Out from under my hat ... fresh from my garden

Sex on a Sunday in the garden

2012-02-05T07:12:00.011+13:00

deflowering

When I was growing up in a small town in the North Island of New Zealand, my religious father used to tell me that all sorts of things were forbidden on a Sunday, like buying ice creams when we were out on our Sunday afternoon drives. Whenever we asked for one, he'd gasp and say, "not on a Sunday!" as if it was the ultimate in sinfulness, to be found referenced in some hidden part of the Bible which I hadn't yet got around to, but my father had no doubt uncovered during his deep studies of John, Paul and the others. I realise now of course, it was just his frugal ways, but it took many years before I stopped looking sideways at the sinners brazenly licking ice creams on a hot Sunday afternoon.

So what my dad would've made of me leaping out into the garden on a wet Sunday morning to procreate, I have no idea. And this post is about to get very grubby indeed, so parents, if you haven't yet had the birds and the bees talk with your prepubescent children, I'd shield them from this post, unless you are okay about me giving them a wee Science Lesson. Haha.

I have a bit of a thing for pumpkins. Not just any old pumpkin. I have many pumpkins growing in my patch, which will be perfect for pumpkin soup, or if I was American, pumpkin pie, almost enough to supply everyone I know. But this year I am raising a special kind of pumpkin, purely for its seed, which I like to eat raw. You might wonder, why I am going to so much trouble, but have you seen the price of organic pumpkin seeds lately? It's cheaper to get them from China, and even then, I practically need to ring the bank to extend my mortgage even if I am going to buy those, let alone the beautiful large pumpkin seeds locally sourced, which of course are preferable, food miles and all that.

So what's a girl to do, except to take matters into her own hands, as it were, when she's hanging out for some? (Pumpkin seeds, that is). And all would be pretty straightforward if it wasn't for the bees. Because what the bees do is fly around the garden, pollinating things. They flit from male flower to female flower getting bits of pollen on their little leggies and spreading it all around. And no pumpkin is safe for a radius of two kilometres. They could've been getting pollen from my seed pumpkin and ruining the flesh from that other kind of pumpkin all over the neighbourhood, and getting pollen from the pumpkin where you eat the flesh and putting it on the flowers of my seed pumpkins and ruining them.

female pumpkin flower has plump pumpkin fruit forming at base of flower

So that's where I've had to intervene. I have been keeping an eye on those pumpkins, peeking out from under my curtains for any sign of readiness for that kind of thing. And what the sign is, is those great big yellow flowers. But you have to know the difference between the male and the female flowers and here's how to tell: the male has a long thing sticking up.

Bearing in mind that the bees are out there doing their thing any time between 6.30am and 11am spreading all manner of things, you have to be early. So imagine my surprise when I went out at the crack of dawn, to see several large yellow flowers from my prize pumpkin plants, as seen here. And on closer inspection, I could clearly see there were both male and female flowers.

"male part, meet female part!"

I carefully removed a male flower from the plant and removed all the outer petals so that all that was left practically was only the protruding male part. Then I opened the female flower and poked around a bit, making sure that the male part had been well rubbed all over the female part. Sorry to those of delicate disposition for such graphic details, but there really is no way around it. You have just witnessed pumpkin sex.

But I didn't stop there. I then closed the flower with a rubber band, for my work was done, and covered it with a paper bag. This is in case Mr Bumble Bee, who had clearly been having a Sunday lie-in, didn't realise that Ms Pumpkin flower, was already with child as it were, and tried to pollinate from the male flower of another nearby (non-eating-seed) pumpkin, which would produce not quite the result we want, as mentioned a couple of paragraphs earlier: some kind of hybrid pumpkin which is no good for seeds or flesh.

paper bag bee-deterent

Now all that is left to do is watch and wait. I am waiting for those pumpkins to grow, ripen, and then to be able to eat the seeds of course. And in the meantime, I am out there in the garden eagerly watching like a supervisor at a school disco, waiting for any sign of male and female pumpkin flowers at the ready...

Fertilising Friday (my gardening secrets revealed)

2012-01-27T14:20:00.007+13:00

my corn patch, well fertilised

My corn and vegetables are looking pretty spectacular right now.

And if I could put it down to anything other than my amazing soil which I have nurtured and treated royally with techniques such as crop rotation, digging in manure and general babying, I would have to thank my variety of home-made fertilisers.

I have a habit of fertilising regularly, on a Friday, and also of adding to my collection of fertilisers on this day.

My beautiful friend Taryn manages a food production place where they regularly go through buckets with very secure lids, and we have spent many a Saturday gathering manure (our best find has been dried sheep pellets from underneath a sheep shearing shed, very easy access and excellent material) or seaweed in these buckets. Makes it much nicer to take home as the lids seal very tightly.

A recent visit from my Wellington bloke, otherwise known as Mr Jules, saw us taking said buckets and scoring lots of seaweed from Duvauchelle and also some nice wormy horse manure. I use the seaweed for fertiliser (I have posted before about how I make it) and add the well-rotted manure directly to the garden.

comfrey leaves for fertiliser

But back to the buckets, once these are empty, they are perfect for brewing fertilisers. I wish I'd had these buckets before I started my fish fertiliser, because that would have kept the smell down. The fish fertiliser is truly very smelly. So smelly that my neighbour wondered if there was a decomposing body inside. The wheelie bin does not hide the smell at all.

instructions for fish fertiliser

But oh, the fish fertiliser is a fantastic source of nitrogen and especially phosperous, which fruit-bearing vegetables, such as tomatoes, pumpkin, eggplants, peppers, zucchini, cucumber etc need. And you should see mine! They are bulging with fruiting vegetables right now. Also fantastic for corn, which needs lots of nitrogen as well. Every Friday my plants get a treat, a drink of any of my array of fertilisers that are suitable for their needs.

home-made gift with a difference, in recycled "milk" containers

In fact, I even gave away little bottles of fertiliser for Christmas to a few lucky loved ones. Well, I hope they felt lucky. Their plants certainly will. It is so strong, it has to be watered down 5:1.

Other fertilisers I have been experimenting with are nettle tea, the "nasty" weed most people avoid due to its sting and the wonderful comfrey, which I have plenty of in the paths of my garden, being careful not to let it spread to the garden beds. Most Fridays I have enough leaves of comfrey to pick to start off a fresh bucket of comfrey tea. And I use the comfrey tea I started weeks earlier for fertilising every plant who wants it. Comfrey can overrun the garden if one doesn't keep on top of it, but it has a fantastic selection of nutrients, perfect for almost every different plant's needs.

So if you are wanting to know what kind of fertilisers to use for your organic garden, try these home-made suggestions, which you can store in recycled containers so you always have something ready to feed your plants with. For more information on how I use them, I have a few posts here you may find interesting.

How to save seeds from lettuces (or get some of mine for free)

2012-01-23T11:50:00.000+13:00

Saving Toshi's lettuce seeds

Can you believe, the first lettuce I planted this season have already gone to seed? Lucky for me, since I am an heirloom seed-saver. It was a delicious red salad which I bought from Toshi of Sakura Organics (pictured here) at the Farmers' Market. When I last saw him I told him they were going to seed and checked whether or not they are heirloom plants, because I save seeds and there is no use saving seeds from hybrid plants. I assumed they were safe to save, and he told me they were indeed heirloom.

So, I thought I would demonstrate how to save seeds, because a lot of people want to be seed-savers, but they are not sure how.

lettuce going to seed

First, you have to wait till the plants flower, as this is how the lettuce goes to seed. Before then, most plants get pulled out, because they start dashing and dancing all over the garden and stop looking so orderly.

seed fairies

Then when they flower, they eventually get these wee fluffy fairy-like bits on them. This bit probably has a scientific name, which I'm sure is not anything to do with fairies, but I don't know what it is.

pinching off the seed-fairy

On a dry day, preferably after several days in a row without rain, you simply get in there with a bowl or a paper bag and pinch the little fairy things off and put them into the bowl. Once you pinch them off you will see where the 5 or 6 or maybe more seeds in each flower head, which have been hidden by the fluff. By then they will be quite dry and ready to be blown away.

You'll have a whole bowl of seeds and fluff. I don't bother about the fluff, but some people get in and have a good sort out.

seeds and fluff in a bowl

Take them inside, fold them up in some paper or an envelope and write on the outside the date of the harvest and the type of the seed. This is so important. The reasons are that, in a year or when you are ready to plant the seeds, you will not be able to tell or to remember what kind of seed it was. Also, if two or more years go past, you will want to know when the seed was saved so you can figure out whether or not it will be worth planting them.

So on this envelope I wrote 28 Jan 2012, Toshi's red lettuce. They should be stored in a cool, dry place. They are ready to plant immediately or within a couple of years.

If anyone wants any of my lettuce seeds and you are in New Zealand, send a stamped self-addressed envelope to

Julianne

PO Box 12270

Beckenham

Christchurch 8242

Lunch for royalty: delicious vegan fast food from my garden

2012-01-20T13:58:00.010+13:00

fast food lunch from my garden

I am starting to have a few delicious lunches of boiled potatoes, freshly picked beans thrown in 2 minutes before the potatoes have finished cooking, and everything else raw: grated zuchini, the tomatoes which are just starting and freshly picked salad. Potatoes and a few beans are about the only thing I have which is cooked at the moment because it is summer here and there is so much to eat from my garden and super-kind friends' fruit trees, and even at the organic shops, fruit is just so cheap and delicious.

Remember those potatoes I planted here? Well, this is the potato patch now.

The potatoes get watered three times a week, at least early in the morning, and sometimes later on in the evening if it has been a very hot day. This is because we have water restrictions as a result of damage because of the earthquakes here in Christchurch.

Back to eating potatoes though, I have to say, the difference between bought potatoes, even organic ones purchased from the farmer's market and ones that I have dug from the garden and eaten straight away is great. The texture, the taste, everything about the eating experience is vastly improved when they are dug and eaten straight away. So to eat food fit for a queen, you really do need to have your own garden.

All mixed in with a twist of pepper and a sprinkle of delicious New Zealand sea salt

I do eat the beans raw sometimes, but more often than not, I cut the ends off and plonk them in with the potatoes for no more than two minutes. I do the same thing to asparagus if I happen to find a couple of them in the garden as well. I only have a small asparagus patch left so I am never going to get enough to eat "properly" and as I am the only one here that likes them, that is probably for the best.

a small selection of some of our salad greens with some courgettes I snapped off from the plant

I am also eating a lot of salad greens. We have such a wide variety in my garden to choose from. Often I dig the potatoes and wash them lightly, then while they are boiling (20 minutes is optimum), I pick my salad leaves and tomatoes, courgette and beans and anything else I can find. I am pretty casual with my food preparation. I do wash my salad greens, because I have many birds which enjoy my garden too, and I don't want to accidentally consume something that is not good for me. I have an old salad spinner which I use to dry the leaves, then I loosely rip them into smaller bits, but not too small! I never use any mayonaise, not even a vegan kind. I prefer to squeeze a lemon or drizzle some olive oil over it, toss it around, and a bit of seasoning. I also like ripping up a bit of coriander and tossing that in. It is a simple meat-free, mostly raw lunch, and surprisingly filling, but not so much that one is "stuffed". I always still have plenty of energy left over to go for a bike ride to the shops if I need anything, or to get a load of work done.

Mulching to save precious water

2012-01-04T14:15:00.005+13:00

my special pumpkins, which I am growing for the seeds, not the flesh

I've mentioned in the past that we had an earthquake, and as a result, we are only allowed to water three days a week, on designated days, depending which side of the street you live on. The rules are that you are only allowed to water with a hand-held hose, no sprinklers or irrigation systems. Which is fine, as I don't have a sprinkler or irrigation system. (In the past though, I have set my hose onto "spray" and propped it up and left it.

Now I have two chairs strategically positioned in the garden, where I sit and carry out my watering duties. Sometimes I have the dog on my knee and other times my 17 year old daughter sits in the garden to keep me company and have a daily catch-up.

mulch around one of my tomatoes

So a friend of mine dropped around a couple of wool fadges of straw for me to use as mulch.

On my assigned watering day, I held the hose and weeded the garden at the same time. I even washed the soil off the roots of the weeds I had just pulled out. The ground got very nice and deeply wet. Then I soaked some straw and distributed well around the plants. I actually think it looks quite attractive, and it keeps the weeds down too.

[In the old days I would create my own mulch by raking up bags and bags of leaves from public parks. I would then bring them home, pile them on a garden and soak and soak and soak them with water. Then I'd cover them with black plastic. If it rained I would run out and take the black plastic off so they could get even more soaked. Occasionally I would get in with the fork and turn the pile. You need a lot of leaves, so I would keep adding to it and watering it, then eventually I would bag it, soak it again and by mid summer it would be the best mulch ever. But last autumn, leaf-gathering time, I wasn't here because we ran away to Wellington after the quakes and stayed there for nearly 7 months. However, next autumn hopefully I'll remember to do a post on mulching.]

I used to prop the hose up on the bean frame to water, now I do it by hand

And it's given my life a different pace - no longer do I rush out to put the hose on "sprinkle" flow propped up somewhere, now I take my time watering the garden.

the corn and brassicas surrounded by mulch

It's slow-living at its finest: (not that my life is part of the rat-race hustle and bustle), smelling the roses, and keeping an eye on the pumpkins (but that is another blog post).

Summertime, and the living is easy.

Raspberry season again!

2011-12-26T20:14:00.005+13:00

raspberries for breakfast

I happened to notice that my new lipstick was about the same colour as the raspberries I have been getting recently, even if the lipstick shade is curiously called Plum.

some of our raspberries three weeks ago

Gradually the raspberries in the garden have grown from this (above) to the ones on my muesli (top photo) - it is so nice have enough for a sprinkling on my raw muesli every morning. In case you are wondering, the hairy thing are sprouted and dehydrated naked oats, which is a variety of oat which doesn't need to be hulled because it grows without a hull so can be eaten raw. We buy ours from Milmore Downs.

this small raspberry plant produced so many happy breakfast times

Delicious. There is nothing like a freshly picked raspberry. Or a new lipstick shade, particularly when for so many years, one has stuck to safe "more natural" shades. Like the impulse lipstick buy, having raspberries every morning feels just a little bit daring.

since then, I have transplanted more into a neat row from a big unruly clump. Roll on next summer's raspberry patch!

Life is good.

My courtyard salad garden and the never-ending seedling trays

2011-12-10T13:36:00.000+13:00

chives, always being snipped, and salad greens, always being picked

The thing about growing salad greens is that you eat them. Well, I do anyway. Every day I have a big salad, so I need lots of greens in the garden, and seedlings always on the go.

I also like to eat the usual herbs like chives, coriander, parsley, so I grow them myself as well.

seedlings, nestled among pots and planters of salad greens

more pots of salad greens

And to be on the safe side, as my salad greens get eaten, I have even more seedlings underway. It's a never-ending exercise which guarantees I always have plenty to eat.

The seedlings above though are probably planted a bit close together, especially the amaranth in the cup in the middle. They're going to be tricky to thin out. So the next step is to probably transplant them now into a bigger planter (still for baby plants) with more room around each other.

At this stage I still keep the soil wet, which means a light spray of water (imitating very gentle rain) very often. They are just babies, and they need to be treated as such with gentle nurturing.

Finally, a garden working bee

2011-12-02T13:24:00.000+13:00

Step 1, how I found the garden when I got back from Wellington

Between the two of us, my daughter and I managed to clean up the garden, well half of it anyway. But there were still two other large garden patches to do.

So we called in the Big Guns. I asked the other owners of the land to come in and help. And they did, with their spades. We got both patches and all the weeds on the paths weeded and dug over in about two hours. Then we covered them with cardboard so the weeds didn't grow back before we planted.

I know the blog has been a little bit boring, because mainly it's been about sorting it out and cleaning it up, but bear with me, because things are going to change around here.

Here are the before and after photos, including the top one.

Step 2, the half I cleaned up with my daughter's help

Step 3, after help from the other owners :)

It's a lot of work, but if your garden is overgrown, I hope you look to mine as inspiration. And as I did, if you need help, just ask. You'll be surprised how quickly things can get done if there are many of you.

Corn, not sweeter by any other name

2011-11-28T12:30:00.000+13:00

the soil was prepared and covered with cardboard to keep away creatures

I love corn, who doesn't? Is it because corn syrup as a sweetener is so prevalent in packaged food that we are all addicted? Don't get me started on food and politics, but that is why I love being my own food grower!

And the secret really is in the soil. Mine is pampered with manures and home made fertilisers. Then I protect the seedlings with either baskets (above) or cloches. And I water as often as I am allowed. We have water restrictions now because the earthquake damaged the infrastructure.

metal hoops over the corn which hold the cloche off the plants

These may be fragile young corn plants but with the care they will receive from moi over the next few months, they should grow into big juicy food for us.

And I feed them. I rotate my crops according to their needs, so that explains why the block of corn is in with the leafy greens. It's because they all need nitrogen. Lots of it. And I have my fertilisers brewing away as I write.

weeds are growing too

I don't let a little thing like weeds worry me. In fact unless they threaten to overtake the plant and until I am ready to mulch, I just let them go for it. Sometimes I pull out a handful of weeds and lay them down on the same soil as a pre-mulch mulch.

two kinds of corn

I am growing two kinds of corn, both of which I bought from different sellers at the farmers market, and were planted two weeks apart. Both had brilliant soil to begin with, and will be surrounded by leafy vegetables, in this case brassicas, on two sides, and already have beans underway on the other side.

corn, beans and potatoes in the ground, under cloches

Phew! Now there is just the other half of the garden to tackle!

Beans, to be baked, and dwarf beans

2011-11-20T11:46:00.000+13:00

First baby bean seedling

Still in the garden clean-up mode, one patch at a time. The potatoes are in (at the back behind the wheelbarrow), and the next step is the bean patch, which you can see we have started, by digging out a patch and putting some edging there. We are extending that patch this year to the wall.

The bean patch, before (view from my bedroom window)

The bean patch, after, covered by a cloche to keep cats off

My process for planting bean seeds is to soak them in water overnight to soften the shell. Here I am planting cannelloni beans to be used in my special baked beans recipe, which I slow cook in my pressure cooker. Which is faster than slow cooking. Once the plants are big enough, the cloche can come off.

You'll see the potatoes in the background have a cloche too. That is because I am still shovelling dirt over the potato leaves as they come up and cats love fresh soil (to use as a toilet).

weedy bean garden

I have to say, it was touch and go with the cannelloni, as the weeds grew faster than they did. And I decided I didn't want to waste precious garden real estate, so I also planted some dwarf beans around the edge. I will keep the weeds for now, as they are a disincentive to cats, especially as there is a little bit of nettle there.

How to start a garden from scratch

2011-11-11T11:11:00.009+13:00

A daunting prospect

Just like anything worth doing, one has to start somewhere, and after my daughter and I worked so hard at our start to cleaning up a small part of the garden to plant potatoes in, I thought I would share some photos. We wanted to get the potatoes in, because they take so long, and they really need to be in before summer starts on December 1st officially (here in the southern hemisphere). The new variety of potato we are trying takes 80 to 90 days.

Cleaning up, one patch at a time

Because we didn't want to exert too much energy at once, especially when we were not ready to plant out the other gardens yet, we concentrated on keeping the weeds down on the rest of the garden with flattened cardboard boxes - luckily we had just moved house and had plenty available, (despite keeping some for storage and recycling others back to the removal company). You can also use old carpet. This is a good thing to do over winter, or if you need to suffocate grass you want to convert to garden a month or so later. I know it looks unsightly, but as much as I am a fan of beauty, I am a lazy creature at heart and would rather sit in the chair and relax.

Two small potato patches

The wheelbarrow full of dirt is so that once the potatoes poke their leaves up, I can cover them with more soil. I also have some very wormy horse manure to put straight on top too. That should help them!

Urban cat repellent

Our garden is a haven for cats, so I have to do all I can to stop them using the potato patch as their own personal toilet. Hence the baskets.

The potatoes are in, now we can sit back and survey the garden. And look forward to the day we get to eat them. Life is good.

Back at square one

2011-10-29T14:53:00.005+13:00

What happens if I'm not around to look after the garden

Well, we're back at square one. And that's cool. Luckily the beds are already built, but the garden had "got away" since I hadn't been here to take care of it. Isn't it interesting to look at what happens in a garden when nothing gets done to it?

This is how it looked before then, last summer. I took this photo from my post about summer in the garden of love. I find gardening exciting, watching over the process of growth. So despite everything I'm not really moaning about having to start from scratch because the other body corp owners did not maintain it. I don't even know if they ate the food, and those corn plants were producing the fattest, sweetest and juiciest corn (organic, of course) when I left. We had a few, and there were at least 28 plants producing 2 to 3 ears of corn per plant, so there were lots to be enjoyed.

So today my fabulous daughter and I got out into the garden and dug out some weeds (lots) and put in some potatoes in our newly prepared beds. A kind called Allure, or Allura or something. We also prepared another bed to plant my favourite, Agria. Potatoes are so full of nutrients, especially the skin.

I'm so excited, we will plant each bed as we are ready. Soon I will prepare some other beds to plant corn in. But it won't be tomorrow, because I am going up to Milmore Downs, where I will come back with quite a lot of organic cow manure.

It was such fun when we got back. My beautiful friend Linda picked us up from the airport and brought us home and we took a walk through the garden. We found lettuce, and some kale and there was lots of things like last year's kohlrabi ("Emerald" variety) going to seed. The lemon tree I transplanted which had never really given us anything was actually bearing fruit, and lots of it. But the thing that touched my heart most was seeing two little very fragrant hyacinths, a blue and a white one, proudly standing among the weeds.

I never want to live without a garden again. I need to have dirt under my fingernails to survive. I need to oversee plants from the baby stages right through to old age, just as in the photo at the top of this post. I need to save the seeds and start again, from scratch. And that's exactly what I am going to do. Life is good.

Back from Wellington

2011-10-08T15:03:00.010+13:00

This photo of my recycle bin garden was taken the day it snowed in Wellington. NB special zoodoo compost in bag.

I can't believe it, but I totally lost my mojo for blogging about gardening after the earthquake, when we were in Wellington for 7 months, despite having community gardens and even my own patch at Tanera community garden. So I thought I'd recap about what it was like being gardenless for this post.

IT WAS HIDEOUS!!! I am a gardener, and I've realised how important it is to have my own garden in my own backyard. But despite the fact I didn't have one, apart from a small garden I grew in a recycle bin my boyfriend gave me (see photo above), I made the most of what I did have.

This is what my life as a gardenless gardener was like in Wellington.

Well, I have to say, the walk to the garden was rather pleasant. My preferred route was up the steps at the end of Epuni Street, past the ever changing graffiti, through the dog park, to the garden.

The day I was given the garden, this is pretty much what it looked like (above). An overgrown mess, but who cares. I was overjoyed to have a garden again. Many days after my boyfriend had finished doing a hard day's work, he would take me to the beach in the dark to gather seaweed for fertiliser, or haul bags of compost across the park, or just sit on the seat with me and enjoy the view from the seat at the edge of the garden, which overlooked the city and the harbour. Actually usually when I was there with Anthony, it would be night and all lit up.

My daughter and I enjoyed many a sunny day sitting on this bench admiring the view and talking about life and the meaning of it, after letting the dog have a run around in the dog park. It truly was idyllic.

Once I got stuck into the garden and started weeding, I discovered lots of free food from the previous gardener, and that gave me an idea of what to plant (the crop rotation thing). As you can see from the soil stuck on the veges and the size of the carrots, the soil was quite clayey, which is why I made it my personal mission to improve it the best I could in the time I had.

And I spent many happy hours gardening, talking to the other gardeners, being given seeds and inviting them to share my smelly fertiliser, and just generally wiling away the time. I just love to garden. Even when it is a 10 or 15 minute walk from my home, it is still worth it. (And it makes me realise how rich I am now that I am home to have my own patch).

Here is my garden shortly after I had everything planted out. I tend to tackle one area of weeds at a time, but only before I have something to plant in it.

Anyway, so this is where I have been gardening for the last 7 months. Even though Wellington is urban and there are not many places with gardens, you can't keep gardeners down! They can always find a way.

One of the simplest ways to eat harvested tomatoes

2011-02-11T13:53:00.004+13:00

tomatoes, various salad greens, grated raw zucchini, chopped chives
(click on image to enlarge)

I love tomatoes, and I believe that they are the favourite plant of gardeners to grow. So now that we are harvesting them in abundance, we are eating them in a million different ways.

But you can't go past a simple, fresh tomato salad, which isn't that much different from the normal, very basic salad, except that it had about 3 times as many tomatoes. These salads are not the super fancy variety made from weird and wonderful ingredients (not available locally) and fancy cheeses - they are basic combinations of summer vegetabless as a result of having a leisurely wander around the garden at lunch time. I harvested zucchini, varieties of lettuce, chives, corn and of course, tomatoes.

So I couldn't resist making this my drawing today. What fun. The colour palette I used is I loved a chemist which I created over at colourlovers.com and as usual the fonts I used are my own, juleslove and julesgirltalk available from urgentartwork. As I write this, my wonderful daughter is downstairs playing Ryuichi Sakamoto and the theme from Amelie on the piano, the windows are open at both ends of the house letting a pleasant breeze through, the sun is shining down strongly on the garden and we have enjoyed our delicious tomato salad. It is a scorcher of a summer's day. Could life be any better?

Bigger than an hors d'œuvre and fresh from the garden

2011-02-05T14:07:00.010+13:00

my raw vegan un-hors d'œuvre on my new rawvita crispbread (click images to enlarge)

I made up a recipe for crispbreads, similar to the Ryvita ones, but I have called them Rawvita Crispbreads because these were made with raw ingredients and then dehydrated. They are absolutely delicious on their own, funnily enough, but also nice with a smear of avocado, and also work with vegemite, that's why there is not a full tray of them below. Definitely not a one-bite appetiser like the hors d'œuvre but fun to create as if...

the dehydration process

So this morning I wandered around the garden looking for toppings. Unfortunately I had already put the hose on the garden so my access to all areas was limited as I didn't want to get sprayed on. Apart from the avocado and walnuts from my friend Kay, everything else here was from my own garden, such a nice feeling. However, I also could not resist using a dollop of zesty italian cheese which my daughter made when she reviewed Padmapani's RAW Italian Feast, a recipe book for her blog. (It is utterly delicious, along with the other food my daughter has made from the recipe book).

Clockwise from top-left: Sauerkraut made with cabbage and radish, lettuce, tomato freshly picked from the plant not being watered at the time of picking, rawvita crackers, walnuts, chives, marigolds, avocados, onion leaves

all rawvita crispbreads have avocado on them first

What's what, clockwise from top left:

- freckled lettuce and oak leaf lettuce (?) with a dollop of zesty italian cheese, chopped onion leaves and a walnut
- lettuce leaves, sliced tomatos, a dollop of zesty italian cheese and chopped chives
- lettuce leaves, marigold petals, sauerkraut, chopped onion leaves
- sliced tomatoes, sauerkraut and chopped chives
- lettuce leaves, sauerkraut, marigold petals and chopped chives

Isn't it great to create such deliciousness with what is on hand? Life=good.

From Cabbage to Sauerkraut follow up

2011-01-27T11:19:00.004+13:00

This is a follow up to this post here the day I harvested a cabbage.

My sauerkraut has turned out to be delicious and I have two of these giant jars full of it! Which is lucky, because we love it.

And yesterday my friend Monique said she is popping over after she has cut off a big red cabbage from her garden for me to make kraut with. I also have 6 x red cabbages growing in the garden, probably will be ready to harvest in about 4 months or so.

Sometimes I think that if someone had told me a year ago that I would be eating some of the food I eat now, I would not have believed them. But variety, after all, is the spice of life. And I love to Learn Abundantly.

What I did was I used pink himalayan salt with a ratio of 1:40 to shredded cabbage. (Make sure you use that ratio because last time I used slightly more and it was too salty, and apparently if you use less salt it doesn't ferment as well). I weighed the cabbage then divided that total weight by 40 and then weighed out that amount of salt. I shredded the cabbage first and layered it in a big bowl with a sprinkling of the salt then put more cabbage, more salt etc. Then overnight I covered the big bowl of cabbage with a damp tea towel so the salt would start attracting out the juice of the cabbage. Then the next day I smooshed it all together till the cabbage got really juicy and as I put it in the jar, I layered that with sliced radishes straight from the garden. Then I put some outer cabbage leaves over the whole thing (it was so juicy that the juice was level with the shredded cabbage in the jar) and weighed them down with a heavy weight and left it. I checked it every day and got scum off the top, and one day the top cabbage leaves started to turn mouldy so I replaced them.

Life is good.

How to eat kohlrabi raw (recipe)

2011-01-25T09:17:00.002+13:00

photo from my records

Have you ever tried kohlrabi? If you are in New Zealand, chances are you may not have. Which is why it was very easy for me to win a packet of kohlrabi seeds from NZ Gardener by entering a draw. I was delighted to see that the particular type was called Emerald. (Anyone who knows my daughter and I well will know why that is significant.)

I first tried growing it here and we even had it on a Christmas at the bach one year (see photo above).

kohlrabi green smoothy

But this year we have been eating it differently. For a start, the leaves are delicious smooshed up in the blender with lots bananas as a smoothie. Delicious. Yes, really. If you're not used to green smoothies, then add lots of fruit. You will soon love them.

But, what about the bulbs? The funny spaceman-like things that the leaves grow out of? Well, we turn them into raw pasta. We have a contraption which you put a carrot or zucchini in and turn and out pops pasta. It is called a spiraliser, and there are easier to use models available, and I would not actually recommend this one below, because it comes with no directions and when I first tried it I got my finger caught on the blade and it took days to heal. But this was the only one I could find and I really wanted to make some vegetable pasta. I had a brainwave one morning that we could make some kohlrabi pasta if we used the smaller bulbs, and we love it so much that we have had it three times this week.

ready for the chop

KOHLRABI PASTA
Ingredients:
at least 1 kohlrabi bulb per person
2-3 tomatoes fresh or sundried per person
(If sundried, soak overnight and save the soaking water)
Pesto and vegan parmesan to garnish

We made the tomato sauce by soaking the sundried tomatoes up and blending them in the coffee grinder. We didn't even add anything else to it (apart from the soaking water) and it was delicious as is. Now that we have some fresh tomatoes from the garden we will make some more. Probably today.

My daughter said she never liked my cooked kohlrabi dishes but she loves this raw. How simple is it to have kohlrabi bulb mixed with tomato sauce. We added a dollop of raw basil pesto and a sprinkle of vegan parmesan to the top of it, and it was beautiful. I recommend to try eating kohlrabi raw. If you can't get hold of a spiraliser, you can always julienne the bulb (peel it first).

Add a dollop of raw pesto

Sprinkle with vegan "parmesan"
(which I believe is made from nutritional yeast, crushed cashew and himalayan salt)

Devour, enjoy and eat with gusto

DIY Fertilisers x 3 - fish, seaweed and banana

2011-01-22T11:22:00.008+13:00

nothing but healthy salad veges fresh from my garden, include freckled lettuce, tomatoes, grated zucchini, chopped zucchini flower - all just harvested 5 mins ago

I am always open to natural remedies for the garden, and have often put my old banana skins around the roses which need potassium, and always bury some before transplanting roses. Then recently I found this great recipe for banana (rich in potassium) fertiliser for container gardens. It sounds wonderful and the blogger even posted a comparison of the results. I eat a lot of (organic) bananas, which are very reasonably priced from Opawaho organic grocer in Beckenham. So I'll be starting that next week.

I also regularly make seaweed fertiliser, which is wonderful, and a particularly good place to get seaweed from is Onawe (Barry's Bay) on Banks Peninsular. There is no pollution in that bay from sewerage or anything, and it is also wonderful for harvesting edible raw organic fresh (still growing) seaweed to eat (wakame seaweed, an introduced species), but the seaweed which one would not want to eat is washed up on the shore, and it is well rotted and several different varieties of seaweed all mixed together. So that is perfect for stuffing in a bag and bringing home for the compost heap or to make seaweed fertiliser from.

But, this is my latest adventure of garden goodness: I mentioned to a friend who worked in a fish factory that I heard fish remains are wonderful for the garden. Of course the native American Indians would bury fish and plant in that soil because fish remains provide a wide variety of nutrients which soil needs, and you can also make fish fertiliser which, when watered down to a ration of 1: 5, creates a beautiful organic treatment.

Well, be careful what you ask for because the next day the friend knocked on my door and delivered a large bag of fish remains. I wasn't expecting it, but life is full of opportunities and here was one to test the fish fertiliser theory.

So I googled fish fertilser and set about making some. It is meant to be wonderful stuff, but the warnings were that it does smell strong. However my bedroom is right next to the garden and occasionally I get a whiff, and it has never been that bad. It is about 4 weeks old now too, so only improving. Bear in mind that it is the height of what has been mostly a very hot summer, and as I say, it never did get too bad. Who knows though, maybe the neighbours would disagree?

Apparently it takes 2 weeks before it is ready, so it should be pretty much ok now. There were various methods for making fish fertiliser online, but I have to admit that even I, quite at home with the muckiest of garden tasks, could not bring myself to pulp the fish emulsion in the food processor as recommended by one website. Why not? Because I use the food processor a lot and now eat a vegan diet - although do not call myself a vegan as such - and also, I had been given a large amount of fish remains, about a bucket and a half full - which would have taken forever. Also, I make it a point to be a bit rough and ready with these things, otherwise the fun is taken out of it if one has to be constantly measuring and stressing about perfection. Since when has nature been so precise anyway.

Here's what I did:
I used my empty council wheelie bin, the one for recycling*, and dumped the fish remains out of their bag and into the bin, making a point of not looking at the fish heads .... poor creatures. I then got my trusty garden hose, poked it in and filled the bin about 12 inches from the top of the bin. I then moved the bin to as far away as possible, and in a small garden, this was only about 20 feet from my bedroom window. By the way, I estimate that by volume, there was about 1 : 8 ratio of fish to water. I also dumped in some straw, about 3 x the amount of fish. *The neighbours don't fill their recycling bins up so I can put my recycling in theirs.

fish fertiliser in the council recycling wheelie bin

Every few days I opened the lid and stirred with the garden fork, and as well as a stir, a poke down of the straw. This made the fork stink, but as I then used it to aerate soil in the garden, that smell immediately went. Interestingly, the soil around the newly planted cabbages was the area to benefit, and those cabbages are significantly larger and healthier looking than the cabbages planted at the same time in another area of the garden. But this may just be coincidental.

I may have to do a more scientific experiment now that some of the fertiliser is ready. I have it watered down 1 : 5 but may water that down further still.

Anyway, I will probably apply it once a week at first, not too close to the plants. And for the fruiting tomatoes, I may try twice a week. Home made fertilisers are the only ones I use by the way.

Seaweed fertiliser in a big bin

The soil around my salad veges have been regularly fertilised (every 3 days or so) with my seaweed fertiliser and I have had an abundant and healthy crop. And still growing. See my delicious lunch in the top photo.

Fresh organic potatoes - a summer in New Zealand

2011-01-16T11:48:00.001+13:00

organic potatoes dug two minutes ago

Another garden pleasure I have had is digging up potatoes, which I have been boiling, slathering with delicious olive oil, seasoning with salt and pepper and covering with chopped chives... freshly dug potatoes, yum! Nutrient-packed little balls of potato, just there for the digging. It is not at all hard work (rather fun actually, like treasure-hunting). I have eaten almost 100% raw food for the last 7 months or so and feel so much better for it, but since potatoes are in season and in my garden for the taking, I have had a mini workout with my shovel and gone out harvesting whenever the whim strikes me. Pffff! Not so much of a workout I know, but why more people are not using even a small metre by metre square for growing potatoes I'll never know, much more fun than lawn. You can even grow them vertically with tyres stacked on top of each other. It's infinitely easier than carrying a sack of spuds home from the grocer, but then I only own a bicycle :) In fact the truth is that I didn't even plant these this year and have given them no care at all, apart from a water when I put the hose spray over the garden patch next to them. These potatoes just grew as left overs from last year.

fresh zucchini and chives cut with scissors into my bowl

You will also see that I grabbed a wee courgette/zucchini from the patch that I am just starting to harvest and I grated that raw and smooshed the cooked potatoes round in the mix. Delicious.

Here is my process:

Thought: hmmm, I feel like some potatoes.
Then,
1. move the dehydrator from the top of the stove (because the stove has been unused this last half year) and fill a small pot with hot water and set it to boil.
2. Go outside, grab the shovel and the house compost basket (always clean by the way) which I empty on the way and dig for potatoes. It takes about 2 to 5 minutes, depending on how many I come across.
3. Go back inside and weigh and wash them.
4. By then the water is boiled, so salt it and add washed potatoes.
5. Find a bowl and take it outside and chop a good amount of chives into it with scissors. Bring bowl back inside and add a dollop of good (organic) olive oil and some himalayan salt and some pepper.
6. After about 10 mins, fish out the tiniest potatoes into the bowl and swirl into oil/salt/pepper mixture.
7. Devoured, enjoyed, eaten with gusto! Nothing as good as freshly dug spuds.
8. Repeat step 6 with slightly bigger spuds until they are all gone. If needed, go back to step 5.
9. Repeat the process in the next couple of days when I have the same thought.

Bon appetit!

Life is good!

Peas in a pod

2011-01-11T11:11:00.000+13:00

Like peas in a pod...

I planted some peas this year next to the corn, and this morning when I was strolling through with the spray hose deciding which patch to water first, I noticed that there were a few plump pods of peas. I couldn't help myself, I had to sample them immediately, and so sweet!

Even the pods themselves are sweet and delicious - very fibrous, but juicy and flavoursome, and bound to be good for one. I will be looking out for more every morning when I'm wandering through the garden for its watering from now on. If my daughter was back at school (she is still on summer holidays), a handful of these would be a lovely addition to her bento.

It would also be an idea to let some stay on the plants for as long as possible and dry out, to save the seeds for growing next year (they are heirloom seeds), or sprouting. I probably still have time to plant more, I think I will.

Life is good.

Summer in the love garden

2011-01-09T08:58:00.010+13:00

Remember my plot where I was going to put corn which I mentioned here?

baby corn - taken 5 December 2010

Well I'm pleased to say, that it has really come along and soon we will be harvesting. (Those cabbages went on to be harvested one at a time and turned into sauerkraut.) The one sunflower which grew from a seed blown in or buried from last year is shining too.

Corn today, getting bigger...

And my courtyard garden has proven to be a raging success as well, we will have lots of tomatoes shortly, and have been harvesting salad greens around the place for quite some time.

some of what's on offer in the courtyard

one of the tomato plants

As well as that the two other owners in the body corp who asked for a garden plot each have decided that they won't be using it this season after all, and so they were heading towards being a weedy "mess":

this got much worse!

I am babysitting the garden patches for them and have hurriedly purchased some more plants from the organic grocery shop to fill in their patches and maybe get some late crops for us all, as, apart from lettuce and radishes, it is too late to plant much else from seed. The tomato plants were half price because it is getting too late to plant them now, but they are in a sunny spot, so we may still be okay. Here's hoping! But that's ok, gardening is all about "hope" anyway. Who knows what the future holds in terms of acts of God, which has a large part to do with gardening success, in regards to weather (it's been a hot summer so far, punctuated by nice rain falls) or other natural disasters, such as earthquakes.

plants on their way home in my bike basket :)

So I've been out and about in the garden on a regular basis, watering, weeding, harvesting - we also had an amazing number of raspberries too and our strawberries are also still going - and making fertilisers out of seaweed and fish (but that's another post).

Life is good!

Colours of a raw vegan summer in the garden

2010-12-28T11:11:00.008+13:00

click to enlarge and fully appreciate

Have you ever been to colourlovers.com? I have an account there where I go to play with colours, invent and name new ones, create palettes and patterns and generally have lots of fun mucking around.

This morning I went there and made a new palette called Raw Vegan Summer to celebrate this gorgeous summer we are having here in New Zealand, and all we are able to grow. It is very cool at colourlovers.com, you can name colours, and then create palettes, then make patterns up - the one above is called raw vegan gorgeously, and the palette it is from is called raw vegan summer, where I have named each colour according to which item in my garden it represents.

raw vegan summer

and raw radish.

The other cool thing about colourlovers.com is that you can download the palettes and use them in any of your graphics programmes, like Xara and Photoshop, or to get all the information to use them in web pages etc. You can read all about how to do that here.

Oh, and by the way, using colourlovers.com is totally free! Pretty cool, eh?

From cabbage to sauerkraut

2010-12-11T12:32:00.006+13:00

Today something amazing happened. I harvested the first cabbage I've ever grown successfully. Actually I have previously harvested cabbages from the same batch, but they weren't fully grown so altogether unsatisfactory.

I don't know why I have never grown cabbages before, but now that we are such fans of sauerkraut and the fresher the cabbage the better the 'kraut, we will be growing many more. I will also use my own home-grown radishes to slice or grate and put between the layers. I will pluck them from the garden the second I am ready for them. I'm sure being just picked and organic will make a noticable difference.

Nice and fresh organic cabbages

Aaaaah. (Happy sigh.)

When weeding is rewarding

2010-11-08T09:54:00.005+13:00

In my patch in the big garden, I have already planted out corn, and between the corn, peas, and every morning I water them and will keep doing that daily until the peas (planted only last Sunday) germinate.

So that the peas and corn (corn is already looking great by the way - they are off to a great start) have plenty of room and don't get strangled by weeds, I am weeding often. The main thing I am weeding seems to be baby nasturtiums, and I guess that is because the nasturtiums were put in the compost last year and some of their seeds were too.

Oh well. If I let them have their way, at least I will have a lovely patch of fresh nasturtium leaves to add to salad with beautiful orange, red and yellow flowers. But the thing is, I still want to eat corn and peas. So, I am weeding the nasturtium out.

And what a treasure it is turning out to be. Nasturtium sprouts are delicious!

I weed them, wash them and put them in the fridge to have with my mid-day salad. Deliciously peppery, packed with nutrition, and of course organic and totally free.

Other salad ingredients include lettuce, purple mizuna, red and green spinach, avocado, raw vegan sweet chili sauce, coconut, sunflower seeds, beetroot sauerkraut, ginger and carrot sauerkraut, sweetpeas and anything else I haven't been able to spot

Yum yum!

A visit to a bio-dynamic farm in North Canterbury, New Zealand

2010-11-02T13:13:00.005+13:00

It was cow-horn emptying a few weekends ago, and so my daughter and I caught a ride up to a BD farm to help out. It was a lovely day, with a delicious shared lunch, before we got stuck in to the task at hand.

If you are interested in the reasoning behind cow-horn emptying and bio-dynamic gardening, go to the Bio Dynamic Farming and Gardening Association in New Zealand website.

Also, while we were there we went out to the paddock and got a big bin full of cow manure. The next day I immediately turned the compost and put some big dollops of cow manure between layers. Within a few days, the heap was heating up so nicely, and I have had to cover it to keep my rival the blackbird away from the worms.

I still have plenty left with which to make some manure tea, which is a great organic garden fertiliser. Coming soon.

Labour Day, the traditional time for planting in New Zealand

2010-10-27T08:58:00.010+13:00

Here in New Zealand, in back yard gardens all over the land, there is a flurry of activity, as gardeners scurry from make-shift potting sheds to garden patch, hopefully planting out and thinking ahead to delicious meals shared with loved one, salads and new potatoes for Christmas dinner with strawberries and other delicious summer fruit.

Our common area garden is a hive of activity as well. At the end of September, a huge working bee was had and 7 of us (the owners of 5 of the 6 houses, two with partners) cleared out a lot of weeds and general junk, saving a lot of materials to be reused for edging etc, and waterblasted the paths, walls and everything else that needed doing to prepare the area for planting in. It was a glorious day, and much has happened since then, in readiness for the season ahead.

I have a patch there of course, in which I plan to grow lots of corn and some peas (compatible) and this will shelter the lettuces so that they don't bolt to seed from the hot sun.

I have built a brick border around it, filled it with my best compost, created brick standing areas in the middle of the patch, and laid a whole lot of surplus silverbeet plants on top (for two reasons: so that the silverbeet will decompose a bit before I add it to the compost heap, and also to keep the weeds down on the garden bed before I plant out the corn).

I've also covered the bed with my frames which protect seedlings from birds - this is just for want of a better place to store them - and covered the whole bed with a cloche, to protect my soil from neighbourhood cats. I am so excited about what lies ahead. That is what gardening is all about.

DIY How to sow seeds indoors for transplanting using recycled polystyrene cups

2010-10-18T10:24:00.006+13:00

It's not just because I am a single mum "without spare money" (hey - but with an abundance of freedom, time and love!) that I like to recycle when I garden. There are also world-saving principles to consider, such as land-fills, limited resources, sticking it to the man, etc etc etc. I would never in a million years dream of buying polystyrene cups, or those little polystyrene blobs they use for packaging. But I have no qualms about rescuing them and reusing them. They are good for reuse one or two last times, because you can write on them (I like to write the date of sowing and germinating under the name of the seed planted in them) and they are easy to slide the seedling out when it is ready for transplanting.

A funny thing, I spotted some of these cups in the trash of a friend who works in an office, and quickly got my spare bag out and put them in. I said, could you please ask your office manager to save them for me, but she said that they probably wouldn't do that due to health and safety regulations. What a funny old world we live in.

Many of the things in my garden are recycled. I often use recycled concrete block for garden edging and at the moment in Christchurch, where we have just had an earthquake (click here for short video from the New York Times) many gardeners are encouraging non-gardeners to recycle the ruins within which to grow gardens. After all, we are known as the garden city.

I am also trying to recycle a slow cooker, no longer useable as a slow cooker because of a hairline crack (which I can put damp newspaper in the base of, preheat on warm for a short time, and hopefully not kill the seeds I have in the cups.)

Anyway, this spring I have decided that many of my blogging topics will be based around DIY gardening from the ground up, particularly without financial resources where possible, with a desire to recycle and reuse as much as possible.

Step 1. Gather your seeds together and find some suitable polystyrene cups (recycled) or otherwise acquired (eg from freecycle) seedling pots. IMPORTANT: If they don't already have holes in the base, poke 2 or 3 small holes in with a thin pencil, knitting needle, chopstick, paint brush or similar thin implement.

Step 2. Fill the base with small stones or recycled packaging blob things.

Step 3. Add seed-raising mix or compost, or if you don't have that, dirt. Water.

Step 4. Plant your seeds and wait. If you have little sticks you can write the date and the type of seed and poke them somewhere (obviously well away from where the seed is).

Step 5. Keep your seedlings in a sunny and warm spot inside out of the wind or in a glass house and keep the soil lightly wet until the seeds germinate (the time varies).

Seed saving in autumn or fall, seed planting in spring

2010-10-10T08:36:00.013+13:00

Click on images to enlarge

If you're north of the equator, you will be harvesting a lot right now, and the garden may also be looking a big scraggly, as plants go into the next stage of their growing cycle, where they dry out and produce seeds for you to save, if you so desire. This is so important if you want to retain ownership over your own gardening experience. I hinted at the evils of ownership by seed companies in this post here, mentioned the joys of planning ahead with your own seeds here and rejoiced about the abundant giving by plants here. Lucky you northern hemispherians, you are in a pleasant state of review, where the memories of the closing season are still fresh or still happening, and you can almost sit back in your hammock and rest with a hand on a pleasantly fed stomach, and an eye on the setting sun.

Here in the southern hemisphere, we are in that wonderful state of hope and anticipation that gardening provides. I've written my list, planned out what will be planted where, and now that I have two gardens (a patch in the area next to my house owned officially by the group of owners here known as the Body Corporate and my courtyard collection of pots, a makeshift glasshouse, and a compost-come-pottager which I will post about soon) there is so much more I can grow! From here, I can gather any extra growing medium if needed, having planned what needs to be directly sown, and what can be grown indoors and then transplanted.

As an organic gardener, there are two ways that I know of to grow food. The first and easiest way is to place a seed into fertile soil, keep lightly wet until germinated, water occasionally there after and wait with faith and hope. The second and more complicated way is to approach growing food like a scientific, yet faith-based and hope-filled exercise. The longer I garden, the more joy I get from the second method. If your eyes are glazing over already though, read no further, as I am about to reveal the true geek that I actually am.

I have made a complicated spreadsheet*, which took days to formulate. This automatically narrows down plant families and crop rotation and companion planting recommendations, best times to plant if you live in my area, direct sow or transplant recommendations, estimated germination times, planting (and transplanting) and subsequent crop starting dates, and all will be meticulously recorded in my garden journal. Oh, I just LOVE all of this!

*I have thought about sharing my spreadsheet, or selling it for a small amount, but it may not be useful to anyone outside of Christchurch, New Zealand who likes to plant the same crops as I.

But first, here is my seed list.

This year I am growing from seed:

chia - for seed

corn

lettuces - several varieties

corn salad

kohlrabi

pumpkin - the variety which produces edible pumpkin seeds

onion - welsh bunching

cucumber

radish

broccoli

land cress - 2 varieties

beans

pepper - Czech beauty

peas - champion of England

courgette

shoofly

carrot - akaroa long

endive - broad leafed

kale

tomato - harbinger

tomato - tommy toe

sunflowers - for edible seeds

As well as that, I have perennials which are strawberries, raspberries and asparagus, plus some cabbage, silverbeet (chard), parsley, leeks, celery and coriander also already growing.

I have been a member of the Southern Seed Exchange for about 10 seasons, so most of my seeds come from there, for a very affordable annual membership fee. A little over a week ago we had our annual seed swap and I took in some asparagus seed to swap, plus sunflower, green orach, rocket and silverbeet.

Life is good.

DIY How to transplant a lemon tree

2010-10-06T10:34:00.000+13:00

My lemon tree has been everywhere. It started off in a pot, then moved somewhere else but sulked the whole time because there was not enough sun or water. I then moved her near a drain which perked her up somewhat, but now I have moved her to the ideal place. It is against our house (lemon trees seem to like being close to a house), gets a lot of sun, and is really open.

I have decided to document the transplanting process.

The first step was to prepare the area the lemon tree is moving to. There was a wild plant of silverbeet (chard) in it. This was dug out and what could not be eaten was composted.

The next step was to add some good compost to the spot and under that would also be the time to add commercial citrus fertiliser, if you are into that kind of thing. I also like to give the soil a really good water so that the water drains very deeply, and the roots of the lemon reach down to it once it is put in there.

Now onto digging up the lemon tree. It was in a very grassy-weedy patch behind a fence next to a drain, probably feeling most unloved. Although it has hung in there. It was forked all around it and then gently lifted out. By "forked", what I mean is that the fork is pushed in on each side of it (not too close though, don't want to damage the roots) and wiggled a bit. This is just to loosen it so that a ball of soil around the roots can be removed. Then after lifting it into the wheelbarrow, it is gently weeded of the grassy weeds.

Now onto doing the actual transplanting of the lemon tree. More water needs to be added to the hole, and a hole dug into the soil that I put in there before. From there I gently position the lemon tree and its ball of soil around the roots into the hole and water some more, not on the lemon tree's ball of soil, which may wash soil off the roots and cause stress to the tree, but instead in the soil around where I have put it, so that the roots want to reach out for a drink. I then put more soil/compost on top of the ball of soil so that the roots are well covered, because lemon trees are a bit shy like that, they do not like their roots exposed. Lastly, once I am sure the tree is comfortable, firmly planted and happy, I gently remove the leaves etc (I can't bear to remove them all as I think the tree has had enough humiliation for one day). The removal of the leaves is so that the tree can focus inwards on the roots and settling in well to the soil, rather than sending the energy outwards towards the leaves. Every day for at least a week, the lemon tree will be receiving at least a three litre container of water. I keep water in bottles next to the tree to remind me it needs to be looked after in this way.

So that is it. The lemon tree has been successfully transplanted and from now on should provide many delicious juicy lemons. I can hardly wait!

DIY How to make a garden from scratch on a paved courtyard

2010-09-30T08:19:00.001+13:00

Please click on image to enlarge

The body corporate garden next to my townhouse is not entirely mine to use as I wish any more, but since it is remaining as an organic garden, I am very happy with that, and like two of the other owners, I will have a patch there, just not the whole garden as I used in the past when previous owners were disinterested in the maintenance of the patch. However, at the time of the new owners, when there was a danger of it being converted back to lawn, I began to plan for my little courtyard to produce more food. Because my garden fantasies include beautiful scented areas to rest in though, and I already have this area in place, and neither do I wish to have a large, low garden area accessible to our pug who is always hungry and quite happy to be vegetarian for the sake of his tendencies to compulsively overeat, I am having to come up with some creative ideas.

I have large pots around the chamomile lawn, but I have also decided to use some of the spare pavers which I pulled up and create some garden troughs. I can put the sand from underneath the pavers in this, then fill with manure, seaweed, straw, leaves and compost (probably in any order) and grow directly into them. Because they are quite deep, I can put the new garden troughs directly onto the pavers. Then I can put the large pots in front of them.

I already have some thoughts about what to plant. Strawberries for example? It is a very sunny spot. I'm just happy that I can use what I already have to create some new 2 feet by 4 feet garden troughs.

Step 1. Use pavers to create the sides of the trough. Lean the pavers onto the existing pots, or bricks or concrete blocks. You can see that I am pretty rough and ready about gardening. It does not bother me that there is a crack in one of the pavers (the dog knocked it over) or that they aren't perfectly straight. Life's too short to obsess.

Step 2. Use sand to fill the bottom of the trough. This is for bulk and to drain through when it rains.

Step 3. Throw in some manure. This is riddled with worms, fantastic for soil.

Step 4. Add some un-decomposed compost. This is to encourage the worms to eat and multiply, and create some activity in the soil.

Step 5. Add some soaked cardboard, straw, leaves and twigs (something brown). This is to balance the carbon with the nitrogen of the manure.

Step 6. Add some decomposed compost. My compost has so many worms you can see them from here. Worm rich soil is the perfect growing medium.

Step 7. Plant and water. When I plant into this worm-rich soil directly and keep my seeds watered, they thrive, or I can buy some seed-raising mix and make little piles to plant seeds into.

I have since gone crazy, painted the chairs white, painted the archway white (the "feet" of the archway can be seen in the photo of the body corporate's garden in the top right of my montage at the top of this post) and made troughs so that I can grow edibles to climb up over it, maybe tomatoes or beans or peas??? And I have made another large trough beyond it for maybe lettuce or salad greens.

Gardening fills me with such hope.

A fragrant place to sit in my garden

2010-09-25T08:52:00.006+12:00

(Please click on images to enlarge)

Last year I pulled up some of the pavers in the corner of my courtyard to create a sitting area. Where the pavers had been was the spot I chose to plant a scented chamomile lawn to lie on, just a small patch but enough to give off the most heavenly fragrance imaginable, and so soft under foot. I have always planned to have a place to sit every time I have done any landscaping for myself, and a chamomile lawn is always on my garden wishlist, for the fragrance as much as anything. Every house I have owned has had a chamomile lawn, and in the gardens of any future houses I buy will be a spot for a chamomile lawn.

a close up of the chamomile, the lawn overall needs to be weeded

In the middle of the chamomile, there is one of my mosaics as a path to the chairs under the trellis "bus-stop" so named because it resembles one. I painted that white and have planted jasmine next to it, which I am hoping will eventually creep over it - I adore the scent of jasmine. In the corner behind the chairs I transplanted my wintersweet tree, and am pleased to observe that there are shoots on the twigs and it is alive and thriving. This corner sitting area is to be fragrant at any time of the year. Bliss.

Wintersweet is alive. In winter, it gives off a sweet old-fashioned fragrance, adorable indoors in a vase.

Next to the jasmine is a rose, the first rose bush I was ever given, when I bought my first house in the North Island of New Zealand, a gorgeous variety called Aotearoa, highly scented, and coloured pink. Now of course I live in Christchurch, in the South Island of New Zealand, and I specially dug up and brought down my favoured rose to be there for my new life. It knows I love it and rewards me for that devotion every year. This is the fourth place it has been transplanted to, and hopefully will be its final place. Compatible with garlic, which repels aphids, I have planted some cloves at its base as an apology for uprooting and moving it yet again.

In front of the chamomile lawn is my collection of large pots - these are there so that the pug can't wander out on to my chamomile lawn as he pleases (his urine made the chamomile go brown, and as I like to lie directly on the chamomile, I would prefer it if he did his toileting elsewhere). But the pots also have their logical function, in which to grow plants, but that is another post. I have some bulb planters too, which have fresias, tulips and hyacinths - the hyacinths are already blooming, and I am waiting on the tulips.

Also on my wishlist is Daphne. To hang my laundry outside on the line next door, while the scent of daphne fills the air is one idea of domestic bliss. I'll look out for some.

After an effort gardening, or when I invite friends or family to sit in this small, scented heaven and have a cup of tea or something simple to eat, resting here is indeed a blessing which is good for the soul, and as I mainly garden for food, it is worth considering the sense of smell as well.

Eating raw food fresh from the garden

2010-09-17T07:15:00.000+12:00

One of the joys of gardening of course is the eating. And for me gardening is a pleasure in many ways as I "work", because I have the gift of being able to taste the future. Many a time I have been planting the seeds of salad greens, parsley, coriander and other delicious food and have been able to imagine the taste of many servings of food freshly picked and lovingly prepared. I am like the pavlov dog, except instead of a bell making me salivate, it is the thought of food which motivates me to plant and grow.

And so, at this end of the food process, (the season of spring here in New Zealand), during the planting, it is easy to inspire by imagining the happy times sharing with friends and family the fruit of the effort. There is nothing like a leaf of raw food while gardening: a munch of some coriander, or chive, or to pick a ripe tomato with a bite forcing seeds to burst into ones mouth. One of my fondest fantasies is to live a leisurely life, wandering around the garden and picking and eating, then perhaps sitting in a sunny corner under my hat, with a good book. Or picking a variety of leaves and throwing them together on vintage china with a sprinkle of nuts and seeds, some sliced avocado, perhaps a blob of pesto and a drizzle of vinegar, pouring a glass of kefir for the side, and discussing the day with my loved ones. It's these simple activities that make life rich and inspire me, as I poke a seed at a time into some warm soil to be lovingly sprinkled with water on a daily basis, watching for growth, as happens just after the birth of a wonderful idea.

Storing water in the garden - a good thing to do

2010-09-12T07:01:00.003+12:00

My irrigation system is pretty low tech. I have a hose with a fine mist which is wound up my metal archway and when I have seeds germinating or early in the morning after a dry summer day or two, I go around to the other side of the house and turn the tap on so the garden gets a good soaking. But as well as that, I store water in several recycled 3 litre plastic milk containers in the far corner of the garden. This is used if I can't be bothered unlocking the gate to turn on the hose, or if I have transplanted some babies which need a REALLY good drink. Then when empty, I take all the bottles at once and fill them up and put them back in the corner of the garden. Easy peasy.

But I've always been conscious that it is a good thing to do anyway. In our house we have an emergency food and water stash in case there is a civil emergency, like a flood or earthquake, we have all our documents handy in case there is a fire and we have to evacuate urgently, on the off-chance we have time to grab them and throw them out the window or whatever we'd do. But what if there was an earthquake so bad that it was dangerous to return to our house to retrieve our emergency food and water? That's where the garden comes in and my eccentric water storing. The garden always has something - a lot of plants which are - edible in it, and while the experience of eating silverbeet, kale, kohlrabi, carrots, salad and herbs might get old quickly, I predict this would probably not be a huge concern under the circumstances. But we would also have an abundance of water, obviously not for the garden at this point, but for our drinking needs. Or maybe to share with others less fortunate.

Strangely enough, here in Christchurch, New Zealand, we had a major earthquake a week ago. The good news for us, since we had no drinkable tap water for 5 days, is that I had plenty of beautiful water stored. In fact, the weekend before I had transplanted my grapevine and refilled my water bottles.

I read a book once, I think it was called Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives, and it advised to always have spare to share or rest on, be that time, food, money or whatever. My daughter's Maori great grandmother always cooked twice as much as she needed in case someone dropped in, even when she lived on her own, she had a big pot on her stove. Admittedly, it meant often one ate leftovers of leftovers, but she was just living this philosophy of having margin. (Actually, she may have been grumpy to me on occasion, but the fact is that the woman had plenty of love and shared what she could). So in the back of my mind, that's why I do the storing of water thing: in case there is an emergency and someone drops in, it's my margin. And that margin turned out to be very useful indeed.

Garden planning on paper in winter

2010-08-17T08:19:00.000+12:00

It's winter and my garden is a beautiful emerald green of parsley, celery, silverbeet or swiss chard, as well as some kohlrabi and cabbage doing their best to thrive in the cold. There is plenty for us to juice and make into green smoothies. We are even using the pulp of the juices as the main ingredient of a recipe to make crackers and "biscuits" in our dehydrator.

But with my garden, while living in the present and harvesting what I have, I am also always thinking ahead to the next season, which is spring. Now that I have a glass house, I can get some things started earlier than previously, but what to start?

I am a record keeper, so it is easy to look over last years harvests and see what was most successful.

And then I feel inspired to create a trusty garden plan, as loose as it may be at this time of year. What do I want to eat? Or more importantly, what does my raw vegan in-house chef require? (See earlier post).

Now is the time for writing lists and plans.

Now is the time for checking my store of seeds - what do I have, what do I need, where can I order from? I use only heirloom seeds for maximum control and the ability to keep saving seeds for free. I am a member of the Southern Seed Exchange, a South Island-based, (actually based in Christchurch, where I live) heirloom seed group which consists of members and seed-guardians, whose job it is to grow certain seeds for sharing. The difference between heirloom and hybrid seeds is that heirloom seeds haven't been doctored at all, which means that if you plant the seed the next season you get a reproduction of last year's plant. Hybrid seeds have been cross-bred with two or more different parents, so hybrids will not produce plants with identical qualities as the one before. Apparently plant and seed companies have recently begun patenting their crosses so that only have the right to reproduce the hybrids they’ve developed. I don't want their hybrids anyway though, so that is ok.

Now is the time for researching new food to grow. I have never before grown watermelon, sweet potato or beetroot, for example. Is it suitable for this area? Would it be warm enough? Could it grow in the glass house, or under a hot frame?

Once I've done all this, I usually draw up an actual plan figuring out what groups of plants I have (eg which are root plants, brassicas etc), which plants are compatible with each other and should therefore be planted close together, when it is best to start seeds off (indoors or out) and so on and so forth. It doesn't need to be this complicated, I just like it to be, because it's winter and it is my way to still feel connected to my garden.

However, if I do want to be super organised, I can actually get my calendar out and start marking off some key dates, such as when to start seedlings indoors, and approximately when they should germinate, and approximately when they could be planted outdoors with a cloche to harden off, when to fertilise with my home-made seaweed fertiliser, etc and I could even project when to expect a harvest.

Oh my gracious, this garden planning can be exciting stuff!

Hurrah! This year the garden will stay a garden, the body corporate have voted it so!

2010-08-08T12:35:00.003+12:00

My beautiful productive garden next to my house, which has, in the past, been in danger of being lawned over by order of the body corporate (group of owners, of which I am only one of six), is to stay a garden. We have had our AGM and it has been voted on. Two other owners also hope to work in it which will help reduce the amount of work for me to do. As well as that, the garden walls will definitely be getting a paint as they badly need a spruce up, the body corporate will pay for some nice wooden garden edges to be constructed and, the piece de resistance, we will even get a beautiful sitting area built. The new body corporate secretary is getting some quotes. Nearly every suggestion I put forward, as above, was agreed to. I did go all-out and ask for a nice trellis gazebo for a sunny corner, and this was put aside, but may be considered in the future.

I will still have my little patch of beautiful, healthy soil which has long been nurtured by me with seaweed and manure from bio-dynamic cows, and will be working alongside others who agree that no matter what, our garden should stay organic.

As well as that, I also have more space in the area I own for gardening in, as I have been working towards that "just in case". I have an abundance of large pots, a compost heap, a glass house, a worm farm, balcony space etc which I can also enjoy growing our food in.

How good life is to us!

Growing to order for the family chef

2010-07-20T08:09:00.004+12:00

My 15 year old, to my delight, has taken a stronger role in food preparation this year and I have found she has many great ideas of her own. She likes to eat raw food, and for this she needs a steady supply of fresh, organic ingredients. So I have decided to let her take an active role in planning the garden. This includes deciding what to plant in the numourous pots around the chamomile lawn (to prevent the dog having access to the deliciously scented spot I like to lie in) as well as to extend our growing area.

I would also like to try growing a few things upside-down this year, such as tomatoes. I'll be recording in this blog how that goes.

My daughter is busily writing her wish-list of fresh ingredients and asking lots of questions about how long things take to grow and when they will be available. It is so nice to feel like a team in the production of our food. I like it.

Alain de Botton's definition of success, as applied to my garden

2010-07-15T12:13:00.012+12:00

In celebration of my own humble garden, I would like to point out the relevance of Alain de Botton's talk on success when it comes to gardening.

Gardening is such a personal thing and means so many different things to different people. Some like gardens for sitting in, walking in, looking at, feeding themselves. So, snobbery about other people's gardens is inevitable. For example, my own patch of organic garden which provides us with a nutritious array of goodness and is grown to permaculture principles serves me well, but may look like a patch of weeds to someone else (and does, LOL). Someone else's nicely clipped lawn or artfully placed pebbles may seem like a waste of earth to me. I don't envy that, because I can't relate to a need for that garden expression/impression. But instead, I may be snobby about it.

However, to judge other people's gardens is futile, because each person is striving for their own version of gardening success. For some, success may be to have a lawn which has no litter on it. For others, it may be to have some space which their children want to play in. For others, it may be to recycle the earth's resources and produce something. For others, it may be to have something easy to care for which increases the value of their properties. For others it may be to have a peaceful place to be to enjoy nature and ones thoughts.

The thing is, all these ideas are good! But some are good for some and not for others. However, success is success only if we are truly the authors of our own ambitions.

Gardening as a political statement

2010-07-05T07:47:00.002+12:00

I recently watched a film called Food Inc, which troubled me a little.

I am even more determined to grow as much of my own food as possible, from heirloom seeds which are not genetically modified, seeds which I happily share and save for my own future crops of food, food that I can and will eat with no food miles to worry about. I don't own a car anymore, so it is most convenient to me to be able to pick my own food from my garden and deliver it to my own kitchen for my way of processing it, and then serve it to my family's table.

It helps keep down the country's GDP, I am "sticking it to the man", avoiding taxes and not buying into the corporate world of Food, Inc.

The (recycled) glasshouse project

2010-06-23T08:02:00.005+12:00

We had such a miserable summer, well miserable is an emotional exaggeration, but since last summer in the garden did not produce as much as previous summers, that I decided to take matters into my own hands and build a glasshouse. The other motivating factor was that we had had two sets of sliding doors with aluminium frames removed and replaced with bi-fold style doors, which in our case are tri-folds and the onus was on me to pay to have them taken away. So I got creative, as you do, and decided to turn them into a glass house.

This would solve several problems, such as maximising my own little bit of land which is owned by me and not the body corporate (who at any time can "lawn over" or concrete over the patch tagged on to the end of my bit, which I have been using for growing vegetables.) Another problem solved is that I can extend the growing season, start my tomatoes off early, grow food that I can't quite grow outside such as peppers, and remove that expense of having to have the glass doors hauled away.

Last year I used another piece of window as a hot box growing garden which was very successful.

Mushrooms - an indoors food project

2010-06-08T08:08:00.002+12:00

I remember my dad growing mushrooms in a tray of dirt in his shed as an experiment when I was a little girl, then he and mum tucking into them for breakfast - I wasn't offered any as it was well known I was not fond of fungi.

But times have changed, I love mushrooms now, and after watching a Ted Talk, I was inspired enough to order a mushroom growing kit from Gourmet Mushrooms here in New Zealand. Fungal Fun, it says on the box, and the exciting thing is that they are now popping up ready for me to eat. They grow in a bag of straw.

I thought I'd share them with you, as they are a great indoors project. And what with the price of organic mushrooms, I am practically harvesting a goldmine.

In the garden eating worms (and flowers)

2010-04-02T15:01:00.008+13:00

Just kidding!! I would never eat worms, even if I was miserable. But I do eat flowers. Nasturtiums and calendular flowers are quite alright to eat, and there are others (if you know of any, please mention them in the comments) but I don't eat them. And these ones are delicious. And as you can see by the picture, I am still Japan-mad and making my lunch in Japanese bento boxes now. I've been practising making bento lunches since the beginning of the year. First I bought the bento boxes, then I bought some Hello Kitty ones, and some traditional bentos which were slightly larger ("man-sized") so that I could have more salad. I found some egg or rice moulds on an online auction site - which would be perfect for heart-shaped balls of Wonder Cake - which I snapped up. After that, I bought some little pick things with cute little circle designs on the end, which you poke into food (not pictured) and maybe pick food up and eat it with. And, after much looking, I bought some vegetable cutters. They were half price (only $5) for a whole large set and labeled as mini cookie cutters. No wonder they were on sale. No one I know who eats cookies likes them that small. But they are perfect for cutting vegetables. In the other bento layer, not pictured, I have some heart-shaped carrots, heart shaped chunks of watermelon and flower-shaped slices of watermelon. Plus a tomato, which is just cut around in a zig-zag with a knife.

So, it takes about three times as long to prepare our lunch boxes, but if I'd had more food from the garden this year, I'd probably have been busy in the kitchen doing other thing instead, like preparing tomatoes and beans to freeze or dehydrate, or whatever.

But I'm not complaining about the unusually minimal harvest. I just love handling homegrown food and will always find something to do with it. Even edible flowers.

PS A blank version similar to the layout I have made above is available for free download here.

DIY Seaweed fertiliser

2010-02-24T08:21:00.000+13:00

Whenever I go to the beach, only non-polluted beaches that is, I don't go to sunbathe, (heaven forbid, for I am a pale and interesting type and always have to wear a hat).

Instead, I always make sure I bring a large polystyrene (ie, very light) chilly bin, or esky as our neighbours across the Tasman call them and make sure I collect lots of seaweed. Depending on whose car I am travelling in, I may also bring a large sack or two as well.

Some people, once they get it home, wash their seaweed, hang it on the clothes line and eat it. (Yes! They do! It's filled with nutrients!) This is something I am keen to try - watch this space.

What I do though, is hose off the sand, and leave the seaweed in a chilly bin or two, keep the lid off so the bin can fill with rain water, then about 60 days after that, I use the liquid as a special treat for celery, asparagus etc, and use the weed itself, which gradually breaks down to a nice pulp as a mulch under or on top of compost, when preparing garden beds for an upcoming growing season.

My plants love me for it.

Garden work … or is it?

2010-01-19T13:17:00.001+13:00

Click on the image to enlarge.

To me working in the garden is not a chore. Sometimes I look out my bedroom window into the walled garden on the land owned by the body corporate (the group of owners of our townhouses, of which I am one of six) and wish I could get out there for more than a harvesting stroll, a watering stroll or an admiring stroll, but paying work or whatever other busyness keeps me from it.

But this last weekend, curiosity got the better of me. Such deep and meaningful questions arose, like, whatever happened to those carrots and onions I planted several weeks ago? Are they under all those weeds? And, how can I help the tomatoes along in this cooler than the coolest of summers the whole of New Zealand is having right now? The answer came to me, in a flash. I’ll get out and do some good, old-fashioned weeding.

This was rewarding in many ways. For example, weeding usually turns up a number of what I call “free gifts”. I found self-seeded silverbeet, spinach and lettuce, which I was able to rescue and put elsewhere, in the area reserved for silverbeet, spinach and lettuce. I was also able to harvest a lot of silverbeet, spinach and parsley, with which I concocted several new ways to eat them. I also had a lot to offer to the neighbours, in the spirit of sharing, which always feels good.

I also gave my compost a good turn over, in my hunt for some ready compost, that luscious soil from the bottom of the compost pile, which I lovingly put around my just-weeded and growing plants to encourage them on, and thank them from the bottom of my heap (sic).

To help the tomatoes, I removed the lower leaves so that more sun gets to them, and staked them to the archway and a peice of string I have tied between the archway and a post I put in to tie string to.

I have heard that gardening is good for the soul, because it inspires hope. I just love my garden and thank God for it every moment I think of it.

BTW, if you are interested in the image I made above, it uses the Classroom colour palette, which I made at colourlovers.com. At some stage I will make the layout available from my artmama blog as a freebie, so please look out for it. The same image but with a different background was used for my post with My Miracle Cream moisturiser recipe. The handwriting font I used is JULES P.C. WIMMIN which I sell in my shop. That particular font only uses capital letters and has dingbats in place of lowercase letters.

It’s a miracle! Divine skin from marigold, olive oil and beeswax, my recipe for moisturizer…

2009-12-01T12:55:00.000+13:00

You should be able click on the image to enlarge.

I have posted before about using calendular to make a toner for skin or a tonic to drink, and now I’m going to post my recipe for my miracle cream, a moisturiser. Expect to make a lot, and keep it in the fridge and it should last a while, or put it in jars and give it away for Christmas. I did that a few years back, and friends still tell me about miraculous healings, scars disappearing etc. It’s really very encouraging. I wrote about that in the other post.

I use this as a night cream. It is either too greasy or too sticky to use during the day or under makeup, but you may want to experiment with the ingredients and you may find the right consistency.

I recently made two different batches and they both had different amounts of wax and one was very thick and stiff, mainly beeswax, but worked a treat. Actually the other worked a treat too, which had slightly more olive oil. The stiffer recipe can be used as lip balms (my first ones were quite stiff) and the looser mix is fine as a lotion. The stiffer the mix, the longer lasting it seems to be.

Here is my the recipe for Julianne’s Miracle Cream.

(About a month ago, I picked lots of marigold heads and thoroughly washed and dried them, then stuffed them in a jar and covered them with olive oil, so that I could use the oil in this recipe. I left the jar outside in the sun).

Put 45g beeswax in a glass bowl with 200ml of olive oil* or grapeseed oil or a combination of both. Microwave on your lowest heat for however long it takes to melt the beeswax. Beeswax can catch fire otherwise. Once it has melted, if you like you can add a drop of fragrant oil, like lavendar and mix it in.

* There was about 100mls of olive oil in the jar once I had removed as many of the marigolds from it as possible. I topped it up with grapeseed oil.

Meanwhile, in a pot on the stove, I put the marigolds I got from the jar, added about 150ml of water and simmered them for a bit. I then removed the marigolds, and added a bit more water. I simmered that and dissolved a teaspoon of borax. Borax is a preservative, and when you add the water mixture to the oil/wax mixture it will turn the whole thing creamy.

Which is the next step, combining the water mixture with the oil/wax mixture, which will be melted. I prefer to add the water to the oil/wax. Then you have to beat *very* fast, I use a hand-held cake mixer. In the old days, I used to use a fork, but try as I might, my arm could not work fast enough or long enough, and in the worst cases, the wax would harden into tiny bits of wax before I’d mixed it all together. But that was in the very early days when I would be working at a leisurely pace.

Pour them into sterilised Agee jars and keep them in your fridge, or use little jars. I am in New Zealand, and the Christmas I made them for friends and family, I ordered mine from Arthur Holmes. I used glass jars.

BTW, if you are interested in the image I made above, it uses the Classroom colour palette, which I made at colourlovers.com. At some stage I will make the layout available from my artmama blog as a freebie, so please look out for it. The handwriting font I used is JULES P.C. WIMMIN which I sell in my shop. That particular font only uses capital letters and has dingbats in place of lowercase letters.

Making me crazy

2009-11-10T12:41:00.000+13:00

Please click on the image above to see it more closely

The builder did a few renovations this year, such as extending my balcony rail of the upstairs balcony which overlooks the courtyard, building a pergola in front of it, and moving into the courtyard corner my “bus shelter”, which is a wee trellissed sitting area that resembles a bus shelter in shape and size. So this meant that he had to pull up some pavers and pour in concrete.

I have already made a mosaic garden table top on an old concrete paver (enormous and heavy) and a few other pavers here and there my daughter and I have made together, one in the middle of the chamomile lawn, which tells the story of “our little white townhouse with the chamomile lawn” and another has now been moved to in front of the gate leading into the vegetable garden, the gate which was built this year while the other renovations were being done.

At the moment, there are a few places in the garden waiting for concrete to be poured in so that I can mosaic on the top. There is a trick to it, efficient work is needed. Once the concrete has been poured, one has to work fast before it sets which is a challenge.

So in this case I already had the crockery broken and cut into usable shapes. I put them into colours so that I could grab them as needed. I always save broken china, because I love being creative in the garden with mosaics proper and crazy mosaics, and some crockery is just so beautiful it is a shame to throw it out. See the top of the broken dark blue vase in the pile? My mother made that, so naturally it is a treasure to me, and I am delighted to be able to remember her beautiful work when I look at the way I have recycled it in the small crazy mosaic. Life is good.

Mosaics in the garden

2009-11-02T12:45:00.000+13:00

Please click on image and wait for a huge enlargement.

Making mosaic pavers has been a hobby of mine for a wee while, because it is such a lovely way to bring art into the garden. Although it feels silly writing that because the garden is already full of art. I found these photos from last autumn, and memories of my enjoyment of the lush garden area, and a daily stroll along the path, admiring the pavers every time I walked over them, was really rather heartwarming.

This mosaic is rather formal, and there is actually a third panel to it. This depicts the last part of my personal 8 word mission: Live simply, love uniquely, learn abundantly, create beauty.

A winter overing

2009-10-20T11:18:00.000+13:00

It has been a sad time over winter. I wasn’t sure if I would get to garden in the bigger spot next to my townhouse again. Some new owners bought a place in our body corporate (the body corporate is the group of the six of us owners who own a townhouse each) and the new owners were keen to assert their part in the ownership over the bit of land next to my house. There was talk that the garden my daughter and I had lovingly worked in and shared produce with the other owners from in the last nine years should be converted to lawn, so that everyone could use it.

That’s how it was when we bought our townhouse, it was lawn, which everyone could use. No one came and sat in it, or helped maintain the hedge, or helped cut it down, or paid for the fence, or mowed the lawn. It was all left to me. It was too much hassle for anyone else to do anything, and they weren’t interested in sitting or standing or doing anything in it - they even said, "why should we pay to care for your area?" So my daughter and I painstakingly converted it to garden, a patch at a time. A season at a time. A mosaic paving stone at a time. What fun.

When talk of the garden being converted to lawn was first floated at the AGM, I was so shocked, hurt and outraged, when I got home that night I cried. Various options were suggested. I put forward the idea that we could all have a vege patch each, or have a garden committee of keen gardeners to work in it. This was considered but then decided that it would take too much commitment and no one was really interested in gardening. It took till winter of email discussions before the lawn idea went down the river too, I expect because it would cost too much to do and too much to maintain. My heart by then had gone out of the garden, I was okay with whatever everyone decided, lawn, carpark, whatever. Although I was broken hearted.

So in the end, I guess the cheapest option for the body corporate is for me to continue to care for it for free, and no more has been said (for now) about converting it to lawn. Although, the body corporate has now agreed the wall and fence need painting and have paid for the paint, which is fantastic news. So last weekend, I began again in earnest, patch by patch. As I weed, I plant and the compost heap gets bigger. Within a month, the whole lot should be weeded and planted. The compost from last year is the most beautiful, wormy compost you could imagine. Birds watch me, waiting for me to leave so they can be the earliest ones to get the worm, although I covered last year’s compost with old carpet to stop them.

By the way, if you like my picture above, you can get the template and put your own pictures and words in from my artmama blog here. Great for recipe books, gardening records, brag book photos, visual journals etc etc.

For us, life is good.

Saving Seeds

2009-10-04T11:13:00.002+13:00

One of the very cool things about gardening is that you get so much, if you are kind to the earth, and thoughtful of your plants, keeping them out of harm’s way, praying for perfect gardening weather and in a place where they are happy. Then, when they have served you well by producing so much that you have to give a lot away, and toil in the kitchen preserving for the winter (I used to preserve in Agee jars, now I freeze), they turn into seeds.

Because I like to save seeds, I make sure that the plants I am getting the seeds from were grown from heirloom seeds themselves. Hybrid seeds, which usually come from the big seed producers, have been altered for their own purposes, and do not reproduce accurately as the heirloom seeds, which haven’t been cross-bred or anything, do.

Before the seeds are in the right state for saving, there is some “unsightlyness” in the garden that must be overlooked. For summer crops, this usually happens at the end of the season, after the lettuce, silverbeet etc has bolted, the beans have gone stringy and the sunflowers have turned their heads down and drooped. At this stage, non-seed-savers normally go around their garden and pull stuff out for their composts or green waste collection bins. But not me, I look on gratefully as my vegetables carry out their final act of generosity.

Obviously, I do not have enough land to grow all the new seeds that I save. I have oodles of them. In the photo of the marigold seeds above, there are enough to grow a whole field of marigolds, or at least ring a large garden with marigolds. And those are just some. In my last post, I put the call out to anyone wanting some. Because, really, the humble marigold is very, very valuable.

I also have some silverbeet seed to give away (both the red and green stalked variety), some runner bean seeds, some asparagus (a perenial) and a small amount of lettuce. I also have some delicious rocket. And not to forget the sunflower seeds, but I am planning to try eating those (I like to make my own raw muesli, and organic sunflower seeds are quite pricey and goodness knows how far they travel).

So, with all the talk of a global recession, isn’t it nice to have a store of something which will only increase by 1000% or more in this day and age. And isn’t it great to know that if things get really bad, at least you’ve got some heirloom seeds to use to grow food. And isn’t it just beautiful to have something this beneficial to share.

Life is good.

Post Script: The fonts I have used are my own. “Marigold” is written in my own handwriting font, julesgirltalk (free for personal use) and my very newest font, JulesScribble, is used to write SAVING SEED. Any feedback is gratefully accepted.

That scruffy flower? Calendula and what I do with it

2009-02-15T11:47:00.000+13:00

Calendula and marigolds are some of my favourite flowers. The variety of common calendula (C. officinalis) that I grow looks like a bright yellow or orange daisy. Apparently marigold is slightly stronger than calendular, but both are edible, so to put the petals in a salad or on top of a (chocolate?) cake adds a gorgeous appeal, as well as being healthful.

I was told that calendula was used in the American civil war and the first world war for its healing properties. I make a tonic from it to drink or to use on the skin (after cleansing, before moisturising). If you want to use my recipe, please do, but note that I am not a medical professional so in other words, take what I do with a grain of salt as the only animals this particular batch was tested on are myself and my daughter (consider that a disclaimer), or you can see how e-how recommend using it. Also, you may be interested to read some reviews by users of a commercial product and note that there are various reactions to their calendula toner. Also, I found an article on the interweb that had some interesting information about the beauty and benefits of calendula.

However, speaking of animals, I did make up a batch of calendula moisturiser a few years back, and gave it away to friends as a lip balm for Christmas. I got a lot of good reports, one person told me they used it on a scab on their dog’s leg which wouldn’t heal, with the result that it healed within a few days once using my calendula balm. Another friend had a burn on her arm which she used it on – apparently instant relief and fast healing (Weleda mentions usefulness for burns in their info page on Calendula and so does medfinds). But I’m already a believer.

Besides looking impossibly cheerful despite being discriminated against (the scruffy flower) and rejected by people, calendula is good as a companion plant in the garden, working for us to protect our plants. Apparently certain parts of it repel insects which want to harm veges like potatoes and tomatoes.

So it is so versatile and useful! And how about drinking a nice cup of calendula tea when you’ve just come in from the garden? Or if you need to put your feet up after an online shopping expedition (check out the price of this alcohol-free calendula tonic and see if you don’t feel cheered after making up some of your own).

If you want to grow calendula but don’t have any seeds, I have lots because I am a seed-saver, (look out for an upcoming post on seed-saving) and I am happy to send you some. Please send a stamped, self-addressed envelope with a note reminding me you’d like some marigold or calendular seeds. My address is:

Julianne

PO Box 30048

St Martins

Christchurch8246

New Zealand

A morning stroll in the garden

2008-11-09T11:26:00.001+13:00

Today of course is Saturday, and it was the day of the school fair, and of course, the netball game at 11.30. I had a great sleep, it felt like I’d slept in, but then I looked at the clock and it was only 7am. Good, I thought. I want to do about an hour and a half of gardening and I’ll need to be finished by 10am to have a good clean up, as I planned to turn the compost heap, so I knew I would be filthy. So I made my usual banana smoothie for breakfast, and had a stroll in the garden. It is looking beautiful. Three of the sunflowers I planted two weeks ago have germinated, and I still hold out hope for the others. Also, two more cucumbers have germinated (they are in pots), and the three baby tomatoes have grown, as have the lettuce, corn and kohlrabi which I mentioned planting in the post where I gave away a 6″x4″ quick page for this blog.

Then went back to bed to think about what I wanted to do in the garden. I snoozed for a while longer, then put on my old clothes, unlocked the shed and got out everything I would need: the empty rubbish bin for putting cardboard in for soaking in water, the hose turned on and running into the rubbish bin, the rake, the spade, the fork, and my good, thick workman’s gloves. Serious indeed.

The plan was to turn the compost heap, and prepare the Compost and Divine Garden beds, presently with silverbeet, comfry and rocket past their “best by” dates. So how to begin? I raked the old silverbeet, comfry, and prettily flowering rocket. Put that in one wheelbarrow. Then I forked out all the most recent compost which hadn’t broken down yet, and put that in my other wheelbarrow. I disassembled the compost heap (it is the kind that one builds up by interlocking the sides as it gets higher) and raked out all the decomposed compost (isn’t the juxtaposition of those two words great??) and put it on the garden beds (the Compost Garden and the Divine Garden). What beautiful and sweet compost, and so many worms!!! Lovely.

Then it was back to rebuilding the compost heap. I put the garden waste I had just weeded from the C & D gardens (which I was preparing which presently had the rich compost I had raked sitting on it) from the first wheelbarrow into the bottom of the compost heap. Then I put some pea straw which was dry and added lots of water. Nice. I ripped up some of the very wet cardboard (which was soaking in the empty rubbish bin, now filled with water) and added that, then put the next lot of compost, the half decomposed lot on top of that, added some more pea straw, and the rest of the water. Then I put some of the ready-for-the-garden compost back on top, knowing the worms would make a bee-line for the bottom and get that other garden waste ready.

Then I planted three of the lupins in the Divine garden. I have six more to plant out tomorrow, but needed to get inside and start getting ready so we wouldn’t be late for netball.

Then I went inside and looked out the window at my beautiful garden. I noticed there was a happy sparrow admiring my work. I love birds in the garden I thought to myself, there they are, singing away, how lovely. But hang on a minute!!!!!!!!!! That bird had a worm in its mouth! From my beautiful garden! I want the soil to have those worms though. So I was out in a shot – and put the wire covers over my garden.

I noticed the worms weren’t there when I had a stroll after I came home from the school fair. But I knew the birds couldn’t have got them. Those lovely worms will be deep down in the soil now, well out of reach of the sparrows.

Ah, life is good.

Plantings in the Enjoyment Garden

2008-10-19T10:08:00.001+13:00

Today I got out there. Felicity and I went for a drive out to Woodend, and on the way, we got 2 trays of 5 sweetcorn plants, and some lettuce, which I should have looked at more closely, as there were only three plants in there.

Then when I got home, I saw that the red orach I bought last week could really go in, or at least out of the glass-covered patch. I also planted the kohlrahbi which I bought last week. I thought they would be ideal in the enjoyment patch.

The Enjoyment Patch is in the corner, directly in front of the compost bin. So the lettuces will be slightly sheltered from the sun in the heat of summer and hopefully won’t bolt too quickly.

And as usual, what enjoyment I had there in the garden. I watered the earth first (didn’t put any compost on, but will pile it all up tomorrow when I get a chance), then weeded and dug some holes for the plants with my NIWASHI. It’s my favourite tool for the garden. So I made sure it was in the photo.

This morning I had been a bit creative, and made some slightly curled photo edges, so I thought it would be ideal to use one of those in my wee layout above. Click on it for an enlargement. The font, of course, is my own handwriting, jules-writing (also known on picnik as jules-te-reo as it uses Maori macrons), the painted butterfly is from my Spring is Sprung element pack (well, Spring is here in New Zealand in October), the slightly shabby striped paper behind everything is from an old paper pack of mine called Autumn Chalk Papers (really shouldn't re-release that). The notepad sheet with the wee dog sticker on it is a freebie that comes with my NB Note Well Notelets. The photo edge is a set I am getting together at the moment which still needs more work. The only thing that is not mine is the All is Green by one of my favourite designers, Theres K. By the way I have made a 6×4 Quick Page 300dpi freebie, a simpler version of the above layout with only my own designs.

Next weekend is Labour weekend, traditionally the weekend for tackling most of the preseason garden projects. I can hardly wait!

A new season

2008-10-12T10:04:00.001+13:00

Today I dropped my parents (aged 81 and 93) back to the airport after a great week together. On the way to the airport we stopped in at the Strickland Street Community Garden spring fair, where I spent $9 and got the following:

5 chamomile lawn seedlings (I have seeds but this is a kick start for my patch in front of the sitting area)

1 wonderlight tomato plant (a lightbulb shaped tomato)

1 tray of kohlrabi

1 tray of lettuce

Then after the airport, I called in at the Southern Seed Exchange seed swap, where I am a member.

I got the following seedlings:

curly lettuce, red orach, a variety of pumpkin which is like a gourd, raspberry, anjelica, freesias,

plus some seeds:

sunflower, crown pumpkin, dwarf beans, and I think a couple of others.

When I got home, I planted what I should, and put the rest in my glass cloche, with my vege seedlings. It’s a bit too early in the season here in Christchurch to take the risk with my seedlings and baby plants just yet, so they can stay under the glass where it is sunny and warm.

Unfortunately I have lost my gardening notebook from last year, where I recorded all my harvests, plantings etc. It was a shabby wee thing anyway, so I have decided that this year, I will record things properly in a nice book, as well as writing this blog. So I will have a page for harvests, plans, and this part of the blog will cover what I am doing generally. Should I also have a wishlist for longer term plans? After all that is how my garden got to be what it is today.

Spring is here, and although I still have silverbeet, asparagus, maori potatoes (urenika) from previous years still producing, today is the start of the new season now that I have officially planted stuff in the dirt.

Life is good.

About me

2008-10-12T10:01:00.001+13:00

I am a gardener living in Christchurch, New Zealand. I live 8 minutes by bicycle away from the centre of the city, which in Christchurch, is Cathedral Square.

I live in my townhouse, which is on the end of a row of 6 townhouses, and I use the patch of common land next to my house as my own garden (I do of course share the produce with the other townhouse owners). Since 2000, when I bought this house, my daughter and I have converted this patch of dirt from a lawn with a large 3 metre wide hedge shading it, to a thriving organic garden, with an area for sitting next to scented plants, a shed, a large compost bin, and everything a gardener needs.

I love food and I get excited when I come up with new recipes for the particularly prolific vegetables I have. I also like growing slightly different veges, things which are a bit gourmet. When I harvest anything, I write down the date, and how much it weighed. It helps me keep track of how successful I’ve been. I also like to write down what that produce is selling for as an organic vegetable in the shops. Then add up how much my harvest would be worth if I’d bought it.

What fun.

As I write, (October 11, 2008) I am living alone with my 13 year old daughter. We do all the work in the garden ourselves, and try to use recycled material whereever possible. So we have hauled home bricks, concrete blocks, wood, paving stones etc etc mostly by ourselves.

Here is a list of the work we have completed in our garden so far.

Had a gate built to stop dogs running onto our property; had a shed built for our bikes, cut down a tree, cut down a 6 metre high, 3 metre wide and 12 metre long hedge, chipped it, and used the chips in our garden, built two large compost heaps, battle convulvulus continually, built up 7 raised gardens and surrounded them with concrete blocks and bricks, used fabric cloches, created a hot box with a glass lid, transplanted scented roses which we had in our house in the north island, grown a chamomile lawn, paved our own courtyard, made mosaic paths, planted a lemon tree, built a sitting area with a trellis side and top (we call it the bus shelter as that is what it resembles) and are presently growing another chamomile lawn and making more mosaics for the paths.

It’s good to have a record of what we have done and what we are doing, and this is what the blog is for.