The replanting is done, well for now anyway :)

I'd already taken out the peas and broad beans, and reduced the silverbeet, mesclun, carrots and lettuces by eating them. A couple of days ago a new row of peas went in and I bought a couple of punnets of plants, so I was ready to go!

Today I took out almost all of the rest of the gone-to-seed silverbeet, the last of the carrots, and the last two lettuces in one row. So with all the space I planted:

• Beans – Roquefort (the last fornight of the progressive planting I started a little over a month ago).
• Red onions – California red
• Potatoes – unlabelled well sprouted ones from the cupboard :)
• Kohlrabi – Early Purple Vienna
• Carrots – Mini sweet, the same as the ones I'll eat the last of this weekend
• Coriander – Indian Summer
• Parsley – Flat leaved, this time in the blueberry garden as the ones in the herb garden were replaced by the summer basil crop last week
• Dill – Bouquet
• Lettuce – a mixture

This leaves me with a couple of quandries; what will replace the last of the silverbeet when it comes out in a week or two (the new ones are coming on well), and what will replace the leeks and shallots for three months before the broad beans go on.

In general I'm pretty pleased with how it's go so far. The rotation is mostly working – once the broad beans go in each section will have had a legume season. What I'm not managing so well is constant production, I'll have a couple of weeks of total glut of one kind or another, weeks like this one where there are relatively limited options (leafy green things and the last of the carrots), and then the occasional well balanced fortnight.

And before I forget, the tomatoes are fascinating me. Clearly the ones in the lemon garden are much happier than the ones in the front garden. The lemon garden ones are huge happy plants and I expect to start seeing tomatoes soon. The front garden ones get solid morning sun but not so much in the afternoon, and it shows.

Tags: Veges, Beans, Herbs, Tomatoes

The usual combination, two days of strong winds form the north (and some heavy rain) so today it turned round and a southerly front came through with thunderstorms and heavy rain.

In the gap I managed to pull up all the past-their-best plants from the southern vege bed and get a row of peas in. I also pulled almost the last of the carrots and made chilled carrot and orange soup. Which, with fresh rye bread, was a damned fine lunch.



The bread is a current favourite; I've finally found a good rye recipe. The trick is burnt sugar and caraway seeds, plus it's only 25% rye flour :) Today's loaves were baked baguette style, so sprayed with water every two minutes at the beginning and cooked really hot.

It's been a cooking couple of days, yesterday I made the best ever date scones and I know I'll never manage to reproduce them. They were made with dodgy old dates (soaked in orange juice) and the dough was way too wet – so a lucky accident I think.

Then, to continue the theme, I spent the evening shelling the last of the broad beans. Once they're blanched for freezing they lose the colour, but at least until then they're beautiful!

Tags: Veges, Bread, Beans

After finishing up the pond today's game has been renovation, pulling out spent plants and putting new ones. The gone-to-seed parsley has been replaced by basil (fino verde, Genovese giant, red rubin and cinnamon), the peas are out and shared with the chooks, and so on.

The chooks have turned into lovely friendly birds, with an occasional streak of insane panic – strangely reminiscent of Seb actually. They enjoy pottering around their section of the garden; scratching, eat and snoozing. Their combs are starting to fill out and they're starting to make grown up chook noises, so eggs can't be far away.

I'm enjoying working out what to feed the chooks. Every morning they get homemade mash, a variety of leftovers and often (their absolute favourite) cooked whole grains mixed with yoghurt and kelp powder. Interestingly they like that mixture way more than its component bits (which are still pretty special) so I guess there's something about the texture of the combination which works for them. They also get greens, sometimes weeds, sometimes some of the gone-to-seed silverbeet. Then I throw down mixed whole grains last thing so they have something exciting to scratch up the next morning.

Tags: Herbs, Chooks

It's nearly finished! The liner has been replaced (was 0.25mm PVC, now EPDM) and the water loss has slowed right down, and I've just about finished the planting.

As well as the original pond plants (except the Papyrus which didn't make it) I added a Black Taro, so there is now:

• Oioi – Leptocarpus similis, a native reed
• Baumea articulata, native jointed twig rush
• Sweet flag – Acorus calamus
• Ludwigia repens
• Myriophyllum propinquum, native milfoil
• Waoriki – Ranunculus amphitricus, native buttercup
• Black taro – Colocasia esculenta

Around the edges has been the big change, going from two elders to a good mix of the useful and the beautiful:

• Carex dissita, native forest sedge
• Phormium 'Emerald Gem', dwarf native flax
• Leopard plant – Ligularia tussilagenea
• Ligularia renformis (which arrived in the place of one of the L. tussilagenea)
• Ornamental rhubarb – Rheum australis
• Ajuga reptans 'Caitlins Giant'
• Purple angelica – Angelica gigas
• Canna 'King City Gold'
• Elderberry 'Adam' – Sambucus nigra

The bog inhabitants haven't changed, although they got moved when the liner was replaced:

• Arum lily – Zantedeschia 'White Mischief'
• Heuchera 'Amethyst'
• Louisiana irises
• Red Root – Wachendorfia thyrsiflora

After all of that I put in a watering line, then newspaper mulch with mulchpost on top.

Then I slept :)

Tags: Pond

It feels like the house will blow away, and I'm worried about the damson plum in the front garden. The roses are losing petals in small snowstorms (the photo is my first ever Graham Thomas flower) but there are more buds for later



The vege gardens are coming along well; the peas and beans are nearly done, the rocket is looking well, and the corn has germinated and is growing like crazy. I'm trying to wrap my head around how much change there is in the main vege gardens, they look so different week to week as I take out some big tall plants and replace them with seeds or seedlings. I kinda like this as the shape of the garden and the view on the pond will keep changing.

The pond is the big drama at the moment; today the liner is being replaced with a non leaking one, also this one will be EPDM so it should be much more robust. I ordered one group of the pond edge plants yesterday, and hopefully will order the rest in the next day or two – so the pond should be done very very shortly.

The other big changes around here are the chooks; they're loving free-ish ranging, and clearly look forward to me coming home from work and letting them out. The vege garden protection is getting more settled, the trick seems to be a visible low firm barrier (e.g. a half width of plastic mesh) coupled with a couple of wobbly looking string lines so the chooks don't feel they can land half way.

Tags: Roses, Pond, Veges, Chooks

The weekend started up a ladder, then on top of the pergola rearranging the female chinese gooseberry. I've disentangled her from the willow and now she's now draped across the supports, so if the willow branch goes she'll survive. Next week I'll feed her; which will mean pulling back the decaying branches around her roots, putting a bag of zoodoo, some blood and bone, and a couple of grow tabs down, before putting the branches back.

I've never really understood why the female was planted at the shady end, but with a little bit of spoiling she should start doing as well as the male.

In the photo as well as the pond and the chinese gooseberry there are the squash (planted by the base of the male), three Guinée roses, and the two Adam elderberries planted last year. The elderberries have survived remarkably well given the earth moving equipment that hung out there for a while.

The chooks kept me busy, having worked out how to get over the low fences on the raspberry and blueberry beds, so there was quite a lot of chasing followed by some fencing improvements. I'm trying to work out what is enough for them, I've added a couple of strings to the top of the 65cm fence around the raspberry bed taking the total height to more like 85cm.The chooks can definitely fly that high, but they don't seem to like the fact they can't land on the string so it's working so far.

I also took out the last of the spinach and corn salad, and shortened the row of carrots (carrot soup!) which left me enough room to put in a punnet of spinach and another of silverbeet. There'll also be room for a few more rows of beans, which I'm planning to plant fortnightly. The last bit of planting was a punnet of cornflowers in the blueberry bed to replace some pansies.

Watering everything is turning into a bit of a mission, particularly as I haven't found the energy this weekend to put in as many watering lines as I'd hoped. The squash, tomatoes, and black-, boysen- and goose- berries are still being watered by hand. The rest are either on watering lines or can be reached by the sprinkler. So quite a lot of hose dragging. I did manage watering lines for the herb garden and blueberry bed though, both of which seem to be working well.

On the down side I'm anaemic and overworked and spent a lot of the weekend napping, so not as much progress as I'd've hoped. I have the next two days off work, so I should be able to make a little more progress, perhaps even get more of the front path weeded!

Tags: Chinese Gooseberry, Veges, Pond, Chooks, Watering, Health