explanation January 31, 2008

Could be why our tomatoes have been so long in ripening.
Looks a bit like *someone* has been picking, doesn’t it?
Wonder how they missed these ones!

I can count on you….. January 29, 2008

…..to come and join me pottering around the garden. “Please may I help you, Mama,” you so sweetly ask. I cannot think of one reason to say NO!

You carried all the recycled seedling containers from under the deck, you filled them with seedraising mix, you transplanted some seedlings, you sprayed them all with a fine [...]

LUPIN January 29, 2008

Said the old deaf gardener,
“I’m wore out with stoppin’
   over them impident
   sword-blue lupin.
“Look at ‘em standing
as cool as kings,
   and me sopped to the middle
   with bedding the things.”
Humbert Wolfe

virtually instant gratification January 26, 2008

it’s only been three days

taties January 25, 2008

K10 dragged away weeds I’d pulled last night, J12 and M5 carted compost to the plot and dug it in. T3 helped me plant the next lot of potatoes. It’s supposed to be too late for them, but we’ll see. FTR, they’re Swift, meant to be good for boiling.
We’ve renamed the plot leek and potato [...]

of cape gooseberries and kumara January 24, 2008

Having never grown cape gooseberries, I didn’t know waht they should look like, but an inkling that it shouldn’t be a scraggly triffidish octopus was confirmed the other night by a friend who was adamant that her mother’s bushes never looked like *that*
So today I pruned. Pruned like I remember my mother pruning rose bushes. [...]

planted January 23, 2008

seedlings are in situ and seeds are in seed-raising mix. Now *that* feels almost like real gardening (except that I used empty Chinese takeaways containers and their lids as trays, and I suspect they won’t be deep enough). All the same, I’m enjoying knowing I’ll be able to tell what did and did not germinate [...]

there’s a hole January 17, 2008

A few gaps have been appearing……made me think of the winter garden.
Because I am fickle, I have taken a new approach. Oh no, I meant to say, because I want to be a bit more organised I am taking a new approach. I pulled out the Yates Garden Guide to see what I could be [...]

more fun than shopping January 16, 2008

Today’s crop.
Tonight’s dinner: gado-gado followed by some of those yellow squash stuffed with silverbeet, cream cheese and kiwifruit chutney we made yesterday.
We left the cauli a day too long; it started crinkling at the edges.
But look at it yesterday:

And the marrow….it looks quite nice on the grass. You should see how manky it looked on [...]

potato crop January 16, 2008

Here ’tis; our crop of spuds:

12kg of what seems to be three different varieties (though we planted only one sort…on November 1st according to this blog, which is so much better than a pice of paper which I would have misplaced by now).
The children were ecstatic at the number, whereas I was a little disappointed….until I [...]