Our new garden

One of the first things I did when we moved into our new house was to put in a couple of small vege beds!

We, or at least I, didn't have a very good growing season unfortunately, but it's a long term process.. We've had a reasonable time with snap peas & kale though, so that's a start!

And sometimes things surprise you.. because I'm a neglectful gardener, a month after my carrots were supposed to be done - but were pretty pathetic at that point - I finally got around to pulling the rest of the tops out, and look what I found!! And that is even a full size dinner plate!!

 That's the best carrot haul I've ever had lol! And you've gotta love rainbow carrots, those purple ones are packed with antioxidants & all sorts of goodness..

Another thing I look forward to each year is the popcorn haul... we didn't have much success with that either this year, but it still adds up, and the kids love it!! They get to pick all the kernels off the dried cobs -

we ended up with a large teacup full of beautiful heritage strawberry popcorn-

I've got my winter seeds germinating on our kitchen bench in egg cartons - broccoli, cauliflower, spinach & kale - and for once I'm all prepared for the shortest day with bags of garlic & delightfully named potato onions!!

Out of nothing..

comes something...

ha double meaning there, my poor neglected blog, and my poor neglected garden! but amazingly, both have been producing!

i didn't bother with a vege garden this year, since we are planning on moving (it's taken so long that i could have actually, but oh well), but despite being transplanted into pots, we've had a few lovely strawberries-

and have a big stash of homegrown heritage popcorn from last year's harvest!

there is some Miniature Black, Strawberry, and a strange hybrid that i created by growing Silver Platinum sweetcorn too close to the popcorns! and even better still, we have 1 little mini black popcorn plant that has self seeded, providing us with 3 more cobs this year, and without any work from me!!

gotta love it when veges take care of themselves..

nyum nyum nyum

school holiday baking-
cheesy-mite scrolls, cinnamon scrolls & chewy muesli sultana bikkies!

and you call that a garlic clove?!
THIS is a garlic clove!
heh heh heh, simple joys....

end of the summer weather

it's definitely getting much colder here now!

so as a reminder of nicer weather i thought i would share pics of some of the treasures from our garden this summer-

some of our solanaceae haul - the nightshade family contains potatoes, tomatoes, datura, belladonna (deadly nightshade), mandragora (mandrake- the screaming baby plants in harry potter ;-) ), capsicum, nicotania, and sweet little petunias.
so now you know.

taters are definitely my favourite of the bunch, and these lovely specimens are Agria taters.

and some yummy wee Chocolate Capsicums-

Corn-
the good - Strawberry Popcorn, an accidental hybrid white popcorn, Rainbow Inca Sweetcorn,

Miniature Black Popcorn,
and the bad.
sometimes growing four different varieties within a 1sqm patch isn't a good idea. sweet corn shouldn't have pointy spikes! (it's the same accidental cross between strawberry popcorn & silver platinum sweetcorn that produced the white popcorn above, but these are the other side of the coin. oops.)

i'll confess i have given up on our vege garden for now... we're hoping to move to a new house sometime in the foreseeable future, and i can't be bothered fighting our horrible soil any more! I'm already laying mental plans for the New Garden though ;-)

vegelicious

I dug up a haul of self-seeded potatoes a while ago, a beautiful purple heritage variety called Urenika-
not bad for a free potato plant!

and yes, they're even more purple inside than out-
people often seem to wonder what vegetarians actually eat on a day to day basis, well this is an example of the sort of meal that makes me happy...
a "token pasta dish", as one of my vege friends puts it, purple taters with cream cheese, green beans, and a salad with homegrown carrots, tomatoes & cucumbers (plus a bunch of other stuff) with way too much mayo.
simple, but tasty, fresh, colourful (before i added way too much mayo ;-) ) and with plenty of protein, for those that obsess over the stuff!

and speaking of home grown tomatoes & cucumbers, these are some of my Deka & Port Albert (respectively) heritage cucumbers-
and a few of the pretty Red Russian & J.Walsh heritage toms we've been harvesting... i've got some black toms ripening too, but they're obviously a later variety.
also dug up the garlic, and i'm very pleased!! i had a much smaller patch this year, but ended up with larger, plumper bulbs, which taste a thousand times better than the imported chinese stuff!
it's a shame i couldn't get a photo to capture it, but they had a gorgeous pearlescent purple quality to them, which made them all the nicer to have hanging up :-)

worst blogger... ever.

but firstly, a massive thank you to the lovely Kat at Family of Girls, who sent me these lovely dishcloths in a giveaway on her blog!
heh heh you know me well kat!!

other than that, i've been busy with a variety of different projects, i've finished one of my secret things, but can't share that til after xmas!! and i'll have a few other things finished over the next couple of days too.. but in the meantime....
our garden is going quite well, our strawberries have started ripening, but it's a fight between us & the ants as to who gets to eat them!

we've got quite a few boysenberries popping up on our plant, i ate the first one the other day even...
should have waited until it was *properly* ripe first though!

we've got radishes, beetroots, kale, silverbeet & rainbow chard, cabbages & another cauli all ready to eat, flowers on the potatoes, cucumbers & feijoa, and the first tiny tomatoes & mandarins are shaping up, and the pumpkin, peas, beans & garlic are all growing nicely.. sometime in the next few days i need to plant out our corn, more cucumbers & the sunflowers too...

it's quite impressive how much you can squeeze into a small space (we've got an 8.8sqm/94sqf patch, plus have bordered the front lawn with trees & dug up some of the tiny lawn), and ours is by no means optimised, but i'm fairly happy with how it is progressing! oh for enough space to lay down some decent beds though!

beauty and the beast

as proud as i am about our beetroot, it really doesn't compare to the good looks of a new first-time-attempted radish!
(though quite honestly the radish tasted really blah...)

and our first cabbage!this is from the same little bunch of brassicas that our first cauli came from, that i nearly pulled out not so long ago! and sure enough, after harvesting that cabbage yesterday i was going to pull its stalk out along with another one that hadn't been doing anything... but something made me check right in the middle... and there was another teeny tiny cauli head forming!! one day i'll learn to just leave them alone!

(we've had a crazy few days, including a planned hospital trip, so i'll be back with more bits and pieces soonish!)

early morning harvest

woohoo!! our first decent cauliflower!!

it was from a bunch of mixed brassicas that i planted last autumn, that largely didn't amount to anything, so this is a real surprise! a couple of the cabbages look like they might be firming up a bit, so fingers crossed.... patience really is virtue with these things isn't it?

Project Monday #7

i'm making good progress on my horde of so-far-faceless penguins, though i'm actually having to rip them back to make them shorter, before adding their bellies!

i've done one eli sock, and have started the second.. yes, my son will have lacy socks.

i discovered a very cute little cauliflower head hiding in the depths

and my biggest mission at the moment?!

this-
it's a knitting chart.
90 rows x 40 stitches, in two colours, that has to be completed twice, plus a whole pile of plain knitting besides.
i've never knit from a chart before, nor done any colourwork... and this is to a deadline!

what was i thinking?!?!

more garden stuff..

our wee mandarin tree is covered in blossoms now-
and we spent a very productive sunday sowing potatoes, mulching, and digging up the front lawn to make spots for some pumpkins & cucumbers (in the back), and peas & beans (in the front, with a hidey hole for little people in the middle!)
and i finally got around to buying a sprouting lid & jar! the brown lentils were a hit-
now if only it would stop raining for more than a day!

Spring harvest

It's rather nice, and rather unusual, for us to have stuff to harvest at this time of year, but we do now!

today we picked (and sampled) the first of the NZH Joe's lettuces that we planted a few weeks back-

and a few days ago i harvested the last of our wonderful (also NZ heritage) Spinach Beet-
a wheelbarrow full from just two plants! and that is even though we have been picking it all winter for our fav lasagne too... if you like spinach but are better suited to growing silverbeet, then this is the compromise for you!

i de-stalked, cleaned, chopped & froze it all immediately, providing us with (amazingly & conveniently) exactly 1kg of greenery goodness ready to use-
and we picked the umm.. roots of my carroty labour-
they're a selection of different varieties from various sources, but the tastiest were definitely the yellow ones (yes they're supposed to be that way), which are Austrian Yellow Llobericher from Koanga - which is where i get nearly all of my seeds & seedlings - they do great work & have some fantastic varieties too!

(and yes i'm trying to find a solution to stupid random photo rotating issue! wish me luck!)

Nova-1 : Nature-.... 2... doh!

so in a victory for me, i've just transplanted the self-sown cherry tomatoes that i found the other week! hopefully they will grow into productive little plants for us :-) and if not, well hey, they were free!
however.... look what i just found in the area destined to be my corn patch-
a potato!
and it wasn't alone either.. again, self seeded from some we obviously didn't gather last year.. not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, i'm leaving them be, luckily they're on the edge of the corn patch, so shouldn't be too disruptive ;-)

anyway, this is my spring garden so far-
garlic, beetroots, kale & last years spinach beet
(all vastly more impressive in real life - i never said i was any good at photography!)
the other side of last years spinach beet (great stuff that, grows like silverbeet, but tastes more like spinach, and is easier to clean), rainbow chard, broccoli (one is just sprouted a teeny tiny head! yay!!), lettuces, cabbages & calendula...

i've also planted some heartsease, calendula, marigolds & sweet william around our sandpit, and have some tomatoes, lettuces, potatoes & poppies ready to plant in the next few days!

Nature-1 : Nova-0.... again...

it doesn't take long reading this blog to realise that, despite being keen, i'm not actually very good at this vege gardening lark.. my seed raising skills leave a lot to be desired (and a lot of seedlings to be bought from elsewhere), and bountiful harvests have failed to eventuate...

basically i have a hard time cultivating anything in our dry, barren clay...

however sometimes nature does not.

like look what i just found in amongst the brassicas-
just like last year, some little tomato seedlings have self sown themselves in my vege patch! however unlike last year, these have popped up early enough in the growing season that they hopefully can (once transplanted) grow to maturity!! HA! take that nature! :-p

success!

of the small but satisfying variety!
as for what variety it is, i dunno! but way back in autumn i borrowed one of our macrocapa seedling boxes, filled it with potting mix with a layer of seed raising mix on the top, and sprinkled on a whole bunch of carrot seeds... they grew a little bit then slowed down over the cold winter months, and as it has started to warm up again woosh they've shot away again!

and today in a fit of impatience i pulled one up.
and we ate it.
it was good.

now i just have to wait nicely for the rest to get a bit bigger... but that is ok, because at least i know that it has worked! growing carrots in boxes might not produce crops of any decent size, but a few carrots in a box is better than no carrots in the ground i reckon!

green

Lesson of the day - over-wintered broccoli is tough

Preparedness.

We're inching ever closer to spring here, and while i would be celebrating, really spring here just equals even more rain!

but on the upside my mini camelias are flowering, and the two new grape vines are showing signs that they were just being deciduous, not being dead. So that is worth a good dose of cheeriness i reckon!

Various friends of mine have been busying themselves making compost heaps, shovelling mulch (including some into the drier thanks to a helper), setting out tiny seeds, and drooling over seed catalogs.

me?

well, i planted my garlic only a few weeks ago, but it's looking strong (hooray for the trick of sprouting them overnight in water with a little bit of manure!) -

and i've made a spring gnome-so i might not be exactly on top of the whole spring planting thing, but hey, that doesn't matter because at least i've got a gnome.

(she's made from a little wooden gnome base from Winterwood toys, cotton wrapped pipe cleaner arms, wool felt clothes & hat, and wool fleece hair)

Intermission

*doo-dee-doo-dee-doodoodoodoodoo. doo-dee-doo-dee-doodoodoodoodoo. doo-dee-doo-dee-doodoodoodoodoo-doo-doo!*

sooo....
a) the power supply for our puter packed in = no puter
b) school hoildays = kids who interfere with precious puter time
c) we've been busy ripping up the carpet = no table for puter to sit on (umm yeah, hi dad. we've ripped up the carpet.)
d) still knitting hoodie of certain doom. ok, so i exaggerate really, it's actually going rather well, and i only have this much more to knit -> until i run out of yarn anyway, hopefully that will be enough to finish the pattern too! ;) fortunately if i do run out the sleeves are orangutan-worthy, so i have a bit of yarn retrievable from there...

other than that it has been pretty ho-hum here on the crafting/making stuff front, except for this little morsel...

waaaay back last summer we grew our own popcorn. mini black popcorn to be precise-
which we finally popped one cob of - strangely resulting in the whitest popcorn i have ever seen!
tasted good though :)