We move today

Yes. Trucks packed at each end ready to move. They are moving here and we are moving there. It is all go.

This blogspot is coming to an end now

Well we are about to move into the Otaki village and I will no longer post here. I may be posting on http://rangiuru.blogspot.com as we develop this new property. It has been a very good autumn with apple, pear and quince crops very abundant. We still await the NZ Tree Crops Association coming here if they need any scion wood from the apples. However it may be possible to wait till the trees are pruned in winter to get that wood.

Potatoes grew huge among comfrey

This was an amazing discovery today, though knowing what nutients comfrey brings up from below I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

Today I harvested the grapes round the water tank. They are black and probably wine grapes I think.

This photo shows one root, so apparently I dug a shaw of potatoes, Malcolm says. And I found a huge potato among the strawberries too where I had piled in the comfrey water and other feed.

Soil has lots of worms

One thing I have learnt rather reluctantly is that you just put mulch on a garden then you have heaps of food and good soil biology. I used to dig and dig like my father and first husband did but now I just mulch and scratch.

But every now and then I have a good look at the soil. A great time for this is when I am digging up potatoes. This soil is now so friable, it breaks apart and there are heaps of worms on each side. Here is one rather big one. And I know that if you don't disturb the soil too much it is better for your health. Just learnt this. Being a science graduate and very curious I always need to know why a rule exists. I took no notice of Malcolm when he told me not to dig. He didn't explain that if you dig you disturb the fungal chains which make polysaccharides. If you put on chemicals it kills the bacteria which produce polysaccharides. And polysaccharides are essential for making glycoproteins for the body. Glycoproteins are used all over, they have a heap of functions in the human body.

Anyway now I know why, I will just mulch and have a peep at my results every now and then.

The property has sold

To Leigh and Hamish Wells of Rangiuru Road. We leave on 25th March. Here we are with our sold sign. The agent was Grant Robertson. We bought their property.

More vegetable garden enthusiams

Every year the vege garden gets better. The caulis and broccoli have been so healthy this year that they grow enormous and don't suffer any disease. Beans are climbing to the sky and when we get home we expect to climb the beanstalk and meet the ogre and his wife.

Today I mulched the corn, peppers, lettuces, leeks and of course the potatoes with a mixture of grass clippings and wood mulch mixed with a compost activator and some magic liquid (water from comfrey, nettles, chicken manure and human urine). There are potatoes growing everywhere and only the Maori potatoes were planted by me this year. The others all popped up unannounced. Carrots are good. The pumpkins the same except for four heritage pumpkins which I nurtured. Tomatoes look good on the west side of the house this year. I only have a few in the glasshouse as I am building up the soil there this summer instead. It is hard to keep moist and gets quite powdery.

I have planted radish and more beetroot. The latter are something I have yet to master growing.

Looks as though it is going to be a good apple season and I have had to thin them quite a bit.

I wasn't much good at growing peas though so I have fed them for the first time and then we will see. I thought they could do without feeding.

Growing kumeras, harvesting broad beans and dealing with passionfruit moth

I have decided to grow quite a few kumeras. I have now harvested nearly all the broad beans and the theory of rotation is that I should start again by adding nutrients and growing greens again.

But we have enough greens and to grow kumeras will save more money. So I have planted kumeras in one patch to which I had added compost and all liquid feeds and wonder what will happen. Apparently they should be planted only in poor soil so will they grow all top and little root? So today I will put 20 more plants in without the extra nutrients right next door and see the experiment emerge.

As for broad beans I have learned you don't need to blanch them before freezing and have frozen heaps. Poor Malcolm is so sick of helping shell them. Then I learnt you don't even need to shell them to have them in a stirfry. Admittedly they repeated on me and I might try again with what is left in the garden.

The darned passionfruit has a moth. I have taken off a lot of leaves and will do some more research. It might need garlic spray.

An early summer report

Things look so great now. The lawn isn't dry at all and everything looks very green.

I have got the bug of making compost in the actual garden bed rather than on a special pile and then transporting it. The handcart is a real boon. I can get a huge load of grass clippings from the pile left here regularly by a commercial lawn mower man and the wood mulch from the pile Malcolm makes when he uses the mulcher. This gets loaded onto the garden. Well the place where the broadbeans have come from anyway. Then I water it, add rock dust and lime. Then I add the various wondrous liquid feeds I have.

The liquid fish waste gets diluted 200 to 1. Then the worm wee gets diluted and added on. Then I use the diluted contents of this blue bin of comfrey leaves, nettle and a bag of chicken manure suspended in the water. Of course this latter stinks to high heaven and I am not sure that it is altogether right, because it must have e-coli in there.

Today at the edible garden tour run by our Transition Town group, an older guy told us that he cold presses his comfrey in a bucket with holes in over another bucket with a brick. The liquid which emerges doesn't stink and is very concentrated. I might try this but would have to get nettle water in somehow.

Anyway there is some new soil-to-be waiting out there. Not sure whether to plant the corn plants there but might try even before it changes itself into compost.

The other thing I did tonight was suspend some jars from apple trees. Inside each jar is 1 tbl molasses and 1tbl of vinegar and water, stirred of course. We have corrugated cardboard wrapped around each tree this year, or rather each branch of each apple tree. It is tricky to suspend them safely.

My first good carrots

Finally I have learnt the art of growing carrots. Buy King seeds or use Koanga Garden seeds. I made the soil very fine before sowing. Used only rock dust and no nitrogen. Thinned well by two granddaughters who needed plenty of instruction. Watered well after thinning. And boy do they taste good.

Good veges coming from the garden now

Gosh I realise that I now use the following to feed my tomatoes, greens and sweet corn:

Worm wee diluted
Fish concentrate very much diluted
From the blue barrel – comfrey, nettle, and chicken manure in a barrel of water, diluted.
Compost tea, made by aerating a panty hose full of compost for three days, having added 2tbl molasses and 1tsp humic acid. I use a $13 acquarium pump. All Elaine Ingham inspired, thanks to Ken Ross of Northland. So easy and cheap to make and teeming with microbes.
Bokashi buckets buried. Not doing these so often at the moment.

Those are the foliar feeds.
And of course when the soil is depleted I add compost itself and lime. The woodash in the soil under the potatoes and the tomatoes is obviously doing a good job because the stems are so strong.

Property is for sale with First National

See on this site our property is now for sale with Grant Robertson of First National. Price $595,000. Phone him at 06 364 2430(0ffice) or 06 364 2430 (home) 021 660 113. Email is firstnational(at)paradise.net.nz

Rupert fells the macrocarpa shading the fruit trees

A lot to clean up yet but the view is already very different with no macrocarpa there. More firewood too!

More photos of the working bee

The effort of city children to distribute blood and bone is certainly appreciated. The smell stays with you for ages and here is Genevieve braving the reality of blood and bone. Hamish was suitably horrified at the smell and the origin.
There is also a photo of Genevieve in front of the figs which are just coming into leaf.
You can also see the process of mulching the feijoas as we lay down cardboard to kill weeds.

Working bee third day

Yes it was fun as well. The Stanley handcart proved both useful and a great toy. Useful for carting the grass clippings and mulch all the way back to the feijoas and fun for joy rides round and round the house. The two year old Lachie enjoyed it most of all. In this photo from left are Jim, Rachel, David, Susanna, Ruby and Genevieve. In trolley are Hamish 4 and Lachie 2 (not visible)

I never thought we would manage to get the feijoas mulched but today people were great. We had heaps of grass clippings and wood mulchings to take back there and we laid down some cardboard and newspaper to kill the weeds beforehand. When we had run out of mulch we got the rotting leaves under the trees on the west side out the back.

And here is David shovelling grass clippings. We were so lucky because just as we ran out, the mowing service fellow arrived with more. And he fixed the line trimmer while he was here too.

Then we all got stuck in and cleaned up round the compost heaps and made two more lots of aerobic compost. Wonderful wonderful. And we mulched the persimmons with grass clippings and compost. And watered them.

My son David and his daughter Genevieve came from Christchurch and joined us. Rachel's partner Jim had just got home from Scotland.

Working bee second day

Wow it was a great idea of Fiona's to have a working bee to get the place tidied up. Yesterday Alistair and Malcolm bought some gravel and fixed up the drive. The best picture I have is of Rauaroha, aged 2 who came with her father.

Then in the afternoon Susanna arrived with a couple of kids and we got the line trimmer going so she could clean up. I taught Ruby aged 10 to thin carrots, transplanting the thinnings so we didn't waste them. She in turn taught her cousin Genevieve the next day and they managed a bit of chinwagging while doing it on the Sunday.

Working bee first day involves wallpapering the kitchen

So here is Oriwia, Malcolm's granddaughter pulling off wallpaper in the kitchen. Rob and Oriwia spent a long time doing it and the job was bigger than we all anticipated. There is more to do and oh the trouble putting back those two way electric switches! Rob is so patient. Things didn't work out on Friday night and the dark overtook him so it was a relief when my son in law finished wiring things up today. Rob will come back to finish the wallpaper when he has time. A long job. We are so grateful.

Freesias are a sure sign of spring

The previous owners Margaret and Ross Dean planted quite a few lovely flowers under the walnuts and chestnuts. The narcissus are nearly finished but we greatly enjoyed them.

When the freesias bloom it is so lovely. You can see the grape hyacinths too. I don't know the name of the yellow bell like flower but they are everywhere and make a good show.

Picking macadamias now

Well it looks as though we have a reasonable crop this year. The first year was good, the second I picked them too early and they were too small and this year it is just at the right time.

You have to take off the coating within 24 hours, then leave them to dry for 12 weeks. Had to get a ladder to get the top ones, scared I would fall and noone would find me. Still more to gather I think. Maybe we will use the young men when the families come for a working bee on Saturday.

Wow just picked yet another bucket. Wonderful! Good size this year.

And another photo is of the macadamias when about half of them have their green coats off. Malcolm takes some off every day. We have now filled a bucket with their shells.

Mulching in the spring

I never thought these trees could use so much mulch. Christabel has shown me that it is easy to kill the weeds under a tree by putting down wet cardboard. And then we just pile on the half rotted grass clippings and the mulched up prunings. It just never seems to stop.

She tried to persuade me to make a bigger circle under the apricots but that is hard work and a heck of a lot of mulch. We already get extra grass clippings delivered from a local contractor to save him paying money to dump it in the Council's dump. So we have done the citrus, grapes, figs, apricots, plums, peaches (well the ones nearest the house anyway), persimmons (these sure need to be protected from the coming summer drought), feijoas (the ones nearest the house), the new avocado, two new apples, new grape, tamarillo, pears, quince and nectarine.

Malcolm's grandson Paul is living in Otaki now and was a great help recently.

Making new soil out the back

When you grow root vegetables there is seldom enough room. So last year I started a patch out the east of the property to grow Maori potatoes. I laid down straw and mulch but they didn't do well as apparently Maori potatoes need a lot of water. It was just too far away from the house.

So this year I got my granddaughter to build a new garden. Rather than pay for someone to build raised beds, we used the nearby stones (this property and all surrounding properties are full of "Hautere spuds", big stones under the ground, and all gardens and all fruit trees have been developed by taking out those stones. In our case there are piles of them around and shrubs have been planted among them quite successfully over the years.

Well we have put brown cardboard down over the grass to kill it, then layers of wood mulch and grass clippings and manure and sprinkled it with EM. Then more and more and covered it for a while. Now that soil is developing, and the spuds have sprouted we have planted the Maori potatoes, not to mention some attractive flowers. (After all it is the bed we see straight out from the dining room window.)

Today I rummaged round in it and worked in some wood ash so that the potatoes have plenty of potash. Should have done that earlier. I worked it into the soil around the tomatoes too. Should have done that earlier too.. We live and learn.