out of this world

Going Home

2011-11-25T23:42:00.000-08:00

Leaving a community is a bit like mopping the kitchen floor, where you walk out of the room backwards mopping up your footsteps as you go until no trace is left that you were there. The house will be repainted and a new family will move in. Life moves on.
One of the things I've enjoyed in the garden is growing great weeds: phacelia and calendula in the glass house below, borage not flowering yet and red poppies in the background.

Here's a closer look at the poppies growing on the path. I'll leave these traces of joy but around the house it's time to erase, to return everything back to woodchips and trees that can be easily managed with a lawnmower and poison spray.

One thing will last a little bit longer: fabulous soil that absorbs moisture instead of repelling the rain and for a few seasons, wild flowers will try and establish themselves. Oh yes and it will take a lot to remove the comfrey. The poppies below are a snag in my timetable because they are just about to flower. These are great big blue ones that a favourite neighbour gave me seed for and this is the first year they are growing in quantity. I will pull them out at the last minute.

I pulled the comfrey out easily in Spring when it was crowding the trees and just threw it down as a nutritious mulch. If you like it, it is very easily dealt to and useful but if you don't like it, well ...
I've been reading a marvellous book Finding the Still Point by Gerald O'Mahony. One of the things he talks about is finding a motto that encapsulates what we want to be. I'm working on mine and I suspect it will have something to do with food. I even like my garden to be well fed.

Now the frost did damage some of the tomatoes and more spectacularly the potatoes; compare plants on left in the warmer mid section of the glasshouse to the end rows. This will reflect in yield and timing too I expect.

I had a little experiment going with the raspberries with pruning and sure enough these will fruit for Summer instead of Autumn this year. I later read that you can prune half your raspberries in Autumn and half in Summer (after fruiting) if you want to stagger the crop but here it is too cold too quickly for Autumn fruiting berries.

I am endeavouring to delegate some packing and have a couple of unsuspecting neices arriving the week before the moving truck does. I have singled out some of the more exciting jobs for them, collecting pine cones to fill the shed and hosing down the house and windows among others. The outside of houses, in this climate, need a good scrub down every few years or five, which was a housekeeping revelation to me that I intend them to act on. On with the rubber gloves then...

Unfamiliar Text

2011-11-05T21:52:00.000-07:00

NCEA exams are no longer on the horizon. They are coming into shore on a speed boat and boys are busy getting in final assignments, applications and folios.
They didn't do so well in unfamiliar texts for English so we are going to have some practice together over the next week. We all 'see' according to our level of expertise but there must be some broad rules that apply to most things. For the person who covered one of my compost heaps with red hot poker debris, blue gum leaves, rose prunings, couch and what looked like Pyracantha prunings-branches with spiny thorns my advice would be: 'look at the end result or the big picture' or to put it another way, 'What is the purpose?'
In a compost bin you are looking to make compost.

For the person who tipped buckets of food scraps on top of another tarpaulin covered heap I would suggest 'Look for a pattern'. If there is a heap amongst the five that has fresh food debris on top, go for the obvious and follow suit. Like with like.
Compost has been a very gratifying success this year. Thanks to the briars and thorns keeping me out I still had a beautiful stash for the glasshouse come tomato time. It has hitherto missed out and the compost has made a big difference to watering times, about every five days instead of everyother day at this time of year. The compost piles I made on site in the glasshouse in late winter were a cinch to spread out as a thick if rough, mulch. The wheelbarrow can take a holiday; on-site heaps are the way to go.

Now you can see below how the plants are thriving in this mulch. We had a frost or two recently that has clipped the wings of about half the potatoes in the next glasshouse but tomatoes don't seem to have suffered. I was gifted various trays of seedlings of which I've used about 80. By the time I got them the labels were gone and I know one tray were sweet 100's. So much for my strictly moneymaker and beefsteak. All will be revealed in time.

On the first read through the text we'll be underlining literary devices and any sort of patterning; garden equivalent would be my sorting out the plants from the weeds which is what I'm doing in Dunedin to rescue any treasures that have survived.

Louis had to create something out of a complete sheet of paper for his design application.
It's a viewing box where you look through the peephole, through a set of bars to see 'Freedom' in the distance. He suggested it was something some fellow students might like to use to get a preview of their future if they didn't make some lifestyle changes. We knew living in the country would give them a different perspective on life... I don't know what we thought it would be. I choose freedom.

Cow Cola

2011-10-04T01:36:00.000-07:00

Brace yourself for a slew of 'before and afters'. It's enormously satisfying to get such apparent results and immediate garden. I guess TV programmes are made out of this sort of thing. I'm working on the patch of long grass in the middleground. The tree to the left is an annoying self sown sycamore that is cleft between concrete. It has to go but how? not quite sure as I can't get a saw in to the base. I cut down the long grass and dug out the roots in clumps. It's the hard way to garden. Planted globe artichokes and mulched with clipped up grass.

There is a bank above this patch so it collects a reasonable run-off of water. Artichokes like water and shelter. One out of two is only half bad. These will be sacrificial as a shelter belt; they are going to protect the vegetable garden.

It took me quite awhile to separate out the grass clumps, chopping them up as I went until the bin was nicely full. There is a name for this, something like 'kinetic meditation' where you idly can do a job while your thoughts run free.
This project of renovation is reminding me of one of my favourite books 'The Secret Garden' where the garden starts to come alive in the Spring as she (Elizabeth?) clears away the overgrowth.
When our children were younger and we chose storybooks I always looked for a great text and Bill picked them by illustrations. A really good illustrator would plant secrets, extrapolate information from the text to enrich the story for the keen observer. I suddenly remembered Sleeping Beauty. From memory the whole kingdom sleeps for a hundred years and one of the versions we had showed flowers blooming and brambles and thorns peeling back as the Princess awoke. The gardener in me must have noticed those details and leapt with delight.  As Ken might say, I speak fluent garden and anything is fair game for the topic.



Now the bucket in front above is loosely manure tea, a big dollop of fresh cow manure that I kept refilling and stirring and decanting onto the heap as an activator. If it was fizzy and in bottles you would be banning it immediately, just the smell would strip the enamel of small children's teeth and coins would dissolve in it overnight: Cow Cola. I'm expecting some heat from this pile.

I'm finding lots of treasures still alive amongst the weeds in the herbaceous area. Other finds, see pegs below and what you can't see is two buckets of plastic rubbish, yoghurt pottles, foil, bread ties, an amazing amount of non biodegradable stuff.

Last photo I've put the blackcurrant, gooseberry bushes and rhubarb along this strip up against the bank where they'll get some shade but also extra moisture. The strawberries in front will get the extra sun. Sometimes the theory can be perfect but incomplete. Having some good reasons to make decisions is a good place to start. And this might be a good place to finish...

Two Timing

2011-09-28T02:13:00.000-07:00

You know what the problem is, it's 'The Other Garden'; here is a small corner and there is another 1000 square metres or so in similar state. In fact, it couldn't be better as I feel like I'm getting a clean slate to work on.
By far the most interesting part of our move to the city is moving the garden and the juggle I'm in of establishing the garden for the season here whilst looking ahead to there, and not wanting to be without vegetables.
The garden is derelict and fortunately the house is empty so I can go in every few weeks and make a start. This is part of the old glasshouse so it is a concrete bounded bed and as far as I know it is free of wireworm.

The obvious thing seemed to be potatoes and the long grass suggests reasonable fertility so away we go. I cut it down with shears and then layered newspaper, potatoes, dirt stuff and grass clippings on top. Loosely one of those sandwhich gardens; I didn't have long and also didn't fancy digging out great hunks of grass with it's capacity to carry away your topsoil.
For your interest, our neighbour is a bowler as the lawns in the distance attest. We've always got on so well that neither of us has wanted to put in a fence. The boundary line is defined as where the lawn (theirs) becomes field (ours). He sometimes crosses over and mows our grass as well. Who couldn't love a neighbour like that.

Dirt 'stuff' was the contents of the compost bin. Not exactly compost, dry and crumbly; maybe five years of grass clippings. Shearing back the grass was the hardest part so I did it in stages. In the end I ran out of seed potatoes and left the area where the bin was clear. I have broad beans in pots to put in that space. I expect them both to grow at about the same pace.

Loading up the trailer. Boxes of compost, cuttings and divisions and the young quince tree.

Now I didn't mean to load this photo but Noodle will never see it. He was indignant, 'No Mum, not in the floral pinny'. I was capturing the phone call while cooking. This is classic teenage boy cook style where cooking tea also means you can have a phone conversation, take off and check your emails or try and shoot a few hoops while the potatoes are boiling dry. The current goal is a meal on the table in a timely fashion. Frills will have to come later unless they are on the apron. Chortle.

Tomatoes have been hit by slugs. I've supplemented my seedlings with selfsown replacements so there will be a surprise or two after all! Possibly Black Krim (good) and Blackjack (not so useful for others here). This year I tried to do mainstream but it doesn't come naturally.

Looking ahead

2011-09-03T02:47:00.000-07:00

Spring has Sprung
The grass has ris
I wonder where the mower is

Definitely that time of year when gardeners' fingers begin to tingle with anticipation. The classic mistake in this climate is to whip out in some small weather hiatus and put stuff in that won't make the next cold snap, like seeds. Having the very large glasshouse at my disposal is a rare luxury and gives me a toasty conservatory environment to play in and jumpstart the planting. The down side is the lack of the very weather you are keeping out. No rain to water and freshen, no variety of plant life and animals: slugs, birds and whitefly overwintering on the parsely and I will miss it when we move.

Last week I planted the new potatoes for Christmas: Red King as always. I quickly found that it was quickest of all to spend a bit of time measuring and placing the potatoes carefully. Then it becomes a no-think factory-line-burial-programme without that 2cnd guessing over spacing. Because of the very wet season this year, and the subsequent late and frost damaged harvest, muddy to boot, the remaining potatoes haven't stored so well. It is an important job at this time of year to sort the seed potatoes from the pigs' dinners and perhaps a little later to dust the table potatoes with anti sprout powder for use through to December.
No one was more pleased than I was to see Jocylyn and David pull up in the house bus and report for potato duty in their overalls.
Job now done done with all the rotten potatoes out, so come time to cook tea you can put your hand in the sack with impunity. Thank you, thankyou, thankyou. They put aside 50 sacks of 20kg each of the small neatly formed seed potatoes. These won't jam in the planting tube as they rocket down into the ground and are for next years main crop.
Because there were less potatoes, that left a motley crew for me including what I call potato clowns: the ducks, the snowmen, the love hearts, the lumpy bumpy misshapen, knobbed and larger ones. It will be really interesting to see what this years new potato crop is like.
I've covered the beds with black plastic to warm up, usually this is just for overnight frost protection but this year it will warm the beds up sooner. Farmer David has a wonderful intuitive knowledge for growing things and there will be reasons for this decision that I have yet to uncover.

Now I cleaned up this particular pile of sticks and it is now a nicely tucked in compost heap as it should have been to begin with. Embarrassing really. What did I think was going to happen over the winter?... because it sure didn't. The sunflower stalks are now snapped in to foot lengths and sandwhiched with a weed selection and some cow muck; still waiting on a soak with the hose but it is too cold to have the water supply on at this spot just yet.

Here's the brag parsnip photo. Variey is Caversham from the Otepoti Seed Savers Network. Caversham now is typically a lower income area in Dunedin, but one with a rich history, rather nice siting for the sun in some places, close to everything and my impression is it still has a strong community.
There is a way to say it, 'Caversham' with the emphasis on the last syllable to make it sound a bit posher, if you are being silly. Very appropriate for this lovely workhorse vegetable to come from such a humble unpretentious background and to be a culinary star nonetheless. No hard core at all. They melt. The only reason I had to crop the photo was that the oven was so dirty in thebackground. I have overplanted on the lettuce front again. The seed went in before the big snow and I thought I had lost it. I had the punnets covered with frost cloth which I've now moved to cover the emerging mesclun. I'm sure it helped.

Planted the tomatoes, a conservative trio of money maker, beefsteak and grosse lisse. Hope to have something to show for it soon.

The north wind doth blow...

2011-08-15T18:51:00.000-07:00

And we shall have snow
And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?
He'll sit in a barn and keep himself warm
And hide his head under his wing, poor thing.

Poor old birds don't seem to know what to do. Finches and sparrows are out gleaning the long grass for seed. I planted seed myself last week, mesclun, broad beans and lettuce and brassicca types. The glasshouse is zero degrees at the minute and outside, according to the radio it is climbing towards the high of 3 today (1.8). I went down to pick some celery for soup and checked the seed beds while I was there. No evidence of germination yet...or of celery for that matter.

I shouldn't think the snow would normally come in to this degree, except that it isn't normal snow. It's dry and powdery. The wind blows it in through the gaps.
I had the pleasure of Heather's company for four days last week and of equal worth her help in the glasshouses. We weeded, cleaned, watered and mucked with cow manure for the tomatoes. Built 5 large heaps directly on the beds with all the debris: corn stalks, bean wires, vines - there's the word, a good variety of weeds. The heap that is still warm today had blood and bone throughout which seems to have upped the temperature. Interesting.

I marvelled a bit how people seemed to get caught out with the weather, given the warning and all, but quickly realised my own preparations were lacking. Hand tools on tray turned out to be inadequately protected (above) oops, and wish I had dug a few more carrots and snips and fetched a new potato bag. Car isn't going anywhere today.

Kids were going to build an igloo, that is an 'ig' with toilet facilities. Bewilderment. 'Oh, a joke,' they said. Small laugh. Snow was too dry to pack in the boxes so they tunnelled out caves in the drifts.
By the time the snow is over I will be ready for it. Swiss M had a Swiss saying taped to the inside of her cleaning cupboard: 'Don't try to sweep up the snow while it is still snowing'. What it meant was, kids have to be allowed to play first. Don't try and clean up too soon. Not something I have ever been accused of but I take the point to heart of enjoying it while it lasts.

Irrelevent Threads

2011-07-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

The observant eye will be able to tell that Louis is home by the mate cup (inscribed Buenos Aires) that has jostled for and won a place at the coffee station.
The special mate straw is sticking out, metal with filters in the bottom to keep out the tea leaves. It's a small thing but I do look back fondly on the paper straws that you sucked to death and threw on the fire instead of throw away plastic.

Not much happening in the garden: turned and watered a compost heap, gathered and spread pine needles around the hazelnuts, got gardening books out of the library.
That's a whole red cabbage in the colander, in shreds by the time I thought to take a photo. It was a miserable specimen but they stand well in the garden; peel off the manky outer leaves and it cooked up great with grated apple and some butter.
Cabbage is one of the standout home grown vegetables, if you needed to be persuaded. It is just so delicious fresh and so ordinary if it's not. I expect I have said that at one time about every vegetable I have ever grown.

Here's my raspberry experiment: the twigs in front of the fence. I pruned these at the wrong time of year to fit them in the car and that's when the trouble began. After that I noticed they were Autumn fruiting which doesn't suit. They don't ripen in our brief Autumn sunshine. I'm going to cut them to the ground in January and see whether the new shoots fruit early the following year (January) or if they grow slowly through to Autumn fruiting.

Wax eyes feeding on the fat below. This is a photo from about this time last year.
I've actually spent the holidays making puddings but didn't photograph any. The boys have each stepped up to their cooking nights (with degrees of assistance) so that leaves me to make pudding and explore my current favourite, the 1965 WDFF (Women's Division of Federated Farmers) Cookery Book. It is unfortunate that the names were not attributed to the recipes because some of these ladies were awesome. There's one voice stands out in particular. Here's her introduction to Peter Pan Pudding and don't you just want to try it:

When something just a little light and luxurious is required for a sweet, nothing could be more fitting than Peter Pan Pudding. It is as light as a cloud, not cloyingly sweet, but utterly delicous.

. That woman is a mind reader.

Perhaps I have said before that worms also like a little fat in their diet so it is okay to put some in the compost heap. On that note, off to put a little fat in our diet and document some winter puddings.

Mischief

2011-07-09T20:49:00.000-07:00

If I had to pick out a movie to define this stage of my life, the one that resonates in my mind is Babettes Feast. It's not the concept of spending my inheritance on a meal, although when you're doing a big shop it can seem like that sometimes, it's the image of Babette out there picking thyme and wild herbs to make her soups; wind is howling around her and she is wrapped up in many layers.
Fresh out of the garden is all very well; however, in winter I have to put my gumboots and jacket on and go on an expedition in the darkening cold to dig out parsnips carrots and leeks so I try and get a weeks worth of those at a time.

Bob's beans above turned out to be as beautiful as their pod. I left them too long on the vine and it was uncharacteristically damp so quite a few had a 'white bloom'. I didn't keep those for eating. That's not like me but I was thinking of the rye moulds in the middle ages that drove the peasants insane and the jam moulds that are probably bad for you. It was a fierce struggle against my genetic inheritance to err on the side of caution.
Home grown beans are different to bought. Possibly because they are so fresh, don't take much cooking, not as starchy, they almost melt: Beef and Bean Chilli. Beans gone.

Finally on the last leg of turning over the beds in glasshouse one. I'm building a compost heap on site rather that cart everything out there and back here later. Here it is going up. I'm gambling on being able to spread it by November as a mulch on this lucky bed (albeit in a rough state). Compost normally takes a year here. The tomato debris is off to the dump but all other weeds , wood chips, straw, layers of nettles conveniently growing nearby and sloshes of liquid comfrey on hand, all that has gone on sandwhich style. I've covered the heap with black plastic hoping for some solar advantage. It has warmed up. I didn't add any animal manure which would give me a hotter heap. I imagine this will be colder and slower.

Now it was a week of high drama on the roads. Only a dusting of snow and the road looks deceptively clear. There are alot of big trucks come through Highway 85 especially through the night and they compressed the snow to a layer of ice. Bill got stuck on the Pigroot coming home. There is no cellphone reception through that stretch and we had a power cut at home so nobody could ring. We went out in the truck and found him around midnight with six other cars in a cluster and pushed him out. There was an Irish fellow putting chains on nearby who said the roads were 'mischief'. Something about that word has you imagining small mythical creatures spreading danger out like sand. They closed the road through to midday Friday and everybody just drove around the barrier.
As it happened, the next day so did we.

From memory, Babettes Feast is set in a remote religious community and their inability to acknowledge her beautiful food is just part of a big story; no comparison implied here! However, this is a teetotal community and the meal voucher I won to Riverstone Cafe was for a three course menu complete with wine matches. It was all the better for the novelty. We were booked in for Friday and would just about have walked through the pigroot and carried the car if neccessary.
Final photo is the last peice of cheese. Swiss M made it before she left. I could see it wasn't quite right but haven't made any for so long was unsure where the problem lay. In hindsight I think there was too much whey left in and the cheese 'turned' pretty fast. Cheese moulds don't scare me one bit and although there were ammonia notes, nothing was wasted. Genetic inheritance includes a robust digestive system.

Man Food

2011-06-21T01:42:00.000-07:00

I was using up some kidney beans for tea tonight and imagined making some kind of beany stew, lots of cubed vegetables, a few spices and so on. Fortunately, I have a good memory, a practiced 'reality checker' and a testosterone charged household behind me. I could see the inevitable follow on, a large dish of leftovers in the fridge that nobody would eat for a second time or a first; and it would eventually grow mould and be thrown out when the fridge began to smell enough to warrant the search.
What is top of the vege stakes at the minute, with 100% take-up is Kale. Be surprised because it is not a result of good parenting, just pure inclination.

What interests me are these little buds in the Kale 'armpits'. I haven't grown this green Kale before to know how it will end, but they remind me of brussel sprouts. I was out of sync this year with everything; the winter stuff went in early and so did the Spring greens which are now nearly over so perhaps it is preparing to go to seed.
For my autumn clean-up around the fruit trees I chopped up the weeds and trimmings as mulch and banked them around the artichokes in particular. It felt like a good permaculture principle, saving my energy, and I expect it to both harbour slugs(bad) and keep off some of the effects of the frosts (good). Perhaps in spring I will need to rake it back to allow the ground to heat up and the birds in.

Moving along, the star of this photo is my new toy, the 3rd hand magimix off Trade Me. Cuisinart promise that their blades never need sharpening. It's true. Everything these days is getting chopped parsely because the blade chops things finely instead of bludgeoning them into a pulverised mess. The frosts are still only namby pamby, no ice on the window, frozen latches, frozen washing or lack of cold water in shower, and so I am still bringing in tomatoes to ripen in the hallway. These ones about to be baked with crumb topping, crumbs, tasty cheese, garlic, parsely and a little anchovy.
The beds in the tomato house are rock-hard for digging and watering hasn't really helped. If it was only me, and only a small space, I would experiment with swapping the tomatoes with the potatoes because potatoes leave the soil in beautiful condition. I know they are of the same family and disease prone, well you don't want to even whisper 'disease' in the vicinity but as I'm sure I've said before, Dirt Doctor in Kakanui follows one with the other with beautiful results (we have a strict segregation policy with each to their own house). Of course, just like children fighting, there is always a lot more to the story. The potato house here has not fared so well with the glass and is probably too cold for tomatoes now.

It's not a cast sheep, it's napping. They all were. Sheep and cows seem to like doing the same things together. They all gallop, they all eat, they all bleat, they all throw themselves down on the ground and take naps, all at the same time. It's sort of a collective Borg-like consciousness.

In case anybody was wondering, I made a Rose Elliot recipe with the beans. It included pasta and a tomato sauce and had a delicious crumb/cheese topping. It was supposed to include lentils but I had a bit of leftover dhal (fridge clean out not fridge alert) which successfully blended without anybody noticing. Everybody ate it.

Frost Nipped

2011-06-06T01:08:00.000-07:00

After an unseasonably mild May, woke up 3rd of June to our first hard frost. By 3pm the temperature had only risen to 4.5degrees, cold enough to frost anyone's brass which was all right and proper for Queens Birthday week-end, time honoured week-end of the Brass Monkey.
Apparently there were plenty of tents over at Oterahua, the local hotels seem to do very well also. I can confirm that there is an age when only a comfortable bed, a hot shower, and a good coffee will do.

The weather has been a great boon for the gardener who was running at the back of the pack. That's me of course. I've got my own backyard in decent enough order now to take me into spring, which is the garden equivalent of being up to date on housework and free to turn my attention elsewhere; like the glasshouse for starters.

This is the Hopi pumpkin that only grew successfully under cover this year. It has a thinner flesh than the Australian Grey that we are so fond of; a really good flavour and texture makes up for that. Not mealy enough for soup, a baker or a roaster.

I was really pleased with this bit of lawn patchwork. It's part of my master plan to keep the guys who cut our grass happy and the plan has also included pruning the fruit trees back hard so nobody has an eye poked out as they swoop by on the ride-on. I had pushed the ornamental beds in which left a drop and a weed patch. The birds are feeding on the lavender heads (it's the fluff ball in the distance) so I can't cut it back yet.

Can you just see there are still tomatoes on the vines, some of which are not bad and others are tasteless. The ground will have to be content with a dig-over this year, enough water to stop it drying out, and as much compost as I can find, hopefully under the debris in the bins. I enjoy this sort of job which you can chip away at a bit at a time and intersperse with other things.

There was a good poem in the paper today by a woman with a lovely name, Waiata: Waiata Dawn Davies, aged 85, a retired teacher, mother of 8 sons, 22 grandchildren and she lives in a fishing crib at the mouth of the Waitaki River.
It could have been called 'Hindsight'.

Foresight

At three score years and twenty-five
each new sunrise is expected
and every expectation now requires
enormous deeds of faith.

At night I set rolled oats to soak
for tomorrow's breakfast,
take meat from the freezer
for tomorrow's dinner
iron tomorrow's clothes.

And I tidy my bookshelves
just in case I don't wake up.

Back on Track

2011-05-19T02:58:00.000-07:00

How many movies have an escape scene, destruction snapping at our hero's heels and ahead, a shrinking exit, a door of steel grinding inexorably down to the floor. The long corridor from Brisbane to Nelson seemed to have many of these and we slid through each one on our knees. I could hear doors slamming shut behind me and felt like we were escaping in the nick of time. When I saw the ambulance at Nelson Airport I nearly wept with relief; responsibility rolled off my shoulders and my head cleared. I could see garden time in my future.

Checked in on a favourite little Nelson garden where the vegetables are still ousting the flowers from their strip beds. Beaut show.

Back home, Rose told me some weeks ago that the turkeys were circling; circling the quince tree that is. I got there in time to pick up a box full. They are seriously hard but that doesn't stop them bruising. Next time I will only get them off the tree and leave the windfalls. The turkeys must absolutely love them because already hapless, half pecked quinces lay about the tree.

We had a laugh about the fact that Autumn is prime eating time for these birds and I thought I was joking. Son turned up with minced turkey for the hamburgers at cooking the next week. Jude said the meat was quite yellow...

Turns out Rose had just waited until they were asleep and then carried one off to the chopping block. Look out.

So I'm preserving quinces over this week. Peel, quarter and core. A fairly thick syrup (2C sugar to about 3C liquid) with some honey and lemon juice in it. These quinces don't take long to cook at all and cook to an apricot colour. They are delicious bottled.
We had a months' rainfall in a day in May which has hampered the great potato dig and curtailed the Autumn clean-up. Anthony had to swim the sheep by the river to safety about 5.30 that morning. Later the wind came through and pushed over the sunflower stalks, bent double.
Prior to that they rather looked like a graveyard of lanterns; now all dignity is gone and I've been trucking them off to the compost heap: carbon loading.

I've cut back the asparagus fronds, and pulled out spent brassiccas. The ground is a bit wet for weeding but still plenty to do and when that's done, glasshouse.

Here's the Bon Chretian pears. Found the best way to preserve them is oven method in a fairly slow oven. Prevents overcooking. Have granted the other pear a stay of execution until I find out whether it is a crucial pollinator.

I missed the deadline for broad beans and cover crops and whatever else will become apparent. Thank goodness there are things that wait for me, apples on trees at the minute and beehives waiting for their AFB check. Give me one warm day and see what I can accomplish.

Spring Greens

2011-03-31T02:29:00.000-07:00

Lemon trees have come up trumps which is an absolute treat. I expect every household on the property will be enjoying lemon cordial this week. Mine is. Now I have been ruthless on the bushes that haven't performed, they went to the dump, and have kept the others cut back hard to get past them.
I had already granted them a stay of execution anyway, primarily because of their flowering habit which seems to be almost all year round. The glasshouse has a continual party of bumblebees and buzz-pollination and glasshouses are synonomous. I'll reward them each with epsom salts and compost before the winter, and a metre or three of frost cloth each.

Last year I used some sort of chilli garlic spray for the scale and gave them a jolly good wash with warm water. More in the realms of routine maintenance than pampering. They have responded generously.

This bean is Bob's. Frada is dried and all but seed-sorted but Bob is still growing green although some pods are ripening off and changing colour now. From memory its an interesting round brown speckled bean whereas Frada is a creamy lozenge not unlike a glucosomine tablet, for all those over 40. Enormous to swallow whole. Won't be swallowing beans whole.

More beans, this time cannellinni. I bought several packets of seed a few years ago before I took notice of things like climbing beans and bush beans. I was just looking for cannellinni. When they came up some were bush and some were climbers, some white flowers some pink. I saved seed from the climbers which are more productive and this time have noticed a big difference between the two colours.

For the record, pinks are in the lead and photo is of the different pink bean flowering habit. I think the word is racemes, these rods of beans that it throws out that make them extremely productive. This is where seed saving really comes into its own.

Plodding along, we are chowing through a wealth of brassiccas seeing as the 'Spring crop' has matured early, and that includes lettuces too. Guess I put them in too early. Last year too late. Won't do that again. It means we are snowed in by vegetables what with all the Autumn crops coming in.
Ah yes, those green things are caterpillars, nothing that a pot scrub won't flick off, a soak in salt water and a good clip. What I'm getting too is 'perfectly good.' I guess its a variant of good enough (Marg) except that they are perfectly, good, all they need to be. Perfect for this Jamie Oliver recipe from his jamie at home book. Cauliflower cannellonni and my fussiest eater was scraping the dish. We'll have that again.

Surprise

2011-03-16T00:35:00.000-07:00

The prune tree has only been in for two years and went from 3 fruits last year to laden boughs this year. Sensibly laden, most of them are clustered around the trunk and forearm of the branch so they are well supported and nothing has broken off under the weight or even bowed down. Important for such a young tree. The wind thinned them a few months ago, not so as you'd notice now. I looked up some local research at the time and from memory, the 16th March was the day to pick them, in Central Otago, for maximum sweetness. Give or take a day.

Sure enough, right on the button a few kilos worth suddenly dropped to the ground announcing that they were ready. This is a freestone plum, 'Italian' so I took a minute to stone them before drying and the result, surprise... prunes. The one surprise is that they are yellow inside, I imagined they would be that deep purple all the way through.

The greengage finally produced a crop worth mentioning which enabled me to scupper a few cherished dreams. For some reason I always thought how nice it would be to have enough to bottle. No no no no no. They turn khaki green and the skins crack and they look horrible and taste sickly sweet because they are so sweet.
They deteriorate the minute they are picked and they don't all ripen together, why should they I suppose. Best way to eat them is off the tree as they ripen, and this over a period of quite a few weeks. I'm on the last of them now. Hanging out the washing is never a fruitless task; it has been especially fruitfull this year.

We finally caught a 'working day' at Hayes Engineering in Oturehua which means the factory is cranked up and we got to see the machinery in action. What I didn't expect to find out the back of the restored homestead was this beautiful vegetable garden with a few flowers, snapdragons and old fashioned things to the right, out of view. The whole thing is rabbit fenced and sits in this sheltered corner. The house is made of mudbrick, 2 layers thick and radiates warmth at night. Those are tomatoes over by the windows. It may look dry, that's how it is here, it was very productive. The lady warmed to my enthusiasm and sent me home with a beautiful cabbage. I had to turn everything else down because we already had it.

Never mind taking photos of the kids, this is looking out at the garden from one of the bedrooms. What a lovely sight. What could be more practical. The whole place, his inventions, the factory, the homestead and the running of it all beautifully illustrate Occams Razor in action. That is, the simplest solution is the correct one. Sounds like a good maxim for life.

In the Wake

2011-03-06T21:49:00.000-08:00

We will always remember what we were doing when the earthquake hit. We were all down in the big kitchen preserving peaches and nectarines and everybody immediately said 'Christchurch'. We listened to the radio as we worked and I felt sick.
We've already welcomed new children to the school and Bill is up there today for a funeral. Cancer, this one. Life and death go on.

By way of light relief, sunflowers. They are already in far more spectacular bloom. There's going to be alot of seed, which is apparently good for sprouting. Just as well. Next time I would grow a multi-headed variety that blooms sooner so I won't be keeping it.

By way of even lighter relief, bottled spaghetti. To me it is pure Kiwiana. Never mind that no one in this household has ever really liked canned spaghetti. Nothing was going to stop me making this and more besides. It is delicious, very easy and at 30cents a jar I can't resist making more. Incidentally the family have come to the party and they like it. Recipe to follow.
It's what you make when you've already made pasta sauce, relish, soup, and dried tomatoes and there are still pounds of them to be picked. Oh to be always so blessed.
For the record, Mum had the good taste not to make this for us as children.

Beetroots are enormous this year and I can tell you the drawback. Not that they are tough but they take so long to cook, and it probably didn't help leaving them in the liquid overnight. Means the pickled beetroot doesn't have as much colour as usual. Never mind. I use Digby Law's recipe: to follow. Do we all eat the leaves? They are better than silverbeet.

This is the brag shot. Third time lucky with the cucumbers. I'm really impressed with these telegraph type. They are very hardy and as of today these babies are ready to eat. (the photos are last week's) The plant is hardly full grown but starts to flower and set as it climbs, as do most beans that I've noticed. We have snow on the hills and temperatures have plummeted. Autumn is here and I expect to see growth slow right down.

Bottled Spaghetti
12 pounds tomatoes
1 pound onions
2 T salt
1 cup sugar
a few cloves garlic
1T mustard
1 1/2 packets vermicelli (750g)
Simmer together the sauce ingredients until soft. Put through the mouli, bring back to the boil, and add the cooked vermicilli. Simmer ten minutes and bottle. Makes 12 one pound jars. Amaze your friends.

Pickled Beetroot
Wash and boil a big pot of beetroot until tender. Cool, peel and slice. Reheat in 2C sugar, 3C cooking water, 4C malt vinegar. Bottle overflow method. Done.

21st February

2011-02-20T20:20:00.000-08:00

Coincidentally, today it is two years since our father died and here's the Rowan Tree to remind me. The flowers on his coffin were lovely but the branches of Rowan berries seemed particularly appropriate and beautiful. Rowans thrive under difficult circumstances, do well in drought conditions and are fairly frost resistant. The flowers smell a bit like rotten meat, reminiscent of Dad's fridge, and in the Autumn the berries are stripped by the birds.

Now it is lazy gardening I am particularly enjoying at the moment so here's some of my favourite garden events. Starting with the rocket top left, I planted the seed and never got around to pricking it out or potting them up, let alone planting out. A row of seedlings has turned out to be ample supply for current demand and without any stress of moving it took awhile to go to seed. Top right the seeding spring onion finally fell over and a wealth of little seedlings have sprouted around it. Like wise the parsely plants below are volunteers.

I have been potting up any small self sown seedlings that I find to overwinter and get a jump start on Spring. Planting from seed in Spring doesn't produce parsely for eating until very late in the year. Bottom right is dill which suffered the same fate as the rocket. A row of seeds went in and that was the end of it. The dill hasn't reached it's full potential at all due to overcrowding and fairly quickly went to seed but there has still been enough for me to pick.

On the zuchinni front, gold zuchinnni, the comment might be 'live and don't learn'. The itty bitty squitty photo bottom right could easily have been taken last year. I had some small insect infestation then and thought that they were the reason the leaves had browned to a crisp. In hindsight, the same thing happening again, I think the glasshouse is just too hot for them. The older leaves are brittle and dry so although the younger leaves are in pretty good heart, the plant as a whole is losing productivity and slowing down.
'How many zuchinni do you want?' Yes, you might well ask. Three jars of Fay's Zuchinni Relish (recipe lifted straight off the internet) is possibly a year's supply given all the other relish and condiments stowed away down here.

We snatched this photo on our last trip through the Pigroot just to show Annarosie that we may live in the middle of nowhere but there are still social occasions and signposted at that. The partygoers are geology students who start the year with a field trip up this ways every year.

To recap on the zuchinni. Next year I will stagger the planting a little more. I will probably only grow the gold zuchinni because they are less inclined to run to marrows and don't get waterlogged. They also look great in a stirfry and make the best relish. Beyond the first two of the season, the rest can go outside and make what they can of the summer. They don't seem to need the heat that corn, beans and pumpkins need to produce well.
I can't resist one poem for the occasion. Another by Richard Langston called:

He is There

When I wake.
He interrupts my nights.

In his empty armchair.
His folded glasses.

In the humor in us,
our appetites,
the heavy tread of our feet.

He is the bird lifting slowly
out of the dewy paddock,
the impenetrable spaces
above the sea.

The Lazy Perfectionist

2011-02-11T01:29:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't reduce my personality to two adjectives, but this cap, among others, fits very well. My husband has cut back on coffee and I seem to be the one without any energy this week, out in sympathy.
So I've planted out the last two dozen leeks. Two months too late for this climate. The first batch of seedlings were wiped out twice; It seems to me that this soil does not drain well and short of bog plants, even moisture lovers need drainage. That was one problem. A weeding 'incident' took care of the rest. Dibbled these leeks in to a better class of dirt and my secaturs weren't sharp enough so I gave up mauling the tops and in they went. Good enough gardening.

The broccolli has gone to flower and the bees are loving it so much I can't resist leaving it in a bit longer. There's kale and silverbeet and parsely in the background. The Kale will make it through the winter.

This year the garden has had shelter on two sides. I'm really enjoying the potatoes (on this side) which other hands planted, tilled, hoed up and weeded (in the old strawberry patch). Sun-yet-to-be-flowers are a windbreak on the other side. We're digging the potatoes now, and with a record 53mm of rain on Sunday night the tops have freshened up no end.
This place is potato heaven and on the menu it is always Red King; We go from the new potatoes at Christmas (glasshouse) onto the first new potatoes outdoors and then dig them through to the maincrop is lifted about May.

I remembered the other reason I like to grow a tiny tomato, beyond something to eat in the glasshouse, is for drying. I prop the oven door open with a wooden spoon and have the oven low, about 120C or anything less and just leave them in until they have dried or the fire goes out. Salt the halves first,

they sweeten as they reduce and of course the flavour intensifies. The boys who won't eat fresh tomatoes will eat these like candy. This is blackjack and never goes very red. I store them in the freezer because they aren't normally dried to a crisp. In winter I put them into an olive oil
mixture in the fridge as we need them .

I pulled out the dwarf beans this week; runner beans still running. The roots were pretty poor and I've already loaded the soil with woodchips, sheep manure and sowed a cover of black oats. I'm beefing up the organic matter to improve drainage in the soil.
Bean fatigue starts to set in when you have them every night. What helps is the magic tool, the Krisk bean slicer. Just think of them as vegetable linguine I cheerfully advise

when the kids start complaining that the serving size is getting bigger and bigger. The Krisk even has a little blade to top and tail them (mine has broken off, this is an old one.) It also usefully rejects anything too big and tough, bean pile on the left, so that young palates can enjoy their beans in optimum condition and form good mealtime associations. Hear, hear.

Now I know...

2011-02-02T01:16:00.000-08:00

Now I know why the replanted tubs aren't doing so well. Orange marigolds, lobelia and irresistable catmint under that naughty lump. She likes to lie down while she snacks on the catmint.

I also know why Jack took bean seeds and not celery. These wouldn't have got him far and slowly at that. The celery is called 'crunchy dwarf' from Otepoti seeds. Maybe this is as good as it gets. I planted the seed in the second week of September, about 18weeks ago and blamed the slow start on the bag of seed raising mix. Maybe it was old. The name caught my fancy after the dwarf incident in the U.K a few years ago. Apparently a hippo in a zoo swallowed a dwarf as he fed it a loaf of bread (the story comes from Uncle Doug of course).

In the background are my bean couple Freda and Bob. One of them has flowered and set beans and the other is barely flowering. In hindsight I planted them way too close together (45cm apart, needed 60cm at least). They all get equal shares of the light, water and food. Some things remain a mystery.

The summer feels like it has turned before we really had it. Suddenly the glasshouses both need closing down at night and the real proof that it is cooling down, the lettuce are all the better for it, Canasta I think. I've chanced a late crop of yellow zuchinni for a very special relish. There they are stretching into the distance. Last year they came to nothing here because of an insect infestation. This year I've awarded them my bokashi supply and so far so good. Here's hoping.
In the far distance corn is racing against time and unless we get some good temperatures it may be off the menu.

On the menu is all things NZ. I'm putting together a few recipes (with photos) for Louis to take to Argentina. This is Apricot Frangipane. I also make it with plums. For the record I use Pams sweet short pastry, the lump that is left over after making Chocolate Mud Pie is enough. Filling is 75g each of sugar and butter creamed. Add 1 egg, a few drops almond essence, 1/4c flour. Spread that over base, put on raw fruit and almonds and bake at about 170 for about 1/2hr. Serves 8.

Happily Ever After

2011-01-24T01:10:00.000-08:00

Never mind the outfit, here's the tomatoes that went to the wedding; Belgian Slice sneaking into the photo in the background, top left, was for the nuptial afternoon tea.
The show-off in the middle is a fused beefsteak, one of those fruits which is clearly three squidged together. The problem with them is that the three fruits still ripen individually and sometimes one part of the tomato will be green while the rest is nicely ripening. Other problems: well if a bird pecks it out and it goes rotten you lose a lot more tomato at one time. These also don't separate easily from the plant and require secaturs on hand to pick them.

The green shouldered tomatoes behind are Black Krim. Pink Brandy wine to the right with the deeper wrinkles and little blackjack over on the left. They are all delicious with Black Krim and Blackjack top of the flavour stakes at the moment.
Now somehow a few rogue sunflowers got away in the glasshouse and I haven't had the heart to pull them out. The heads are threating to push through the glass and that may be the nudge that leads to their execution. Actually they are still headless as are all their siblings in the garden; that is only a growing tip. It is own-seed so there's a genetic mystery to solve sometime if they don't flower.

The birds seem to have bred twice this year and were feeding young again in the New Year. Sure are plenty around and they too have a penchant for fresh tomatoes. Children were given permission to aim the beeby guns at them but the responsibility of broken glass countered their enthusiasm and the best thing so far has been these dangling foil strips. ('Bull in a china shop', guns in a glasshouse? no shots were fired).

Photo below doesn't capture the beautiful veiny yellow of the leaves. The yellow features on the new growth, the edges of the leaves are a darker green, we're looking at a micronutrient deficiency, and can you guess?
The real give-away is that I limed the soil twice so factor in a high ph soil. Other possible contributing factors are water stress (this is presenting in the tomatoes around the sunflowers which are sucking up moisture like gum trees in a bog.) One more thing, we had a fairly cool week and colder temperatures can also inhibit nutrient take-up.

Iron Deficiency. I know that now. I'm thinking there is probably enough iron in the soil and that it is just an access problem exacerbated by too much lime. Answer: do nothing.

I tried to find a suitable wedding poem to dedicate to George and Kerry and...came up with On Not Getting Married by Richard Langston. I think it could also be called Getting Married A Second Time (with apologies to Richard)

Getting Married A Second Time

Instead of a bride
she imagines the whiteness of a flower.

Instead of a groom
he imagines how to be the best man.

Instead of household appliances
they make the gift of each other.

Instead of an organist
they make their own music.

Instead of a church
they have a room to dress and undress.

Instead of sprays of cut flowers
they leave them in their gardens.

Instead of one supper at long tables
they will feast many times on this light.

Cutting back, Moving forward

2011-01-14T19:35:00.000-08:00

This was supposed to be a feel-good photo. Somebody is bound to see these broad beans and feel really good about their own crop by comparison. This is not a dwarf variety and they should have been towering over me instead of knocking my knee caps. The photo doesn't do justice to the rust splotched foliage and the stubby pods, some of them split by a late rainfall after neglect and drought.

It confirms my favourite cleaning adage which relates to everything in life it seems: If it is worth doing it is worth doing badly (courtesy of fly-lady). What that means is better to do a poor job than none at all; a small crop is better than no crop and we are the only ones that seem to really look forward to them anyway. No surprises there.
The red flag of secatur handles is to remind me to mention that I cut them off at the base and leave the roots in with their nitrogen nodules and microbial hangers-on to enrich the soil.

The wheelbarrow back there is as heavy as a tank. My own one has a slow puncture in the tyre and I have added a repair rescue to the wish list which includes all tools sharpened for the New Year and have them stored in one place. Pat on the back for me because I am already chipping away at that list: I've cut back the entangling branches and moved obstacles that catch the hose on the daily watering walk. Very satisfying to streamline routine activities.
Some of the stawberries got a weed this week and a clip and a handful of compost for the most promising runners. The rest were removed.

The website for all things garlic http://www.gourmetgarlicgardens.com/ says to harvest it when you have about 5 green leaves left. If you leave it longer the bulbs will be bigger, but have fewer layers of that papery skin which is what helps it to keep. Because I'm a numbers gal, I can tell you that there were 227 large bulbs and 80 too small to put in the mix. We'll use them first. They are conveniently out of the picture and for the record, my seed garlic for next year, ie the biggest and the best happens to be top of the trolley for transport. It is a fabulous crop but not as great as the photo makes out.

I have tip pruned the peach branches back to each fruit to encourage the tree to put everything into it. Have done the same to the plum and apple tree branches also. The theory is that a summer prune will not create a landslide of regrowth next year and by tip pruning the branch, back by 2/3, the tree throws out more fruiting spurs on the existing branches. The greengage tree in particular had grown long leggy branches with fruit on the tips but very little (ever) in the centre of the tree.
Pruning is alot like cutting your childrens hair. It takes nerve to start and then it's hard to stop. From experience I can tell you that the tree won't burst into tears at the sight of a mirror, nor do you, the pruner have to hold back maniacal laughter as the exhileration of clipping (just one bit more...) sweeps you away.
The tree does not run away either.

Accidental Gardening

2011-01-04T02:30:00.000-08:00

The first year I grew these golden dwarf beans a large proportion of the plants inexplicably died, nibbled through at the base of the stem and many of the beans were taken out with mildew; like those 3 on the right. Grassgrubs were the culprit firstly. Secondly, the mildew is easily averted: a eureka moment, stake the beans. In their native environment I'm sure the gentle rain falling is no problem but here, the weight of the crop combined with high pressure hosing and they hit the deck and rot. Gardeners are a resourceful and ingenious lot and sure enough I found something sufficient to the task, the little metal bar on the basket; one per plant.

These beans came through at 9weeks from seed and are still cropping and flowering. They freeze well, that's good, and the kids all like them. That's very good.
Runner beans start flowering from the base up and the first beans were set also at 9 weeks and they will crop for weeks. First job this week was pull out the thistles from around the base. I want to encourage the community to forage around for those beans that get away to seed and slow production down.

My first humble pie of the New Year will be corn pie. I have yet to tell Bart (Otepoti Seed Savers) but out of 2 packets of Early Gem, say several hundred seed I got 26 precious seedlings below. The seed bed was bird proof but not mouse proof and it/they ate the kernels even as they sprouted. I'm supposed to be saving seed for which I need a minimum of 50 plants. I left the sprouting till after the last minute anyway because I can't put the corn in until Boxing Day when the beds are clear. The new potatoes are out on Christmas Eve and well, I have Christmas Day off.

Ran out and bought some Yates seed and seem to have thrown out the packets. It wasn't a hybrid. Having learnt my lesson it's coming on in trays. I will be cutting it fine to get cobs. I have planted a wall of cannellini beans between the two corns to separate them...not quite the prerequisite isolation distance of two miles, barely two metres. As a result of my big win I now have the book Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth to guide my way and I'm going to paperbag them and keep seed for me by way of experiment.

If you ever take your child to the doctor only to find you really should have taken them in a week ago that's accidental parenting (sorry Pomble). A repeat performance, I got down to the glasshouse after the holidays to tie up tomatoes and was already too late for some where the weight of the fruit had left the branch hanging by a thread. Accidental gardening. It's those brandywine pink (the two left photos) with their indeterminate stems and branches everywhere.The fruits are massive and delicious however they are tricky and there is some pretty dodgy foliage about. It's one of those crops where you hold your breath almost wondering whether you will pull it off.
Top right is moneymaker which is suddenly looking so attractive, completely reliable and consistent fruiting.
Blackjack cherry is the bottom right. See how big the flower sprays are. This variety is prolific, very vigourous, I am pinching out the tips as they are getting higher than I can reach, and has the best flavour of all so far.

Oh here's that photo of the corn round 2. Here's Hoping and Happy New Year too.

Growing Soil

2010-12-17T01:42:00.000-08:00

'Chop chop choppity chop
Chop off the bottom and chop off the top'
Now at this point, seasoned Southland gardeners will know what I have been doing this week. The rest of you will have to guess.
It's been unusual growing conditions this year. This sounds like an excuse for something that has gone wrong; not quite, it provides answers.
1. There have been alot of aphids owing to the mild weather. There is a short delay and then the ladybirds arrive en corresponding masse. Cosmetic damage only(particularly to the blackcurrants).
2. The weather has been mild, cool at nights and perhaps less sunshine hours. A -5 frost on the 12th December took out the courgettes in the garden and checked the potatoes. Most people around here just clip off the potato damage with hedge clippers.
3. The slow but steady growing conditions have really suited things like lettuce, not so much the heat lovers like yams.

The Hopi pumpkins in the glasshouse have these lovely big velvety soft saucer leaves. I wonder what the pumpkins will look like.
Further jobs over the last few weeks have included thinning the apples, plums and blackboy peaches. The latter I probably took off 3 out of 4 as it is the first year fruiting and the branches aren't robust enough to carry alot of fruit. Apples I reduced any clusters to one and plums just nicked out what I could reach to thin them out a bit. This can apparently be done with a stick, whack whack. If I'm not careful the whole fruiting spur comes off leaving...nothing. Sharp fingernails are a good tool.

This is one of the worst beds in the garden in terms of soil. The yams that were planted here rotted as the soil does not drain well. We double-dug and added sheep manure and ok, wood chips which I'm not fond of like this. Originally they went into that base layer a spade depth down so out of sight. We turned one bed into these two narrow ones (a la Dirt Doctor) that are raised and rounded. I'm expecting that this will either help with drainage or the plants will dry out faster. One good one bad. That aside it has enabled me to plant more intensively. Bok choi in the foreground, winter cauli, red cabbage, kale, silverbeet down the row. Even if they come to nothing the soil will be better for the next crop because of it. Still a long way away from John Jeavons 'living sponge cake'; it will be achieved one crop at a time.

Leeks, of course. My seedlings seemed to just stand still this year. They've been so long in the pots that now they are starting to yellow off through lack of nutrient. See the beautiful dibble that has been a split wood handle in another life. The shears to choppity chop off the top few inches and reduce the roots to the same. Into the hole, a good pinch of blood and bone to give them a boost, water them in and they disappear like Alice down the hole into Wonderland. I planted the thinner ones that last year I would have tossed away, in two or three to a hole.

It must be a Central Otago Christmas when you come home to a bowl of cherries. My dozen strawberry plants have taken the lead in the most useful for the least effort stakes, followed closely by Sweet Basil. For the easy stakes put Zuchinni up there but do you think we can keep up with them? No. For the very little return put in the yams that rotted, the yams that it was too cold for (another bed) and my own cherry tree. On the scale of things, it doesn't seem anything to complain about at all.

Tying up loose ends

2010-12-07T23:33:00.000-08:00

1. Kings seeds got back to me real fast and I immediately wished I had contacted them before pinching out all the growing tips on the Brandywine Pink. The plants now look as if they have amputated limbs; which they do of course, and I see that I have foreshortened their productivity needlessly.
To quote Mr Martin, 'Brandywine Pink is one of the old tomatoes that didn't have a single stem leader bred into it, rather it takes the form of an indeterminate triffid that branches.'
Yes it does. Triffid is a good description.
'American home grdeners use an upright cage like a teepee for supporting these so the branching habit isn't an issue. They are worth preserving as they're a very tasty prolific tomato.'
Our tomatoes are strung from overhead and I have left one leader on some of them and a fruiting spur on each of the arms that were pinched out. This variety has grown the fastest and I expect them to have the first fruit ready.

The photos this week are by way of an aside. We visited the Dirt Doctor in Kakanui and were privileged to have a look around his garden. This is probably what it feels like to meet royalty. He was busy tying up tomatoes and delateraling and I knew exactly the spot he was in, leaving that to show us around. I thought of all the people I have talked to as I work without moving from the job and I was so pleased that he extended a bit more graciousness to us.
I've picked that photo of the brassicas to try and illustrate the amazing productivity of this relatively small garden. The vegetables crowd out the weeds, there's probably three times as much in his space as I would have in the same area.

Same garden, this section is right beside the sea and is surrounded by trees and shrubs to provide the first windbreak. Compost piles. No wasted labour here, they are right beside the garden, Jerusalem Artichokes to the right (Somebody out there must like them).

2. Reporting back on the couch ('cooch', not a large sofa) that I had submerged in a barrel to drown. I put a lid on it to prevent an explosion of animal life. The nettle tea in the glasshouse had become a soup of rat tailed fly larvae that was particularly gross to dish out. However, the lack of oxygen was possibly the reason it went sour, really sour. Heaving in a bag of horse manure to speed things up may not have helped. Soon there was a white scum on top. I've incorporated some of it in a compost heap and ladled the rest around the fruit trees as a mulch. The couch looks as if it might spring back into life but it smelt absolutely dead. I hope this is the end of the story. Have cleaned out the hapless barrel and filled it up with seaweed and fresh water.

It was a hideously cold day. Is anyone surprised, I had packed a few sacks in the car just in case we got the opportunity to collect seaweed.
3. Back to the question of the garden I want or the garden I can manage. Advice taken. I think I can have my cake and eat it too by redefining the 'manage' part. I'm thinking about taking small parts of the garden and doing them really well (the garden I want). Keep on recklessly planting seeds and put in what I can but leave
the rest (that's the manage part).

The bank drops away to the sea and Bill had to heave the seaweed over his head to get it up. Thank you kind friend. I had to keep my hands clean to take the photo.

Not Waving...

2010-12-02T00:19:00.000-08:00

O.K we've been this way before. I'm luring you in because the next photo is frightening. Admire the artichokes, smell the roses and brace yourself for the rest of the garden...
having solved the...
problem...
of the rhubarb...not waving but drowning.

Not Waving but Drowning (Stevie Smith)

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

The garden is on a slope and water merrily drains to the bottom. I moved the rhubarb down there to enjoy the moisture and despite reasonable encouragement it has never done well (over a couple of years). We had 12 mm of rain last week in a sudden downpour and this is the water level 5 days later. It was at surface level for several days. Our Swiss maestro had the sense to dig the hole and expose the problem and he suggests running a few field drains (basically a ditch with rocks in the bottom to draw off the moisture). I favour moving the rhubarb up a block or two this Autumn. It would run across the slope and catch some of that water as it races down the hill on its clay slide, just below the surface.

Having figured that lettuce like some shelter from the direct sun I have pocketed them in spare spaces. So far amongst the broccolli this is a good working arrangement. This is the Rueben from Otepoti and their broccolli 'Multicropper'; hoping it will live up to its name.
You'll be pleased to know that I won a seed saving book in the Otepoti book draw. I had sent in seeds to qualify. Less happy are the seeds I am supposed to be growing out to save. One is a type of pepper and it will have to be 3rd time lucky with the last of the seed. I can see me growing it indoors through the winter at this rate.

Farmer Rose out at Kyeburn put this box of mushrooms in the back of the car this week. That is not a side plate but a dinner size by way of comparison. No worms in these champions and I freeze them rough sliced like this to make that. I shall now attempt a link. Success, it's a cream of mushroom and bacon soup and absolutely delicious and I don't even like mushroom soup. Thanks Chef.

lost for words

2010-11-22T23:35:00.000-08:00

Well it doesn't happen often, but I don't know where to start. Start with Johnny's tenth birthday and his new tub. He has strawberries on the right and a cottage garden mix on the left. The sticks are for a lone sweet pea. Gotta foster that interest.
My own garden is in transition and I haven't quite worked out where I fit. One of the things I hadn't anticipated about a wealth of help was that I would no longer be making all the decisions and have a hands on relationship to everything. To some degree I have been a bit on damage control tactfully fixing things that I wouldn't have done myself and which have proved to be not working...

My respect for good management continues to grow in its absence. Suddenly I need an overall plan to effectively use the help available, something else which has been missing until now. I've been surprised at my own ambition when I keep bringing out plants that I have tucked away. How did I ever think I would have time to put them in but in they go, a tray of thyme, red and white onions, and the beetroot and parsnips to boot. Anyway with the chance to garden at home on my side, I have converted the last of my compost, on site, to a little pumpkin patch or at least a pumpkin plant.

Notice how loose the strings are on the beans below. And a nice loose knot around the ankle. This is especially important for the tomatoes where the stem will easily double in girth after it has been strung. Complacency here results in a tomato garrotted, and the twine cuts present a wound for infection. The advantage of having plants at different stages has meant that I can do this job a row or two at a time, likewise pinching out laterals and winding the strings.

This is the peabean below which next time I will space and train differently. I can see it will grow quite tall; there are a few feeble bamboo sticks framing the inside of this tangle.

Actually my gardening week has borne no resemblance to these pictures. The first zuchinni are being picked, and basil at last and many questions have been answered (yellow foliage on potatoes was 245T contamination, shhhh - must have come in on that load of horse manure from a different source). Correctly diagnosed the yellowing on pot bound tomatoes as nitrogen deficiency and fixed it with some manure tea and a handful of sheep manure.
Also had the welcome visit of that rare beast, a fellow enthusiastic gardener which has left me with lots of great ideas.
I guess the question is, 'Do I plan the garden I want, or the garden I can manage?'

monologue and diatribe

2010-11-12T00:18:00.000-08:00

Thought I would kick off with a sort of NZ Gardener gratuitous flower covershot to lure you into a false sense of security. Then in the twinkling of a new sentence I get onto my monologue, tomatoes. Welcome reader.
The question for today is, what does 'Hard to grow' mean? If it was a grade on a sewing pattern, 'difficult' it could mean welt pockets, invisible zip, fitting required, or finickity detail, but hard to grow? See, it has opened the door on a favourite peeve which is insufficient information. I like things to be spelt out in detail; like a Delia Smith recipe in fact.

Once the tomato plant puts out the first flower truss you can see where the plant is heading. For those without a magnifying glass, first frame is trifurcate, second frame bifurcate and third frame, a single, which in the tomato world is normal and going to be hands down, the most productive. The stems have split off (furcated) into two and three growing tips and I may just have to pull these plants (most of them) out. The other variant is no growing head at all. This is relatively easy, and I have already put another plant in alongside these. Once that first and only truss of fruit has grown the plant is pulled out and the piggyback plant next to it gets full space to grow.

Now the tomatoes in question are the Pink Brandywine and I would normally put any genetic problems down to the seed supplier, (still a favourite mail order catalogue) because I had the same problem with another of their tomato seeds last year. However, I now recall seeing somewhere the enigmatic 'hard to grow' and wonder if this is part of it. Surely they could get more genetic uniformity than this? I can feel a long hand-written letter in green ink coming on.

Broccolli and peas still hogging my planting space so put the remaining beefsteaks out of their crammed pots and into sick bay to perk up a little before final planting. Hopefully there will be an aftershot soon with them looking green and radiant in their 60cm suburban blocks.

This time of year just about everything seems to germinate, so long as it doesn't get eaten before it gets a shoot above ground (beans). Here's my little markers with a selection of winter greens and whites and reds: cauliflower, broccolli, red cabbage and kale and lots more summer and autumn things too. It's that curious time of year where you seem to be planting for all seasons at once. It will be followed by that time of year when there is not enough room in the garden for all the plants you have grown!

Bean there, Done that

2010-11-05T02:40:00.000-07:00

The remaining tomatoes are waiting impatiently to be planted but there is a bottleneck of produce blocking their way. The peas that went in as a cover crop have sprung pods and peas; it would be a shame to pull them out now. Furthermore the Autumn sown broccolli is just coming through so likewise it can crop and then be replaced and smartly at that.
My 60cm bamboo stick is proving to be a useful arbiter of space marking out 20cm or 30cm by simple divisions of thirds or half.
Five different bean types here and more to come when I get the space. At this time of year I get the best and easiest germination by planting direct into any spare space in the glasshouse. Besides, by now I've run out of seed raising mix whether mine or otherwise.
I've given the runner beans 60cm apart (in the glasshouse). I pinch out the tops when they get too high and they send out multiple leaders.
The climbing beans 'Bobs' and 'Frada' are next @ 30cm apart. I'm growing these side by side to compare them for Otepoti Seed Savers.
If you notice the gap in the seed bed below you'll see the first point of difference. The slugs have honed in on 'Frada' and out of 20 seeds apeice I now have 4 'Frada' to 18 'Bobs' to subject to scientific observation. Whoops. Well slugs hate lime, oh yes I've remembered that now and have taken belated action after the buffet has been had. Sorry Bart.

The next two are purple bush and golden dwarf @ 20cm by 30cm rows. Now out of interest, it is the runners and the broads that cross freely and need isolation distance of bee flight proportions. The remaining Fabeaceae are self fertile so can be planted cheek to cheek, which I have done, and if necessary you can save seed from only one plant to keep the line going.

A playful splash of light on the potatoes? Fraid not. That yellow reminds me of the yellow lupin in the other glasshouse overwinter and they both had horse manure from same source; not that the oats showed anything. It will be interesting to see how these particular potatoes crop come Christmas. Only a few plants are affected and the foliage is luxuriant and deep green, otherwise fine. First tomato flowers on the Brandywine Pink. There ought to be a formula with tomatoes same as for strawberries. Basically when you see flowers on a strawberry plant you count on 6 (or 8? can't remember) weeks to get fruit. My guess would be about 10 weeks from now, say mid-January to get the first tomatoes. I'll let you know.

Lettuce, broccolli and dill chilling out in the shade house. Dill is very compatible with brassicas and the lettuce I thought would enjoy growing up in the broccolli's shade so they are all in together. This year, thanks to the Swiss family fabulous, I have had time to cover the soil with compost, mulch the plants with old silage, circle young plants with blood and bone, snip up PVC hoops and find and cut to measure the netting to cover them. White butterflies were hovering hungrily as I worked.

The Swiss family are proving to be the equivalent of a lotto win for me; an unbelievable windfall that I couldn't have even imagined. Garden spaces are being systematically worked and nurtured in a way I would never have time for normally. It's becoming the garden as I always imagined it, but never quite realised. Today I had a day off for my own garden, a baking catch-up and an afternoon nap, knowing that yams were being planted, rhubarb watered and weeded and paths mulched without me.
Q. What's yellow and wears a mask?
A. The lone lemon.
Q. How do you make an orange laugh?
A. Tickle its navel.
(Rosie sent us some 'Laffy Taffys'. They each come with a joke.)

Swiss Efficiency

2010-10-28T00:45:00.000-07:00

With Labour Weekend approaching, and in-laws arriving, several good gardening days were lost to cleaning: the oven, the fridge and the shower. There was no point surprising anybody with an actual tidy up; they might come to expect it, but we had somewhere to put the food, I could cook it without embarrassment and the shower was a bonus for us all.
Yesterday, possibly my favourite task of the year, planting tomatoes. Now the Swiss family have arrived and buoyed by assosciation and absorbing those vibes of order and system, I gave free reign to my own meticulous aspirations and cut a peice of bamboo 60cm long.
This measured out the strings for the plants, each to have its own generous and equal share of the bed. Thank you they breathed, or not. For once I sowed basil at the same time as the tomatoes, see the tiny plants running down the middle of the bed. The tomato is Pink Brandywine with a leaf so broad it could be a bean.

The lettuce on the left is in transit. I just want to show off the rootball the size of a softball, the size of the softball that fell into the drainpipe, the drainpipe that blocked and was dug up by hand for miles until the offending ball was found and blame apportioned, correctly alas... but I digress. Had to move a few lettuce to make way for the courgettes (Striata Italia). Lettuce are on a diet of manure tea and haven't looked back.

To interpret the photo, pile in foreground is predominantly couch with a top salad of thistles. This is the bed where turf was turned, cow manure, pea straw and anything else piled up and now the grass is growing through. It is a slow but satisfying job tracking couch runners, all the easier because there are both moisture and worms in the soil whereas elsewhere it is parched as usual. This time I've stuffed the lot into a barrel of water to rot, with a lid on tight. Might as well put it all back later, much later.

Some surprise gifts this week including a Potentate and a Roma tomato. Now to recap what I have planted: Pink Brandywine, Moneymaker, Grosse Lisse, Black Jack, Beefsteak, Heather's tomato, plus 2 makes eight. It may be monoculture in there but a variety of ethnicities. Quite which remains to be seen as there were some labelling issues. The pen and tabs went missing at a repotting moment and trays were mixed up. Found them later and wasn't it worth it. The girls have made a little garden, see the stone fences and labels. Amongst a household of boys this is something I never see but recognise immediately. I know they've had a great day.

Here's rich (?) and famous music people rubbing shoulders with Louis. Ah the giddy heights of fame and now we have the award on display, and the song on the computer to play to visitors and we can supply the balancing depths of ordinariness for free. Could you ask for anything more?

Going Forward

2010-10-15T03:19:00.000-07:00

"Doe the nexte thynge"
(Saxon legend inscribed in an old English Parsonage)

It would seem there are many things in life that you can only aim towards without knowing quite how to get there. Mum says it is like that in Poland, trying to get a train to a particular destination. A garden can be like that too and it is only achieved one step at a time.
Found an article in an old magazine about 'Dao' (Tao?) as a method of agriculture. Their focus is not on the soil but the way water travels naturally through it and they plant accordingly. So looking at this garden, on a slope, and the way the water runs from top to bottom, I've been thinking about how to slow it down to benefit the plants on the journey.

Now the garlic did come up the very week after I complained about it. I've put a little board on the lower edge to help retain that water. The beds also run across the slope for the same reason. Garlic is like all the members of the allium family who won't compete with weeds; hence the mulch and it will conserve moisture. When you get seed cloves in from outside your area they take 3 years to reach their full potential, each year adjusting a little bit more to your own climate and soil. Commercial growers apparently refresh their seed every 10 years or their yield drops. Who would have known?

Rhubarb continues to be a mystery. Took both photos today, what is going on? All plants have had the same treatment and that is a sulk. Factors to consider:

I woefully underestimated how dry it has got. First water of the season today and the ground is 'waterproof'. Everything runs off. One answer is to water a little, several times over the next few days and the ground will begin to rehydrate and hold water again.
I suspect the plant on the right was overpicked, too much for too long. Could have been me and that Rhubarb Caramel Crust Pudding...sigh.
The yellow leaves mean something, ummm, my usual mulch is grass clippings and that should provide nitrogen but they can just dry out and blow away instead of breaking down. First thing I'll try is liquid manure. Just got to set it up, and in this heat, wait a week.

Enough about that except to say I have hatched a plan for the couch crop behind it and that is to lay down some black plastic and old tyres for a month and see what happens underneath.

Have finally chopped up some PVC pipe to make hoops to support netting or fleece at the minute. The original purpose here was to protect the lettuce from the birds; a happy side effect of the dense netting is some shade which the lettuce seem to like.
Leeks below. I forgot to take account for just how long they are in the punnets and give them plenty of root room. A container with twice this depth would be more appropriate and I will repot them as soon as I see roots coming through below. It makes them easy to untangle when it is time to plant as well; the larger punnet size will also increase the water capacity so the plants are not as reliant on meticulous watering.

Those little lettuce are called 'Ruben'. Perhaps that is to suggest a red blush, or that they are colourful.
Now one of my favourite programmes on TV at the moment is The Mentalist. The character has, at times, pretended to have prescient powers but he is merely a keen observer of humanity. Well you don't need a crystal ball to look at those lettuce, and there are more out of screen, and say 'a glut is coming in the near future'.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Enter my cunning plan to plant them close together and thin out to eat as they grow. Nothing new, but a new refinement for me.
That saxon quote comes from Elizabeth Elliot with a poem that she couldn't source:

Do it immediately,
Do it with prayer,
Do it reliantly,
Casting all care.

"And in the doing of whatever comes next, we are shown what to do after that."
Elizabeth, you are right.

In for another Term

2010-10-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

First morning, first day of term; the boys are not half as pleased to be back at school as I am to be back in gardening mode, despite the light snowfall on the ground. The most exciting blossom of this Spring is the Black Boy Peach below, flowering for the first time. We bought this tree with us as a 20 inch seedling 3 1/2 years ago. Blackboys are one tree that grow well from seed and this came from Mama's former garden in Avonside, Christchurch and who knows what that house looks like now. Gardens, like people, are all the more interesting for their stories.

Those are not my hands or legs or short shorts below but it is my new Sieve being put through its inaugral paces. I don't know where Mum found it, what a treasure, and it flew down from Nelson, squeezed into Jen's suitcase. You can see how rough my compost is, and the lovely fine siftings for a seed raising mix; four equal parts of sand, leaf mould, compost and dirt. I've run out of potting mix and may just use the same recipe for that even though it has minimal food value. I have found the commercial potting mixes run short on nutrients and I have to feed the plants with a liquid fertiliser anyway.

I haven't lifted the fleece off the tomatoes for a few days now as even in the glasshouse it was scratching to get 10 degrees. On the right is the Brandywine; quite a different leaf but the same hairy tomato stalks as the black cherry on the left. This is planting week and time to put in all those subtropicals, beans and cucumbers, eggplant and peppers. I'll set something up in the living room this year just to get the heat for germination.

Asparagus is up later than last year. I never did add a compost mulch over the woodchips but it is not too late. I wanted to bury the crowns deeper to get less frost damage, and conserve moisture and besides, trundling compost is one of those repetitive jobs that creates a great mind space for planning other garden exploits.

It can also be said, in a loving way boys, that school for you creates a great mind space for me. Let's go out on The Future, (by Richard Langston: The Trouble Lamp) because I am up to it and I'm polishing my bright ideas.

The Future

The future is not a contraption.

It is the second you just passed

on the way to the next one.

It is where our fears collect,

where a blind-dog sniffs

at the edge of a precipice.

The future is looking back at us,

asking us if we are up to it.

It is the place you need to walk out to

to hang your bright ideas

on the blue undisturbed air.

Spring Cheer

2010-09-27T00:24:00.000-07:00

Last week was a dreadful one for gardening. I despaired of posting a blog at all and then decided to cheer everybody up with a few gardening-gone-bad photos. After all I am always telling the boys that mistakes are learning opportunities, so learn from me.
The worst of the storms passed us by but we had snow and too much wind to even be in the glasshouse so I ended up doing house-work; be amazed.
Returning to the mysterious yellow lupin patches, compare the yellow on the right to the control lupin on the left. The photo doesn't bring it all out but on the left there are fine threads off the tap root with nitrogen nodules on them. The root is fairly much the same colour as the stem and as long as the plant is high. The yellow lupin was unable to fix nitrogen and the root sort of shatters in all directions; where the stem hits the soil it changes to a dark brown. It wouldn't be much of a leap to say the problem is in the soil.

For the record, lupin is easier to dig in than oats; if I had a small glasshouse with the compost bin handy I would probably just put the cover crop on the compost heap and put compost in the glasshouse. Here, that would involve too much double handling and it is better just to grab the spade and dig. Optimum benefits accrue a month after digging in the cover crop so that puts me in line to plant the tomatoes Labour Week-end.
Now one of my neighbours chanced to ask me if hydrangeas grow well in this climate. 'As a matter of fact I have one in my garden. Come and see...'
Hydrangeas are shade tolerant, but not drought, frost or neglect tolerant. As Meat Loaf did not say: 'three out of four is very bad'.

Now I rethought our tiny balcony, did nothing and worked out that it was a success story after all. Ruth has started a feature on Real Gardens and the first one, here, has a lovely seating area that really caught my imagination: it has trees for shade, bulbs and other garden enticements. Ours is a concrete block that is also a thoroughfare to the back door. The obvious thing might seem to be pots but I know I would never water them, (drought, frost,neglect...) and the result would be worse than nothing.
So I'll talk you through the existing features.
1. The brick walls heat up during the day and release heat in the evening. That's when the seats against the walls come into their own.
2. The table seats 6 and is right beside the BBQ
3.We look out over the Maniototo plains from here with trees in the foreground.
In conclusion, the space functions well for a crowd and the ambience comes from the surrounding countryside. That's enough.

The Fruit Fly Incident

Funny how small things can lead to bigger outcomes. The heart of it is that I haven't been straining the tea leaves; instead, just slopping the whole lot into the compost bucket and the result was an incredibly wet compost heap and a build up of fruit flies. Well they don't like the cold and I would empty the bucket on a frosty morning, take the lid off and sling it in. If the air had warmed up there would have been a swarm all over me. All over Bill as it happened because the population hit the exponential growth button, warmth,moisture etc while I was away in Australia. They must have piggy backed into the house on Bill, they really stick to you, and the windows were black. He had to spray all the sills with fly spray and then rebuild the heap outside, incorporating all the boxes of bits and garden peices that I had been saving for this very thing.

I'm sorry Bill, I can hardly type for laughing but you did a great job thanks. We're currently enjoying the Bokashi Buckets instead.

Reach for the Sky

2010-09-16T22:09:00.000-07:00

Temperatures in Brisbane ran about 25 degrees every day and I came home to snow. Everybody complained as they got off the plane in Dunedin but it is spring and this is spring weather. Now we are preparing for THE BIG STORM. The lambs are wearing little coats and newly shorn stock are being brought in to shelter.

There was a progaramme on TV in Autralia, called, say Letters and Numbers. The winner consistently created the longest words out of a random selection of letters. If you want to share the fun, todays letters are E E A O I L T T (and Jen, it is not toilet).

I've achieved a massive seed credit with Otepoti Seed Savers so on top of my modest order, Bart sent another dozen or so packets to try. My own selection seems boring in that it is carefully considered on a practical level, trying to please everybody and not pushing the growing boundaries. I really enjoy trying out these surprise items. Cue the unrelated photo. (I have a feeling that text and photos are not going to align this week.) Below, enjoying the experience of a Polyanthus potting success story; just the one. The tub still has its plug.

There is a certain ignition point in the growing year when everything seems to take off. It happened while I was away and suddenly my red onion sets have become spring onions. We'll use them as such and go on to plan B, C, D, E...Things often don't go exactly to plan.
This week is planting week so I'm sowing seed for the hardier things and early glasshouse crops: Leeks 'Frosty Morning', more tomatoes, Black Krim and 'Heather's' (gifted seed), Zuchinni Striato D'Italia, Lettuce 'Rubin', Dill, Celery 'Crunchy Dwarf', Parsely 'Coastal Otago', Spinach 'Pounamu' ,Broccolli 'Multi Cropper'. I'd like to get the Sugar Snap peas in too but that requires a little bit of site preparation...

The first tomato seed is potted up and this year I have constructed a little fleece tent in the glasshouse. At night I pull over some bubblewrap for extra warmth. The days are not necessarily cracking 10 degrees here let alone at night. I suspect that the later plantings will quickly catch up with these because of the warmer temperatures.

In the other glasshouse I've rogued out the potatoes. The bits and bobs from last years crop come up a few weeks earlier than the intentional seed so it is easy to pick them out now to clear the ground for the legitimate crop. Potatoes will grow from the smallest scrap but they won't produce a good crop.

The tomato seedlings on the left were on top of a high cupboard and when I got home they were stretched and pale and reaching for the sun: ETIOLATE -to make a plant pale by excluding light.

I've got plenty of other seed (photo on right) so I won't use them. I read a book called Hands-On Agronomy while I was away and Mr Kinsey reminded me of the concept of the 'growing highway'; of as much as possible, creating an uninterrupted trajectory of growth. I didn't have enough grasp of the science to take it all on board but the book was all about establishing the correct mineral balance as the starting point for your soil. It's a farmer's book really; it could be a litmus test on how serious you are about gardening or an indication of peaceful hospital moments, sitting by a sleeping patient's bedside.

Outlook Fine

2010-09-03T01:42:00.000-07:00

We caught a glimpse of a lady on Close Up the other week, billed as a 'Dr Dolittle' who talked to animals. The only bit I saw was a cluster of animals making a noise. 'So what are they saying?' says the presenter.
'Oh they're just talking about the weather.' How we laughed. I have a saying that life is always telling us something, if only we would listen and this lupin below is signalling in bright colours: 'Look at me and do something.' My first guess was nitrogen deficiency. These are the glasshouse beds that I buried in wood chips and pony droppings; wood chips tying up available nitrogen as they break down which they will release once the process is complete. Now the lupin is fixing nitrogen from the air but that won't be released until the roots are dug in to rot.

I swallowed my pride and shot another question off to Dirt Doctor wishing that I had enrolled under a psuedonym. If I ever do one of their courses they'll see my name and roll their eyes. Jim says a number of interesting things: Could be burning from excess nitrogen in fresh manure, could be herbicide residues in the poo or chemical residue from anything the calves-that-mucked-the-woodchips were treated with (eek), or pathogens in the soil or introduced. He suggested applying lime. I noticed 'greening' on the soil here pre any Autumn additions so had planned to do the same thing myself.

So moving right along...

Photo on the left is one of the paths in the same glasshouse. A quick weed and shovel up what the birds have scratched out of the beds. Then I've put down heavy white plastic strips in between the beds, photo on the right. This has been done before (not by me) and I remember it helped keep the paths weed free. It will also reflect light and heat back up to ripen tomatoes. Those tomatoes so far, thanks for the suggestions Tim, are 'brandywine pink', and a small one 'black cherry' both from Kings and I have booked some 'Grosse Lisse' from master greenfingers (Hamish) down the road. In addition, my own beefsteak seed has failed to germinate so I will be browsing the garden shop next week and can try some others instead.

The bees are enjoying the weeds in the vegetable garden so much I haven't the heart to pull them out so I dug out the raspberries and moved them into my backyard instead. Having read up about them I've decided they are Autumn fruiting. Of course I trundled them up in the wheelbarrow first, then went inside to learn that I shouldn't let the roots dry out; went out and turned the turf over to begin to prepare the ground, thus day one. (photo on left)

Day two dug 8 holes, added a shovel of grit and compost and chopped it all in with the turf. Pruned them right back to stumps(photo on right), see what eventuates; raspberries I hope. Autumn fruiters are supposed to be better for a hot climate, don't need staking, are completely cut down in winter and pruned again back to 6 stakes if required. I should be so lucky.

Now apparently we are in for a mild start to Spring with some cold snaps and it snapped today alright. Life is always telling us something but sometimes it is just talking about the weather.

Would you like brussel sprouts with that?

2010-08-27T00:54:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about going away, is coming back with fresh ideas. Amongst first things I did was turn some of the parsely into a bright green pesto that has been used on everything all week. Spring can seem a bit like scurvy season and we're scratching like chickens for greens. The brussel sprouts have come into their own, by virtue of there being no competition. The last scraps of four seasons lettuce to the left; they overwinter without being bitter and come away for just this time. I lost quite a few in Autumn to grass grub and slugs and birds. Have stowed away good intentions for this year to be dusted off and practiced in March.

Monty Don says somewhere that it is not so much 'what' or 'where' in gardening as 'when' that counts and I'm beginning to agree. Onion sets below case in point. Red onions to the right were planted at the end of March. We could be eating them for spring onions now if it was allowed. Five weeks later the white onions on the left went in. The birds were hungrier and pulled alot of them out and the heat was going rapidly along with daylight hours. I planted more than this but onion seed is like parsnip and needs to be fresh to be viable. I also purchased this seed from a cut price chain store. Good intentions to not do that again will be stowed away for later retrieval. These are in the glasshouse because the frost pushes them out of the ground outside. Onions need as much growth as possible before the longest day so that's why I Autumn sow to get a head start.

A few signs of Spring. The peony shoots just beginning. Some gardeners here don't clip back their perennials in Autumn, choosing to leave the dried foliage for frost protection in Spring. I have done that through neglect with the hellebores in particular and they look terrible. The little flower heads are just coming through amidst a mass of rotton foliage; it's not dry and crisp and should have been cleared away. Good intentions formulated but not yet activated.

The hazelnuts are flowering, the only thing flowering apart from a little blue weed, Speedwell

in the garden that is a welcome call for the bees. This is the first year that the Whiteheart have flowered. Last year it was only the pollinator Merv. de Bolwiller.

Here is my first sketch and I'm completely happy with it. Bill normally names his paintings but I've already called this sketch "Rolling Back the Years" . I think the girls who've just seen me will all agree that Bill works with a flattering eye. I'm thinking of an array of my favourite gardening tools in the background.

I finished planting the new potatoes this week, 7 beds @ approx 120 seed potatoes each. The yield, from memory, is around 500g per shaw when they are very first dug in late November. By Christmas it will be maybe 750g. Mostly red kings which are a well shaped, lovely flavoured potato and a few of another variety with a speedy name; it's either Sprite or Swift and all I can remember is that it suggests a fast, early potato. A crow bar, wiggled around to create the hole is the perfect tool for planting. These are too close to mound up and I plant as deeply as possible to minimise any greening of top potatoes. The soil was marvellous and I quietly congratulated myself as I went. Every effort spent on it has repayed me lavishly. Have planted some tomato seeds and begun to rehydrate the glasshouse. The soil cannot absorb too much water at first and it needs to be taken slowly. I'm trying some new tomatoes this year; recommendations welcomed.

Parsely Pesto

2 large handfuls of parsely, stalks removed

1/2 c olive oil, 1/2 c parmesan cheese, 1/4 c nuts (cashews)

2 cloves garlic

'now we see as in a mirror, dimly'

2010-08-12T21:06:00.000-07:00

Looking 50 boldly in the face, (the approach of it, not the event) I commissioned a portrait, grandly in oils; a sign of security and self acceptance. I have been quick to criticise women who don't face up to their age and I marvel at the filter of denial that the mirror seems to be seen through. Marvel not. When it came to securing the image of how I wanted to be seen, guess what? Nothing was suitable and everything made me look too old.
The artist tells me he is in a new phase. In the last one he looked for beauty and put it in. Now he is embracing the wilderness. O Oh.
Well I've sorted out a young thing outfit and console myself with the concept of Dorian Grey. That didn't come out of nowhere.
Anyway, it is enough to be seen through the eyes of love.

Today it rained which seemed a good time to pot up some strawberries heeled in the glasshouse. They travelled by handbag down from a North Island flea market, wrapped in newspaper and rootbare. They have spent more weeks than I care to admit to stuffed in the ground as opposed to planted. I've potted them up in my woodland mix: wood chips, leafmould, blood and bone and a bucket of garden dirt. The dirt widens the range of micro activity around the roots and introduces the same flavours (for want of the right word) the plant will meet when it gets to this garden. Now that they are in pots they can beef up a root ball and then be hardened off in the shade house before going outside. The details will make the difference.

I was quite pleased with them until I looked back at an autumn file photo of my own runners. The light looks so different and maybe that is partly why the greens are warm.They are also growing vigorously, another point of difference between the two.

Moving right along I dug in the last bed of black oats. Normally the ground should be left for 3-4 weeks before planting else young plants will be starved of nitrogen by the decomposition process. Last year it was a month before the seed potato threw up shoots so there is my 3-4 weeks. However, there is always an however, by the time the seed goes in next week it will be two weeks later than last year. Will they sprout in two weeks and suffer? Will it matter? We can only wait.

Timing is all important with a green crop. There are premium times for each plant to be dug in, some flowering (broad beans), all pre seeding I would guess, and the softer the plant the easier it is to chop up. You could haul the tops off to the compost and with oats there is a thick root mass so still plenty of organic material for the microorganisms to work on.

The other thing is that after a month of decomposition you start to lose the goodness. So many things to consider or ignore. My primary aim has been to get a 3rd crop rotation before new potatoes go in again (and again and again) and the soil is definitely the better for it.

We had a family interview for Louis' LIA (language immersion award) and it was interesting to see ourselves/myself through yet another lens. One thing I hadn't thought about is that our main family recreation is eating together. No wonder it is so important to have great crops of new potatoes and strawberries upon strawberries upon strawberries.

I'll give Monty Don the last word which applies equally well to gardening or any other past time.

'It is important to remember that having made your own planting rules, you are free to break or change them. In fact it is probably vital to do so, otherwise you risk disappearing up your own rigidly controlled horticultual nether regions. '

Summer Pudding

2010-08-06T00:53:00.000-07:00

The Japanese talk about a rice stomach that nothing else can fill. We have always had 'pudding seats' and I think that was what swung the idea to plant gooseberries: gooseberry pie. I'm getting ahead of myself because this is a blackcurrant for which there are only three things I need to know: blackcurrant cordial, blackcurrant-pie-the-all-time-family-favourite-pudding, and blackcurrant crumble. Make that four: summer pudding.
These are the self same currants that missed a year's pruning and consequently gave me a lot of grief, zillions of tiny currants that nobody could be bothered picking properly and in the end we left the lions share to the birds. Such tiny thorns on the rose bush of gardening are a marvellous agent for change and sure enough, I remembered the pain sufficiently to prune and prune hard.

There are three years growth here and I wonder if you can make out the difference. It's very easy on site because the oldest growth is thicker, darker and has many side shoots. Take all of these out straight away with loppers. The next layer are strong shoots with evidence of last years berry crop and normally I would take all of these out with secaturs, the wood is softer and thinner. The remaining branches are the new growth from last year that will fruit this year. Leave seven of them.

In the end, the new growth was so spindly that I picked out the strongest seven two year olds and next year we will get back to fruiting on year old wood. There is more than one way to prune blackcurrants and this method does not fit the text books. However we have 75 bushes which cuts us some slack in production. This is virtually the only care they get, apart from mowing the grass between the rows and the grass around them is sprayed once a year. (I have seen a companion planting with comfrey work very well as a weed suppressant and nutrient package.)

Can you see there is a crown at the base from which all the shoots come up and to which the branches are cut back? There will always be a bud or two left at the bottom which will come away this year for next. I should think the harsh pruning gives us less fruit but they are large, shiny and beautiful and command the respect they deserve.

I squeezed those gooseberries into the little red car on Thursday for a long drive home and what great plants they turned out to be underneath the wrappers. That tangle that looks like straw is a mass of roots and a bucket or two of compost and a peck of wood ash later, however much a peck may be, they are ready for spring. The potash in the woodash encourages fruiting rather than leafy growth and they like it.

Final picture, the triangle of three, the circle of ash defines them. They are on the south side of the fruit trees, don't need full sun and replace the red hot poker that I took out in Autumn.

I'll give the final word to Mole from Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows who is discovering the 'joy of living and the delight of spring without its cleaning'.

'Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!'and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel...till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.'

Hello Old Friend

2010-07-30T02:43:00.000-07:00

Gardening is never boring, tedious sometimes, and usually hard work but so much to see and enjoy. Hello old friend. It's really good to see you again.

The top garden looks relatively dry but the bottom by the access path is so wet that I went home this week with an inch of mud on my boots to squelch and slither on, hopefully lose most of, all the way home.

Cleaning up the asparagus bed was quite rightly a job that belonged to Autumn but it is clear I didn't get that far. Never mind. Clipped back the fronds and even the weeds were lovely. Lots of stinging nettle courtesy of sheep manure last year, and calendula because I let it seed. These are orange and yellow and cheerful and easy to pull out when they become a pest. For once I had the recommended compost mix right there in the wheelbarrow of dry carbon matter and soft green weeds plus a generous serve of soil because it was still wet enough to stick to the roots.

There were a few mossy tinges of green on the soil and I put a sprinkle of wood ash down first. I know it has a limited liming effect and having read a bit more, may do a follow up with lime because asparagus does not like an acid soil. Besides that I had a small stash of by now, very smelly, slimy seaweed. On with you and to cover it all a layer of woody muck from the cow byre.

But wait, there's more. The final layer is going to be compost but the path is too slippery for the minute to get my wheelbarrow up which brings me to mulches. We lose the first asparagus in spring to frosts so the plan is to bury the crowns deeper so that it comes through later. Apart from physical depth, a mulch layer will slow down the warming of the ground so that should also set it back a bit. It will also retain the moisture which this year is already in the soil. It can of course keep the moisture out.

Elsewhere in the garden, I've heard that bare soil around fruit trees can reduce frost damage, something to do with reflected light I think. Mulches around the trees tend to be fairly mobile anyway as the birds, hedgehogs whatever scratch them out.

This is the broad bean/garlic patch, take your pick. I did a composite photo but you couldn't tell the difference so here it/ they is/are. The point of note here is nothing to note. Hmmm. I am considering digging around to see what is below. At this stage it feels a bit like cheating. For some reason it reminded me of finding out what sex your child is at a prenatal scan. Ridiculously over dramatic, nevertheless I resisted and will check when they went in and then consider it again.

I presoaked both the garlic and the beans, normally a sure fire starter to success but the big rains, the rains of 2010 followed and I wonder whether they have rotted in the ground. On an optimistic note there are no new weeds in that soil either meaning that things just aren't growing yet or are they...

The pea-beans are up (they were not pre-soaked). These are an heirloom plant I know nothing about. I was sent the seed so like Jack and his beanstalk I will have to see what develops and keep a look out for giants, singing harps and geese laying golden eggs.

the good, the bad, the ugly

2010-07-20T03:13:00.000-07:00

What gardener didn't love 'The Secret Garden' as a child, or more recently, 'Tom's Midnight Garden'? There's something about this idea of a hidden garden that is still open and free within that I really like. I guess that's what 'garden rooms' are all about; not revealing everything at once.
Well my thoughts are above ground, open and free, but it has been a captive, basement existence for the last few weeks in one of the potato rooms. En Hakkore has had five of these windowless, internal rooms in the time we've been here but the sultana room was converted into a kitchen a few years ago. It was a room off the main kitchen, fully lined with tin to keep it rat proof and in the Sanitorium days all the dry goods were kept there. The smell of sultanas had completely permeated it but it has gone now as has the lining.

Go through the open door of the Administration block, turn right and walk along to that set of ground floor windows. Turn

180 degrees, push the door open and imagine alot more sacks, each with an average of 8o potatoes. There are platforms on the floor to keep the potatoes off the floor because if they freeze it's all over.
The other rooms incidentally are a walk-in safe, another potato room, and from the Youth Detention Centre days, a very sad jail trio of three rooms. The jail seems to be still permeated with despair.

My job was to drag the spuds out, brush off the sprouts, dust them with powder and re-bag, lug back into the tiny room and stack. It didn't take me long to realise that if the job had been done a month earlier, then each potato would not have to be handled and buffed. A quick dust would suffice. I've had ample time to consider that this is not a mistake I will be making twice.

Finally the job is finished and on a lighter note I'm preparing to cater for a camp this week-end. It's a FGB group, Full Gospel Businessman, and in NZ that means men only. Hence the man-labels on the jam and the man-size jar of relish to go out with the cooked breakfast.
In the UK they are open to everyone. I used to go along and typically we would meet in a hotel over high tea.
Without making sweeping generalisations I can confidently say that there will be no-one asking for herbal teas, trim milk, or with dietary intolerances. There will be no sandwhiches left-over after supper, only biscuits and the porridge will all go while the muesli is ignored.

Oh that life could always be this simple.

Back in my Day

2010-07-07T03:30:00.000-07:00

Hah! These holidays we are progressively joining the butt-whipped ranks of those who have done the rail trail. Welcome to our world.
Lunchtime at Waipiata on Monday; two degrees all day which beats Alexandra's high today of minus one. Bill is about to dispense the boiled sweeties, today raspberry drops.
We have found a number of benefits in doing the rail trail in Winter. Firstly you have the track all to yourselves. The other children are away ice-skating, luge camp or bonspeiling at the outdoor curling rinks which are beautifully frozen.

The track for the most part is firm. A few muddy patches here and there; cycle through those and you get a stripe of mud running up your back like a badger. 'Daisybank' below. To the right of the photo, just out of shot so you'll have to imagine it sorry, is a very old apple orchard. There are a number of these in this area and it on my list to pursue some of these varieties that fruit well here.
Another advantage of the season is that you don't have to stop to peel off layers. On the contrary you keep cycling to keep warm.

It's been one of those experiences where you suddenly get a whole new insight and revisit old memories accordingly. I now remember how visitors (off the trail) have hobbled into the house, their appreciation of long hot baths, and the seemingly disproportionate gratitude at the sight of Bill and the trailer come to collect them from a Station.
Is it just my age or were bike seats really as large and capacious as I remember? With springs, full support, and nothing to suggest that you might go into your child bearing years in any way compromised.

I have the only gel seat (which promises a lot more than it delivers) and although coveted and complained about, it is my non-negotiable right. I dropped everybody off at Wedderburn today and then set off from Ranfurly to meet them half-way. Parked the trailer: hat, gloves, scarf, jacket, butterscotch shells, gel seat, gel seat, gel seat...forgot to pack the gel seat. Fortunately, as an ex brownie, I was prepared for every emergency and set off wrapped in enough bubble wrap to post me to Samoa intact. (that is the seat wrapped, not me).

We had left home planning to do a down-hill stretch and I was going to drop everybody and then read my book with a nice hot coffee in Hyde-no wheels at all in my day. But we took the opposite direction to get petrol and changed the plan. The mirage faded and I only remembered it later, soldiering bravely and somehow doing an uphill peice anyway, alone, as the others whizzed merrily along even free-wheeling towards me.

Anyway, gardening joys also await me although it may still be some time. I can probably count on one hand what is useful straight out of the garden at the moment: leeks, spring onions, parsely, cabbage, brussel sprouts, carrots. Whoops that's six fingers already and I've still got rosemary and coriander and silverbeet and celery.

The only job this week is to dust the potatoes with anti-sprout powder. I'm not even going to ask what's in it. Just scrub the potatoes properly from now on. Enjoy the holidays!

On the Rise

2010-06-27T00:05:00.000-07:00

Danish Pastries: this is another product that has been degraded from the special
to the everyday by a food industry eager to advance the illusion that luxury can
be a perpetual condition, forgetting that it is only in contrast to the plain
that the fancy has any meaning. The road from treat to commodity is paved with
cheap ingredients, manipulated to make less seem more.

Andrew Whitley, Bread Matters

The tax deadline falls nicely in the middle of winter and has been the perfect excuse to stay inside for two weeks. Of course you can't spend all that time on paperwork and the kitchen has seen a flurry of breadcraft, the perfect antidote and side track that has got me through to another year's meticulous accounts (meticulous now). This book is great and can't you just tell from that quote that it would be right up my alley. The recipe for Danish Pastries is sufficiently difficult that they may never grace our table but there has been no lack. I've made the best wholemeal fruit loaf ever and am gearing up for the Stollen next.

Had a mishap with the sourdough due to insufficient heat. Mr Whitley suggests purchasing a small plant propagator to achieve consistent results. Bill has pointed out that if I wait for the annual police auction I could get propagator, fluorescent lights, hydroponics kit and automatic watering system at cut price.Think I'll carry on with the hot water cupboard.

That photo incidentally is self-sown coriander seedlings outside the house beside the struggling grape vine. I could hardly put the rhubarb below as my top shot ; who would still be reading? The house is brick and even in winter can put out some heat at the end of the day on that North face. I haven't exploited it, beyond planting the grape and a black boy peach, because it is also very dry and the soil is poor, but I have it in mind.

Now this is a sorry sight. Somebody can correct me, but it seems like this particular rhubarb wants to grow all year round but just gets killed off with each successive frost. See the new shoots coming through from below that keep growing and then get hideously burnt off. As long as it got water it grew fresh stalks right through the summer and they are always a beautiful red. I read somewhere that wood ash will secure the colour but I have another variety amongst them that is quite green and in the same conditions so in this case it's a plant thing. The green rhubarb is the wallflower of the garden, unpicked and unloved and hence soon to be replaced.

Thought I'd get all the ugliness out of the way in one go: the path that I really wish I had got around to woodchipping in Autumn. They are all in this state, or worse, and preclude even going in for a look without gumboots and gardening clothes on. Even then, I emerge with thick dirt hoofs on my shoes and sludge and slop home. Could I be doing anything in there anyway?

Well, I could finish cutting back the asparagus and I have a big pile of muck sequestered away and 3 bags of seaweed especially for them. I want to get a bit more cover on the beds because the first spears come up too early and just get frosted off. If I can't slow them down I will have to use frost cloth or hay? or neglect?

The promised Kale shot. This is Red Russian and I also planted Squire because I liked the name. I'm embarrassed to say the seed was planted at the end of March. I have no idea what I was thinking. It should probably have been in before Christmas. There's nothing teaches like experience but it can be a hard way to learn.

Big Wednesday

2010-06-16T02:52:00.000-07:00

I never normally consider the fact that this is a household of boys but there are times when there is a gender weighted divergence of interests. Happily, for all its faults, the TV caters for me on a Wednesday night: 'Flash Forward'. The couch and chairs are full with the line up of five who sit mesmerised and only break into life in the ad breaks to punch/pinch/chew nails/argue/discuss the programme, and all manner of boy things. I have the computer to myself and I don't need to see the screen to know that I'm not missing a thing.

These remind me of little birds peeping for food, actually, emergent lupins; planted a month ago in the glasshouse. At this time of year, indoors or out, growth is either nil or death by freezing. I have only really grasped the fact that in this climate there are only two crops a year and one of those is a cover crop that will germinate and grow through the coldest months.

It seems painfully obvious that winter crops need to be fully grown here before winter starts. I didn't quite manage that. For celery and cabbage I bought plants in early February which bought me time but the brussel sprouts should have had a lot more growing and the Kale, well I'll save that for a blog of shame.

The brussel sprouts, freshly shampooed and glistening. The spray had to be used in 24 hours and the recipe made 5 litres which even for me was too much. Next time I'll freeze half. It's active ingredients were chilli, garlic and onions and there was speculation that rather than annihilate, I might instead incite some sort of mexican party. No sombreros to be seen and the aphids turned from grey to black so I consider it a success. Each leaf has a sprout in its armpit until you get to the little cabbage on top which is the last thing to eat.

Getting back to the two crops per season, that main crop needs to go in as early as possible and the fennel also went in too late. I finally got one beautiful fennel, the only one that didn't bolt to seed and had to pick it because it was beginning to freeze. Now what? Well I feel like we need a culinary success here to justify growing it again. Just don't quite know what form that will take. Have used some in a salad to get the benefit of fresh, there's nothing like it but then you knew I would say that.

Finally I am going to take my own advice Marg, who I merrily told to save her runner beans to eat as shell out beans. I haven't tried them yet in this form myself but I am drying them very carefully. How easy it is to assume that voice of authority ... and really know nothing at all.

Personal Cares

2010-06-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful sight. A bit like gopher holes on a lawn, not that I've ever seen them, leaves ready to be collected, stamped down, watered, covered and stored for two years. We trailer them off to the compost bins and I keep them seperate because they take so long to break down. I still have a stash from our very first year here that I use in seed raising mix, strawberry potting mix, anywhere where I need a weed free, nuetral base.

Coupled with that, I've run out of bin space so first job was to put a thick layer of last year's leaf mold on top of the compost piles. In the bottom bin you can see it's black and earthy, it's broken down roughly and is just nicely moist. The weeds are just beginning to regrow under the cover, (top bin) so it seemed a good idea to smother everything under a blanket for the winter.

I've been turning over the grass under the fruit trees and covering it with newspaper, cowmanure, pea straw, wood chips, anything I can get my hands on. The mulch helps retain moisture, feeds the trees, creates a nice medium for other plants (some more welcome than others) and means the lads can go through the property on the ride-on mower to cut the grass without getting their heads clipped as they negotiate around trees. A trailer load of leaves is already waiting for my next lawn annihilation.

I'm gearing up for a new spectacular artichoke season. The boys have been less than enthusiastic but I have seen Julie and Julia and besides, I have the books (Mastering the Art of French Cooking, volumes 1 and 2) with more recipes than I can count on one hand. Success awaits me. So, I've cut back the artichokes for the winter and the promising new shoots for Spring remain. Some are under sacks for the minute until I put hay around them; these ones have pea straw loosely about them, a combination of sacks and hay may be the best protection.

Quite off the topic, there's a substantial grey aphid colony parked on the brussel sprouts. I have been researching whitefly and come back to Kay Baxter 'Keep in mind that if you have a pest problem it is a sign that the plant is not happy and spraying the pests will not make much difference or help.' So therefore it is likely a soil nutrition problem. I'm inclined to agree but have a chilli, garlic, soap spray to try on the symptoms anyway. If nothing else they will be clean.

It looks like a dead stick stuck in the ground. I had to use a crowbar to get this walnut tree out of the forest a couple of years ago where it was languishing amongst the pines. The ground is on a slope so the little rock wall is not a collar around its neck but a dam wall tapering away at the sides to hold in the earth and water.
The tree is already quite old and has a poor structure. It has never bourne any nuts and self sown walnut trees are a lottery with the same poor strike rate. If it gets large enough it will be able to withstand the frosts better which at the moment, strip its leaves in Spring.

Unusual for me but I did a double take; it doesn't have to produce anything, it can be a poor specimen, it's allowed to be cared for even with its poor prognosis. Expectation nil. Enter Nurse Graham, and the old sanitorium has a hospice.

Winter gave Autumn a cold shoulder

2010-06-01T01:01:00.000-07:00

The week's gardening fits into a neat nutshell. After 4 inches of rain (2/5ths of last years annual rainfall), the trailer was needed in a hurry to rescue some stock grazing near the river. It was on my mind to empty all the horse poo off it earlier but it was very cold outside and deliciously warm inside. Owing to the sudden urgency, I had 5 willing helpers barrow off horse manure and finished covering every bed in the glasshouse in about 15 mins. Some of it went over lupin and peas sowed the week before and some over oats now about 6 inches high. It really was the icing on the rain-cake and it's not often you would call manure that.

This is the Taeiri River down by the green bridge. Normally it's a thin winding strip and the trees on the left are on the bank.
On Wednesday the school bus couldn't get through at one point and turned around and dropped our kids back off again, home for the day. The next two days were snow days, inside/outside, every radiator draped with wet gloves, hats, coats, and children everywhere. Is it any surprise that by Sunday Mama and I decided to head off for a drive and explore the snow from the comfort of the car with the prospect of a coffee stop at Black Forest Cafe? No it is not.

Kyeburn diggings, the cliff face scoured away by the gold miners and we followed it into the hills as far as we could go...

...to not much past here. We were planning on driving as far as the Dansey's Pass Hotel but the road was closed in a very convincing fashion, it looked completely swept away. Couldn't see any smoke rising from the cribs. One had a prominent sign 'NO visitors, NO callers'. Guess we won't be popping in there then. You can see the mountains reflected in the windows. This building looks like an old hotel to me. The current hotel is only a few kms away.

Those same mountains that were reflected in the windows. I have a poem complete with permission to use it, both courtesy of Mama. Many thanks. Poem by Nelson poet Carol Don Ercolano.

Seasonal Talk
...
You're one hot baby
Summer, said Spring
I'm off before
I get burnt
...
Very wise, said Summer
who spoke in cliches
If you can't stand the heat
get out of the kitchen
...
Autumn went to
Summer's funeral
dressed
in her finest colours
...
Winter gave Autumn
a cold shoulder
and sent her packing
...
With one look Spring
Melted Winter's heart
and he dripped sleepily
to bed
...
you're one hot baby
Summer, said Spring...
...

Imposter Syndrome

2010-05-25T02:49:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that men often define themselves by their paid jobs. 'I'm a ...whatever'. But I haven't always been in paid employment and I'm not always doing anything that I've trained for and I'm definitely not earning money. So what am I?
I also think that women often won't define themselves by what they do if they haven't formally studied it, got the certificate etc, hence 'I'm not really a chef, gardener, whatever, it's just what I do.'
The thing is we've had 30 mls of rain today and yesterday was drizzle and cold and I've been inside and in town shopping and the world of gardening suddenly seems so remote and I've been wearing other hats. Never mind. Gardening lives on in deep recesses of the mind.

I rewarded myself with the first cabbage this week now that the broccolli has finished. I bought plants and put them in at the beginning of February. I've been listening to them while I squash caterpillars: the cabbage whisperer. They make a kind of crispy squeaking sound that tells you how fresh they are and that they have had enough water. The large caterpillar bodies turn black and go mouldy and I'm interested to see whether that taints the growing cabbage. I've squashed enough to confidently make a few observations and suggestions.
1. Always check both sides of the cabbage leaf. You can hold the outer leaves up against the light and see the bodies silhouetted through of those in hiding underneath.

2. For anybody who has seen the movie I Robot, like the seemingly inanimate robots who for no explained reason, cluster together for company, so too caterpillars of all ages are often clustered together in a group rather than evenly dispersed.
3. I suspect it would have been a very good idea to flick the bigger bodies off.

Fresh cabbage has joined my list of vegetables that are unbelieveably better home grown.

A few good frosts last week and I flew into action and dug the yams. They have had 6 months in the ground, albeit without a lot of attention but it didn't seem like a particularly good return. Many of them are quite small and some were sort of flattened in the way that vegetables grown in hard dry soil can be. The crate weighed in at around 28kg with this load, say the crate is about 3 kg, and the original seed was 1kg of seconds. It's like one of those maths questions, the train is travelling at 40 kms per hour, the car is travelling at 30 and so on. The answer to this question however is not 25kg yield. The answer is don't use little tiny yams for seed. Unlike potatoes I suspect you need to plant what you want to get.

The next thing was garlic. Let me talk you through the photo. White dust on the ground is lime because I also planted broad beans which need lime so everybody got some. The board is for standing on while I plant. It firms the soil down evenly and is a handy measure for row width. There is a little wooden handle on the left that drills the 4 inch hole. The garlic cloves in the bucket have been soaked 24 hours in cow manure tea and already have root buds at the base. Now apparently garlic likes to put out roots before the worst of winter, a few months dormancy in the cold, even though there may be green stalks through and then away in the Spring. The best information by far is at www.gourmetgarlicgardens.com and I have their handy print out in my diary. What they don't tell you is that if the garlic gets too much water late in the season, all the outer cloves replicate and you get a large looking bulb that is full of tiny cloves. I'm hoping to avoid this this year and escape a trifecta.

Four seasons lettuce in the bird protection unit, which will come away in Spring. A VERY SILLY BIRD has been pulling up my emergent onions so I will have to plant them again. That's a third time because the first seed didn't come up at all. Onion seed is like parsnip and needs to be fresh to germinate.

When the rain stops we will rake leaves Mum and I. Pull out Robert Frost,

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

End of the Golden Weather

2010-05-18T02:18:00.000-07:00

I had already emailed a tree nursery enquiring about heritage apples suitable for this climate when I remembered the old tree up above the swimming pool. Every year, come frosts, come drought it is covered with bright red apples. I had been told they weren't worth bothering about and it occurred to me that it may be a cooking apple. Yes it is and a jolly good one too. Picked a bucket of apples and stewed them, bottled them, and remembering Jen's apple jelly, made jelly with the skins and cores. How thrifty is that? Sophie would be absolutely proud of me (Destitute Gourmet). The final test, made an apple pudding for tea which proved their suitability.

Here's one that got missed below, good colour and good size but the flesh is very dense suggesting not enough water. No surprises there.

There are old concrete bearers on the ground behind the tree suggesting that there has been a small dwelling there at some point. Went back to get a photo of the tree and found another one beside it that I have never noticed before. A smaller tree in fairly poor condition sporting one delicious apple. Call me Eve; I photographed it before I ate it. Have never seen one like it before but we all agreed it tasted great; shared it. Open Orchard Project down in Riverton (that's Robert Guyton) runs grafting workshops where you can graft your heritage tree cuttings onto new rootstock. I can see a week-end away coming up for me at some stage. I expect they may be able to identify the varieties also, given enough information. Shame I've already eaten the only specimen.

Meanwhile back in the glasshouse...I have covered the lemon trees in the middle with frost cloth. The frocks are pinned on with clothes pegs and already branches are wriggling out from underneath. This is the make or break year-deliver the goods or go. To their credit they are covered in lemons (green) and it's on the strength of this that they are getting such care. Looking forward to those lemons you lot.

I hate it when people ask for advice and then promptly disregard it but I had to in this instance. The advice was spread wood chips and quality compost over and fork in lightly. Well I haven't got any compost, good, bad or indifferent so on went the woodchips, pony poo as available, a sprinkle of blood and bone and contrary to anything I may have said before, I sowed lupins.

If you've ever watched Location Location Location on a Saturday night, the clients give the real estate agent a list of what they want and then buy something quite different. For my part, I was going to sow black oats, but when I went to find the netting to keep the birds off, it was buried beneath and behind building bits and peices. Birds don't eat lupin seed, plan A out the window, enter plan B. How easily carefully thought out plans are discarded for convenience.

The soil is looking all the better for it and I suddenly remembered that I've always had a feel for good soil. Even when we were little making mud pies we (you know who 'we' is Marg) knew that parts of the garden had much better dirt for baking, and that an egg or two (who's idea was it?)made a glossy smooth mixture. Cooking and gardening go so naturally hand in hand.

Beyond that I've been on caterpillar patrol all week. There are only nine cabbages but I planted them all together and created, in hindsight, a white butterfly brassica buffet. Still finding more caterpillars every day. Nine cabbages will be plenty because there's only one family will have the nerve to eat them . A final shot of the garden; it's a 'before' shot. As I said to Bill, call me Rolf Harris. No not singing kangaroo songs; in a few weeks, with a few deft final strokes it will all come together and suddenly everbody will see what has been in my mind's eye all along. An ordered garden bedded down for the winter.

Icarus Flies

2010-05-11T02:45:00.000-07:00

With Mama here, washing and ironing and tending my flower garden, all sorts of possibilities seem to be tantalisingly in reach and I have found myself compiling lists of all I want to achieve in the weeks she is here. I know I'm stretching too far. Even here with En Hakkore's measured pace, life is often busy enough and garden tasks take a back seat. But I plan and scheme and fly and maybe the wax won't melt and I'll reach my impossible goals. Maybe.

I was just wondering last week if a week might ever come where there was nothing new in the garden. Not yet: buried treasure. Dug up the two Maori Potatoes and netted 4kg from the pair of parents; that's a good return. One of them I washed for the foto; that's what they were like in the soil, gleaming purple and quite hard to distinguish from the earth.
In the week since, I have acquired glasses so maybe they are not normally so difficult to find.

So I was on a roll and feeling optimistic enough to pull up a yam and see if there was anything below: 665g of anything it turns out, most of them tiny. You can see the burnt off foliage with a few little clover like yam leaves near the crown. They were all still attached by their umbilical cords which made me hope that if I leave them a bit longer, there may be a weight gain. Not the sort of thing that anyone is normally hoping for.

With the ease in the schedule that Mama's industrious toil has created for me, I took a few minutes out to do a job that I've been meaning to get around to. Cut back the mint and surprisingly, weed it. It takes a pretty brave weed to try and outdo mint but clover was one of them and I think the other was grass. It escapes me for the minute. The mint has been nicely contained by the corrugated iron if I haven't shown it before.

Quietly behind the scenes the ongoing task is glasshouse prepaaration. Dirtdoctor (http://www.dirtdoctor.co.nz/) suggest adding woodchips to this particular soil for humic acid and humus to revitalise it. Yes, that is on the list.

I felt that I had picked my Bon Chretian pears too early and left these till in the end they all dropped off the tree safely into the comfrey below. It cushioned their fall and hid them from the birds who have left a number of cores hanging on the tree. This is the whole crop by the way. The name that springs to mind is Beurre de Bosc whether rightly or wrongly. They're never very big and I wonder if this tree was chosen primarily as a pollinator. Both trees are still young but look to be dwarf rootstock. Even dwarf pear trees may come into their own as they mature. Don't we all.
I took the opportunity to buy myself a few things for Mother's day to supplement the cards and breakfast in bed etc. One of my brain waves was to order 3 gooseberry bushes from Sutherlands Nursery in Waitati which will be waiting on the verandah for me to collect in August. A vague thought, what will I actually do with the gooseberries?, but no, push that aside. Clearly I have been reading English gardening books and the English love gooseberries. I will too.

My other present a book by Richard Langston, The Trouble Lamp.

I will close with the image of Athene and hope to imitate her in my achievements this week.

NOT MYTH
by Richard Langston
Some winged Athene on a racing cycle
glides to a halt at the traffic lights:
shades, helmet, hair tucked-in for speed.
Those limber athletic legs
ending in a professional click into the pedals.
'Lovely morning,' she says,
fast-disappearing over the brow of the hill.
The sedate mid-life plodder
left to consider other options.
The bus perhaps.

Belated photos

2010-05-02T18:15:00.000-07:00

Happy Tiredness

2010-05-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

The great potato heist last week and I forgot to even mention it. Normally we do potatoes in the school holidays so as to have every available pair of hands on deck, age no matter. It takes 3 or 4 days of hard slog. Somebody normally puts on morning or afternoon tea and off we all go in the trailer on the back of the tractor. It keeps everybody together and helps keep the impetus up. I always associate it with the holidays and that holiday feel of happy tiredness.

This year for various reasons we had a stupendous harvest, which as the potato inner circle grows, is a good thing but the prospect of digging, scrabbling, sorting, bagging loomed large. Enter the potato digger, thus, which was pulled out of Margaret's garden where it had done 20 years as a garden feature; some fine tuning; we'll never look back. I felt like the tailor on Fidder on the Roof who gets a sewing machine after a life time of stitching by hand and the whole village crowds round to marvel at it. It was marvellous alright and the whole job done in less than two days. So quickly in fact that I didn't get photos really.
Now I've had NZ spinach in the glasshouse for two years now, self sown this year, and never used it beyond a casual nibble on site as I water the glasshouse. It's the one spinach that you can eat raw with impunity so that ought to recommend it. I've always considered it to be the canary in the mine shaft. It's frost tender and so when the glasshouse begins to freeze it's the first thing to go and tells me that winter is effectively upon us.

Well thanks for the reminder Christy and I made those fetta and spinach muffins out of the paper last week (for suscribers of the ODT). It created one of those moments when Bill could happily say: 'I married a chef'.
It has been a week in the glasshouse. Digging over the tomato beds one by one, one a day to keep the job manageable. I straighten up after a good workout and consider that once again, the gym room remains unused. I've had my session for the day and I know it. Now tomatoes are narcissistic; they like themselves, their own company and their own compost, made of them. The main thing is to take good note of which bin they are going into so that it goes back to them next year, even as a rough mulch.
The ground has had nothing done to it for a long time and is in a sorry state. The clods break open to reveal worms coiled up into a tangled ball, hibernating amidst drought and barrenness. I'm covering each bed with pony poo and will sow oats here too. The masterplan (gardeners always have master plans that stretch out into the distance, bigger and better) is to use broad beans next year for the winter cover crop because they are an excellent soil conditioner and dug into the ground, they destroy the bacteria that cause tomato wilt. Yes, you read it here.
This year I'm growing the broad beans to get truck loads of seed.

The birds this year are very hungry and I'm going to have to start netting. There were no Rowan berries, because of late frosts, and they have eaten all my peas up, not one sprout and are ravaging the oats both seed and seedlings. Could they not pick caterpillars off the cabbages? (No, gobbling up my seedlings, here the four seasons lettuce.) One disadvantage of a proprietary pest kill spray is that when you run out, the pests reappear with a vengeance and if I'm not quick there will be no cabbage left to eat. I can hear the sighs of disappointment, mine are genuine.

I have to put in a photo of the romanesco broccolli, on the right. She's the cover girl of the vegetable world. Looking up her records I see the seed was planted on the 1st of December and the photo, just about the 1st of May, 5 months old. It is well worth noting that this is by far the best of eight, and same thing happened last time I grew them: one really good one and the rest stragglers. They ought to prove a good indicator crop of soil fertility and gardening prowess so I can only aim for a better tally and keep growing them. Until next week then...

Going in Circles

2010-04-24T02:29:00.000-07:00

Here I was this week clearing away the last of the corn stalks and thinking it didn't seem so long ago I was planting them. Now I'm sowing black oats, then it will be potatoes and then another summer crop and on it goes. Life is cyclic and so is nature.

Still reading Monty (Monty and Sarah Don, Fork to Fork) and absorbing the ideal of a self-sustaining or 'non-input' garden. This is where you establish an environment that largely provides for itself, supplying its own compost and nutrients. It is probably easier to do on a larger scale and I would think that having livestock would help, even if it is as small as worms. Strangely enough the penny dropped this week; I am gardening on a larger scale. I was reading an advertisement for forcing pots where they recommended two rhubarb plants, not one, if you were going to force it. I'd say I have 3 dozen and that is barely enough. This is a big garden.

Well sustainable gardening requires that nothing is wasted and that everything is returned to the soil. Ta da! That black in the wheelbarrow is leaf mould from the leaves that Mama raked here 2 years ago. Yip,it takes that long for them to break down. In the sack is sawdust, untreated, from the workshop. In the bucket dried blood, and bone meal. Without asking too many questions, dead animals get sent off to the works and come back in bags...seperated. This is a gift from a farmer down South. We don't work on this scale.

So equal quantities of sawdust and leaf mould, and a good handful of blood and bone (with a partiality to bone meal here) and the result is a strawberry soil mix to dig in and use as a mulch. Finished them off with a pine needle mulch because these are planted 2ft apart and are just new runners. Look in the box and you'll see the nice root formation.

Now what remains is plenty of Autumn watering and they should be cropping next Summer.

The time has been right this week for getting in those cover crops where ever the ground is cleared; ideally double-dug in this garden. It is a slow process here because it hasn't been done. It can only get easier.

The seasons may run a circular route but jobs in the garden are a chain of processes. One job leads to another to another to another to finally the end task that you had in mind from the start. So to throw over the peas as a cover crop first required saving the seed back in February, podding them, preparing the soil (fetching the cow manure and building it into the dig) and then slowly rehydrating it with the soak hose over a few weeks here and there. Sowing seeds: 5 mins. Preparation: always and ongoing. When I come in the door and say, 'I've had a great time in the garden; I sowed some peas' it doesn't really communicate all that. Blank stares all round.

Haven't mastered the really close-up in which you would have seen not just one or two bees, bottoms up in the artichokes but many, all burrowing down into the depths of the flowers. We may not have eaten many but they have been a great crop.
The frosts are taking them out but they have shoots coming away at the base to nurture over winter with straw. In Spring I'll plant them out and begin the year again...

Looks like Autumn

2010-04-18T02:06:00.000-07:00

'It seems to me that making places is what gardening is really about and the
means that you use, with plants, hard materials or open spaces should always be
directed toward this end of creating somewhere with its own definable identity
that was not there before. '
Monty and Sarah Don, Fork to Fork

Autumn is rather a nice time to stand back and look at the framework of the garden. Monty Don's aesthetics are something to aspire to but I haven't really got a clue about how to make these places or even what I'm trying to make. I normally just respond to needs and the current need is a place to put some raspberry canes and blackcurrant bushes that I want to get out of the vegetable garden. The obvious place is amongst the fruit trees at my place. First step remove the red hot poker that had sucked every skerrick of moisture out of its immediate environs. Here is the sad debris, dead leaf on the left to compost, live material on the right that is full of virulent looking stems and roots; dump that. And behind the piles the large gap to plant raspberries. They have to be far enough from the fence that the cows won't reach them. This is as far as I could be bothered going for the minute.

Of course, when you can't, or don't feel like gardening, there is always the great fall back of reading about it so that's how I spent the rest of Saturday afternoon, rereading John Jeavons', How to Grow More Vegetables.

.

Current gardening task until my new seeds arrive is putting in cover crops. Here's the black oats just up in the glasshouse. This year I'm forking in pony plops (secret flag swamp stash), then oats and the plan is to dig it all in in Spring before we start planting again.

Last day of the school holidays so today we took a day out to Falls Dam. This is the overflow plughole and the picture doesn't really show you just how low the water is behind it. Last time the boys were here the plug was submerged and all they could see was the swirling water tumbling down. Apparently this is the driest it's been for 80 years. We carried on to St Bathans for the drive. Thought we could come again when you're down Mama and carry on along the loop road which comes out near Becks.

Here's Bill heading up the road to have a look in the little art gallery. It's in the middle building, the old Bank and gold depository barely big enough to swing a cat in. You can see the leaves have changed colour but are still on the trees...for the most part.

So for the week ahead? I've had a week of starting things but not finishing them . Started double digging beds but they're either too wet, or too dry. Things like rhubarb, artichokes and the yams are starting to disappear in the garden as the frosts take their toll; but it's a process and too soon to do anything. The primary goal is to get the winter cover crops in, the seasons' debris out and tidy up for winter. Now all of that done really will make the vegetable gardens a great statement of purpose and identity and in my opinion, beauty. It will take more than a week though.

Photos for Emergency Rations and the technology to integrate them is beyond me.

2010-04-09T03:12:00.000-07:00

Emergency Rations

2010-04-09T02:43:00.000-07:00

I caught myself thinking this week that all of a sudden I had accidentally got 20 brussell sprout plants in the glasshouse. That's about 7 plants each for the three families that even want to eat them. I don't need a crystal ball to see a little consumer resistance looming as they appear again and again and again.

What struck me as odd, was that I only just seem to have noticed it when I did indeed plant the seed, and according to someone's law it struck particularly well, whereas the broccolli, which we all love, has been poorly represented. Not wanting to waste good plants, in they went, watered, fed and sprayed with "Success" which has seen to the white butterflies. It's the only spray on anything and is supposed to be organic but sure wipes out a lot of things. I don't trust it. Nevertheless, brassicas are a sorry lot if white butterfly is not dealt to. I'm gathering ideas on that one. One battle at a time.
Where was I?
Oh yes, I have been tending to them for weeks but now that the corn is picked and frozen, and the runnerbeans uprooted and out, then there are no other distractions and I sort of gasped, and counted them. Twenty.
Oh well. They're very good for you, and you, and you.

There are lots of runner beans drying as I write that just got away in the end. That old consumer resistance. Some years we are eating them by early January so that's four months of runner beans and they don't freeze particularly well. Enter plans B and C.
Firstly they make a great dried bean. Secondly these Emu beans, more what I call a french bean, freeze well. Grow these for freezing.

Here's Johnny podding them for me. If that looks like being very helpful (yes it is) he did also clean the windows for me today, but money changed hands. It was well worth it.
Now I've been bottling plums madly all week and still going. The basement is looking like some sort of Amish food cellar apart from the electric light overhead and the gentle hum of the freezer. I won't brag a tally until they are all done. Suffice to say, if there is an emergency, Marg has two pumpkins in her basement for the requisite 3 days food supply. (Hope the power is still on. )
We on the other hand, will dine on a surfeit of plums and all we need to do is prise off the lid. So both households are well equipped.
It does remind me of that book you used to read us Mum, 'Landslide'. The house is covered by a landslide and the children trapped inside. Hey ho there are hams hanging from the ceiling that keep starvation at bay. Now that's a good emergency plan.

And just to put a little reality check-in for anyone who might feel their garden is not performing. The sticks on the left with brown bits was a bay tree. Sorry Mama, that rather handsome rosemary of yours that came down from Chch; it doesn't like the cold/drought/neglect either. Then again who does.
Monday's poem out of the ODT this one by Susan Jones. What I like about it is that it's not beautiful, clever, profound or particularly meritous but it's still charming to me. Like your pottery receptacle Marg, for want of the right word, that hasn't been thrown out and we are all rather fond of.

The leaf takes leave

The leaf takes leave,
leaving the only home it
has known,
sails off
across swelling wind,
surfs waves of air.
Free
at last!
Exploring another world,
lifted by another gust,
twirls in
ecstasy,
dances in blue
air,
but,
suddenly,
drops,
falls
subsides
is lost
in the
pile of ageing gold
at gutter's edge.
Sweet freedom all too short.
Oh
that I had left earlier!

A Good Pudding

2010-04-02T00:52:00.000-07:00

It's a dwarf cox's orange tree. Last year the apples got too heavy and a
branch broke off. This year, a few more fruits and the wood a little stronger. The apples tend to have little cracks around the stem which is enough of an imperfection that the boys don't want to take them to school. They have grown up in an age of visual perfection. Real perfection is these apples, tree ripened and absolutely delicious straight off the tree.

I pulled all the beetroot, no photo. Lacklustre as they were, they bottled up well. Beetroot are a good indicator of soil health and sure enough, they reflected it. At one end of the row they were huge but by the other end they had dwindled away to ping pong balls. The tops of a good beet are even nicer than silverbeet.

The plums are in and the crutches down. This is my best pear: I think it's a Bon Chretian. The other tree I suspect was planted as a pollinator. It delivers more fruit at the moment but they aren't as well suited to this climate. They don't mature enough before the really cold weather and seem to be the worse for it.

Just a reminder of whose house you are looking in. Managed to get some of the dishes stack into this shot. That's more like it. Corn chowder for tea, and yes, the wheel has turned full circle, there's the first leek of the year. I seem to remember that that's where I started.
When I announced the other week that we were having leftovers for tea, Johnny asked would there be pudding, 'because when we have a poor tea then we usually have a good pudding.'
Soup also ranks as a poor tea. Pudding is pending for the minute while I do this.

Won't be long everybody, just post a poem.

IN THE TEST OF TIME

Here lies the start and the finish. Wedderburn.
To bear witness will be the old tavern
of schist, mudbrick and rough thrown mortar.
Stalwart and steadfast.
Unhurried in nature, in the test ot time.

From far afield, from all walks, they are drawn,
to compare their skills and stategies and fortitude.
To benchmark their youthfulness, perhaps.
Those aging cyclists.
Hurried in nature, in the test of time.

The poet is Eion Mills who the newspaper tells us is a forest manager based in Milton.

Running to Win

2010-03-26T04:07:00.000-07:00

It's alright, you can stop worrying. We got out of Milford the day before heavy rain washed out the road and trampers had to be helicoptered off the Routeburn track. And we had two glorious wet days where the side tramps were cancelled and we had to stay in the hut and play cards. Who could ask for anything more?
When we got home and up to my elbows in the sink on catch up, there was this terrible smell. I boiled the dishcloth and teatowels to no avail and was looking into the depths of the pot cupboard, perhaps there was a rotting dead mouse but no, mystery solved. Three jars of rotten tomatoes on the sill were getting a bit high. There's a layer of mould on the top you can just make out and the decomposition breaks down a coating around the seeds that inhibits germination. Next step rinse and count out onto squares of toilet paper, 5 by 5, 25 to a sheet. Come spring I will just cover the whole sheet with potting mix and so it begins again. Most of these are off to the Southern Seed Savers Network, (Otepoti Urban Organics). I need to build up a bit of seed credit.

Autumn has that strange synchronicity: you're both harvesting and preparing to plant again at the same time.

It's very dry, did I mention that our rainfall was 9 inches last year? I think that puts us on a par with desert, officially. Well I've been watering the strawberry runners to encourage them to root, and of course pinching out all but the first plant on each runner. Have double dug a bed with cow manure, for once they are established enough to move, and being forest dwellers at one time, they like pine needles. For both the offspring and the mother plant, the biggest factor in good production next year is thorough watering this autumn. I have noticed that this is also true for a lot of plants and here, it makes the difference between surviving the winter... or not.

Corn is finally ready and was worth the wait. It took about 25 days longer than the packet promised (115 days, not 90 which was probably optimistic). I put that down to growing into the dark side (fading light and heat) instead of into the height of summer. This is speculation not knowledge. I'm digressing because the photo below is not corn at all: florence fennel and I've cut it throught the middle to display the interior going up to seed. Seedlings sat in trays too long before being planted. This is a plant, like celery that likes a lot of water to be sweet and juicy; makes sense. Best way I've ever had it was sliced thinly, raw as a salad with smoked salmon. Short of such grand company, it's a good addition to coleslaw.

Final note. Here's Jude finishing the 2.5 km cross country run around the hills at Paerau. They have to stagger over 2 hay bales as they come up the final straight. There's no one else in the picture because he was so far in the lead, coming in first by a country mile. Running the race, it's a great metaphor for life. Run Jude, run.

Star of the Week

2010-03-11T18:42:00.000-08:00

Johnny decided to do a project on bees for his homework this week. He got two books out of the library, one of them called 'Bees and Wasps'. I fail to see how the two are compatible at all. One makes honey, propolis, pollen and royal jelly amongst other things and fertilises plants. The other kills bees and steals their honey. It's not hard to pick the real friend.
O.K I better back down a bit. As always, nothing is so black and white. There are parasitic wasps that do great things to control white butterfly. Also the common wasp has a carniverous diet for many months which must take care of a few things. It develops a craving for sweetness late in the Summer. That's why they only spoil the picnic towards the end of the holidays.
Anyway, having twisted arms in the past to get a hand down at the apiary on the odd occasion, I was bowled over by the interest and aptitude. He is a boy of surprising talents. Well done Johnny.

Now this morning we had a frost and then by mid-morning there was snow on the Hawkdun ranges and Mt Ida. Temperatures have dropped with a thump. It's hard to believe that only the night before this last one it was so hot I had to sleep with my feet out of the blankets, where they were bitten by the cat who felt I was impinging on her territory.

These are dwarf butterbeans dangling on the wire like chooks, all hung out to dry. The seed went in on the 29th October, when I was making comprehensive notes in the gardening diary. Post Christmas and January draw a blank but it looks like we were eating them by February. That's about 90 days from seed to harvest. I left the rest for seed which is what we can see here.

Now the 2 plants one in from the left have no bun of fluff around their stalks which is the root ball. They had begun to wilt a bit and when I pulled them the stalks were nearly eaten clean through.

I've had bean plants suddenly wilt and die off in the past, especially dwarf beans and just thought it was something they were prone to; perhaps a fungal infection. I don't know why I never thought of the humble grass grub that I know so well. Sure enough, there was a plump one still in the ground. I think they must come in with the compost and they really like beans and lettuce. Nothing else seems to be affected so drastically.

From one small insect to another, whitefly on the courgettes. I had decided from the brown leaves, dried out to a crisp, that the plants didn't like too much full sun. Wrong. They love the heat but it's the whitefly that drains all their nutrients like a vampire. Kay Baxter (Koanga Gardens) says whitefly, at its root is a nutritional problem ie. 'there are some quite common, specific relationships between pests and diseases and certain soil imbalances'. In this case then, excess nitrates in the plant tissue and/or a molybedenum deficiency. Winter would be a good time to research this further and decide what it means for the gardener and what action is required.

It now being Autumn, let's put that aside and admire Bill. Every garden needs one. The sunflowers are inside because the summer was shaping up so lousy and I thought they'd die outside. Corn on the left will be ready in about 2 weeks. Corn outside has come to nought. It did turn out to be a lousy summer. Hopes are high for this crop here.

One of my neighbours has given me some interesting poppy seeds. A big blowsy orange one with the lovely round seed heads and a no less attractive one, en masse, the red Anzac poppy. The gardening magazines say to plant wildflowers in Autumn which may or may not work here but I'll sprinkle the seed about and see what happens. Flowers and colours have never been my forte so I'm actually better not to think too hard about it and just scatter. Could be famous last words...

The crutch of the matter

2010-03-03T00:55:00.001-08:00

Those walking sticks in the basement have finally been put to good use; all four of them. The scene is somewhat reminiscent of a Salvador Dali painting except that here the props have a purpose: the branches are so heavy with plums they'd just about be touching the ground, or breaking. Perhaps I should have thinned them but last year there was no fruit and so I figure the tree owes me all that watering and care. When gardeners turn mean...

This is the prune tree and I managed to get the entire crop into one photo. The third plum is tucked up in the left hand corner. The photo doesn't do justice to the amazing purple that they are. The blossom and fruit are so beautiful that I'm not going to prune it at all so that it can be a showpeice in the front yard. The birds will be pleased to get all the fruit that we can't reach. I figure we can share.

Brace yourself for a sorry sight. Even with the best of intentions some things just don't get done. Basil and dill still in the seedling tray. Yip. Every day I water them but I'm past thinking must get those in. Now I silently apologise and prolong the agony with a good soak because that is easier than doing something about it. At this rate I'll be able to harvest the dill seed before it all goes to the compost heap. How cruel is that?

And finally because the Autumn clean up is actually hard slog, hoeing and digging and trundling away weeds and not nearly enough fun, here's my favourite cover crop: phacelia. The bees really love it and they've had a lean season.

I've been saving alot of seed. Lupin and phacelia for cover crops. All those beans that missed being picked, and collecting in tomatoes from the best plants to see if I can lift the calibre of next years crop. Oh yes, already thinking ahead to bigger and better but on the other hand enjoying all the bottling and freezing and squirrelling away of this year. Keeping busy.

Autumn clean up

2010-02-21T22:39:00.000-08:00

I've already told Marg and Jen my great dramas of the week but as they are less than half of my readership, just, and because Mama is probably wondering what the fire engine sticker was doing on her letter this week...I'll boil my cabbages twice and mention the chimney fire. We were going away for the week-end and leaving all the boys home alone. Marg's words where still ringing in my ears 'so long as they don't burn the house down' when I noticed a stray spark and the chimney glowing red hot. I shut the fire right down and yelled and rang for help and then had time for that terrible moment of panic the house is burning down, what do I grab? In hindsight I thought of lots of things, paintings and photos probably but at the time, nothing. There was nothing I cared about more than being alive.

By this stage David had whacked the chimney with the rolling pin and seemed cheerful enough so my natural pragmatism won out and I decided to wait and see how things went before carting anything outside. Bill swept the chimney that afternoon.

Boys astounded us by having the house tidy when we got home and managing extremely well. I had a first glimpse of all that parenting donkey work paying off; the relentless coaching on dishes and washing and so on that never seems to really permeate as long as you are around, but it has. Hey ho.

Carrots are ready for thinning. Ground needs to be kept moist enough to wiggle them out without pulling off the tops, whoops, or leaving half the carrot in the ground. The triumph of these carrots is no carrot fly. It was David's idea, plant them right at the bottom of the property while the carrot flies weren't looking, and put them amongst the emergent peas. Apparently carrot flies fly close to the ground and won't hop over a barrier. It has certainly worked so far.

Anyway, I discovered the cure for gardening inertia in the form of a visiting Swiss student Tabeah who is eager to help and comes genetically equipped with a Swiss work ethic. Buoyed by the prospect of someone else to toil alongside I've leapt the first hurdle and begun the Autumn clean-up.

First beneficiary the yams. Discovered belatedly that they need earthing up like potatoes. Well there's nothing down under there yet and somehow the yams are supposed to miraculously appear after the frosts take out their tops. Here's hoping.

Still harping on about the cucumbers. Green shorts squarepants has taken fright and set fruit and earned a repreive. I'll grow this one again. It's very good eating and big enough for two.

I did say Autumn back there. It's suddenly dark in the mornings and colder at night. Rose, a farmer near here, who looks at the sky and knows where the clouds have come from, and what that means, says that the rats are gathering bones and the birds are already eating the Rowan berries. Translated that means it's going to be a long winter. Even I have noticed the first mouse strolling about the house and another rummaging in the compost bin, while Katie (the cat) seems oblivious to it.

Ate the first yellow tomato this week. I planted the seed at the very end of October last year, so that's 3 months 3 weeks, about 110 days till first fruit. Pinched out the growing tip early to get the crop home and hosed before the frosts begin in earnest, about a month away. Look at all that fruit yet to ripen; most seem to have a double truss on the second layer. It's hard to tell whether they have quite the same bite as a red tomato. Will have to make a pasta sauce and see if I can get past the colour.

On the occasion of a year since Dad died I'll give the last word to Shakespeare:

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Or perhaps on a more macabre note:

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell;

hosecraft

2010-02-07T01:17:00.000-08:00

It surprises me sometimes, the small threads that far bigger decisions hang on. It was when I was particularly brassed off with the hose that always kinked and leaked that I decided to get a new one. You might think that the cords of logic and economy and knowledge would twine together to hang a prudent purchase on. But I went out and bought a magnificent Italian garden hose, 4 times the price of everything else. Ahh the joys of retail therapy and it wasn't my money so I got a few other things besides. Actually the thread that fueled it was that I felt unappreciated, and purchasing a good peice of equipment gave value to my work and my time. Is it L'Oreal that has that insightful marketing angle 'Because I'm worth it' and who can argue with that?

Of course I'm still procrastinating on THE BIG GARDEN which has proved to be a fruitful time for attending to smaller details. A bit like when you're sitting exams and suddenly the room is spotlessly clean and you're doing any number of things out of character to avoid the necessary evil of study.
Well the aforementioned hose has a fixed site, glasshouse one, and could argueably be cut to perfect size so there is never any excess to trip over or get entangled in. Except that occasionally it is required in its full capacity so I neatly coiled up the excess by the tap and although the rest is left out it looks loved and cared for; in the style of this one above. Jane's garden in Dunedin.
I came back from Nelson admiring the rough and tumble of their gardens, the mix of flowers, weeds and vegetables rumbled together and thinking I should loosen up. Looks like the garden has done that for me while I was away.

That's the broccolli in the foreground; the lot that got the extra water last week. The first night we had some for tea Jude flicked a large yellow thing out on to the table. 'What's that? (horrified voice) It looks like a spine.' Any number of things went through my mind, mostly along the lines of concealment. But no, a positive caterpillar identification quickly followed and another green vegetable fell off the menu.
How many people know that I grew a watermelon last year? The plants were mysteriously fruitless and by about now, early February I was ready to pull them out in disgust. As I came in close to grasp one particular plant by the neck my foot kicked something hidden by the wall...in describing it later I made the mistake of saying the first thing that came into my head. 'It was as big as, as big as...(looking around) Louis' head.' Louis did not appreciate the comparison.
I only bring it up because of the lacklustre performance from the cucumbers. Last year we had gherkins by the bucketful so this year I tentatively planted 2 of each cucumber thinking we would be swamped.

Reached in today to execute one specimen. No, you can relax now, 'green shorts' has had a reprieve; one fruit has been sighted amongst a sea of foliage. The telegraph has proved to be the only reliable performer with restrained foliage and regular fruit. The others might need hand pollination. Can't think why.

Amongst a week of solid fruit preserving the tomatoes are finally ripening like billy oh and it's serious harvesting. My Mouli (one of them) is sitting on top of the pot poised for action. Funny how I've never noticed quite how much the handle looks like a tomato too.

Did anybody else read this weeks Poet's Corner in the ODT? Martha Morseth, Then Luck Will Come. I've had two letters this week so my luck has arrived with a trumpet blast. I think thats why I like it.

There must be a moment
when wind stops,
trees hang limp and sleep comes easy,
when postmen slip hope
into hungry letter boxes.

Each time I pluck the petals
the daisies come out wrong.
Most things I know:
how glass shatters against hard surfaces;
teeth ache when cold;
spring often comes late.

Better to watch clouds
nudge their way across the harbour,
notice webs shudder with light,
see fantails careen, hear tuis cackle.
Then luck can arrive unnoticed.

garden meanderings

2010-01-30T00:20:00.000-08:00

About those artichokes, ahem. It may not look like many in the basket but it took ages to trim them down to almost nothing with a small knife and have another go. Too late I looked up Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle, Julia Child) full of loads of ideas. Too late I read my trusty Koanga Garden Guide (Kay Baxter) and found out they were a seasonal harvest. Somehow I imagined they would flower on indefinitely and I could play around with them but looks like that might be this years bounty and now they are boiled and sitting in french dressing in the fridge and they don't look good. As for eating them, I'm on my own. Sorry Jen, I'm going to need some direction.
(Saw this wheelbarrow while we were in Waimate and it just took my fancy. What a workhorse.)

One thing about growing vegetables you quickly get into a seasonal rhythm because unlike the supermarket, in the garden things aren't normally available all year around. Or if they are, like potatoes, they are changing all the time. New potatoes at first that are good for boiling whole, potato salads etc. As time marches on the skins get tougher and won't scrape off anymore, now they need peeling. Later still the starches in the potato change, they are drier and can now be mashed and baked and make great roast potatoes and chips.
Well runner beans are one of those few things that you can just pick every other day for weeks. There will often be both a flower and a full grown bean on the same spray.

This magnificent example is at Mum's place growing behind the clothesline. I took a lot of photos of thrifty, creative gardens in Nelson; this would have to be the smallest. Note to self: a small garden is easier to maintain.
The vegetable garden is in such disarray at the moment that I've taken to my own flower garden at the house with new enthusiasm. I can get great results in a short space of time and everytime I look out the window I can enjoy seeing the difference.
I have ventured out to the vegetable garden to water the broccolli which has little heads peeping through. There are a few particular times when plenty of water pays off for yield and this is one of them. If something is producing continually of course then it's going to need continuous water too.

So getting back to those potatoes which are turning a little starchy.

Spiced Indian Potatoes

Scrub and boil them whole for 15 mins then cut into cubes. Oven: about 200 C. Grease the tray. Spread out one layer deep. Drizzle over a little oil, finely grate fresh ginger over and sprinkle on spice mix: 1 t cumin ground, 1/2 t cumin seed, 1 t salt, pinch of cayenne. Mix and bake about 25 mins. Enjoy.

End of the long hot summer

2010-01-26T02:17:00.000-08:00

It hasn't been hot enough or nearly long enough and school starts on Monday. Too soon. It was always too soon.
Marble Hill DOC camping site on the Lewis Pass and here's the key to carboot camping: a Polish coffee in a cup. Never mind that young delinquints had tried to jemmie the donations tin off the post in the night, or the family who arrived at what felt like 2am but was only about 12.30 and set up noisily beside us, that coffee in the morning set everything right for another great day of holidays.

Home to some serious gardening. The weeds are up to my armpits, or at least kneepits and for the first few days I just contemplated where to begin. I can be at home and feel overwhelmed about all the things to do but once you walk around the garden it quickly becomes apparent what is the now job. Well I know there is garlic in here somewhere.

First thing I like to do is clear the path so I can walk and bring in the wheelbarrow easily. The easiest way I find on a dirt path is to use a sharp spade and just whip along slicing the tops off all the weeds. It's easy and fast. Note the hose snaking along the path as they often do. It's a good idea to identify such things and move from the line of destruction...nearly hacked a hole in it; whoops.
The drought has broken and the ground is unusually wet. The skin on the garlic is starting to break down and a few bulbs have rotted so I want to get it dug and drying.

Half the row done and it's fragile at this stage and needs a few days to harden up. Then it's clip the roots back to a tidy nub and buff off only the damaged outer layer of skin which will give a clean groomed bulb that we can use until next year's crop. The more layers of skin you leave on the better it keeps. I'll move it onto racks with good air circulation in a dry room, the garlic room as it happens.

I've got plenty of photos of other people's gardens from holiday and quite a bit happening in the vege box: the first cucumber which will have to be taken on trust because I ate it immediately, without taking a photo and I haven't found any more yet. Lots of beans, and the first tomatoes. Another category to follow up springs to mind: garden casualties...back soon.

Rain

2010-01-09T23:46:00.000-08:00

One of the great things growing up was that we always went out on Sunday afternoons walking, and took afternoon tea in a backpack: thermos or thermette and a packet of biscuits very carefully counted and measured out. When it really rained we might get as far as the Claremont St playground (only a few blocks away but trees to huddle under) or for lesser rain, a walk to town to go window shopping. Of course now the shops are open 7 days a week so you wouldn't have the street to yourselves or be locked out.
And here they are, noses pressed against the glass to see what lies in the world outside, thistles window shopping. It's all out of reach.
Thistles have a long taproot which can't help but bring up nutrients so in my home garden I dig them up and chuck them around the fruit trees to mulch and feed the ground, covering with other things as they come along. They have a beautiful purple flower and our En Hakkore honey has significant thistle notes. However, these are already on the compost heap. Their prickles seem to be the last thing to break down. Ouch.

The flowers are not unlike the globe artichokes if they too are allowed to fully flower. How merrily I said the first artichoke was ready to eat '... and don't worry, there are plenty more.' There will always be plenty more. I can see already that no-one else on the property is going to bother with them. For a medium/small size you boil them about 12 mins and pull off leaf by leaf to eat, dip in butter. Small ones can be trimmed and eaten whole. It probably didn't help that at the same meal we had pork bones and corn cobs. Yes it was all finger food but I had to get in a box for the debris. (corn husks, cobs, bones, artichoke everything) You only eat the little nut of each artichoke leaf and then scrape out the choke and eat up the heart. Giles said it was like eating a potato in very small slices, without it being a bag of crisps.

I can't remember whether I mentioned that from 2 pkts of seed I got 204 corn plants plus a little bundle of scrappy ones. I felt a bit like Mme Makutsi (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith) with her unheard of 97 % from the Botswana Secretarial School. I know it's a very grand comparison but in my mind, I considered emailing Kings seeds to let them know, or perhaps send a photo; not that I would expect a certificate, but if it came I suppose it would have to hang down in the glasshouse. The corn had never been potted up after germination and was too big to transplant without being shocked. In those first few days of post planting trauma I must have been considering all this out loud because my friend Ruth, who was there at the time, commented that I should see how many plants made it through before totting up my record results. They look a bit shabby but are pulling through.

Here's Louis, and Phillip on the right picking blackcurrants down by the Nurses Home (in the background). My difficult lesson of the week about a stitch in time and all that.

The pruning window for blackcurrants is a large one running from Summer while picking through to early next Spring; nevertheless for various reasons I missed it. The result is masses of small blackcurrants instead of large dessert ones. What that means is that you can multiply the time it takes to pick them by about 5 and for the record, note words like tedious, frustrating and poor results. Add to that the final insult, you spend your available time for the week picking them instead of doing the other things that need to be done. Some roads you only need to go down once. I've been there, time to move on.

Runner beans are in the vege box incidentally, probably crushed under the weight of courgettes for which I am fast running out of recipes. Am digging a little garlic as needs go, which isn't really ready yet and starting to use the onions because too much water at this stage rots them. I use a big sprinkler at this time of year to water everything but it falls not only on the things that need it but also on the things that should be drying out. Careful thought and planning could help if they get the opportunity. The year is full of possibilities.

After all that today it really did rain. What better way to finish than with Hone Tuwhare's Rain. It's probably old hat to anyone younger than me but when I was at school, and University we didn't study NZ poets (!).

Rain

I can hear you

making small holes

in the silence

rain

If I were deaf

the pores of my skin

would open to you

and shut

And I

should know you

by the lick of you

if I were blind

the something

special smell of you

when the sun cakes

the ground

the steady

drum-roll sound

you make

when the wind drops

But if I

should not hear

smell or feel or see

you

you would still

define me disperse me

wash over me

rain

A good day for gardening

2009-12-30T02:14:00.000-08:00

It has just occurred to me that this blog is a little like my life at the moment: trying to fit too many things onto one page.
It's a very typical squeeze in the gardening calendar, especially where you have a short growing season. In fact, I go down to the garden and feel very much like a primary school teacher with a large class of small children, who all want attention at once. The trick is knowing which voice to attend to first.

The tomatoes are very interesting at the moment and I've come to the conclusion that the biggest factor in yield is genetics. Next year I'll put most of my money on ... moneymaker which has reliably set good clusters of tomatoes and has had less deviants. Which brings me to Beefsteak which has thrown up all sorts of variants all of which produce less fruit.
1. Sometimes the flowering spur is not obviously attatched to a growing tip. The stalk splits in two, thus (below left) and then you have two tips. Productivity drops right away. The answer is to choose one leader and pinch the other one out.
2. No growth tip. The plant grinds to a halt and only sets one spur of fruit. (I forgot to put in the picture for this and haven't mastered the art of adding it in.) Answer is to replace the plant with the spare ones you are nursing along in pots, hopefully. Be ruthless. It won't come to anything.
3. Great looking flowers, (Photo on the right) the plant is covered with them but there's something wrong. I'll have to do a side-by-side analysis but they look wrong and haven't set any fruit over the whole plant.

This is Not Companion Planting

What I learnt last year, with pumpkins and corn, is that companion planting doesn't mean putting two things in the place of one. Each needs room to grow. Well I planted that corn that's cramming out the beans, the Chieftain hybrid, and intended to pot it up until there was space to plant it. Corn resents being moved and is a difficult seed to germinate unless you are in the know. This time I clearly got it right, planted the seed into watered ground, covered it with a sack and left it until it germinated. Out of two packets (Kings Seeds) I have transplanted 150 seedlings today and still another 50 at least to go. Every seed in the pack must have sprouted.
This works well for large seeds which can otherwise rot.
Oh that's what I was saying, I missed the moment to pot it up and decided to leave it until it could go straight into the ground.

Here's another corn/bean suffocating friendship combo; the mistakes here are barely enough space for the corn and then the beans went in too late and were rapidly outgrown by the corn so haven't got the light or nutrient they need. I'll move them even at this late stage when I can make space somewhere.

Here's the seedlings in my flash new trays. Some of these will go out into the shade house for a week or so to harden off. The other thing I could do is plant them straight into the garden and cover them with a cloche (an empty plastic bottle with the bottom cut off) for a few days for extra protection. The birds enjoy them as a snack and they don't want to be drying out. Probably their biggest threat at the moment is that I'm going on holiday and like all mothers, nobody loves them like I do.

The perfect photo in the gardening magazine, or on a packet of seed, is at the end of a very long chain which is not always completed. It also doesn't matter. When I planted the broad beans in April into very poor soil there were a number of things I was considering: they became a useful windbreak, the beans fix nitrogen and the soil in point was no longer lying bare over winter. Growing them prepares the way to grow something else better there next. Well besides all that we have eaten quite a few along the way and then eventually I did get around to picking them, co-incidentally just when there were plenty of spare hands around to help pod them.
By this stage they were fairly large and less than ideal eating but I rewarded their tenacity, lavishing them with a bit of extra attention. All the larger ones I have skinned, it's not hard, and this way I know that in the middle of winter they will be an appealing find in the freezer. Yes, nobody loves them like I do. It's also one of the things that is so rewarding about gardening. The satisfaction of paying attention to details that make the difference.

Three quarters of the potatoes were gone by Christmas Eve. A queue of black plastic bags by the door as the men filled the orders and away they went. Bye bye.
Well yesterday was scorching hot, too hot to garden so I took the kids down to the river for a swim and then watered the garden in the evening. And then today the cold weather, wind and bits of rain came through which made it a perfect day to be in the glasshouse planting corn. The weather is always good for gardening.
Now the notice board has fallen off the toilet wall and I have no poety forum until it's fixed. So I will put one more thing on the already crowded page. A poem by Andrew Johnston from his book How to Talk which I picked up at the Naseby book sale for $1.25 yesterday.
For the record, the ladies went to the book sale and then had a coffee at the Black Forest Cafe.

The Poetry Inspector

has been sent by the tradition
to check our
nails. His are impeccable

as his crisp tones, which come to a
point
somewhere over the horizon. This

is called verse
perspective
says the verse detective

filing his ironies.
He says
we're menaced by

nebulosities
and smiles;

he can tell us if our
poems have class,
whether our nails fail or pass.

We should render our
caesuras
to the things that are England's

encapsulates the tenor of
his findings;
he sometimes spares a word of praise

for good
measure-
it should be said

the poetry inspector
sometimes hits the
nail on the head

optimum versus possible

2009-12-20T12:11:00.000-08:00

This is the time of year when the distance between what needs to be done and what gets done stretches out like a very long peice of elastic. Not that it's anything new: case in point globe artichokes. I planted the seed in autumn and it overwintered in the glasshouse. They are not particularly frost tolerant which may end up being a problem here where we have up to -12 frosts. I'm going to cover them with hay in the winter, and see if it blows away, or not. Anyway, the plant on the right and its fortunate companions was planted in timely fashion into reasonable conditions. A winter mulch of newspaper, leaves and peastraw over couch grass (lawn) amongst the fruit trees. Add shelter from the wind, and water as regularly as anything else, voila.

Several months later, surviving in pots, sibling plants went into drier ground and leaf mulch which remains dry unless it has a cover of something. It didn't. The difference in colour is just the light yesterday evening. Happily the first artichoke is ready to pick now. For anybody who's worried about how far it will go amongst 6, not far at all but there are others coming on.

Now to tidy up remaining loose ends before next year: Chris Tea here's a particularly attractive salt pig belonging to my neighbour Sarah. I always thought the 'pig' must be a scottish thing for bag/jar/crock, like they have a 'poke' of chips (which is a parcel of them) but lo, a search through the online dictionary, and the culinary dictionary yeilded zilch. Well a salt pig is a container for holding your salt, normally right beside the stove. The idea behind this design on the left is that somehow this shape keeps your salt dry, from the days when salt was seen to be anhydrous and went clumpy as it absorbed moisture from the air. They must put something in it now to keep it freeflowing. The salt pig on the right might perhaps be your default option or batch/crib variety. This one sitting comfortably beneath Maisie in Marg's kitchen and looking perfectly at home. Thanks ladies.

Moving into the big time Bill has made me a small fleet of seedling boxes, most of which have already been pressed into service. They are 3 inches deep to provide plenty of root space, not too big because they get quite heavy; can you see all the drainage holes in the bottom? And hold about 50 plants this time round. Will see how prudent that was in time. May be too crowded. Thanks Bill.

It's a very good thing to have a gardening ally for all sorts of jobs and construction and moral support. We stopped at Flag Swamp School on our way home from Dunedin last week because the horse poo stand had been replenished. At 20c a bag it is the best buy of the year and although the car was full, all 6 of us, plus the Christmas shopping, groceries 'the big shop', library books and so on there was a little foot space here and there and most laps were clear and I only had a $2 coin. In they went, stowed 10 glorious bags and away we went but as the car took off, little black fleas emerged and clustered all over us and the windows. Murmurs of discontent and dissatisfaction from the back.

'Boys' said Bill, 'what you have to understand is that this is who your Mother is.'

So bolstered by such a show of understanding and acceptance I put in a request to have the plastic laundry basket mended instead of throwing it out to the dump and already Bill has drilled holes and laced it up like a bodice. Beautiful. Who could ask for anything more? Thanks for your support with all my crazy schemes.

As soon as I saw Chris Tea's 'pink farm' I realised why I had trouble hanging these 2 little Ivan Hill paintings. Small paintings go well as a collection and in a house without a lot of hanging space left, there is always a place for them. This tiny farm is perfect and we live on a tiny farm. Thanks, I love it.

Nearly final thanks, the Area School graciously paid for Giles to go on his jazz trip to Wellington.

Big Noise in the
City

Joshua blew upon his horn
and Jericho's great walls
were gorn.
So, if you play guitar,
then dump it.
Make an impact:
buy a trumpet.

-Stuart Porteous

thanks God, for such an amazing reason to celebrate Christmas.

turning up the heat

2009-12-11T02:19:00.000-08:00

Without stepping in to the river of climate change debate, I'll just stand on the bank and observe that it doesn't mean the sizzling hot summer of your dreams. Although this has apparently been one of the hottest years on record, what we've actually had was a kind of lacklustre winter, cold and unpredictable; not as cold as usual, but neither were the days clear and sunny which we can get with really cold nights and mornings. To cut to the chase, the upshot is that it may not be a good year for corn and pumpkins. Ah the thud as we fall from lofty political and ecological heights to the solid ground of base level gardening, which is what are we going to eat?

To introduce the corn trio, on the left: Chieftain F1, yes it's a hybrid from Kings seeds. I panicked because it was getting so late in the season and this one promises to mature in 79 days from seedling emergence. I planted it 1st December and it was up by the 5th and today is the 11th so it's not wasting any time. Expect to eat this corn at the end of February no matter what because it will follow the potatoes in the glasshouse and lead a sheltered life.
Middle photo is Rainbow Inca, a Koanga seed and NZ heirloom. It has large cobs so will probably need at least 90 days. Planted 29 October. Oh, you can't see it, looks like peas. The theory is the corn will take up nitrogen from the peas as the two grow together. Well corn needs heat, and peas like cold and it has been cold; a pea take-over... It may be ready mid February but it may not come to anything. This lot is outside and I am thinking about covering it with frost cloth and see if we can get some growth.
Third picture corn arrived as tiny seedlings from Hamish, the budding 6yr old gardener down the road. I've had it in the glasshouse since about mid October. The tillers, which are the shoots on the sides, aren't coming to much which is probably just the cold. Ideally you would get 3 or 4 strong tillers, which means 3 or 4 extra cobs.

After a lot of trial and error I have discovered I get the best results by planting seeds straight in the ground. These were all planted 1st December. It pays to know what varieties are slow to germinate, like parsely and celery so you remember to keep watering their spot long after the other seedlings have left town. I keep the ground consistently damp except for corn which is tricky. The voice of experience here will save you grief. Corn seed rots: you wet the ground, plant the corn, cover it with newspaper or something to keep the moisture in and then leave it until it germinates. I found this out the hard way, sorry Bart. That's why there's no photo of Otepoti Honey Pearl. That's why I panicked and bought a hybrid replacement.
From here I will prick these seedlings out into pots next week. They like company and do best together. Big seeds will go into individual pots, (corn, zuchinni) and keep the pots huddled together. How do I know when it's time to put them into the garden? I'm glad you asked.

This is one of the Otepoti yellow tomatoes. I only wish Cucumber green shorts was doing so well. In my experience the plants you buy come in very small containers that just don't have enough nutrient. They get rootbound very quickly. In a larger pot your plant is a good size by the time it's ready to plant out. By now I've used up most of the room in the glasshouse so I'll go through and pull out any plants that aren't performing and replace them. Sometimes you'll get plants without a growing tip that just turn into a stump, or that are male, no flowers, or that aren't true to type (the glasshouse is not the place to celebrate difference; it's all about performance).

A final sad shot of Otepoti pumpkin Galeux d'Eysine. French heirloom. Needs 100 days. Seed planted end of October. Moved from the glasshouse to the garden end of November and then we had a frost on the 4th. The tyres absorb heat and provide a little shelter which helped, they also help conserve moisture and later on, they tell you where to water when the ground becomes a sea of pumpkin leaves. Here's hoping.

I nearly forgot, the yellow zuchinni have climbed on board the vegetable wagon. The first gorgeous photo has got lost somewhere inbetween the computer meltdown and reinstalling the photo programmes. To conclude the gardening saga, to quote from Mama's last letter 'love and best wishes to everyone and cries of encouragement as we dash up the slope to CHRISTMAS'.

Big Day Out

2009-11-30T01:43:00.000-08:00

The Strong Mothers
by Rachel Bush

Where are the mothers who held power and children,
preserved peaches in season, understood about greens and two classes of protein
who drove cars or did not have a licence
who laughed, raged and were there?

They have rested their bicycles inside their garages
let needles lie in the narrow chest between verandah boards.

They have tested the last jam on a saucer by a window
comforted the last crying child they will ever see,
and left. How we miss them and their great strength.
Wait for us, we say, wait for me.
And they will.

Speaking of mothers who raged, I had to go and snuggle the little boys who had had a sound telling off before bed. You can't sit down and write a wholesome blogpost when there is resentment in the air.
Well it was my birthday and Mama sent me a poem in a card. I love this poem. Thanks Mum. One of my presents was this Granny Smith apple tree (it's the stick on the left). Where to plant it? The frost flows down like water and pools at this fence, but in turn it shelters the tree from the wind. The shade from the house, the amount of sun, the heat from the bricks, the downward run of any moisture, so much to consider not to mention can the hose reach? That's one variable that can be easily fixed.
Smith is a traceable theme around here (it being my maiden name). Among other Smith things, a pastel by Bill, 'Family Reunion' . Yep, that's what those apples will look like.

The vege box lost a passenger this week. Asparagus is over for another year so that it can recuperate. Don't be under any illusion that the children eat plates of vegetables, but we had broad bean tops again this week and Louis said, 'This is nice silverbeet'. Still eating the smaller broad beans whole with butter, like asparagus and Jude said 'These are quite nice'. And one more vegetable triumph, they have discovered the fun of wrapping dinner up in lettuce leaves as they eat it. There's that many lettuce coming on I'm keen to plow through them. Day in and day out, apart from the potatoes, the most useful things at the moment, for the least effort are spring onions, parsely, mint, basil and lettuce. So on to the big day out, we took the little red car up to Oamaru and Riverstone Cafe for lunch. Here's Bill in the car park afterwards trying to work out which car is ours. They were both red. It quickly became apparent on the big road trip (about 300kms round trip) that the brakes had finally gone on the car so we travelled in an orderly manner with the occasional judicious use of the hand brake.

As we drove past Moeraki on the coast I thought how nice it would be to paddle in the water. Remembered the sacks in the boot of the car, 'just in case' and look, treasure. Seaweed. Doesn't it pay to be prepared? It's in a well covered drum of water now. Leave for a month and dilute 10:1. Celery and Asparagus particularly like it but I'm sure everything in the garden will be saying, 'choose me'.
I have toyed with idea of a bucket and shovel in the car 'just in case', and a pair of rubber gloves. If you can't guess what they are for let me tell you that roadkill is a marvellous addition to the compost heap...apparently. I'm not sure that I'm ready to go there yet but I won't discount the possibility: 'I get older, ever learning many things.'

Christmas comes early

2009-11-21T23:34:00.000-08:00

'The immediate is often the enemy of the ultimate.'

Indira Ghandi

That quote has nothing to do with new potatoes being early this year, which puts new potatoes as the surprise guest in this week's vege box. They are a month early but they don't know that and I don't care. Delicious.
Runner beans, it would seem, were aptly named and they have bolted away and are sending out tendrils looking for something to climb; however, they are in temporary digs and I can't have them strangling tomatoes. The timing is perfect to dig out new potatoes and
rehome them next door.

The other newcomer to the vegebox this week will only be making one appearance for quite some time. Silverbeet appeared amongst the asparagus and I pulled it out because it was already starting to go to seed. Mystery solved on both counts: can you see from the roots that it has grown from a slice of stem/root that was consigned to the compost bin, and then trucked over unharmed about 6 months later (remember the rule is leave compost for a year) and mulched around the asparagus. Come Spring, and water and away it grows, precariously, it hasn't enough root of its own. Makes a meal and none of the children are grateful.
Should I be surprised?

Good things come in threes and lettuce are on tap. These ones are coming up the rear as the first lot gets eaten. Add them to the box. It's looking up.

Nine years ago when Johnny was born I asked the midwife, Barbara, if she had any advice on parenting. She said she wished she had kept sight of the big picture more when she was dealing with things with her children, to keep them in perspective. She was talking about cherishing 'the ultimate' while coping with 'the immediate'.

Well about this time of year, I just want to clear out the house of everything (everybody else's things) and prepare for the influx of stuff at Christmas. Suddenly I can't find anything, nothing is where it belongs, every surface is cluttered and the driveway is lined with wetsuits, socks galore, balls and boogie boards, miscellaneous clothing, as if they've fallen out of the car and stayed there (probably have). Except that this year it occurs to me that I've spent the years picking up and putting away after the boys (or not) because it's quicker and easier (!) and now I've come a cropper because there is this huge discrepancy between the image I have of them capably running a home (the ultimate) and what I've done in the immediate to teach them or direct them to it. Let's not start on role modelling.

I'll troll through flylady and look in the archives for tips. Beyond that, any suggestions?

Rhubarb

2009-11-15T20:54:00.000-08:00

'She feels they need a dessert. She feels they need it because somewhere, in the
inner recesses where mothers look from time to time to see how they are doing,
something tells her she has been negligent in some way. And dessert is an easy
way of making this up.'
-Norma Jean Harris (Sheila Ballantyne)

Rhubarb Caramel Crust Pie
4 C diced rhubarb,3/4 C flour, 1/2 C rolled oats, 100g butter, 1t baking powder, 3/4 C sugar
3/4 C brown sugar, 1T cornflour, 1/2 C boiling water
You cut the rhurbarb up and put it in the dish. put the dry ingredients into the food processor with the butter in cubes. Chop in the butter. Spread this over the rhubarb. Mix the brown sugar and cornflour together in the food processor and sprinkle this on as a third layer. Finally pur over the boiling water evenly and bake 1/2 hour at about 180.

Yep we've been having a lot of puddings lately, for no particular reason. Rhubarb has a season even though in more temperate climates it may seem to be there all year round. In the Spring when the first shoots come up through to about December is best, and it needs to be kept well watered. Otherwise it gets dry and woody. Like other garden perennials the new growth goes to the outside circle and the inner part becomes old and spent . Every few years it's best to dig out some edge peices to start off new plants. I've made two beds, one each year so that there is always one lot to pick. First year you let it build up strength and don't pick any. This one has thin stems and is reluctant to come out cleanly when you pull it which can cause problems of its own. It's very frost sensitive and disappears all winter; but it is nice and red and stays red when it's cooked so it'll do in the meantime. Rhubarb thrives on grass clipping mulches and anything else. Mostly lots of water.

If there was such a thing as a guest trophy it would have been given out again this week. Jonothon and Morven came to stay enroute back to the U.K so although they brought goodies to get rid of, a bike for Louis and kitchen toys for me of course, what really was the best thing, J noticed that Jude's bike had a puncture so he fixed it in the morning and tonged up the brakes and left it parked by the front door ready to go for when Jude got home from school.
To give the trophy out, if there was one, I would have had to retrieve it from Jen who doesn't know she would have had it. When she came to stay she finished off Giles' craft project from school that had become becalmed for a year and we are now enjoying the footstool. Thanks Jen.
Jonothon and Morven used to get an organic veggie box delivered each week and he asked me a great question that has sort of set me on a better gardening course.
'What are you eating from the garden at the moment?' I know how easy it is to have a garden full of things, but week by week not much alot of the time for tea.

The most difficult time is Spring. Now really. All the winter stuff is cleared for new things, or gone to seed. New season stuff is weeks away. I thought it would be a really useful exercise to catalogue each week what could go in my veggie box if I built it. Well, rhubarb, and asparagus, but that depends on the weather, when it's warm it romps away and when it's cold it grows slowly so enough for a stirfry or a quiche but don't bother making hollandaise this week. There would be a head of garlic, and spring onions and mint and parsely and broad bean tops which I'm pinching out and they need plenty of butter and salt, and potatoes. There's still peas and french beans in the freezer and parsnips, above, dug in early Spring when they begin to go hairy and blanched for the freezer. And at this time of year we chow through the last of the jars of tomato and jars of beetroot. I can see a new sub heading on my blog (with apologies to Marg): a veggie box a week

Hurry hurry hurry

2009-11-09T01:54:00.000-08:00

Phew, what a week. The garden has gone wild, and it's birthday month and then it's Christmas and then it's New Year...tommorrow I'm
going to stay home, slow down and do chores. I read this Spanish proverb last week:

'How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward.'

...and then laughed maniacly. That's not something I have to aim for; I've noticed it arrives with old age; whenever that is. Here's a beautiful Romanesco Broccolli that I picked for tea tonight and made everybody eat because it's been such a long time growing. I planted them vaguely in Autumn in the glasshouse before I had learnt the value of the garden diary so let's just say it was about 6 months ago.

The snow is gone from the mountains so I've been putting in the garden: yams, carrots, parsnips, beetroot, globe artichokes, leeks and potting up all the tropicals: pumpkin, beans, cucumbers, corn and flowers, sunflowers, dill. I've got photos of it all but I haven't learnt how to put up more than four at a time so I've got plenty of material to go right through winter with. Here's the leeks down below. 180 went in and I probably threw out the smallest 25. This is way too early for leeks even here but I must have planted the seed way too soon (didn't have that trusty garden diary going) because suddenly they were ready and had to be planted. The board is a handy measure and something to stand on.
In the background you can just see some broad beans and a bit of straw mulch that hasn't blown away. Half the bed has short plants and half the bed has tall. I had formed an elaborate theory about wind and shade and soil condition and why they had had this effect before remembering that the first packet of seed were dwarf beans and the 2nd packet talls. There is often a simple explanation if you only knew it.

When you live amongst pine trees you discover that there is more than one sort. We have about 12 different types on the property and they all have different pine cones. This is how these ones begin. How amazing.

And seeing as how I couldn't fit photos for a blow by blow tutorial on planting beetroot here's the chives flowering instead. Don't be disappointed, I will master the technology. Now for any of my five readers who are still reading (four family and one friend - Chris Tea that's you) I got to thinking this week about where do blogs go when they die? There was one gardening blog I found where the last entry said something like 'sorry I haven't posted for awhile, I've been unwell'. And then it just ended and the date was months ago. A bit like boarding the Marie Celeste and finding no one there. Another gardening one had half a dozen cheerful posts before it came to an abrupt end and no comments. Ever. No family? No friend?

On a lighter note Giles found a poem scrawled inside his Latin Primer.

'Latin is a language
as old as old can be
first it killed the
Romans
and now it's killing me'

It's been a great week for laughs.

How The World Gets Bigger

2009-11-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

Reading your post Marg, 'Things never as they seem' reminded me of this beautiful poem

by Alison Hallett

How The World Gets Bigger

This morning there's a note pinned to your door

explaining why you've had to rush out

and cancel our meeting. I turn back into

the rain, watch it falling on tarmac, rivering

in gutters, little bullets exploding. I unbutton

my jacket, lift my face up to the sky. This is better

than crying: nowhere to be and nothing to do.

I walk the christened pavement, cherry tree

humg like a chandelier, the corner on the end

of the road suddenly appealing, the way it

turns without revealing what lies beyond.

When I mentioned to Mama in a letter that Bill was gathering up his boats from boat sheds and garages and (alas) outside places she replied 'What on earth are you going to do with boats up there? (In the middle of nowhere hours from sailing water)' Here they are under the trees resting.

Well the pool is deep enough and when they're all mended we can go up the road and sail on the neighbours dam.

But I was telling Bill about the Brighton boats 'the corner on the end of the road suddenly appealing, the way it turns without revealing what lies beyond.' There was something about going to Brighton that was such an adventure. Running home from church to pack lunch, maybe tea also, and run back down the hill to catch the bus (will everybody make it?) And then the long bus trip out to Brighton Beach and somewhere in the course of the day we'd take a walk down to the boat house-just a few of us kids by ourselves. We had to negotiate with the grumpy old men for a boat and then head off up the river rowing, around the corner and away into the countryside and looking in to peoples backyards as we went. Once or twice we went up as far as we could go until the river ran out. I don't ever remember looking at a watch but we all seemed to make it back to the bus stop in time for the ride back and then a 40 min walk up the hill home. Rivers and boats still contain that adventure.

Took the kids down to the Taeiri River today. The snow on the hills is melting so the water level is running high. They assured me it was warm. From the perspective of a wetsuit it probably was.

The garden goes wild at this time of year and here's my special helper: it's a 'PLANET JNR', a seed sower for anybody who didn't instantly recognise it and it will be sowing 6 packets of carrot seed and 3 packets of parsnips-with a bit of assistance from me.

Ever Increasing Circles

2009-10-25T00:43:00.000-07:00

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.
-Faith Baldwin

It has been one of those weeks where small pebbles falling seem to have made an inordinate splash. If things ever go in threes I've just broken the fourth item-not that I care-things get used, they have a life, they break but what I did care about was my little salt pig: up there on the right. And I accidentally dropped the lid, smashed to smithereens, while I was putting a loaf of bread on in the breadmaker. It had a little mystery, and a history stamped on the bottom 'BUCHAN' and 'Portobello Scotland' inside a little scotch thistle. Maybe it was part of a set, and how did it ever get to the little craft shop at Broad Bay Dunedin; where I retrieved it.

Anne Wilson Schaef to the rescue (Meditations For Women Who Do Too Much) because I keep my library books to the max and then renew them up to the hilt and sometimes return them late.

...Many of us have tried to treat our lives like our houses. We have believed
that we could get our houses fixed up just the way we wanted them and then they
would stay that way forever. We have felt personally attacked when slip covers
wear out, when a room needs to be repainted, or when an appliance breaks down.
We have set up our lives based upon a static notion of the universe...

I am a process. Life is a process. Alterations are part of
the process.

So when, not much later in the week, David suggested we could move the vegetable garden down to the bottom of the property, I was prepared. I stood back objectively (in my mind), I silenced the objections: 'what about the asparagus, the rhubarb, the globe artichokes still waiting to be planted, the apple trees only recently gone in'. I considered what benefits it would offer, recognised that it was the best long term plan, and said 'yes'. He should have been bowled over in amazement. He hid it well.

The Tomato Incident
First the little seedlings sprouted in the warmth of home. Would family please note the iron in the background, far left. Occasionally it does get used and occasionally put away.

Next they are potted up and live in the blocks-the old hospital blocks have verandahs running their length with huge glass windows and
brick walls that retain the heat at night. (It was part of the Tuberculosis cure in the olden days for the patients to lie in the sun all day and breathe in the fresh air.) See them straining towards the light which does result in a bit of leggy growth.

As the weather gets warmer they are carted to the glasshouse for a further few weeks and then planted, thus. Except these below in all their gorgeous good health aren't my plants. Hamish (small child) down the road had been growing some in their spa room to sell at the Labour Weekend market. I chanced to see them one morning and came home complaining bitterly. They looked like they were about to jump out of their pots with zest. 'What's your problem? (Bill) Can't you take being beaten by a 6 year old?' No, it would seem not.

God help literature to the rescue. Out comes my Word for Today (Bob and Debby Gass)

Friday October 23rd: 'The surest way to get discouraged is to compare yourself
with others. The Bible says "...Don't compare yourself" (Galatians 6:4) because
some people will look like they're doing a better job and you'll get
disheartened, while others won't be as effective and you'll become proud.
"Concentarate on doing your best..." (2 Timothy 2:15). That way
"... You will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and ...won't need to
compare yourself..." All the apples on a tree don't ripen at the same time.

I had a sudden glimpse of what it must be like gardening in an allotment. You couldn't help but be noticing whos got what in and how it's doing. And wondering what they're using but don't want to ask. And although we are supposed to know better I can tell you that visitors to the garden always comment on size.

Now if I had mastered the art of putting more than four photos on a post I would have put in a 5th photo. David and Sarah and I planted half the glasshouse out in tomatoes yesterday. It's wonderful how help always comes even when you don't know you need it.