A Year In My Garden - Spring

It's been a while since I've written about the garden..I have actually been working hard. With pickaxe and shovel I'm digging into the side of the hill that is my plot of land and extending the vegetable garden. I'm putting in new raised borders. About 5 of them in toal adding up to about 50 square feet.  Doesn't sound much when you say it like that ..But it's taking A large effort to carve my way though either dense wet clay or near rock shale like clay depending what part I'm working on......This then will take me up to some 230 square feet of raised borders dedicated to growing food ..., I must look up what is the minimum area for say 2 people to supply their vegetable needs .....We have way more ...But then we can afford the luxury of growing way more tomatoes And I've aready planted 20 or so potatoes into a border ...That plus the 'dustbin' potatoes and purple Maori potatoes and Yams And we'll not need to buy any of them until the next winter....If they grow of course ....    











Do you all 'chit' or sprout your potatoes before planting them?? I do it ....Because my dad dit it and the "elders say you must. But I don;t see the point in it ...After all, where we grew potatoes last year and missed some they have sprouted abd are already a foot high !!! no Chitting needed for them!!  Even deep down in the depths of the compost bin they still manage to strike and sprout healthfully forth skywards....



















Anyway, not only am I building borders but I've sorted out the pathways between them. This past year we put up with roughly hewn pathays that had bumps and holes in them and soil and weeds and grass galore....So I've cut them out properly, dug in and built steps and retaining walls and started to lay weed matting and bark on top.....It will look a lot better :O).. Even Sis-in-law K on her recent visit was drawn into helping and laying weed matting for us :O)  We'll send down some chutney later on in thanks..:O) Whether she likes chutney or not !!! :O) 



















 But overall the veggie garden will always look "Wonky" as it slopes in far too many ways and directions....But I can handle Wonky :O) we'll get a pile of junk ornaments and decorate the place as well to add some je ne sais pas. I'm also planting up pots with various herbs ....I'm shoced at the prices they charge in the shops for a small sprig of say sage or mint !!!!!!   They Grows Like Weeds !!!! I cannot kill the stuff off in the veggie plot ....mint of 2-3 varieties has been growing up there since before I moved in.....It just grows ..Loves being mis-treated ...The ideal plant really I guess....

 

























I've plans to do more over the next 12 months around the outskirts and look at utilising the clay bank in someway. Also want to clear fallen clay/soil from the base of the band which I think will be enough space for gooseberry and black/red current bushes....On the other side are 'Scrub" bushes and ferns. I will cut them down and remove them. Room then for dwarf fruit trees ...probably in 1/2 wine barrels ....Apples, plum, damson and the like ....



I've also planted Fejoa bushes in barrels in the front yard ...Oh and a pomegranite bush, dwarf nectarine, and a fruiting cherry tree in a corner beside the front gate. Where Cola's ashes are but we wont dwell on that ....She would be happy though as we burried her favourite "Bad" food , sheep pellets with her and promised all deads cicadas will be placed there for her ...She loved them...Ate them alive or dead with a bottomless hunger.......



   









  

And now it's seed sowing time. Some direct into the borders others in cardboard or peat pots or seed trays and the  warm yellow room of the house will become a nursery for a few weeks ..............Spring has sprung and it won't wait for me ....dammit......Work work work work work..........What would I have have done if I had a paid job as well !!!!



And thats just the vegie garden!!!!!



I've also cleaned up the stone paths in the front as well as the front yard and dug the round border and planted some standard roses that were not happy in other places around the garden, and fed all the roses with rotted manures and started weeding the borders and cleaned up the paths at the back and planted 1/2 a dozen gooseberry and black current  bushes in tubs and  planted other tubs and not to mention the housework and the cooking and when will it all be done !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:O)  busy busy busy ...  

End of one gardening Year - Start of the Next

For the Maori of New Zealand the Shortest day (same day as the longest day in the northern hemisphere) heralds the start of the new year ... For the gardener this is especially true . From that day on as the days start to legnthen, Camelas start to flower and buds of trees start to fatten and the sap starts rising. It's a short dormancy in New Zeland for plants.



It's been a strange winter in that despite the unusually cold weather it's been patchy and in between we've had some reasonably warm days ... Plants are confused with some Rhodos and camelias flowering earlier than usual .. We have at least one native Kowhai tree in flower in the area ..These normally flower in September. We have Daffodils on the roundabout that begins our township already starting to flower... Put this into perspective - It would be like daffodils in January in England ........







Being out of action with my back problems, I didn't get to plant any vegetables in the autumn for winter cropping .. .We do have a few cabbages and pak choi and celery and chard to pick at. It's all great for stir fries or even just adding to stews and casseroles ....







We've planted a heap of garlic this year after last years wonderful heritage crop. So different to the shop bought garlic ..Very pungent.. wonderful taste ... We also planted a small crop of Elephant garlic this time ...Just to try it ... The garlic did try and make a break for freedom pushing itself up and back out of the ground ...Soil a little light ?? Planted too shallow ?? One heck of a good root system produced already - We tucked them back into the soil a little deeper this time with a good pat of the soil on top...







Strawberries were not only a great success last season fruit wise they shot a load of runners out that snaked their way across the raised beds. We've made use of a few of them  to extend the population ...Now having 8 squares (2 rows) at the end of each of the 3 main beds ... Already trying to flower I must get some decent compost for them with potash to get them fruiting .....







I was caught out at the weekend ...We saw some Broad Bean Seelings in punnets at the local garden centre ... Bought a few punnets as we planted nothing in the autumn ... Only to find out in reading that they do not grow well this way ..Not liking transplanting .... What can I say - I'd always planted seeds previously. I just never thought it would be an issue with seedlings ... Never trust a garden Centre ........ However they are in and we shall see ....But will be planting seeds as well very soon for my Christmas lunch harvest...







Another semi failure  story ...I'm trying to build a polytunnel over one of the raised beds (maybe two) .. We bought the tubing at what turned out to be about 3 times the cost we could have gotten it for AND what we bought was too flimsy for want of a better word ... But we will see what we can do with it and some wood or cane supports .... 







In one border wit hthe polytunnel I want to plant some potatoes ... The jury is out on this, As to whether the winter is mild enough to allow the spuds to grow .. One NZ gardening magazine  editor tried to gow them a couple of months back only to have the frost turn them black ... Maybe in a poly tunnel we can do it ....







I Quite like the idea of this 

Kitchen garden Design

Planting a raised border for a specific requirement...Not sure how practical that is ...Especially with the square foot gardening as you do tend to plant what you can and what wasn't there previously for rotation cropping...... 







More Bad news at the Dinzie household...Pepsi Dog (picture in last post) has ruptured both knees of her back legs ..Old age sucks eh .. She's on painkillers now but they want to operate ...$5,000 for the ops alone, never mind the pre/post op charges  ... She's almost 12 years old and life expectancy of up to 14 ......  



Well that is number 4 of the bad things that can happen to the dinzie household in 2009 .. And it's only July .....  

Composting and Compost Bins ..And Sparrows !

I've been building another compost bin ... Bin #1 was filled up to the top and left a while to compost down ...Bin #2 now built and put in place, is for turning bin # 1 into ... This ensures and even composting as the top of Bin#1 is now at the bottom of bin#2 ... It also aerates the compost pile ensuring a good bacterial attack :O)



We built both compost bins using a interlocking thingy-majig... You buy them as per the picture and nail them to the ends of the wood ... Very versatile as you can then build different sizies and shapes for all sorts of uses....And you can also deconstruct the bins as you empty them rather than bending into the bin to get spadefulls at the bottom.....







The bins are a little over a metre cubed in size which seems a good size to have in a small garden .... Certainly by we got to move the bin#1 contents it had dropped about a quarter down into the bin and was already looking like good compost should ...





I'm contemplating building a compost bin#3 as a staging bin for the final result compost.. Come September onwards, through spring and summer, the compost making rate can and will be pretty fast. .





excuse the mess in the background...One of my projects while unemployed



I'm adding much more than the usual food scraps. While perfect composting material, it would take a 'yaks age' to fill a bin up ..So we're buying bags of pea straw, and untreated sawdust and plenty of manure from the local 'lifestylers' plots..And, for this year only as I'm only doing the paths, I'm raking up mainly NZ native beech leaves from the piece of bush we own.. Only from the paths as I have no wish to interfere with the forest structure beyond that...I've not done this for about 5 years, or never further into the forest so quite a bit there to use. I have to say that with the smallness of the leaves (about a 10cent piece in size) they are the perfect composting leaf mould.....



So a rich compost to add to the veggie plots and around the garden really ... I'll also get a kit to test for acidity and add lime if necessary as compost tends to be very acid.



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We've not seen many sparrows around the house in recent years ..About 10 years ago they suffered a viral attack that was named by the press as 'bird aids' ..Anyway this year they are back in force .. It's been a good couple of years for them ...Good for all birds in the area actually as they did a poison drop on the forests and killed off the possums ...



We now have an abundence of native and introduced birdlife around the garden. A few I've never seen before and had to go to the reference books for identification .... I know many people are against the poison they use (1080) but the results really are dramatic and beneficial in the long run .....







McD started to feed the sparrows much to Pepsi Dogs' annoyance ... Bread drops are being taken away by her and dug into the garden borders ... A good composting dog is Pepsi :O) But not so good if you come across a rotting lump of it when gardening ....







Talking of which, McD and I were rescuing a tray of iceland poppy seedlings that had been knocked over in the yard (amongst the other trays and rubbish ).. Me in bare hands rummaging through the soil to get the partially burried pants .... I grabbed a pile of what I thought was soil !!! It was a dead and bloated RAT !!!!!



"EEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKK" I commented in a very low and manly voice ...



Not ....



Still after about 8hrs of hand washing in dettol and other cleansing substances I think I'm safe to use the old left hand again ....



errrr - maybe just another wash to get the very thought of it away again .....





:O)_

A year in My garden #11

Well finally we have Spring !!!! This weekend we had temperatures hitting 24C in my garden. Just confirmed this (new thermometer just bought) at our local Stokes valley weather station who has the detail on the web.. The chap who does it is just a little way up the road from us so pretty close for weather guaging :O)

We sat out on the house desk for the first time ..>So nice ..>So relaxing.....

Cola

I won't go into detail here as McD has written a nice little entry on her with some lovely pictures etc ... The Bottom line is though that she was back into the vets last week for a few days but there is nothing more they can do for her .. .She is now at home enjoying the warm weather and McDs love care and attention ... One day at a time we wait for the inevitable ...Bu t at the moment she is happy enough..

If you have time - visit McDinzies Blog on Cola

I've had a birthday !!! :o\ 49 now !! :o\ ..I've warned McD that this will be a difficult year for her and me... I've started to create a bucket List for the last year of my 40s ... just to try and make it a little different to the rest of the decade .....Of course it all starts next saturday when someone (Ahem - Me!!!!) has to win the $30m lottery The highest it can get to in NZ....

Meanwhile We actually got stuck into the gardening and building more raised borders on Saturday...Then went out for a meal at a malasian restaurant called Monsoon Poon with B my son. Unfortunately B had just that morning been dumped by his girlfriend of some time ...All went well but I get very upset and angry as B won't get himself sorted in life... He will be 29 soon but still looks and acts like a uni student.....

Oh well ...He's probably happier than I was having worked for 11years or more by that age ....

Today we were back into the gardening again ... But our bodies are showing signs of too long a period of inactivity and are tired and achy especially now .....

McD bought me a little plastic green house for my birthday !! I now can house my seeds and seedlings properly instead of on top of the dining table covered in plastic ...

All the plants seem to be growing well at the veggie plot. Garlic looking more and more tempting to have young wrapped within a nice butterflied leg of lamb ... McDs Mum will most probably visit in a couple of weeks as we have labour day public holiday .... You can guess the rest :O)

The Pole beans I planted outside came up but are not looking too healthy in one of the beds ...Suspect the extended cold weather did them no good ... If they don't look too good in a week or so I will replant them as I have time on my side still ...

Meanwhile we are trying to complete another 4-5 raised beds of varying sizes ASAP.. The plot of land we are using is causing problem after problem and it was already terraced (badly) .. so the latter few beds may not be as big as I had hoped .... But at the end of the day we will have enough to keep us fed hopefully in fresh vegetables just about all year ... Just wish it would hurry up :O)

There is also so much else to do - tidy up the veggie patch. Dig out the dreaded gorse root before it grows again. Laydown weed mat and bark around the beds, sort out the pathway proerly up to the vegie patch before one of us kills ourselves (it's muddy and steep and needs a couple of extra steps putting in) ..

This is McD's seeting arrangement util we can get a proer piece of decking put in .... Works a treat Though a little snug with the two of us .... great spot to look out at over the valley though and down the other valley to wellington and it's harbour..

And then there;s the rest of the garden .......

This was the pot sposed to me M-in-Ls prezzie ... now waiting to be taken onto the decking of the house

Potatoes in Dustbins and buckets :O)

The purple Moari potatoes coming up nicely ...Though doubt they will be ready by Xmas.

Waiting for the dahlias to grow...

Azalias weeds and all

allotment, flowers, gardening, kitchen garden, New Zealand, Photography, pictures, potager garden, raised beds, spring, square foot, tomato, vegetable garden

A year in My Garden 10 - AAAAHHHHHH

"It's just all so damned Frustrating"

The weather's done it worst again for us ... Rain all weekend and cold with it. I just can't get the break to complete these raised borders ... Just so frustrating ...

 

Mind you the seeds we've planted in the raised borders we have are coming up albeit slowly... Great excitement at the beginning of the week as our first runner bean pushed its way out of the dirt ... A very slow germination period due to the cold spring so far ... I did start to think they may just rot in the ground instead ..

Not that there hasn't been good days . Just few and far between and not on weekends .... We've sown a range of tomatoes and pumpkins and cucumbers etc which are in bio-degradable pots or in seed trays all lined up on a plastic covered table top in the yellow room ... Tomatoes are coming up out of the dirt now. another few days and they will need transplanting..I've grown too many of each variety, not having too much faith in other veggie growers seed saving techniques(heirloom seeds bought over Trade Me an equivalent and local type of Ebay).. But so far they are growing in great abundance.. I will 1/4 the seed number next time ... I've a large number of tomato varieties as well ..All heirloom. We will try them out this year and narrow the numbers to the ones we prefer for subsequent years ...

Today we went out in between the rain showers ..Destination - food ..But as soon as we got downstairs and I went to get into the car we found the car door left open !!!  It was me !! I'm starting to lose the plot ...Getting more and more forgetful ... Struggling to remember bnames of things and plants etc ... McD now in understandable impatience tries to complete my sentences which then just makes things worse as I lose the thread completely ....

It's the start of the end I tell you ..... 

 

Then McD wanted to stop off at the local hardware store on the way back to get some oil as we've a toilet door that SQUEAKS in the night ... anyway aprt from not finding anything like that (!) we got to the couter with two black current bushes and some metal tags to nails polyurothane (sp) to the wooden frames (we'd bought some treated lumber by mistake (stupidity) and want to keep wood from soil ..(As you would) .. Anyway the counter woman then announced to McD that they had no code on them and she would have to go back (to the far corner) of the harware hanger to get it .>@#$

 

"they are called xxxxx" says McD ..."thats no good to me" says to counter woman ... Forget it then says McD... Well then we walk out and we're grumbling about the service (not our fault it wasn't labeled nor was there anything to tell us to write down the code (or anything to write the code down with) ... .So McD rings the place up when driving home and complains ...The Customer services woman argues back to McD trying to justify the service we got ..."Can you or can you not search on the name on your database?"   "yes we can" Could you have not done that if required or had someone go and find it on our behalf?"  "yes that would be the practice" "So you are arguing about what?" 

 

Both McD and I work in a customer services environment ..We expect the same level of service when we are out in the wilds ... For this woman to argue that the level of service we got should be considered the "norm" is unbelievable.. We have a choice and will chose not to go there next time ........... 

We did however get some of the garden flowers before the wether beat them to nothing.... Not the peony flower... One of only two flowers from the Tree peony we have in a wine barrel ... The first lasted a day outside ..This one perhaps 2 days inside... And thats it for 12 soddin months ....and has been for the past 4 or 5 years !!!! .. SO - out goes peony (it can have a spot in the garden ...And in goes my fig tree ...I love fresh figs ......  

 

And so on it goes .... and now it's sunday night and we've been stuck in the house for 2 days and none of the outside work has been done ....... 

Except McD woke up this morning and cleaned up my computer room ....I don't have to fight to get to the PC any more AND I have my armchair back !!!

 

Thanks McD :O)