My Garden ~ a Kiwi Gardener’s Green Blog

 Yay! Himself and I drove to the Bay of Islands and took a nano-break in our Northern backyard so to speak and joined the few visitors brave enough to visit our country at this time of the year. Three nights and four days! We stayed in Paihia. No matter the wet and wintery weather, we played the tourist and imbibed our nation’s heritage and cuisine. Of course, we checked out the cafes. We drove to a local vineyard near Kerikeri. We discovered a wonderfully crisp dry Sauvignon Blanc 2006 and a fruity Pinot Noir Rose. That made the trip worthwhile.  

In 1819 Samuel Marsden introduced winegrowing to New Zealand with the planting of over 100 different varieties of vine in Kerikeri, Northland.

“New Zealand promises to be very favourable to the vine as far as I can judge at present of the nature of the soil and climate”

he wrote. Nearly two hundred years later, the New Zealand wine industry is at an all time high, and is especially praised for it’s Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir.\

It’s fascinating to read the historically familiar names on the tombstones of the earliest settlers in the cemetery behind St Paul’s Anglican Church in Paihia, the first church to be built in New Zealand, quote:

I actually forgot to take photos - I guess a case of being blase about familiar sights and taken-for-granted scenery. Anyway, we spent much of our time near the waterfront.

In June, I boasted about the warmer than usual night-time temperatures. I was intent on getting as much planted and established as quickly as possible - including an early potato crop. Squelchy soils in the paddocks caused by stormy squalls later grabbed my attention. There was no need to cover plants with frost cloth.  The early potatoes were planted in a sunny sheltered situation. The raised bed, made of lots of compost and well rotted organic material,  drains well. Early this week, all of the early potato plants’ shoots had just emerged above their warm blanket of mulch. 

On Tuesday this week, Himself and I had our attention diverted  with a stint of caring for grandkids overnight and all day Wednesday. Busy as, we missed the weather forecast and of course we never gave it a thought to put a frost-cover over the plants. The first frost (albeit  a light one) of winter happened on Tuesday night. It dissipated quite quickly next day before mid-morning. At first glance, the larger potato leaves are affected - but I looked more closely and noticed the very small leaves at mulch level seem to be OK. They may have been somewhat sheltered and the soil was not frozen. Tonight, there’s an extra layer - of straw - over the plants. So, I’m crossing my fingers and hoping the damage isn’t too bad.

Another thing I noticed was that a few heritage potatoes that had self-seeded in a weed-like manner seem to have resisted the frost.  I re-read my gardening books about recovering frost affected potatoes. Each mentions mulching and mounding. On reflection, I’m not sure what I learned or my options were. (1) Leave Himself in solo charge of the grandkids? (2) Turn TV on and watch the weather while we give the kids their bottles? Work in the garden later - by torchlight if necessary. (3) Every night, think, ‘frost’. (4) Let self-seeded potatoes have their way in the garden. (5) Gardening moral - an ounce of prevention is better than a cure.

The basic tenet of my gardening actions is to care for the soil. I so appreciate the value of the living organisms that function sight unseen beneath the ground. I suppose it’s a biological partnership that we enter into when we garden. Worms recycle humus and produce vermicast as they dig and delve beneath our feet. That’s why I try to tread lightly - and when, like we do here, keep a few animals for grazing purposes, it gets difficult at times to walk with a light footprint. I seek to grow healthy soil and to establish gardens with minimal input. 

In Permaculture Ethics in Introduction to Permaculture, Bill Mollison with Reny Mia Slay (pg. 3. 1995), wrote

Care of the earth means care of all living and nonliving things: soils, species and their varieties, atmosphere, forests, micro-habitats, animals, and waters. it implies harmless and rehabilitative activities, active conservation, ethical and frugal use of resources, and “right livelihood” (working for useful and beneficial systems.

I am concerned about the long-term consequences of hoof pugging by our animals. We don’t have a large herd in the commercial sense (that’s another and broader-issue). I have to think of sustainable solutions for our place. Do we use the tractor to plough the soil? The machinery would further compact the soil and cut up the micro-animal life beneath the ground. I prefer (idealistically some might say) to do my best to grow soil with the biomass we have naturally to hand. We rotate our animals away from wet paddocks and fence off stream-banks to minimise erosion. On the up side, our cattle provide manure that attracts the worms that transform it into vermicast. Trees or branches that are felled during stormy weather are a recyclable source of bio-degradable matter. But then chainsaws and chipper machinery uses fuel energy. And so it it goes weighing up the pros and cons.

I guess at this point, I use my energy where it produces fresh food. I’ll let my photos do the rest of the talking.

Since I returned home, I’ve been busy in the garden - with some manual help from number two son and his sons. Two-year-old pea-picking, ‘tato inspector who featured in some of my posts last year is a ‘big boy’ now aged three and his baby brother is now 18 months old with a another sibling expected in August - how time flies. I’ll just have to get more garden trowels and forks for these budding gardeners. At least Daddy gets fit giving wheel-barrow rides. And I got to re-plant the spring onions and red cabbages that three-year-old triumphantly declared to be ‘weeds’.

 Vegetables and fruit are quite expensive to buy at present. And the stuff fresh-picked from the garden seems so much tastier. I’m pushing my luck and trying to get some vegetables growing for our winter months. I’ve never started this late in the season before. I can’t believe it’s almost a year ago I wrote about Matariki  (Pleiades) re-appearing in our southern skies to herald a new growing season. It’s time to celebrate the Maori New Year again. As I mentioned in my last post, weedy growth was rampant in my absence. See my before and after photos.

In the interest of getting a head start, I cheated this time and bought the mini-variety seedlings of cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. I read they mature quicker - so I’m crossing my fingers that is so.  The temperatures are not too bad - the coldest we experienced the other night was about 4 degrees C. The garden beds are reasonbly sheltered from prevailing winds and have a north-south alignment so get full sun. I have raised beds and and compost so here’s hoping we don’t get an early frost.

Friend at work has put in a very early crop of potatoes. I’ve got some seed Cliff Kidney potatoes chitted and will plant them and see how we go. I’ll put frost cloth over at nights as needed. 

We’re enjoying the last of our tamarillo fruits. It’s a rewarding fruit - raw or cooked. Loaded with Vitamin C and makes a wonderful fruit crumble for dessert or sauce to accompany pork. Such an easy plant to grow - never know whether to call it a tree or not. Bigger problem is the rats and possums that also love the fruit. Must the be the healthiest pests around!

Next on the action list is to sow Broad Beans or a green crop for over-winter. Then the strawberry beds need attention and feeding. Then there’s the roses to prune. And I really should deal seriously to the pests. On reflection, think I’ll add a To Do - snuggle up in front of the fire, glass of wine in hand and read the new season’s gardening catalogues.

Please bear with me. It’s taken me all of today to teach myself how to use Flickr. This is my test post using a snapshot of the grounds in front of the historic Government House in Rotorua which is now a museum and art gallery.

Historic Government House - now a museum, originally uploaded by Jennylitchfield.

Obviously still some refinements needed. That’s tomorrow’s effort.

New Zealanders are in mourning. Today we learned Sir Edmund Hillary died. Like others, I can’t recall life without this great man’s presence. Is there a Kiwi kid who since the 1950s, hasn’t at some stage in their schooling done a project about this great Kiwi bloke? His remark after scaling Mt Everest, “we knocked the bastard off”, is pure laconic Kiwi style. His face has adorned the NZ$5 notes for decades. He made national and international news. He is our national treasure. Humble and compassionate he inspired people to reach out and to conquer their own mountains. We will remember him.         

When we moved into this old house about nine years ago it hadn’t been lived in for about 18 months.  It’s a house long ago relocated from town and transported onto our rural property. Rats and mice came and went courtesy of either a hole in the pantry ceiling or gaps around drain-pipes under the kitchen bench. The ancient wall-oven cooked at one temperature. The extractor fan above the hob vented illegally into the ceiling. Brown tatty curtains, brown painted skirting and scotia boards, brown aluminium window frames (replacing the original timber frames). The roof leaked. Why buy this place?  Lovely area.  Location of the land. Look out on native trees, not houses. Lots of space for gardening.

Two years ago we painted the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom. Blue was the main colour. Redecorating went into recess while our son and his family took up residence with us for a while. Before that, the kitchen and walk-in pantry make-over had been a major project.  Rats = 0. Humans = 1.

I’ve sewed thermal-drape curtains for all the windows - I don’t sew willingly but it was more economical to do it myself. There’s the lounge to finish. We finally got a new fire-box installed at the end of July. A major storm earlier meant the installer wasn’t able to get to work as planned before the onset of last winter. Himself’s work on filling holes in the roofing iron before having it painted paid dividends during the storm. Only one leak to trace. It may be because the high winds sleeted the rain sideways at our house. The downstairs bathroom needs rejuvenation (so will our bank balance). And then there’s the stairwell. We’re not looking forward to the high ceiling.  

But, we simply must complete what we started. Now, the dining area is being transformed from pink to soft yellow. Our intention is to have the same soft yellow on the walls throughout the house.

I must confess on this occasion to vowing, as I perched on the ladder and wielded the paint-brush, it’s the last time I’ll live in an old house. The houses we’ve owned have been progressively older. Himself and I have developed great handy(wo)man skills over the years. We each grew up in big old houses. Our parents in their time worked hard to maintain their homes. New next time. All the work done - by someone else.

I’ve been housebound and full of antibiotics. The doctor didn’t prescribe gardening as a therapy. But, my head is feeling less woozy so I must be on the mend.  

I must be on the mend because I spent time viewing others’ blogs and websites about blogging. I happened on Mike Sneddon’s 7 Tips to Building Your Blog’s Readership http://www.worldwidefreelance.com/writing.htm. His tips about navigating and highlighting interest points made sense. Then in my boredom, I thought I’d apply his advice. I idly thought I’d use Word Press widgets to change the format of my list of categories and to add a Platial map to highlight my New Zealand references. Why do I do this to myself when this is the first time I’ve been laid low for more than a year?

Changing the categories format was simple enough after a couple of false starts. The map? I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing. I thought to start by using place-names used in my recent post. Initially, I entered Northland twice before it dawned on me the Platial search didn’t recognise a region. It worked better when I specifically tagged Whangarei as the regional city. And so things have progressed slowly and painfully this afternoon. What have I learned? Not sure. It seems too much to get my head around RSS feeds - that’s for another down-day. Might have been easier to ignore the doctor’s advice and go into the garden.

Fresh and spray-free produce from the garden to the pantry. I’ve never been so organised.

I’ll probably serve these pickles with whatever’s on hand - variety of cheeses, cracker biscuits or breads, carrot or celery sticks and the like - not forgetting the drinks.    

The cauliflower is cut into small florets, the onions are finely sliced and salt is sprinkled over the vegetables to be left overnight. I have two recipes I use. One includes finely chopped fresh mint leaves, turmeric, cayenne pepper, allspice. The other includes crushed pineapple, dry mustard and curry powder.  Both are simmered in white vinegar and then thickened with flour. 

  I like to add Cointreau when making strawberry jam.

Much later:  I got carried away with being pleased with my ’organised’ efforts in the kitchen that I took my eyes off the saucepan and the jam mixture boiled up and over onto the cooker top.  What a mess (or pickle!)! Luckily the jam was cooked and is okay. While it set well, retained its flavour and colour, the boiling sugary spillage continued to bubble turning into a blackened burnt ‘toffee’ that adhered like super-glue to the cooktop surface. It’s taken me nearly an hour to clean the ceramic cooktop. It’s now the cleanest it’s been for ages. Moral of the story - a watched jam pot never boils over. I’ve done enough in the kitchen for this weekend. It’s raining (the garden needs watering so that’s okay), so I’m going to read the Sunday papers, do the Sudoku and Cryptic Crossword, and have a coffee.

As the weather gets muggier and warmer, growth in the garden is rapid and a conflict of interest happens as work gets busier with end-of-year reviewing and forward planning and pre-Christmas socials. The heat is also on in the kitchen. Friend Trish brought some grapefruit picked from her tree for me to make marmalade - just as my thoughts were on making cauliflower pickle. And I keep hearing the retail message that it’s-55-shopping-days-to a jolly Christmas. So, Christmas baking has been added to my To Do list. This year I’m making it easy on myself and like my sister, am using a favourite boiled fruit cake recipe which only needs three eggs and is quick to make. Food prices here have increased of late – but it’s still cheaper to make my own cake.

     I sometimes wonder why I say I use a recipe when I nearly always modify it in some way and the end-result is different every time. This time, I substituted organic muscovado sugar for its rich flavour and texture and added brandy.  What my sister and I tend to do because we’ve usually cook for large numbers, is to double quantities in such a basic recipe. The texture is lighter and slightly more crumbly than the richer cakes I usually make. Later, I’ll cut the double-sized cake into smaller pieces and then wrap them to be given as gifts. 

  The marmalade set well, is sharp to taste as we like it and clear so the shredded rind shows. 

The cauliflower has been cut into small florets, the onions are finely sliced and salt has been sprinkled over the vegetables to be left overnight. I have two recipes I’m using. One includes finely chopped fresh mint leaves, turmeric, cayenne pepper, allspice. The other includes crushed pineapple, dry mustard and curry powder.  Both simmered in white vinegar and then thickened.

Well, it’s Saturday evening. People throughout the country will get together, may be enjoy a barbeque and set off some fireworks to ‘celebrate’ Guy Fawkes. Fire-fighters don’t ‘celebrate’ – there’s always the idiot factor at work somewhere, I guess. Local councils are doing their best to encourage families to enjoy organised public displays. Sales of fireworks were restricted to about four days and then it’s only over-18 year olds who can buy them. Not the same sense of freedom as when we were kids.