Sunday, 12 October 2008

Sunday, 12 October 2008

Sunday, 30 September 2007

The netting has been a real blessing. It keeps the birds from eating the tomatoes, but our biggest problem was domestic cats.  They are a real menace here.  Not only are they very partial to native birds, but they dig up the garden terribly their mess makes many plants inedible.  Nearly every house in our neighbourhood has at least one cat.  Not us!

The netting of the vegetable garden meant that we had a bumper crop of vegetables last summer.  The runner beans looked like something Jack had planted, the courgettes snaked out over the paths, and the cherry (miniature) tomatoes hung like bunches of grapes on their vines.  We picked produce every two days, and in one afternoon’s picking alone we worked out that the tomatoes we had in our basket would have cost over $200 to buy in the local shop.  We are still benefiting from the litres and litres of roasted tomato pasta sauce that I made in the summer and stored in containers in the freezer.

Sunday, 27 October 2007

What a beautiful weekend for gardening!  The fence between us and the neighbours has been partially painted (green, of course!), and Andrew has dug a tidy garden beside it in which to erect the runner bean frame.  It was always my plan to have the bean frame outside of the netted garden this season.  Last summer, the beans climbed through the top of the net and provided a stairway into the garden for cabbage white caterpillars, which became a bit of a scourge as birds could not get in to pick them off the plants. 

Still, the incursion of the vegetable garden into the lawn was carefully managed and monitored by Andrew to ensure that this is not the start of "expansionist" edible plant policies that will take over his lawn.

I don't like to use too many chemical sprays in the garden and yard, but I confess to spraying the entire lawn this weekend with a weed and prickle spray.  I love walking barefoot on the lawn in summer, and Onehunga Weed (in particular) makes that a rather dicey pursuit. It is rife where we live.  So this is the first such spraying the lawn will receive during its period of new growth. It is important to catch Onehunga Weed before it flowers and spreads still further.  Important, too, is avoiding decimating delicate plants with spray drift, particularly in still weather when it settles, so I sprayed first and planted tomatoes out afterward.

The potting bench is like a miniature jungle.  I now have containers full of basil plants, gherkins that are almost ready to plant out, tomato plants reaching for the light (seeds from our own large eating tomatoes last season), spring onions, and capsicums.  Most amazing are the Cherry Dot tomatoes that have grown from the seed of tomatoes that I froze last season and forgot to take seeds from.  This year, I thawed some of my frozen hoard, dried the seeds on kitchen paper for a day, and planted them in potting mix.  And yes, some of them actually germinated. What a surprise!

Most disturbing are my Cape Gooseberry plants.  When given the seeds I was told that they only have a 10-25% germination rate, so "plant lots of seeds to gain a few plants".  Regrettably, I followed this advice. I say "regrettably", because now I have a container chock-a-block with small Cape Gooseberry seedlings. They have grown evenly, so are like a fresh, green, spring carpet.  We love running our hands over the top of the plants to feel their silky texture.  Anyone wanting some seedlings is welcome to contact me, as they'll soon be big enough to give away.  And there are a lot of them!

This winter we emptied the rose garden and put the resident roses into pots.  I pruned them hard, trimmed their roots where I needed to, and potted them in a mixture of rich compost and untanilized sawdust to retain moisture in the pots.  Andrew dug a trench along the back of the empty garden to expose the block wall of the basement, where moisture was seeping through.  The trench was hard work, as the soil was compact and full of conifer roots, and had simply been covered over with weed-mat and bark by the previous owners. 

After cleaning the wall, we coated it in an excellent waterproofing product by Sika, repainted the top of the blocks in house paint, and tanked the wall with corflute.  Then Andrew put shingle in the bottom of the trench for drainage and filled it in.  Delayed by the weather, the roses were by now budding so it was too late to plant them out without causing them shock and knocking them back.  So Andrew has agreed that for one season only I may grow zucchinis and capsicums in the empty rose garden instead.  He has dug part of it over and I have forked in barrow-loads of dark compost, formed little mounds and planted the zucchini seedlings out in their peat pots.  They are looking very happy in such a warm spot.

Friday, 19 October2007

My potting bench is already covered in trays full of new green seedlings.  The tomatoes, gherkins, basil and butter-crunch lettuces are already sprouting in their trays, and zucchinis have popped up in their peat pots.

Andrew is pleased that the garden has been covered and “contained” with a hardwood edge, because he had earlier expressed his concern that I was going to keep nibbling away at the lawn with my spade and stealing a little more ground for my garden each year.  I tried to convince him that this was a good thing, as it would leave less lawn for him to mow, but he was not having any of it.  He’s already seen Mum and Dad dig up the front lawn at their place to plant potatoes, so he's wise to halt any expansion at our house before it gets out of hand.

I like to plant out my capsicums and tomatoes out in the garden at Labour Weekend, which is only one week away.  But this year, like last year, I will have to delay planting out for up to a fortnight because the wind and rain are driving the soil temperatures below what they should be at this time of year.

That will give me time to dig over the empty rose garden and prepare it for vegetables.  We potted all of the roses this winter and dug a trench at the back of the rose garden to gain access to the block wall of the basement, which was leaking.  Once it was water-blasted, it took some time to paint the waterproofing compound onto the wall, as we struck more rain.  By the time the compound was on, the tanking in place and the trench filled in, it was too late to replant the roses as they were budding in their pots.  So, after turning the garden and adding plenty of compost, the rose garden will be home to capsicums, zucchinis and gherkins.  The roses must endure a summer in their pots, and I will be working hard to ensure that they don't dry out.

Sunday, 7 October 2007

From seeds saved from last year's harvest I have planted:

• big, juicy tomatoes
• sweet, red, cherry tomatoes
• capsicums (bell peppers) that are predominantly green (and don't change colour very quickly)

I purchased and planted seeds for the following plants:

• black jack zucchinis
• mixed capsicums (bell peppers) that ripen quickly to a variety of colours
• gherkins (dill pickles)
• butter-crunch lettuces
• spring onions
• basil, basil and more basil

I also planted cape gooseberry seeds that I have been given, but with a germination rate of only 25% I don't have particularly high hopes for them.

I have planted the zucchini seeds in peat pots, one per pot.  It will save them from suffering transplant shock when I move them into the garden, as the pots will break down quite quickly in the moist soil.  I want to give them a head start by germinating them in the warmth of the back shed.  They would simply rot in the ground with the amount of rain we are having at present.

Yet again, I will probably end up with a lot more plants than I need.  But I have now found a local gourmet food shop that will buy my excess produce, so I needn't feel at all guilty about it. I perhaps didn’t need to plant 40 capsicum plants last year as Andrew pointed out during summer and autumn when he was getting sick to death of picking them (and also of me cooking them in everything and freezing them by the kilogram).  I had stored produce away like a squirrel, but in midwinter the capsicums were still flowering and producing.  Their development was a little slow because of the cold temperatures, but we were still getting more than enough capsicums to eat ourselves and to give away at a time when they were costing $2.98 each in the grocery shop.

Sunday, 18 November 2007

The weather has simply been too gorgeous to sit inside and blog.  There has been no rain for almost a fortnight, so every evening we are out watering the garden with the hose or the watering can.  We don't own a sprinkler.  For a garden like ours, I consider them a waste of water and a primary cause of fungal problems.  Roses and vegetables are best watered around the roots and not on the leaves as water on the foliage promotes blight and mildew, especially in humid weather.  Watering the garden by hand takes about 30 minutes for one person, but it is time well spent enjoying the garden, noting new growth, fruit or buds, and seeking out any pests.

The gherkins I have planted are struggling a little.  I didn't have as much compost for them as I would have liked, so they have to make the best of the poor soil in the rose garden and the little compost I had.  A feed of liquid blood and bone seems to have given them a boost though, so I shall keep encouraging them along.  Something has been finding their leaves very tasty.  Possibly earwigs, by the look of the holes.  And I have baits down for slugs and snails but have seen no sick slimy creatures in the garden.  I may have to move some of the potted garlic into the vicinity, or give the gherkin plants a spray with soapy water to make them less palatable.

The tomatoes are booming.  And the zucchini garden is dotted with cherry tomato seedlings, all self-seeded from the compost.  I don't put weeds in the compost, as the compost doesn't always get hot enough to kill the roots and weed seeds.  So the majority of "weeds" that now appear in my garden now are self-seeded tomatoes and broccoli!

Sunday, 4 November 2007

 Saturday was perfect for being outdoors, but Sunday's cold rain drove me into the potting shed and then into the house.  Part of Saturday was spent solving the problem caused by thrushes and blackbirds in the rose pots.  Not only do we have the contents of the rose garden in pots, but we have a dozen or so more roses that we obtained from my parents.  Mum and Dad had bought them for me at about $2 per root stock from a rose nursery that was closing near the start of the decade. Mum kindly heeled them in under the trees in her yard for me until I had somewhere to put them.  Then I moved to Australia!

Now, about 6 years later, Mum has sent in a search party to find what is left of them.  Not all of the roses were still in existence.  Some were just bare, knobbly stumps, and others had rotted away completely in the damp grass under the trees.  But she gave me what she could find, even the stumps, and I potted them like I had the others - in compost and untanilized sawdust.  To make up for my many years of neglecting them, I have doted on them ever since, watering, pruning, cutting back dead wood, spraying with Yates Shield and Supershield, and generally fussing. Incredibly, all have now recovered to some degree.  They all have leaves and new growth.  All but three have recovered in full and are now covered in buds, blooms, and lush leaf growth.  Most rose blooms are in sunset colours - pinks, salmons and scarlets.  Amongst them there are also several Iceberg roses, which make a stunning contrast.  It will take several seasons to train the standards back into form, but having them in pots for a cycle has allowed me at least to identify their types and colours so that I can design the rose garden around them more easily this winter. 

But being in pots, the roses have been at the mercy of the thrushes and backbirds that dig among the roots searching for worms.  The birds are so good at digging that they turf out half of the compost and destabilise the rose roots.  So on Saturday, Andrew and I set about creating bird excluders for the pots.  We bought a 5 metre roll of green, plastic dipped chicken wire mesh for $19.90. Andrew cut circles from it to cover the pots.  Each circle has a radial cut to the centre and a hole cut in the middle so that the whole thing can be wrapped around the rose rootstock above soil and mulch level and tucked in under the lip of the pot.  The netting is sturdy, with holes big enough to water and weed the pots and drive in bamboo support stakes, while keeping out our feathered friends.  The green coating makes the wire long-lasting, easier to work with the hands, and blend in with the colour of the pots so that the solution is not an unsightly one.

The passionfruit pots shall receive the same treatment this week, then our friendly thrush family and mother blackbird will be back to digging in the border gardens and eating the alpine strawberries as they ripen, and I can take a break from sweeping up the contents of the pots off the ground each day and trying to keep one step ahead of my garden's avian visitors!