Beautiful Flowers

My wee girl brought me these beautiful flowers and I was so dazzled by their beauty that I asked her to show me where she found them. She took me to a patch of chickweed in between the garden shed and the kids fort. I never knew that chickweed had such a beautiful flower - like a little miniature hibiscus in many ways. Perhaps I won't get around to weeding that patch...

Meanwhile the rest of the garden continues to flourish, although new seedlings disappear with frightening rapidity. I need to sow more lettuces but the prospect is filling me with dread. I'm going to try sprinkling coffee grounds around them, apparently that deters snails and slugs and since our budget doesn't stretch to beer drinking at the moment my husband would be horrified to see saucers of it put out for them.

I took my elderly neighbour's advice last weekend that the ground had no heat in it yet and didn't put out my tomatoes, basil, cucumbers and watermelons. They are still basking on the windowsills. I may be brave and put them out this evening, but I will then have to vigilantly go around with the torch every night again, just when I was feeling I could leave it for a night or two because the critters appear to be leaving my brassicas and the like alone for now.

I picked a tremendously windy afternoon to water my garden with my homemade sheep pellet liquid and found to my horror that I had left the back door open and the stench had permeated throughout the house. I also managed to leave the scoop (with which I was filling the watering can) outside. Apparently the dogs found it and regarded it with all the excitement of a child with an icecream: they came inside panting happily and letting us know that our nostrils would know no relief in the near future.

Aside from that I have accosted a poppy thief and demanded my plant back - a beautiful red flanders poppy plant stolen from out the front - and taken on a patch of my elderly neighbour's garden, which was overgrown with weeds and getting too much for her since she fell in her rosebushes and ended up in hospital. I've still got heaps of lawn to dig up, although the wheat and the alfalfa are doing well, the fennel has sprouted and I'm going to plant the corn today in the bit I dug up last weekend.

I'm going to be very busy indeed!

Seeds sown outside today: Coriander, Corn, Atlantic Giant Pumpkin

Gaillardia Lorenziana Sown Indoors Today

I have just agreed to take over a patch of my elderly neighbour's garden which is currently overgrown with weeds - she is elderly and has just got out of hospital and the bit of garden I will be responsible for is the bit people see first, down the side of the driveway by the letterbox.

I didn't really want to spend money on someone else's garden when I've been forcing myself to be frugal with my own so whipping down to the nursery didn't feel like an option. I decided to have a look at what I had in the way of seeds. She wasn't keen on Lavender (I have seeds for the dwarf munstead variety) because it attracts bees and the last thing she wants is to get stung when she goes to get her mail. The trouble is I deliberately selected loads of seeds to attract bees, like Bergamot bee balm etc.

I decided on Gaillardia Lorenziana Mix which should look good enmasse and hopefully a good range of colours germinate. I've sown a whole tray so fingers crossed.

Pity they're not perennial, will have to think what to put there next...

A beautiful day at last!

I've been very busy in the garden since my last blog. The wheat is growing well, the alfalfa path has germinated, I've dug another patch of lawn up and I'm waiting to see if the fennel seed I threw in will germinate.

I've also dug up all the lawn in the retaining wall at the front. Previously I had planted a feijoa, a mandarin and an orange up there, and the rest was grass. No grass now, I've emptied most of my seedlings into the new bed I've created up there - although both cats have had a wee in my cornflowers, so not holding out much hope for those. The dirt that Scott barrowed round to the back and put under the fig tree and the fort is forming a small hillock - it's quite the eyesore I must admit. He has an aura of "I told you so" about him. At least the front will look nice!

Today I planted out my lettuce, rhubarb, and spinach strawberry seedlings into the vege garden and planted surplus seedlings of annise hyssop and yarrow in the dirt mound off to one side - nowhere else to put them and didn't have the heart to let them die. Potted up everything else from the seed trays into pots to go on windowsills - the large seed trays on the kitchen table had got the better of Scott's tolerance.

I'm knackered. I was hoping to do a bit of whittling but can't be bothered now. When I said to Scott that I really need a garden seat to sit in and whittle, he suggested I might need a harmonica and some chewing tobaccy...

Zucchini Black Beauty Sown Indoors Today

This morning I've managed to dig the path from the patio to the corner of the house and I've planted alfalfa there (I hope you can walk on it, soon find out) in keeping with my plan to redo the back lawn.

I also realized that the garden bed I dug last weekend (between the house and the new path) was really a bit of a dud in terms of the soil quality and the new seedlings weren't thriving. It's mainly clay and I decided that it would only get worse as the weather warms up and eventually bakes it hard.

I scraped together as much finished compost from the heap as I could, pulled out the seedlings and replanted them in it. Fingers crossed!

Seeds Sown Indoors Today

Passionfruit
Spinach Strawberry (heirloom from www.kingsseeds.co.nz)
Rhubarb
Bean Roquefort
Sage
Oregano
Thyme (wild)
Lavender Dwarf Munstead
Watermelon Georgia Rattlesnake
Cucumber Green Dragon
Cornflowers

Stop Raining, I want to get out there!

Sheep Fertiliser

After seeing liquid sheep fertiliser being made on the "Good Morning" show I decided to give it a go. Simply half-fill a bucket with sheep pellets and top up with water, then put on a lid, but don't seal the lid in case the gases build up and it explodes. Leave for 3 weeks and then dilute 1:6 with water.

Sheep pellets themselves are dried and inoffensive. For some reason my brain did not compute that I was turning them into a big bucket of sheep diarrhoea and I was quite dismayed when I opened the lid to reveal a very offensive greeny/brown sludge which I would then have to somehow get into my watering can!

I have done it though and my vegetables better be grateful. I have a feeling I now smell offensive too, or is it that the smell just won't leave my nostrils? I always wanted to live rural and now I can honestly say that my place smells like a drive through the country on a very hot day.

Lawn Replacement

Hubby thinks I've gone mad. Yesterday I started removing our lawn because it is a mixture of weeds and kikuya and I'm replacing it with anything I've got an abundance of seed-wise and that is easy to pull out later: corn, wheat, marigolds, parsley, buckwheat, alfalfa and goodness knows what else as I go along. Why? Because I'm organic and I don't want to spray my lawn to get rid of it, neither do I want a muddy bog while I painstakingly remove it. Since I don't have oodles of spare time it will probably take me quite a while, and then when I've finished I can pull out the replacements all in one go and then level the whole thing. Finally, I will put in pebbled paths and sow some nice grass. Yes, the kids won't have a lawn to play on for a while but I think they'll enjoy hiding behind the corn and examining all the beneficial insects and their backyard will definitely be unique for a city garden.

Sowing and Slugs

I got back from my weekend away to find that slugs had found their way to the seedlings in the greenhouse. They annihilated the chamomile and all but a couple of the livingstone daisies, and had a good chomp through most other things.

I potted up the one surviving thyme, the hollyhocks, morning glory and poppy peonies.

Sown today: Tomato Moneymaker, Tomato Gardener's Delight, Tomato Roma, Basil Sweet Genovese, Lettuce Fancy Leaf Mixed, Bean Cannellino, Bean Scarlet Runner.

Record for Crop Rotation 2009

Obelisk Garden 2009

Left hand side: Garlic, Rosemary (out of sight), Red Batavian Lettuces, Mustard, Brassicas, Peas in obelisk (snapped off in wind) Mesculun starting in foreground, Brassicas, Red Batavian Lettuces, Curry Plant, Red Onion, Rhubarb. (Wheat and Vetch interplented on right 1/3)

Fence Garden 2009

Rear: Silverbeet (green, yellow, red), Calendulas, baby spring onions, Calendula, Blueberry, Brassicas, Beetroot, Celery, Brassicas and Swede (harvested) Pak Choi (some interplanting of wheat and vetch on right 1/3) and Red Onions here and there

Front: Garlic, (out of sight) Perpetual Spinach, Calendulas, Brassicas, Blueberry, Parnsips (germinating, formerly patch of Cress and Mesculun), Brassicas, Spring Onions, Brassicas, Pak Choi

The above is a record of what is in the garden now so that I can ensure I rotate my crops correctly. I'm not that good at photo editing and I had to do a spot of cutting and pasting to line them all up - not trying to trick the followers!

Gardener's Best Friend

Note to self: made sheep pellet fertiliser today so ready in 3 weeks from now.

Spring

It's my favourite time of the year. My fig tree now has leaves on the very ends of it's branches (above) and the seed trays on the dining table are starting to come alive. Everything is full of promise!

Last year when I was completely new to having a vege garden and everything seemed to take soooo long, I had doubts that it all would come to fruition and felt a great deal of impatience, but this year I am just carrying on doing a little bit here and a little bit there, happy in the knowledge that whilst what I do in the garden today may not be immediately obvious, it certainly will be well and truly evident and worthwhile in 3 months time.

The best decision I've made so far was to grow winter veges and the fact that I'm still harvesting them and my beds are reasonably full means that I'm not desperate for some new food to grow. I even grew a great winter lettuce "Red Batavian" available from www.kingsseeds.co.nz.

Even though we had several frosts, and some of them quite hard (very strange for Auckland) all of my vegetables made it, (with the exception of self-sown pumpkins) even self sown spuds and tomatoes refused to die! We havested the spuds a couple of days ago, which is quite amazing for this time of year.

They were self-sown because I put my homemade compost into the garden bed when I sowed my winter veges - there is nothing more satisfying that free food!

Hydrangea Cuttings

Today I potted up some hydrangea cuttings my friend gave me. The above picture is what hers looks like, but the beauty of hydrangeas is that they change colour depending on your soil ph. I'll be interested to see what becomes of it at my place. Pink = alkaline and Blue = acid.

Parsnips

Today I tried again with my parnsips - the last lot failed to germinate. This was no surprise after catching Celeste the cat using that part of the garden for her toileting requirements on several occasions.

My 78 year old neighbour, Clyde, has told me that the best way to sow them is to flood the area (doubly necessary I suspect, in my case after Celeste's antics) and then scrape back the very surface, put the seeds in and lightly cover. Next, cover them with wet newspaper. In 3 weeks time, he swears I'll have loads of seedlings. I'll let you know...

Other garden jobs today; dug in some compost where the tomatoes will go later and covered the area with leaf mould.

In the seed trays the morning glory and hollyhocks are starting to appear.

Weed, Feed and Mulch Day

I'm officially a killer. I found that my Champion Purple Top Swedes were being attacked by slugs, which were hiding in the alfalfa cover crop underneath. I pulled out all of the alfalfa and put it in the compost - couldn't dig it in as I've had to plant other things in it since I planted it.

Pulled out the bags of leaf mould I have made from the autumn leaves I collected and spread that around as a mulch. Some of the leaves were still crunchy but however, they will rot down in time! Everything is looking tidier.

Can't wait for my seedlings to be ready to put in!

Seeds Sown Indoors Today

Flowers
Hollyhock Summer Carnival Mix
Aster Cut Flower Assortment
Poppy Iceland
Livingstone Daisy Sparkles Mix
Poppy Peony Formula Mix
Morning Glory


Herbs
Anise Hyssop
Chamomile German
Yarrow Common White
Feverfew
Self Heal
St Johns Wort
Thyme

Other
Shoo Fly Plant

I need a windbreak!

After my obelisk disaster yesterday (it ended up falling over and snapping my peas off at the base) I decided to not only hurry up and plant the hedge on our side of the fence but also to plant some natives on the council verge on the other side of it. They can't complain about that surely...

I took the dogs down to The People's Park at Te Atatu Peninsula - for those unfamiliar this is a wetland area with views across the water to the city and the harbour bridge. As we trotted along I collected some seeds from Manuka Red Tea Tree shrubs. I want all the bees I can get and I don't need to worry too much about height (although I will keep it in check) because that's where the very last of the day's sun comes from and nearly all of the wind!

Now where is that seed raising mix?

Red Onions

About a month ago I planted two red onions which had sprouted in my pantry. These turned into "sets" which look like several spring onions growing out of the onion. The biggest one grew six and the smaller one grew four. Today I decided to dig them up, divide them and replant them.

I had just found out that peas don't like to be near onions too and they were next to my obelisk with the peas - they are now in areas where my brassicas were being attacked by white fly.

After enjoying a few cold and therefore pest-free months, the local pests have cottoned onto the fact that I'm the only one with a plentiful garden around here at the moment. I made a spray by putting minced garlic and chillis in water and leaving it to steep, then straining it to make a pungeant spicy liquid to spray on my veges to dissuade them. I also sprinkle curry powder on after watering some days just to mix it up.

It's horrendously windy today with my obelisk leaning over like the leaning tower of Pisa.

The above photo is what my garden looks like today - the yellow flowers in the foreground are purple pak choi available from www.kingsseeds.co.nz - the bees love it.