My Garden: in progress

Tomorrow I fly to the USA for 4 weeks!  I spent a bit of time today tidying my garden up for while I'm gone. I know it's going to be mental when I get back though! The tomatoes are going to be CRAZY and possibly even ripe?  The pumpkins may have taken over by then too. LOL (laugh out loud).

I've been meaning to do a post on my garden for ages now.  I got distracted in my last blog and ended up writing about last year's garden! hahaha.  I've written a whole heap of things for this blog.....but, as usual, I know want to change it all (this is why I rarely revise papers I write!).  So, I think I'll scrap round one (which has a couple of cute antidotes I suppose) and just go with a more easy to follow format similar to my previous blog:  each of my plants gets it's own spot :)  Probably far less writing for me and far more pictures for you! LOL

At the end of summer last year, Dave gave up a large junk of his lawn so that I could attempt to have a winter garden. I had hoped that bringing the plot away from the fence would allow the low rising sun to get over the fence's shadow, but in reality the tip of our round only got a small amount of light.

I did put a few plants in: the silverbeet (aka swiss chard) grandma give me hung in through winter to give us yummy silverbeet pies this spring.  I got a few turnips, but the radishes were eaten by either slugs or ants.  I ended up letting them go to seed

Radish flowers

The onions (and weeds) did pretty good in the two spots I placed them.  They are slow to start and take about 8 months until you can harvest.  I'm pretty pleased with my results:

Row of onions among grass weed and turnip (left)
 (10 Sept)

Onions getting bigger! (28 Nov)

Onions today! (21 Dec)

While waiting for the wet winter to pass, I also planted garlic (which never even sprouted!) and shallot (I'm pretty sure they are doing something; they have lots of green).
I also bought my first ever flower bulbs.  I was delighted with my first spring Hyacinth (a bit worse for the slugs) and my lovely Japanese Iris

I quite liked my surprisingly bright anemone also.

Windswept and rootbound,
but starting to fruit

I planted capsicum (sweet/bell pepper) from the seeds of a store bought pepper sometime in late summer/early fall.  I was surprised to find EVERY seed sprouted! Capsicums, however, don't like the cold.  That meant they had to be in the warmest room of the  house; the dining room where the fireplace is.  We had a lovely forest of plants as our centerpiece throughout all winter!

Bigger Fruit!!!!

Having babied these plants for MONTHS, I was as nervous as a mother letting her child ride her bike alone for the first time!  Would they survive the slugs?  Should I have waited for a less windy day!  Will it be too much direct sun all at once?  I put the 6 pepper plants out on the same day as two store bought tomatoes and an eggplant.

The tomatoes have been doing well, a bit to well actually. I didn't manage to keep their lateral shoots trimmed, so I've had to tie a million different branches to the stakes!  I got a little ruthless today and broke off several well developed laterals, just because I couldn't be bothered supporting them!  As you can see, these two tomatoes have gotten quite bushy!  The little plant in the middle is one of the capsicums.  I've had to tie it up to support he massive fruits :)

My potatoes have done pretty well too!  I can only hope that the massive amount of foliage is producing lots of starchy tubers under the dirt!  It's a touch annoying having them take over the path, but hopefully our patience will be rewarded.

Planting seedlings

While we are really happy with what we've got going so far, the two big crops (we hope) this year will be the sweet corn and the pumpkins!  Dave planted out corn seedlings from the farmer's market as well as popping a few seeds in the ground.  The seedlings are already producing silks and tassles, while the seeds are well established and on their way.

tassels being formed

I have 3 different pumpkin varieties, started from seed.  I've really enjoyed watching their fast progress!  I'm pretty sure they will have taken over by the time we get back.

My baby seedlings on 11 Nov

11 December

and TODAY 21 Dec!

We put in drip line last month.  The idea being we could put a water timer on it for 90 minutes each morning.  We have yet to get the timer going (one from the store was broke, another shipped out without the important attachment piece!)  We are hoping to get something sorted tomorrow before we fly out!  I can't have all my lovely plants die from lack of a plan!

Oh wow, I wonder what everything will look like when I get back!?!

I actually have more photos (the lettuce garden, the plum tree in blossom and fruiting (we ate a few plums yesterday!), but I just don't have the patience to upload them all.  I'm sure this is plenty for all of you anyway ;)

Hopefully I'll post again fairly soon - with some pictures of a white Christmas :)

Happy Holidays!

My Garden: a look at last year's work

Kat tree already for planting

I've been back in New Zealand, living with Dave, for a bit over a year now. While I go through restless periods every so often, wishing I was travelling again, I am generally quite happy being settled.
 One reason for being content is my ability to have a garden.....and cats.
  I LOVE Dave's two kitties.  (Gardening and cats really go hand in hand anyway.)

From the moment I arrived last November, the garden was being created (well, actually, before I landed!  Grandma had been growing tomato seedlings for nearly a month before I arrived so I wouldn't be starting from scratch!).

Grape tendrils

Dave was more than happy to let me have free reign over his bare dirt - as long as I didn't mess with his grape vine! LOL (laugh out loud)  While Dave is more than happy to enjoy the fruits of the garden, he has never been one to water or weed.  Had I not taken over planting tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, peas, beans, etc he would have been quite content to occasionally spray the weeds and look at dirt while he mowed the lawn.  However, along came Mel! :)

A quick look my facebook (FB) album "Back in NZ" shows that the main garden item to get FB recognition was the tomato.  Between the photos of our work on the house and trips up the coast lies photos of our first tomato turning yellow to red to being eaten.

My next FB album "Coromandel Life" shows a bit more variety in my garden pictures, recognizing potato flowers, purple bean flowers, and cats rolling in the dirt.  I'd say the highlight of last year's garden was: .... in no particular order.....and with now attached links (just pretty colors)......

After a long wait the tomato is FINALLY ripe!

The tomato. As previously mentioned, grandma (Dave's grandma that is) grew them for me as a surprise for my welcome home party.  Dave had thought I'd be arriving too late to start a garden from scratch - little did he know what he was in for!

The radishes.  I dug in heaps of compost to the orange clay outside our kitchen window.  We grew turnips too, but the radishes are much more photogenic. I love all the different colors!!!  

The kumara!  WOW.  How could kumara not come to mind the first time I think about last years garden!

Dave lies amongst the kumara vine. The bushy bit
by his head are potato plants.

Kumara is a New Zealand icon. It's basically a sweet potato and comes in gold, orange, or purple skin colors. Grandma gave us a few shoots she didn't want from her garden.  They went mental! This picture was taken before we decided to just mow the vines.  In the center of the viny madness is a couple of potato plants too, they didn't produced much though.  The kumara, however, produced surprisingly well! I harvested a few MASSIVE roots and lots of average sized roots.  I was harvesting for months before wet winter weather set in and made the few unharvested ones turn to mush.  

Corn!

The sweet corn.  Corn was Dave's idea.  He LOVES corn, so figured why not have some of our own.  It did fairly well, we got at least 4 edible ears off of 2 plants.  The other two were transplanted a month or so after their first planting (from seedlings).  They weren't getting enough sunlight and so they were growing really slowly.  Transplanting them to more light helped them grow, but they didn't get too big before it was time for them to produce (they must be on an internal clock of when to seed - makes growing and harvesting easier I suppose!)

The Dahlia went wild once it had dirt!
Corn plants on each side.

The Dahlia.  Another one of grandma's cast offs.  She had a tuber lying about her yard, unburied yet trying to grow.  She knew how much I liked Dahlia's - as a reminder of my dad and his "dinner plate dahlias".  The hardy tuber should enjoyed it's chance to really shine!  WOW.  It went a bit nuts, taking up heaps of room in the garden.  I was able to divide it several times when I dug it up in the fall.

The purple dwarf beans.  These weren't grown in the garden, but in pots on the deck (along with some sweetpeas).  I love the deep velvety purple color they have! We enjoyed having these in our garden salads throughout summer, along with the snow peas I grew in another container on the deck.

I must not have taken a picture of the "apple cucumber" :(  We bought it from the farmer's market, because the idea of a round cucumber was so novel to me!  It didn't produce terribly well, but we got around 3 or 4 edible fruits for our salads.  Grandma told me she thought a lot of people's cucumbers hadn't done well.  True?  Who knows, but I felt better for it ;)

So, if this is last year's garden, what have I done this year???

My next post is nearly written answering that question, but I thought I'd tease you first ;)  Now, I'm off for a nap before work.....