Back from holiday and have had two lots of wwoofers

Well the ability to send photos might have deserted me (I interfered with it somehow and can't get it back, I used flickr.com for a mac) but the garden continues to flourish.

I wish I could send photos of the heritage apples which are all swelling and looking so promising. We have already finished thinning them (very late I might say) and used the thinnings for stewing. In fact I had so many I had to freeze them.

Our first wwoofers were Dagmar and Paul from Scotland, wonderful people. We did heaps of work. Everything grew so much while we were away for a three week holiday it sure needed attending to. Fortunately we had had family in the house all that time and the glasshouse and vege garden had been watered regularly and the geese water changed. On arrival home we found the early plums had all been eaten by the birds, there are no more early fruit on any of the olives and disease has entered the wine grapes. Well the grapes were never disease resistant anyway. I always put off spraying them, even with Organic 100 or baking soda and it's time I was more disciplined about it. Anyway they look generally better than last year thank goodness.

The herbal ley is proving wonderful for all sorts of beneficial insects. I think I have identified a hoverfly – not sure. Bees are having a party in the phacelia and the various white flowers are growing underneath them. Borage is just staring to grow bigger. By autumn each plant is huge and the bees love it. So I had to transplant a lot of young borage plants from the vege garden (we had a very big one there last year) to under the fruit trees at the back. The coriander I put under the citrus is flourishing, wonderful for cooking with.

And that brings us to the French wwoofer Stephanie, who is with us now. She loves cooking and yesterday cooked us a delicious lunch which I am still recovering from.

My son in law and daughter noticed that the walnuts almost all have borer, so we had to treat them with a dose of kerosene and seal it with wax. Oh dear.

We have also had trouble with rats who seemed to get half our nuts. Devious brutes. So hopefully we are outwitting them now. A fisherman friend on holiday suggested using nylon fishing line to hang them from in the shed so they can't climb down it. Hopefully that will work.

The weather has been fairly awful. Spring was cool and wet and summer not very obvious. We have only had a few really hot days so the prospect of the kumeras doing well is not strong. Tomatoes are ripening in the glasshouse now, most of the carrots didn't germinate (they are germinating now as it is warm and wet) and you can say goodbye to growing broccoli in the summer due to white butterflies. They hardly grew much anyway.

The corn, beans and squash are working well together. Three sisters the Hope Indians call them. Beans climb the corn and the squash is creeping underneath, beans create soil for all of them.

Bryan my son in law did all the shredding while we were away and many little mechaical jobs fixing things.

Oh and I forgot, I love tradesmen. Our plumber came this week and sorted out the filter and now we have good water pressure again. What a relief. Now we need an electrician again for the caravan as it is shorting out too often. Must go for a swim.

Fruit are ripening now and veges are all planted.

Well at last. The broad beans have been good but are now finished. Red currants are great and black currants are just starting but don't look as plentiful as the reds.

Loquats are good too but require a ladder to pick and then they aren't exactly user friendly. A great taste but such a lot of pip, in fact 3-4 pips in each. And we have to share them with the birds, plenty for all of us actually.

The cherry isn't having a good year at all sad to say.

Yesterday I started poking round the early plums and found some ripe. I had a good feed and brought some in too. On the way I picked a couple of leaves of Vietnamese mint and chewed one and lo and behold it went beautifully with the plums. So I made some more up. Delicious.

Elderflowers have finished but their cordial is still going, and the apples have been thinned a bit but maybe we should have been more ruthless. The herbal ley is looking really great under the apples and figs and I look forward to a whole bloom of white flowers later. And of course all the apples.

As for the geese, well they get out a lot. Not sure that the electric fence is doing much at all. And tonight Malcolm was mowing and broke the mower when he hit a big root. A big bolt was sheared off, and we hope we can get a borrowed mower for the holidays from the Levin firm KC Motors. If not... Sounds an expensive accident.

And the corn is growing up, with beans and squash. The kumeras are hopeless because it hasn't exactly been a tropical spring. In the glasshouse the tomatoes are swelling and I finally finished picking off laterals and tying them up before we go away on holiday and have family look after the place.

The tamarillo has now recovered after the awful spring and even looks healthy. Peaches are generally quite useless and macadamia are all finally picked. Well guess what? The rats have eaten all the hazelnuts we had stored in the storeroom and have taken half the macadamias to high places and scattered them everywhere including in the garage roller door. We had one onion bag stored in the mower shed and thought we were clever because we tied it from a rafter. And the darned rats climbed up there and down the string, demolishing half the bag. So next year it is 2-3 bags from the rafters and lots of early rat poison. All that work picking and dehusking and drying them and mostly to feed rats. Darn.

Ther radishes are up and the carrots have finally germinated after several failures in the spring. Good greens always means we have had salads every day and the herbs are extremely plentiful and varied. Peoppermint tea is great. I have peas and beans planted everywhere.

The wine grapes are still holding their own and the table grapes look healthy thanks to all the Organic 100 sprayed on them (fish waste and seaweed) They love it

A happy moment during our property blessing and wedding

DSC_3825_2.jpg
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Well after six years of living together we finally got married on Dec 2nd, which was a very happy event. I think what we are laughing at here is the wee dog that Winsome brought chased the cows in the next door paddock. It wasn't long till the cows thought there was something wrong here as the dog was diminutive and they were big. So the cows turned round the chased the dog back to our property. He scuttled in so fast we all burst out laughing. We went from here into the clearing in the native bush for our wedding ceremony. And of course it was a brilliantly fine day after weeks of rain and indifferent weather...

Malcolm rides the mower at full speed

SV100948.jpg
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

He was keen to get it all mown before the weather broke and sure as eggs today has been very wet and windy. This is Malcolm with his head down going for it. You can see the red currants in the distance with nets over them. We picked a good bowlful yesterday and there are plenty more.

Matze and Peggy plant the Wedding Bells rose

SV100942.jpg
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Yes it is true, we did get married last Saturday and Wendy and Russell gave us this lovely climbing rose. After considerable discussion, and rejecting five other sites, we settled on this one. It is visible from the dining room window, next to the green tea and can climb on the framework set up for the kiwifruit. It looks as though we will have some fruit this year though it is a strange variety and has a bad history, so no doubt it will be well pruned back in the future. Matze and Peggy are from Berlin, East Berlin actually, and have been very helpful to us during the week of our wedding preparations. They looked after our place for three days while we went away to find some sun (it wasn't there in Napier at the time either!).

Boys clean up the branches that Rupert cut off

SV100912.jpg
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Yes it is Rupert, Malcolm's 25 year old grandson from Dunedin. He visited complete with chainsaw and trimmed a great number of branches under Malcolm's guidance. Here he is transporting the branches the day after our wedding. In the trailer is Temmy (Malcolm's great grandson and Daniel (Deirdre's grandson) They had a ball.

Rupert fells a diseased almond tree

SV100836.jpg
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

We have been told there are two almond trees with silvery leaf and since this virus affects the tree fatally, it might as well be got rid of.

Well today was the day. Malcolm's grandson Rupert has arrived from Dunedin (he is a student there) and he very kindly brought all his tools, chainsaw etc for felling trees, which, like his father Graham, he loves to do.

So it was a sad day for Malcolm who hates to see the end of trees. But a relief as they have not produced any nuts. Only one produces nuts actually. We will have to burn the wood as we can't compost it.

Of course our next big event is that Malcolm and I are getting married in the clearing in the bush on Saturday.

The 35 heritage apples have set well this year

SV100821.jpg
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

I think this is Tydemans Late Orange apple. Other varieties we have are Nonnetit Bastard, Gravenstein, Lobo, Jacques Lebel, Alfriston, Peasgood Nonsuch, Scarlet Pimpernel, Mother, Sunset, Sturmer and Laxton's Fortune. Prima was the only one which fruited abundantly last year and this year it only has a handful of apples set. It seems to be having a year off.

We have really tried with these apples. Some trees are so laden we will have to thin them. Interestingly we didn't prune them at all this year. And I have just hung a couple of Pheronome traps for codling moth. Hope it wasn't too late!

Preparing figs for herbal ley

Preparing figs for herbal ley
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

There is one thing really good about a very wet spring – you can keep planting! Here we are in late November preparing the ground to sow a herbal ley under the first row of figs and it isn't too wet to do it. So we already have some catnip, two wormwoods and two rue plants and hopefully will get some comfrey and nasturtium in before it completely dries up. And some of the fig cuttings have taken really well. We have some breba figs already but no main crop figs are yet appearing. It is probably too darned cold. We are still wearing thick winter jerseys.

Preparing figs for herbal ley

Preparing figs for herbal ley
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Preparing figs for herbal ley

Three geese round the kumquat tree

SV100663.jpg
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

This photo dates back to the time when we had three geese. Unfortunately we lost the female, the little one on the right. She disappeared when we were absent for a day and we never found her. That is until recently. Malcolm was clearing the back pathway in the native forest and he found her skeleton and feathers. She must have strayed, got hungry and then fell prey to something. Sometime after she vanished we also found two eggs she had laid in the gum trees.

Actually with the weather being so rainy for so long, the solar unit powering the electric fence no longer worked. That's why we have had to shoo back the geese a lot. They learnt to get over the fence and have lost all fear of an electric shock. So may the sun shine from now on...

Traci the wwoofer from Alaska

SV100817.jpg
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

She is lovely. Happy always, hard working and she came at a time when it just kept on raining. Fortunately she said she loved getting wet and dirty and this was easy because the main job she had was grubbing in preparation for sowing the herbal ley. She also helped me name all the heritage apples and helped spread lime.

Yes I grew this cauliflower

SV100818.jpg
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Good cauliflower. I think this was grown on the spot where I had dug in a bokashi bucket. Fortunately the white butterflies have not started their summer yet! We also have some excellent cabbages coming on.

Getting ready to sow seeds for herbal ley in heritage apple orchard.

SV100807.jpg
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Actually the term herbal ley isn't all that accurate, because they aren't all herbs. But here is Malcolm after a session grubbing the turf, reasonably easy after all the rain. And it should be good conditions for germinating because it is nearly full moon as well. We bought the King Seeds Beneficial Insect Mix but asked them to leave out the fennel.

It consists of buckwheat (white flowers), dill, Bishops flower (ammi major or white lace), parsnip, ammi visnaga (white lacy again), daucus carota (wild carrot or Queen Anne's lace), phacelia, bergamot (bee balm orange or pink) and alyssum (white). We will also put some clovers and alfalfa in.

The blue phacelia already have flowering is attracting a huge range of insects and we have borage, nasturtium, comfrey and a few herbs growing. This year's apple crop looks really promising and the soil is looking reasonably good. The only apple tree which hasn't set much fruit is the one which fruited heavily last year. It seems to be having a year off.

I must say after all the grubbing we get really tired. I can only do 45 minutes of it at a time.

Developments in the vege garden

SV100803_2.jpg
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Well the brassicas are at the stage where the white butterflies are about to arrive but I will be spraying with dipel which is OK in organic circles. See the big mustard plant. Behind them is the bed of corn and beans. On the left the borage has extended itself but the bees are having such a party I can't bring myself to cut it in half. In the middle at the back are the broad beans. On the right are the red and black currant bushes. Behind the broad beans we now have a kumera garden. Behind the borage is the herb garden.

A lot of work has been done in a week

In the past week, with Jan Tillman our strong young wwoofer from Germany, we have completed the following:

We have created a new piece of vege garden, which is no mean feat because it all had to be dug out and remember there are stones just beneath the surface. Malcolm and Jan used picks and then had to take away all the stone. We will grow kumeras there once we get in some new soil.

We have brought in manure, sand, clay to do various jobs. The clay was mixed with the manure and plastered on the apple trunks, and the sand is ready for more seed mixes.

We have done a great deal in the vege garden, getting rid of some winter veges and planting new ones for summer.
We bought a line trimmer which means the edges are now all neat.
We mowed the back part of the property for the first time for ages. The weeds were getting away because the geese didn't like them enough and didn't eat enough.
We have ordered a seed mix of the following to sow under the rows of apple trees:buckwheat, dill, bishop's flower. ammi visnaga, parsnip, caucus carota, phacelia, bergamot and allyssum.
We have lime ready to spread and we are doing this to raise calcium levels mostly.
We have spread rock dust and sprayed with Organic 100, a mix of fish waste and seaweed. Huge jobs.
We have picked and processed more macadamias.
We have used quite a bit of the liquid manure and nettles and comfrey to feed the trees.
We have made two compost heaps and spread compost from the remains of one of them.
We have done all the shredding of all the branches that were lying around under the trees. Wonderful.
The grapes have been sprayed with oil, detergent and water and actually look much healthier.
We have got rid of big invasive plants in the front border and have some bare land to plant corn and beans or amarynth.
We have fixed up all the places where stakes were too close to fruit trees, doing damage to the trunk.

Chris Christoffels checks his beehive

SV100799.jpg
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Very kindly this friend has brought his beehives to our property for the spring so that our apples can be properly pollinated. It has been great and it looks as though it was successful with many apples set. The bees have had a ball with the phacelia, the borage and the various flowers around, but now they will have to go home because flowers are short and they may starve.

And here he is doing it

2 great iPhotos
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Actually it was a fun job. We were very glad of good gloves.

Jan the wwoofer mixes manure and clay for apples

2 great iPhotos
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

I guess more than one person has suggested that to deal with the lichen on the trunks of our apple trees we scrub them down with a wire brush and then plaster them with clay and cow manure. Here is Jan the young German wwoofer doing this awful job. He reckons he has had three smells in three days. The first was the fish waste on the compost heap and the second was this. The third was today when he sprayed the foliage of fruit trees with Organic 100 which is a mixture of fish waste and seaweed. He had to wash his clothes afterwards. We also ruined the wire brush with this job but here is hoping the apples are better.

Tomatoes in glasshouse in late September

tomatoes in glasshouse.JPG
Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Well this year we have a bit of whitefly and I have sprayed with oil and detergent and water and put up yellow stickies and planted a pyrethrum plant.

I must say it going to be challenge to get the watering system up and running again because Malcolm ran over the hose late this afternoon.

These tomatoes are a mixture of Russian red, Waimana, and some cherry tomatoes. I grew mustard over the winter and Richard dug it in, then I added more of everything I could find to nourish the soil.

Some pumpkins sprung up too...I transplanted them or gave them away.