February and March

Well, summer is now over and autumn is here. It was a very short summer. It lasted from mid January to mid March. As well as making me sad because I lover summer, it has also meant production of some things has not been as much as last year.

The vegetable garden is doing well. Still mostly filled with low-lying weeds but the few veges I have planted are doing well.

The two broccoli I planted grew large enough to eat (and then some) so we picked them. What I didn't realise at the time was that we also picked a lot of green cabbage moth caterpillars. Didn't discover this till halfway through our meal. Gross!!! Have totally been turned off the idea of eating our own broccoli. The two plants we harvested continued to grow more little broccoli heads off the side but I couldn't face eating them and let them go to seed instead. However that didn't stop me from planting six more small plants. This time round they have all survived, although the leaves are all full of holes from either the caterpillars or the moths. They'll probably be ready in another month or so.

The zucchini just continue to produce and produce and produce. The fruit can double in size in a day. I've been getting about one a day. We have eaten a lot of zucchini over the last two months. I have also pickled some, dehydrated some and frozen some. Consider it a bit of a test to see which way works best. Think next year I'll only need to plant one zucchini plant.

The one cucumber plant that survived has produced three and a half cucumbers (a half because the last one was very small). They were nice. Think next year I'll need to plant more than that.

The tomato plants are doing really well. Have grown very tall, over my head. The lesson I have learned though is to space them further apart because they are growing together and it's hard to find the fruit. There is a lot of fruit and I'm getting about a handful each day. Lots and lots of cherry tomatoes, which we are eating either as snacks or with dinner. Not as much of the regular toms or Roma toms. Which is a shame because I was planning on bottling them. Can't bottle cherry tomatoes I don't think.

Spent a lot of time in February weeding the lavender fields and have now harvested it. The yield was quite a lot down on last year. Last year we got 7 and 2 litres of oil (from the two different varieties). This year we got 3 and 1 litres. Think it was probably due to the wet spring and lack of sunshine. Have also made contact with the Lavender Growers Association and met some other members and learnt a bit from them.

As well as the lavender, the passionfruit and feijoas also seem to be suffering from lack of growth this year. There are virtually no passionfruit on the vine this year, whereas last year there were so many I couldn't use them all. No sure if this is because of the weather or because I cut the vine back so much late last year. The feijoas aren't ready yet but of our three trees only one is really fruiting at all.

The blueberry bush has done very well. Last year we got nothing. This year I covered it in bird netting and have gotten several cups of blueberries and enjoyed blueberry muffins and blueberry cobbler.

The strawberries have pretty much stopped production for the year. The plants on the weedmat produced lots of berries compared the ones without weedmat which produced hardly any fruit but lots of weeds. Will have to extend the weedmat before next summer.

Still continuing to drink homemade lemonade and eat homemade bread. Still continuing to mow the lawn with the tractor. Have run out of weedspray so the weeds around the property are growing quite high.

Have had a couple of families of pukekos (or pooky-yo's as V calls them) hanging around the lower fields for the last couple of months. It has been interesting watching the babies grow and develop their blue feathers. They're not particularly frightened of the car, but as soon as you open the door and they see you, they run or fly away very quickly.

-M