December

Lavender field as at end December 2010


Vegetable garden as at end December 2010

After a very hot November, we had rain for pretty much the first three weeks of December. And the weeds grew like wildfire. Luckily the weather has been pretty good since Christmas. I haven't managed to get into the vege garden to deal to the weeds, but I've had a couple of goes at weeding the lavender and it's not looking too bad. Still lots to go though and I started with the easy stuff.

You can't really see from the photo above but I have a lot of veges growing in the garden. Everything is obscured by all the potatoes and a few weeds which have sprung up lately. The vege count this month is:

Potatoes: HEAPS. None are ready and not sure if they will be either as they are last years stock replanted
Lettuce: 6 Planted 1 a week and all coming ready now
Brassica: 6 (two broccoli, two cabbage and two cauliflower) Planted 1 a week and the early ones are doing alright but the later ones are swamped by the potatoes
Tomatoes: Planted 6 Roma but only 3 survived. Planted another 3 beefsteak. Plus 2 more beefsteak and 2 cherry tomatoes planted in pots on the deck
Zucchini: 1 Only planted one this year after the success of last years
Cucumber: 2
Capsicum: 1
Pumpkin: 2 Found a couple growing wild in the compost heap and successfully transplanted them into the vege garden where they are now growing quickly and have flowers too
Sunflower: 0 The kids planted one each but they got bent over in a storm and seem to have died
Strawberries: The shade cloth I put over didn't really work. The ones where there is no weedmat are completely covered by weeds. Keep forgetting to check on them.
Blueberries: Coming along nicely although the bird net blew off and it took me a while to put it back on again
Plums: Yes, we have a plum tree I never knew about and it is fruiting lovely this year

In late November/early December we had a family of starlings living in an old watering can that was hanging outside the front door. Every time we went outside, mummy bird would fly away. Every time she came home the babies would squawk and make a racket. But it was fascinating to watch them grow. It took just over two weeks from when they were eggs, to when they flew the nest. When I realised they were gone I felt quite sad, as I'd gotten used to mummy birds comings and goings.



P and I have finally been able to put some work in to clearing the logs and rubbish from the bottom paddock, logs which have been there since the big storm two and a half years ago. Am hoping to continue the momentum in January.

-M

November

Summer has finally arrived at the end of October. It's been hot and sunny just about every day since then. Almost starting to worry we won't have enough water to last the summer, but I don't want to jinx it because I'm enjoying the warm weather so much. It was so nice we even managed to get out to the beach one day.

Finally got some help from the neighbours to put the plow attachment on the back of the tractor and I was able to dig over the vege garden. Albeit much too late, I should have done it a month ago. As soon as that was done I took the plow back off and put the mower back on and mowed the grass which was very, very long. Over the new few days I raked up a bit of grass at a time until the entire vege garden was covered in a layer of grass clippings.

I planted all of last years potatoes back into the garden as they were growing quite nicely in the cupboard. I don't know if they will be any good to eat or not, we will see.

I also bought a six-pack of lettuce and a six-pack of broccoli/ cabbage/ cauliflower. I actually only wanted to buy one of each but couldn't. It is my intention to plant one in the garden each week and hope I can keep the rest alive in their little cell packs until it is time to plant this. In this way I'm hoping I can spread out the time that they're ready to eat. I don't want to plant six lettuces at once and have them all ready at once because we'd never eat them all.

Have also planted six Roma tomato plants along the back of the garden. I've learnt from last year and bought six (instead of two) and have spaced them all quite far apart.

Got given some cherry tomato plants by another neighbour and have planted them in a container on the deck this time around. They grew too big in the garden last year, plus by having them so accessible I hope the children will enjoy eating them more often.

The lavender now has tiny blue buds on it. I mowed the grass in the lavender field for the first time in a very, very long time. I haven't been able to get to it because the neighbour has had his cattle in the other half of the field. The grass was as tall as the lavender in places. But I am getting it back under control now. And I'm sure I'm in for another busy summer of weeding.

Covered the blueberry bush in netting again. Tried weeding the strawberry patch and covering it with something better. Not sure if it will work.

-M

October

As the weather started to dry out I was able to do some things I hadn't been able to do for a while. Sprayed weeds for the first time in a long time. Weedeated around the rows of lavender which I hadn't done in a very long time. Mowed the lawn which was getting long and used the grass clippings to mulch the fruit trees.

-M

September

The month began with rain, lots of it. It rained heavily in the Tararuas and came down the valley, flooding our neighbours across the road and taking most of their newborn lambs. The waters continued on across the road to the cafe next door to us, turning their parking lot into a lake. We were unaffected, being up on the hill. Even our bottom paddocks seemed to have escaped most of the flooding, thanks in part to my trench that I dug. In the early stages it held all the water and even as the water levels rose over the top of the trench, it still helped to keep the water in that area as opposed to flooding out all over the paddock. The water flooding over the road only lasted for an hour and then it was passable again. We were a bit late for school that day. All the farms and paddocks in the area seemed to have turned into lakes, especially in the Koputaroa and Shannon areas, but not so much closer to Levin. In some places the water was so deep that when it receeded there was grass stuck to all the fence wires, from the bottom to the top. There is one farm on the way to Koputaroa where last summer the farmer had dug a very deep trench (totally puts mine to shame, it is several metres deep). Well during the floods this trench was completely full and flooding out the top. Even a week later it was still very full. The rain lasted for several days but not as heavy as the first night.





The day of the flooding


One week later

Later in the month, when things dried out a little bit, I attempted to put the plow attachment onto the tractor so that I could turn the ground over in the vege garden in preparation for planting new vegetables. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not get it on.

The Foxton Spring Fling was held at the beginning of the month, marking the beginning of spring. While we had some very cold days, this winter feels like it was more mild than last year.

The weather may be getting warmer but we have had a few very cold nights, with a couple of mornings where there has been more snow on the Tararuas than there was on any morning in the middle of winter.

-M

August

This month I finished my work digging the trench in the bottom paddocks. Our neighbour in front has mentioned a few times the tree stumps in our bottom paddock which borders his but it just hasn't moved high enough up my priority list. I had a go at it a couple of months ago but it is hard work with just a shovel and my own strength. He mentioned he had a friend with a digger, and the friend came over and dug some big holes and buried all the tree stumps. Just like that. Took a day or two, compared to how long it would have taken me with a shovel. And just 10 metres away was my little trench which I had been feeling pretty good about, and now it feels pretty insignificant being the width and depth of a shovel, compared to what a digger could have done.

For the last year and a half we have been diligently burying all our food scraps in the compost bin. And in a year and a half the pile of compost has grown by exactly nothing. It is still the same it was a year and a half ago. I think we must have created a pretty good worm farm but not a very good compost pile. Heard somewhere about layering horse manure and grass clippings in the compost, both of which we have in abundance. So I spent an hour or so one day shovelling up horse manure from one of our paddocks (from our neighbour's horses) and raking up grass clippings after I mowed. Too soon to tell if it'll make any difference or if I've done it right.

Ate some of the cherry tomatoes and zucchini I pickled last year. Both turned out very nice and very zingy.

-M

July

Twas a very cold month with us lighting lots of fires and shivering in the mornings and evenings.

My big assignment for the month was to dig a trench in our bottom paddocks. The water flows downhill from our neighbours (and probably at its source from the Tararua foothills), through one paddock, under our driveway, through another paddock and off to our neighbours who are pretty much at the lowest point. As the water goes through our paddocks it seems to pool and make the ground all around very muddy and boggy. As we had had a few weeks without rain, I attempted to do something about it. I dug a long trench going about halfway across the lower paddock, following the line of water. I dug it about a shovel head wide and deep. Any more than that was just too difficult, especially when tree roots got in the way. It took me a couple of weeks to complete it. On the other side of the driveway, the slightly higher side, I didn't get very much done because it was still too wet and too overgrown. However, when it did rain my trench worked well and filled up with water in the trench only and not all over the grass.

Early in the month the first jonquils began poking their heads out of the ground, and I saw the first of the spring lambs. Noticed a couple of Kereru birds hanging around the house.

-M

April, May, June

Winter is now in full swing, having had several frosts around here and snow on the Tararua Ranges. Some trees started losing their leaves in early April and were bare by the end of April. Others still have red and yellow leaves on their branches now.

It has been very wet for the last several months so I haven't done a lot of anything in the garden. I finally sprayed the weeds all around the property about a month ago. Went through 15 litres of weedspray all up. They are slowly dying.

The zucchini finally stopped fruiting at the beginning of May and we ate the last one last week. Still have heaps of frozen, pickled and dehydrated fruit to use so don't think we'll need to buy any for the rest of the year. The cherry tomatoes still continue to bear fruit, although the other tomato plants haven't produced much at all. I picked so many cherry tomatoes we couldn't eat them all and a lot of them went off. I tried pickling some. Not sure how it turned out as it is still maturing. The six broccoli I planted in March never really grew very big. I picked two of them last week for one meal. The ones I grew over summer were several meals in each plant.

We have had a lot of feijoas off the tree this year although not sure if it was as much as last year. I made a batch of feijoa jelly as we'd run out of last year's apple jelly. It is alright but not as good as apple jelly.

We have had about half a dozen passionfruit grow this year and none of them have ripened. We had another pumpkin plant grow wild out of the compost. But no pumpkins grew on it. I think it was too cold.

The celery is growing well. The orange and mandarin trees are fruiting again.

Have spent a lot of time over the last few months shifting logs from fallen trees. The bottom paddock is still full of debris from the big storm two years ago. I've been shifting and tidying as much as I can but it's a lot of work and the big stuff is going to need a chainsaw before I can shift it. Also a few months back some contractors from the power company came and topped our trees as they were growing too close to the power lines. They conveniently cut the branches up into small sizes but left them all lying in the paddocks, so I've been slowly shifting them too.

We have been using the fire a lot lately. It has been working better than it did last winter. Discovered a large part of the problem last year was bringing the firewood directly in from outside and putting in on the fire. It was too cold / damp to burn very hot. This year we've cleared a large space near the fireplace and are bringing in about a weeks worth of firewood at a time. We're going through it very quickly though which worries me.

We got a new dog a couple of months ago. Another Border Collie, a girlfriend for Tim. Now we have two dogs, two cats and two kids. A full house.

Other than that the main activity around here has just been one of maintenance. Keeping the grass and weeds down as much as possible, which is difficult when it is so damp and too cold to dry out. And for now my main priority is just keeping warm.

-M