There are baby fish in the pond and legs on the tadpoles! It feels strangely springlike for midsummer.

The big task for the weekend was reorganising the compost; using the last of one pile and turning the other. The compost got used on the main group of tomatoes, which have baby tomatoes showing; on the gooseberries, which did well this year and deserve encouragement; and on the lemon tree which produced a nice crop of lemons and needed a feed.

I took advantage of the compost around the tomatoes to express optimism by planting some vines at the feet of the tomatoes:

• Melon 'Tigger Moon'
• Buttercup squash
• Apple cucumber

I'm not convinced they'll get enough weeks of hot, but I might as well take advantage of new plantable space.

The same need to squeeze things in lead to me fitting some more lettuces in around the sweetcorn (which is still not thriving) and some more basil in amongst the rest.

Sadly I'll need to replant the fennel seeds from last week as the chooks took advantage of the compost rearrangement to get into the vege garden briefly and scratched up the baby plants. Otherwise not too much damage I think, surprising as they had access to silverbeet.

Tags: Chooks, Pond, Veges, Compost

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

There's not been much progress this week; between B being sick and some sequencing issues nothing much has actually got finished.

The compost bins did get their interior paint job, so they're finished and I moved the compost from the old bin to the new.



Now that the old compost bin has been removed the slope can be graded, the chicken mesh can go up and then the trellis. That will allow me to plant the raspberry and boysenberry beds as well as hopefully the chicken run.

Another small step was the finishing of the pergolas (and the repositioning of the Chinese gooseberries) and the framing for the bridge and board walk.



Now that the framing is done the liner can go in, then the bog garden, pump and waterfall, then the planks on the bridge and boardwalk.

So hopefully this week will see lots of completion!

Tags: Compost, Pond, Chinese Gooseberry

Today has definitely been pond readiness day, sadly pond day looks a fortnight away, but it's been good fun.

For a start I trekked across town to buy planting baskets so I could pot all the bare-rooted pond plants today, and get everything else potted eventually. So starting with 17 pieces of sweet flag I separated them into five huge planting baskets



Potted them with garden mix and then put a layer of black gravel over the top. Then (and this is where I get to the cunning/odd bit) I put them in sets into the bath, then gradually filled the bath with water so they were completely submerged, left them for an hour, let them drain slowly and put them out on the deck.



My theory is that this has both proven that there's enough gravel to stop everything escaping once they go on the pond and given everything a proper soaking after potting.

Tags: Pond

On a more cheerful note, once I made it to the house I found several boxes of plants had arrived, so I've spent the day sorting and checking.

There were a smallish group of herbs from Dellawood destined for the kitchen herb and gold and purple beds. The bulk were from Nikau Hill and mean that the plants for the pond are all here.



The sorting took a little effort as some of the plants weren't labelled, but all but three plants were easily sorted. They, however, are a bit of puzzle; three identical plants, one labelled Baumea articulata, one labelled Restio tetraphyllus, and one unlabelled. I'm pretty sure they are B. articulata, which I ordered, but as they're a little yellower than I expected I've emailed off for confirmation.



As well as the B. articulata, a native sedge, there as some other marginals waiting patiently for the pond:

• Oioi – Leptocarpus similis – a native reed

• Papyrus – Cyperus papyrus – which will screen between the bridge and the waterfall,
• Sweet flag – Acorus calamus – a whole pile of root cuttings for me to pot up, intended to keep the nitrogen levels down.

Tags: Pond