seaweed). You can never have too much food for the garden. I've also noticed that whoever mows the local rugby fields dumps the grass against the bank where it is rotting away nicely. I need to take the car, the garden fork and a few large sacks down there also.

pumpkins and poo

For some unknown reason. No, it is known, a reason of me being irrational about some things. I was thinking that the potential new garden area in front of/beside the garage, pictured above, would need to be turned into garden PROPERLY. You know, lots of digging, or a no dig raised bed lined with a mattress thickness worth of newspaper. The idea of buying in trailers of soil doesn't count, cos we don't spend that kind of money.

And then I was reading on the lifestyle block site about a person who grew their pumpkins on the area where they dumped their horse poo. Really, I don't have to wait. I have a compost pile of horse poo and something else I can't remember, rotten hay from Raelene I think. It can go straight on the front-of-garage site which is currently not even producing much in the way of weeds so in need of poo in a big way. I'll do a few more runs south and hopefully strike lots and lots of horse poo for sale on the side of the road. And just dump it down to rot. What is there to lose? This is the spot which is going to be my yellow garden one day.

projects #2

There are five thousand projects of course, but here is the second post in as many days on forthcoming projects. This is what the newly available garden project looks like now. The neighbour on the other side of the garage was inspired by our chopping and took a big hunk of tree overhanging his garden out which has opened up even more light and space. I'll be opting for a raised bed approach as the large tree will be drinking up most of the nutrients in the existing soil.
And in photo two, you can see the climbing garden project for next summer. Our pungas are in the foreground. Beyond them the dead weeds still scatter the lawn but the part to notice if the mulch down the side by the fence. Before the conversion of our unwanted trees into mulch, the lawn fell away near the fence, making planting and mowing impossible and instead providing a great habitat for slug breeding and weed seeding. Now the mulch is in, over a layer of newspaper. We also have chicken wire and larger wire mesh to use along this fence to create a paradise of beans, sweet peas and peas and other flowers/climbing foods next summer. In winter I will do some more research and work out if we can organise the plant choices so there is something blooming or growing on the fence as much of the year as possible.

new projects

This is the front of our property and of the garage above. This picture is after the trees were felled but before they had all been mulched for the garden or sawn up for firewood. This area was all in darkness because of a thick stand of unpleasant looking, invasive trees. I had thought it was ungardenable but actually now the sun is on it, there is mega potential. This area gets the late afternoon sun, that lovely golden hue as the sun stretches out it's last rays for the day. The crop of yellow weeds in front of the flax looks quite nice and has inspired me to think of a yellow garden. Pumpkins, zucchinis (for their food and their yellow flowers), sunflowers, daffodils and other cuties yet to be decided, I think. I'll start by planting bulbs in Autumn around the edges.
The photo above is another of the plot which was all lawn merely months ago. The woodchip mulch has helped the plants cope with the sun and the liquid fertiliser has helped with growth. I'm always thinking this area isn't lush with growth the way it *should* be. Forgettting that I pick from this garden for lunch and dinner every day and the plants keep producing. In the bare-looking patches are small lettuces and chard. I put in three beer traps after losing sevferal lettuces seedlings to the slugs in this garden. The beer traps proved successful and hopefully the replacement seedlings I put in today will thrive. For the beer traps, I used baby food jars, one third filled with beer and buried them in the garden so the top of the jar is level with the top of the soil/mulch.
The photo above is of my invasive patch. The area under pea straw has bokashi buried in it and will be planted in Spring. The plastic bag to the left is full of seeded docks which I don't want in the compost. A bit closer to the centre from the bag is the mint area. The invasive nasturtiums and convulvulus have kept the roots of the mint cool and damp. This area was also full of ugly invasive trees when we moved in and I'm yet to decide exactly what I will do with it. Some afternoon sun. Quite a cold spot in winter in the morning.
Three of my borlotti beans. Good to see they will grow, though a very small harvest this year. I think they are growing in quite poor soil. I'll get some poo down over winter.