So How Does the Garden Go

As I said in the post below the garden needed a lot of help with the new season of spring and summer.















At first it was a matter of finding what had survived the neglect of an un-kept winter garden. And to our blessing there were some plants that had kept growing. Maybe the weeds growing up protected them keeping moisture in the ground, birds away from them and protection from severe winds, but I found a good amount still edible or just needing a bit more time and attention. As mentioned in an earlier post Harry helped weed and dig over parts of the garden and also set to digging a separate block for potatoes. (We have four blocks that are rotated between gardens, the hen run and just being fallow for a bit.)














Once the garden was cleared enough for plantings it was then a matter of working out what we wanted planted and when. I have been using the NZ Gardeners Garden Diary for a few years and it’s a great guide as to when to plant what with hints and recipes each month as well as planting by the moon. I actually am really following this now although at first I thought it was all a bit fuddy duddy. As a prime example I was planting carrots one week even though they said not to because of the phase of the moon – and – nope nothing came up. A few weeks later I panted when they said to “plant crops whose edible parts are below ground” and presto they came up.

It wasn’t long before we were eating the crops from the ‘lost garden’ and now we are well into enjoying all the new crops as they come on. In fact at the moment the only fruit and vegetables I buy are tomatoes and cucumbers (because ours aren’t ready yet) and bananas and one other stone fruit whichever is cheapest at the time.

So all in all it’s a real blessing and so much healthier to be eating straight from our garden nearly all our vegetables and some fruit knowing they have had no herbicides or pesticides added to them at all.

 


And to add to it Harry and I are getting fresh air, some exercise and just enjoying working on a common project together – what bliss.
































No it doesn't need weeding- that's an example of over cropping and not planning for large produce.

What Happened to the Garden?

A while ago a friend asked me how my garden was going. Well like the lack of posts on this blog of late, my garden was also suffering from neglect.

Sure it had started out with a hiss and a roar and I had posted a bit of progress but then it all seemed to stop.

I had been harvesting the odd zucchini when I remembered and we have had a few meals with the lettuce but the rest of the garden just got ignored.

I have reasons for the lack of time but I also just never got around to it either and so the weeds took over.

Yes this is the same garden!!

In fact if you look carefully in the left photo you can see the zucchini plant just above the weeds in the top left corner.
There is also a glimpse of a pumpkin plant in the bottom right corner.

It sure looks lush even if it is just mainly weeds!

Determined to get back into everything I decided to see what I could salvage from my left over summer plantings once I removed the weeds.

Not only that but I had left a frame over some seeds to stop the birds from scratching them out and now not only had the weeds grown through but the carrots and parsnips were well and truly established growing out of the frame.

I carefully rolled the frame back pulling the tops of the carrots and parsnips down trying not to up root them in the process. Most of it was successful and the ones that did come out I replanted hoping they would continue to grow.

There had been plenty of rain the week before so the weeds were quite easy to pull out and it didn’t take too long to discover what had grown, what had survived and a few little surprises along the way.

A tomato plant had grown and had ripened 'fruit'.

The zucchini plant was still producing.

Although a few pumpkin plants had grown from my plantings only one was fruiting, but then I found a whole plant that had self sown right in the middle of the garden. There was no fruit on it as yet but plenty of flowers so I left it there. 

There were even some capsicums still producing green peppers.

I discovered that last years parsnips that I had left to go to seed were already dispersing their seed through the garden and there are parsnips popping up all over the place.


Normally I wait and collect seeds myself to sow but it was doing it all on its own - everywhere!

So once the garden was looking like a garden I planted out some seedlings of cabbage, cauliflower,  broccolli and lettuce and also some peas making a tee-'pea' frame for them to grow up.

This Years Garden Challenge - Part 3

Today we had some salad leaves from the garden with dinner. The first pickings for this year.
It was so good to have fresh veggies picked only a few minutes  ago on the plate to eat.

As I have already started this years gardening - a bit late mind you - Part one, Part two - you can see how I am progressing.

It might look progressive but I can assure you I am a little disappointment.

I planted about a dozen tomato plants I had grown from seed. But only one has survived.
I had two punnets of lettuce plants; great lakes the standard lettuce that hearts up beautifully and a salad selection - multicoloured and shaped leaves that can just been torn off and the plant left to continue to grow. There were twelve plants in all. But by the time the birds/slugs/cats or something else had dug, scratched or eaten the seedlings I now have seven. One of which is still struggling as I have had to replant it I don't know how many times!

The zucchini is slowly recovering from being attacked by one of the above! and three of the capsicum plants have grown.

I have also planted out about five pumpkin plants so we will see if there is enough time for anything to fruit on them.

I was really disappointed as all the seeds I had planted have been scratched away. I am presuming its the birds that also stripped out plum tree.

So I have replanted some carrots, parsnips, beetroot and radishes and this time covered them with the netting frame Harry build me a few years ago.

Maybe there will be a better chance for them this time.

The garden patch in between last years plot and this years is simply over grown with a weed called convolvulus or bindweed. Once in your garden this is a horror to get rid of. Every tiny piece of root system will grow. As I dig any garden I remove what I can and put it in the rubbish to be collected each week.
But for this invasion dramatic action was required. I have sprayed it all with weed killer. I am not intending to grow anything in there for awhile so I thought this was a radical but effective way to start.

I'll post you updates over the next few weeks!!

This Years Garden Challenge - Part 2

Well I sprayed all around the outside fence of the garden including the hen house. Wasn't sure if the hens would cope but they are still all alive!

But a lot of the weeds aren't! 

Remember three weeks ago

And then to my surprise I discovered something left over from some plantings a few months ago that I thought had all died.
 
Mind you it doesn't look too happy but we will nurture it and see how it goes.


So after pulling out all the dead weeds and finding the edge of the garden, Harry helped to spread out eight bags of stable scrapings (Horse poo) over the area I had cleared for the first plantings. Not the nicest of jobs as the bags were well and truly starting to "mature" and the flies were thick. We had added this to our veggie garden for years now and find it so good, not just for fertilizer and mulching but for just building the garden up.



Then comes the hard part. It took forty minutes to dig it all in and rake it over, taking care not to destroy or disturb the little seedling that might grow. Sounds a bit like the little engine who could.

I rescued the seedlings from my kitchen window box that I had grown from seed and the lettuce seedlings I had recently purchased and then got to work planting out.




Tomatoes, lettuces (fancy and heading), bell peppers, cabbage and broccoli (or were they cauliflowers - only time will tell!), a zucchini and a row of carrots and a few radishes.

I also had two pumpkin plants I planted down the other end of the garden.
 
I found my old slug and snail bait holder (the frog) and set it up. I know it looks silly but it holds the bait as well as little reservoirs for the slugs to die in. It's covered so animals can't get at the baits and stops the rain making the bait soggy.

And all this in a mornings work in the garden as the weather report predicted rain in the evening and more the next day. How ever the rain didn't come that evening but it certainly did the next day. In fact over the ranges there was flooding.

So I may be late in getting the garden going and there is still an awful lot to be done to restore it to a thriving plot, but it's a start and little by little it will improve.

I miss not being able to pop out to the garden to gather fresh veggie for meals, or to preserve or bake with.

This Years Garden Challenge

It's that time of the year again - well actually it has well and truly passed it.... but I have entered into the Yates Garden Challenge again and I realize now that with being so busy with the retreat I am no where near completing anything.

In fact this is what my garden looks like!

But because some of you like to see how I go (Hi Lynda!) I will blog it on here and it will make me get onto it.

I have seedlings already to go - lettuce, tomatoes, capsicums and some other greens. I even have some seed potatoes but you can see there needs to be some major work down over the next few days to even get at the ground!

My aim over the next few weeks is to get a little bit of the things I like to do done each day

• gardening
• reading
• knitting
• sewing
• baking
• 1 Christmas thing

Posting here will help me make sure I do it!

Yates Vegie Growing Challenge - Part 5

Well what can I say?

The Challenge on the Yates garden web site has well and truly closed and no I didn't win anything. I didn't really keep up-to-date with the posting on that website's blog for my entries to the competition. But that doesn't matter because I feel I have won my own challenge.

We are in the thick of a drought here at the moment and every thing around us is getting brown and dieing, but my garden so far has survived.

The chooks have not been able to get in and destroy anything I plant.
I am able to keep up with the watering and keep the convolvulus a bay.
I am using the New Zealand Gardner Diary (a magazine) to plant the right things at the right times.

We have been eating lettuce, radishes, carrots, a broccoli and I will be pickling some beetroot.
I had a look this evening and there is a zucchini ready to be picked and a cabbage.

Not sure why this is so blurry

As much as I love being out in the garden with the heat we have been having I have had to keep the gardening to short bursts or get out very early in the morning before the sun has emerged from the other side of the house and our shading plum tree.

Yates Vegie Growing Challenge - Part 4

It felt like a good start

Time for action - The old chook run removed

The old chook run minus its fencing

A hidden nest of eggs

Well it seemed I was beginning to lose the garden and its produce with the hens being a nuisance, so it was now time for action. We needed to keep control of the hens so they could only roam when we wanted them to, not just for the garden but also to be able to find their eggs.

They still prefer to lay in a secret place hoping we wont find the eggs.

The new hen run

This shot is a nest we found last week around the front. One hen has been sitting so the others hold on and lay somewhere else when they are let out.  



We bought a dog run from RD1 but it was square when made up. Harry modified it to fit the basic size of our gardens. He also cut an opening for the hen house to fit on the outside so that the hens had full run of the pen.
 
Before we could move it to the new spot for the hens we had to prune some of the branches off a tree but still allowing some shade for the hens. The branches will be added to the fire wood supply for next winter


Because Harry had mounted the frame on wooden planks it was quite heavy but with Katrina helping we managed to move the run across to the new spot. Harry also modified the hen house so it would sit snugly in the opening he had made.

The chooks locked away but the garden still not safe

Oh what joy for me to see them finally locked up unable to escape. I must admit even though there was fresh greenery for them to scratch in, it wasn't long before they realise their new predicament and would watch us from within their confinement.

This still didn't solve the problem of them getting at my garden when we let them out for a roam. We like to do this each day just so they have a bit more freedom and they do help keep the bugs at bay aground the place. How ever they will scratch away at any exposed ground especially liking freshly dug or weeded spots as it makes finding the bugs so much easier for them!





Harry made up a fence all around the garden space with the old chook run fence adding a couple of gates and a path. He will dig the area between the veges and the chook run for potatoes and I can extend the vegie part further back to the right.







With this now completed I was able to plant out some lettuce seedlings, rescue the seedlings of cabbage and broccoli I had grown myself and had survived the attack of the hens, and also plant a couple more rows of seeds for a continuation of carrots, beetroot and parsnips.

You have no idea of the joy this gave me. I love vegetable gardening and the last two years have been disasters because of the hens. I felt like we had accomplished so much in the redesigning of the gardens, not just control but abundant supply.

Roll on summer.

Yates Vegie Growing Challenge - Part 3

Well it was feeling like I wasn't getting anywhere with this challenge. What little I had planted just wasn't responding.

Of course the hens go into the garden a lot and when walking on the netting frame were able to pick at ground level. I had omitted to watering the garden too so growth wasn't very tremendous at all. Mind you as the saying goes, "you get what you paid for," and if I wasn't prepared to pay the time I shouldn't expect a huge crop.

The only thing that has grown from my first sewing's were  the beetroot, some carrot and radish - I always have radish. Radish is so quick and easy to grow you just have to be careful to only sew a few at a time. I don't use any chemical product on my vegie garden so it would seem that slugs or something have had a bit of a nibble on the radishes. There was absolutely no sign of any beans so they had been eaten by something. As they were right at the edge of the net it could have been anything.

By this stage I had also attempted to grow some cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli seedlings from seeds on my window sill in the kitchen so I felt game enough to plant them out too.

To protect them from being scratched out of the ground I have learnt to cover them and use large juice containers with the tops cut off as little glasses houses. Needless to say those hens certainly weren't taking much notice of why they were there and would sometimes knock them over while scratching around them.

I really was beginning to think that those hens were going to win this battle and well so much for winning any competition. I do love gardening and there is such satisfaction with going out into the vegetable garden, harvesting what you want and cooking it fresh each day, that you don't get from going to the shop to get what you need.
But I kept at it, you never know I may well win the battle if not the competition.

I did harvest the old carrots and although some were gone to seed a few were quite nice and when roasted straight from the garden were sweet.