Wish I could say they are from my garden - However - Taken at the Lady Norwood Rose Gardens Wellington New Zealand ">
Finally - An out of the blue contact by a distant cousin who shares Alexander as her Great Grandfather and I was very kindly sent a copy of his picture
Alexander D - Married Maria C. Together for 60 years before Maria passed away
Inscription on gravestone of MAria
In loving memory of Maria The dearly beloved wife of Alexander Dingle
Who peacefully entered into rest December 27th 1917
"With Christ which is far better, goodnight beloved not farewell
They had 15 Children - my grandfather was number 12 ..
Alexanders first job was as a servant in a large famhouse. He soon became a gamekeeper as was his father (Also Alex) and as would my grandfather and a number of his sons and for a time my father.
He died in 1931 and the grand old age of 87.... They had lived in an old fashioned jacobean 5 roomed cottage beside a church in the middle of nowhere ... I've been there to see it many years ago with my father ...
Both are buried at the church beside the pathway ...along with many others of the family ...
Alexander D - 1843-1931 ... What changes you must have seen
One of the important things with the Square Foot Gardening technique is the spacings of plants ... These are a lot closer than you would normally do in the traditional line by line garden... So for example you can grow 16 radishes in one square foot or 16 onions or 4 broad beans etc .... Tomatoes, it is listed as 1 per square foot ... Well thats what I thought it said ... It's actually 1 per square foot in a line of 4 ...Then you can grow the up a trellis and they have plenty of space front and back .. just not so good a spacing side to side .....
But I read 1 per square foot. And I planted a raised bed with 25 tomato plants .... It wasn't long before I realised this wan't such a good idea..Crowding of the leaves soon happened along with leaves yellowing badly from fungal growth ( i think) being wet and humid here in summer ....
I also then went on to create two other raised beds on the front yard to grow even more plants ...I'm trialing a number of heirloom plants ..... And of course ther were all planted at 1 plant per square foot .....
They had to be staked as well of course and a cane stuck into a little over 6 inches of friable soil over tarmac was not going to hold a 6 foot plus plant and 6 or so trusses of fruit .....
There are cages you can buy for tomato plants and that was an option ...but for 50 something plants !!...
And so this is what I've come up with ... A cage covering the whole tomato plant area... The canes are pushed in at an angle both ways so that as the plants grow up them they grow further and further apart from each other .....
Not a pretty look ...But it does seem to be doing the trick. It's allowing more space and its staying upright in the quite heavy wind we've had the past few days ...
I had to do something with the base of the plants and the leaf die off. I needed to get an air flow through them (being windy wellington and on the side of a hill should be too hard a task) and so simply pruned the leaves away for about the first foot of the plants... I've seen commercial growers go further and take almost all the leaves off of tomato plants as it encourages more flowering ... But leaves produce sugars from the sun and photosynthesis and thats what I want in my tomato fruit...the taste of the sun.. ....Anyway they don't seem to be shy in flowering at the moment so higher leaves stayed on...
I should also have cut the flowers from the lowest part of the stems to stop the fruit forming and lying on the soil ...But I didn't ...And now the fruit is starting to ripen I've had to prop them up off the ground ..not hard to do ..just time consuming and a pain in the butt...
This is one of two raised borders directly onto tarmac in the front yard ..... (The neighbours must thing we are pretty odd people ....) 8 inch wide planks of macrocarpa ....2 inches of straw on the bottom to retain moisture ...6 inches of compost soil ...The tomatoes are growing well and fruit set is growing well too... but the heat is a drawback and does suck the moisture right out of the soil .... Oh and I've two egg plants in the corners loving the heat .....
Oh and the other thing I did back in november was to buy a dozen plants from a church fundraiser (money maker and russian red).. Which is fine except that the 6 russian red are bush tomatoes not vine.. And not knowing I cut off all the lateral shoots (I thought there was a lot) ...Not so good a practice for bush Toms (but they would have rotted in the crowded bed anyways if I hadn't) ...so I will get a reduced harvest from them this time (not that we'll notice if all the others set fruit) ... I've let some of the side shoot grow higher up though where they have more space anyway albeit a top heavy plant they will be ....
Meanwhile the heirloom plants don't seem to set the fruit too well compared to the others ...they are also more likely to have fused flowers (which is where the giant tomatoes in competitions come from) .. We also have some leaf curl in those plants .. .doesn't seem to bad and maybe more climatic or envirmental rather than virus/bacterial .. but I will research that tomorrow and see if anything can be done .....
Open to suggestions of course from those knowledgeable ones :O) The plants are watered daily ...
Top tomato skin is shiny and smooth ... Bottom variety are almost hairy and dulled by the fuzz on them ....
And then there is the monarch catapillar .... We especially bought a defoliated swan plant just for getting a catapillar for the garden ... works out about $4NZ a catapillar !! :O) Since then we have two very happy monarch butterflies continously flying around the flower beds ...They love the dahlias etc ... more food than they could have ever wished for and a small forest of swan plants for their own catapillars ....
Err - the left side is the head side ... You don't want to know what I saw coming out of the right side ......:O) But that must have been a lotta swan plant leaves eaten !! :O)
I'm not well ... Last weekend was the Wellington Anniversary weekend and monday a public holiday and i was ill right through it .....
Felt a lot worse again yesterday ...a Sore throat, aches, stingy eyes, tired ..... Better today .. Today I just have a Sore throat, aches, stingy eyes, and I'm tired
It was raining at the weekend anyway ....So thats alright then .... I'd not been outside of the house. McD did ..She did a small shopping run and then paid a little visit to the vegie garden for a cabbage ....
McD slices it up and stir fries it with a little butter and a lot of ground pepper..... Then she adds roast chicken, roast potatoes and Kumera, Cauliflower from the garden and lashings of gravy and Bobs your uncle (that you never like to talk about ), you have a meal that rivals any meal in the swanky Wellington city restaurants and at a fraction of the price ....
Won't reduce the waist line much though ......
I could eat it again now ... except it's 11:30pm and almost time for bed (as Zebadee once said) ....
But this weekend is fine and sunny...and the waikanae gardens are open for viewing....And in the week McD put her back out ...So she's walking around like there's an ironing board up the back of her blouse....And neither of us have slept for 3 or more nights now ....
Anyway ......
The vegie garden has kept us stocked of food for weeks .. If the tomatoes were ripe and the bell peppers had actually grown more than a millimeter or two this past few weeks we would be amost self sustaining as far as vegetables go ... (Dunno know why ...They didn't move at all in the raised beds ... I've some in pots around the place that are the size you would expect and are in flower ...The raised bed ones are pale and still look like seedling ... Time to throw them out me thinks ....)
Well that and the need for more room to grow more root crops such as the potatoes, kumera etc ... and perhaps carrots we could leave to grow to full size... But boy are they tasty carrots picked at 'gourmet' 'finger' size ... The Paris MArket are ideal for the raised beds as they grow round rather than long. Nutri Reds are my favourite but the white Belgian carrot, Purple Dragon and the karoda orange ones are sweet and tasty as .... Well tasty as carrots of course...
Pumpkins .. I built a box against the side of the bank in the sunniest position and filled it with compost and horse manure and straw... and when it settled I planted two Pumpkin plants - oh and without thinking also planted a scallopini ...or maybe a butternut pumpkin .( So much for me labelling everything.. Dumb eh, kind of, as you don;'t want that pollinating your oversized pumpkin ... So until I have the required numer of set fruit on the main pumpkins the male flowers of the unknown pumkin thingy are being sacrificed ...
***** The update on this is that I've just found a very healthy small cucumber on the supoposedly scallopini plant .... We are very dumb gardeners ...Cant even label plants properly ...
Anyway
The idea was to grow the largest pumpkin I can, just for the hellovit... Pumpkin seeds bought from our trademe (kiwi E-bay equivalent) site ..Called "first prize" and came with claims of fruit up to and over 140 kg .. We'll see..Not that that comes anywhere near the 1,000 LB plus world record sizes .....
Anyway
The fruit I do have set is bright yellow rather than the orange I'm used to. I guess it changes as it ages that or I've been done ....McD is still asking the question "how do you get a 100kg+ pumkin down the hill to weigh it ??" Thats a problem to worry about in april/may says me :O) We can always push them off the edge I guess and roll them down ....
And weigh the pieces :O)
But at this point the biggest is at basket ball size and will have to be removed because of its location far too close to the centre of the plant... The vines have taken off. One, as wanted, went up the side bank and is now making its way along the fence line ... if I can just get a fruit to set there that will be great ....
The other vine is heading down the hill, snaking it's way through grass and regenerating gorse to the house ...Which would sort out the transportation issue in april/may .. except it has decided to set fruit half way down hanging from the side of the hill ...Will have to bring the vine back up I think to a flat bit ....
I planted and tended for a number of climbing bean varieties.. ANd none of them have done well ... Don;t know what it is ..I even had one or two die back at around 5 feet high on the canes ... Some are finally looking more like a happy climbing bean plant, but the harvest will be small from them this season.
Courgettes/Zuccinis ... Well what ever it was that McD bought they are growing large, weighty, marrows a plenty ... By the time the female flower opens the friut is the size of a average courgette...by its flowered and you look again its now looking like a small marrow ...blink again and you have dark green, fat torpedos hanging over the raised bed....
McD and I made some marrow chutney as we have a glut of marrows .... First chop about 3 1/2 pounds of marrow the recipe says .... "Shall I go up and see if we have any smaller ones up there? " I ask .......
Anyway
The chutney turned out ok... A little too sweet for my liking ...One recipe was to have dates added to the ingredients ...Well thats just jam at that point people !! so we missed the dates out .... Although the end result, with the sugar caramelising as it cooked, does have a slight "date" after-taste to it ....
The next recipe is with tomatoes which I think is a good idea .....
TAlking of which I must write about my tomato rearing escapades next time ......
Meanwhile, we now have a few squares empty as we harvested the last of the broad (fava) beans and pulled out the plants ...along with harvesting garlic (Type unknown. Again from trade me. Found growing at the top of the south island and now propogated for sale. It's a wonderful garlic .. .not too heavy and overpowering in flavour just right and great for cooking with ). We;ve also havested the egyptian onions and are ripping into the various coloured beetroot...... .
So tomorrow is plant up the vegie garden day ... Some for eating in a few weeks and some for the longer term autumn/winter harvesting .....
Spose I should hit the hay then and get better .......As you can see in the pictures there is a major tidyup needed as well. The grass is growing high and I want to get the paths done with weed mat and bark ....
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