12 Days of Christmas - Day 2

Today is Wednesday.  It was a hard day....  Schools are finishing up.  I had to go to my workplace to empty out my desk for my maternity leave replacement, and there was a concert, a Pippins party and of course nibbles to prepare.

So - hard day for me, I'm tired, its hot, I'm over it.

It's nice therefore to have a wee pick-me-up!

Today I received this lovely little santa decoration from Odette in my Day 2 parcel.  I'm not sure if she made it, but its incredibly well finished, so if she did she's a smartie!!!

Hannah would have opened her day 2 parcel to find this:  Something for the kiddlies :)

In addition to the swap festivities, I got the teacher's gifts together this evening too (x 6 - 4 kindy teachers and 2 school teachers)  6 nice teatowels each filled with about 1kg of freshly dug new potatoes from our vege garden. 

Seems a weird present to give, but with all the wonderful things teachers receive at this time of year - especially new entrants teachers - I like giving a practical easy present that people don't feel bad about receiving or cooking and using!!



On with tomorrow - phew!  This heat is killing me so with the promise of rain tomorrow, I'm already loving the idea of a good night's sleep.

Keeping the vampires away

I am so damned proud of our little garden. While we are getting a few problems at the moment in terms of white fly (possibly has something to do with the fact we are still growing brassica's in summer......) our garlic has gone so well this year.



Can I recommend you plant your garlic this year in a raised bed? This stuff is kick ass.

Other points of interest.

Corn - doing very well, but I think it might be a bit small.

Basil looking pretty good as well. We are getting a nice feed of beans every couple of days which is nice too. Courgettes OK (but a few brown leaves which is worrying....), lettuce performing well, beetroot growing, cucumbers starting to come along.

Tomatoes aren't going brilliantly, and I think this comes from our reluctance to use sprays in the garden. I am feeding them a little more now, so hopefully it will give them they boost they need.

So - we now have our best raised bed space free again - we just have to decide what to put in the garlic's place for a few months......

My jungle

I am a homebod - a typical cancerian. Love to have all my things around me in the nest that is my home.
I have always had trouble being away from home for more than about 2 weeks at a time, so our holidays tend to be 10-14d things. Any longer out of the country and I get antsy.

On this holiday my worries were a little more grounded - I was petrified about the garden - specifically the tomatoes and my sunflowers.

I had been growing the sunflowers from seed, and before leaving they were nice and tall, and looked like they were ready to pop. I was so afraid I was going to miss the blooms while away in Oz.


Thankfully they behaved, and only one went into bloom while we were away - the others have decided to come out one at a time. Which is nice of them.


I was also worried about the tomatoes. Having never grown tomatoes successfully, this was all a bit of trial and error. While we had staked them before leaving, the amount of growth they went through in 2 weeks was nuts - and it was like a jungle! I have been pruning them for the last hour, and there were alot of clippings, and some lost green tomatoes. But I had to try and get them a little more happy.


I'm not sure if they are now good or not - I guess time will tell whether they get attacked by bugs, or blight, but hopefully the green ones will continue to ripen and we will have lots (or at least a few) nice fresh tomatoes.


We are also having lots of luck at the moment with the carrots (although most of the seeds didn't germinate), courgette/zucchini, beans, beetroot, spinach, and we just picked our last 2 cabbage.




This little beastie is something that has self sown beside the tomatoes and the compost bin.


Not sure what it is. I *think* its a pumpkin. If there are any other suggestions, please leave a comment so we know how big to let it get.

Our plums, pears and apples are all going along nicely. The kids picked most of the first years crop already, so the trees only have to try and ripen up about 3 pieces of fruit each. Now that the cherry plums are in season, and there are plenty of strawberries to hunt for, hopefully their little minds will be distracted enough to let the rest of the fruit on the trees ripen.



How are your garden's growing this summer? Enough rain around for them?

Bragging about the garden.....

We have a kick ass garden going at the moment - like really, its going great guns! On a daily basis we are picking peas (well the kids are munching on about 5 pods a day each) spinach, lettuce, and yesterday we picked our first cabbage which was awesome. SOOOO crunchy!

So I thought I would post some bragging shots as heaps has happened since we have nearly been in this house for a year.

So the first one is of my "fernery" - pretty small so far, but give it time! This little corner beside the garage was originally a spot filled with convulvulas, and white tailed spiders. Yuck. Shane ripped out the fence, and cleaned up the spot by removing about 6" of soil. Then we saw how bad the garage wall was next door! Anyway, we want to hedge it up, so we have planted a couple of camellias, and at the back were there is the most shade, we are doing a fernery. SO far I have 4 ferns in - they will all grow in different directions, and I still want to put in a couple of cabbage trees. In 5 years the corner will look amazing!

Next up is my favourite bed:
This is as you come into our car area from the long drive. I have put in a couple of lavender, some rosemary and other herbs, 3 silver birches and a weeping cherry. All around the front are miniature flaxes, and there are the last of the spring bulbs dying off. The edging was done by Shane's dad - the bricky on his first trip to visit us, and its using all the original rocks that were in the garden - over weedmat. Inspiring.......


Shane put this bed in about 2w ago - its another vege patch, looks great right? It has tomatoes up the other end, and potatoes in the rest of it. Just up from it is my new compost bin that we made for a university project. Can't wait until the new fence goes up and we can finish it using all the old palings.


These are some of the fruit trees we have put in, and in behind we turned over a chunk of soil for a potato patch. There are about 6kg of spuds in this year, hopefully we will have plenty to share with friends and family, plus feeding ourselves for a couple of months.


So on to the current harvest! Spinach has been doing fantastically! This is the last of our perpetual spinach, which has been amazing. Great flavour, constant cropping. I've been eating it 2-3 times a week, and its doing well. Unfortunately its about to go to seed, so we might not have much time left with it. Lettuce have just come out of the patch on the right, so I planted that up today with carrots and radishes.


This patch shows our current lettuce crop with a bit more. Up on the top is radishes and carrots (just starting to come through!) On the bottom is some more strawb plants, and my sunflowers. There are 6 there, and they are the giant variety and apparently you can eat their seeds. Yum!

Close up of the straws - they were all free thanks to a friend Shae, and they are thriving! They desperately need pea straw as the fruit is beginning to form and I dont want them to get rotten.


In this shot you can see our cabbages, the end of the celery and the broad beans - whose pods are just starting to form. Not a great lover of broad beans....... Hopefully we find a home for them, and I can't wait to free up my patch again!


These are our peas, which are cropping well, and the cauli's that shane put in. He actually had about 30 caulis in, cause he thought they were broccoli, but we pulled them out as we really, really dont need 30 caulis! 15 or so will be fine. in the bare patch is beetroot and onions, just starting to come through - I expect I will have to thin them in the next few days.


Brag over - there is lots more I could take photos off, but I will leave it there for now as its a bit of overload. I love this garden - everything is thriving with the aid of our worm juice, NZ weather and good compost. The kids are growing up being able to pick food straight from the yard and its fabulous :)

I have more seeds in trays today. Cherry tomatoes, capsicum, watermelon and cucumbers. Some will have to be grown in pots unless we can finish cropping the broad beans and peas in the next few weeks.