March. The beginning of autumn. The last week or two have still been mostly very hot days but with somewhat cooler nights. February has been another very dry month - we had two brief patches of rain and that was it. This is also the time of year of much harvesting and preserving or putting food up for storage in various ways. Work and life have been very busy, but I've managed to make a little progress here and there in the garden. Let's take a wander....

Since last month's pics, the bed shown above has had the major middle section of it refreshed, no-dig style. I pulled out the shallots that were there, laid cardboard down. used some posts I got from a guy who was dumping them at the local tip to create some temporary edges, spread compost on top, and topped off with wood chip. The intention here is simply to feed the soil and suppress weeds, knowing I wouldn't be planting here for a couple of months yet, as I wanted to let the self-sown choko that was on the right edge grow - I moved onto the space the growing frame I made from various dump finds some years ago, and the choko is now happily growing up it, and just beginning to flower. Some more pics of this being done below. At the front end of this bed are zinnia (bees and butterflies are loving them) and chives, and a few other bits and pieces I needed to plant - a dahlia, a self-seeded marigold, a couple of geraniums and a daisy grown from cutting this season etc. At the far end are still my marshmellow plants, with some beetroot and kohl rabi behind and under them. 

Now starting to try and encroach on the above is my pumpkin patch (below). Still pumping out flowers and new fruits, there are lots of really big pumpkins hiding under there. 

​I sowed Whangaparoa Crowns on one half, but most of the fruits look more like Jarrahdale or similar, being more grey-green with deeper groves than the usually light grey W.Cs. As long as they taste good! My hybrid Pink Banana Jumbos in the back half are all producing well, with a few of the longer fruits typical of PBJs, but most being the rounder shape I expected. 

Some of the older leaves that are underneath and shadowed by the younger ones are just starting to show the first signs of powdery mildew, right on cue. By that I mean, I find it's normal for curcubits (pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, zucchini etc) to get powdery mildew at the end of the season as they start to decline. Healthy, well fed plants should not succumb to it during their prime, but as they age (like most of us) they weaken and become vulnerable. I don't do anything about it - as I've found in the past that's a complete waste of effort. I expect it will run it's course and by about the end of this month the plants will all be dead, revealing all the mature pumpkins that are currently hidden from view, which is always exciting :-). Someone asked me today whether I should take off the flowers that are still coming up. My answer is no - the bees are loving them; from no honeybees only a month ago, my garden is now swarming with them. It's very common to see 3-4 honeybees and a bumble bee all in the same pumpkin flower together, or as in the pic below, two bumbles and a honeybee. There were several flowers close together, all similarly laden.

The zucchini in the middle of the pumpkin patch have been pumping. I wade in there once a week or so and harvest. I'm happy to let most of the fruit grow to marrows, which I like to use to make big batches of pasta sauce, and which also store well out of the fridge, in which I have severely limited space. We can only eat so many zucchini. The pictures below are from one picking, along with some tomatoes and cucumbers from the greenhouse. The watermelon, however, aren't doing well - it was a mistake to plant them there, as I can't easily access them for regular watering, which they need. The pumpkins have been fine with only one watering since they started to sprawl, as they have much deeper root systems, but the watermelon needed less crowding and more water. 

A couple of weeks ago I picked my Damson plum crop. It's just a little tree, which I keep pruned small so I can reach everything from the ground, but it produces prolifically! I turned this lot into a mixture of jams, bottled fruit (some just plums, some in combo with mixed berries and chokos, and some more in combo with feijoas) and some plum and feijoa jelly, as well as giving some away.

Wanting to try something a bit different to use on porridge or cereal and also use up things from the freezers, I defrosted a bag of mixed berries from the freezer as well as a bag of diced chokos, and cooked those up with some plums, adding some honey to sweeten to taste before bottling. 

I also defrosted a container of last year's feijoas and cooked those up with some plums and a little sugar. When I bottled them, there was quite a lot of left over liquid, so I strained it through a muslin cloth and turned it into jelly, just because I could. Looks gorgeous. 

I also bottled some plain stewed plums with some honey to sweeten a bit, but left deliberately quite tart. Later I plan to add to this with stewed apples or other fruits and rebottle or make into pies or whatever. I can adjust the sweetness accordingly. 

Also pictured above is a batch of cucumber pickle I made at the same time, to use up the cucumbers my neighbour gave me as hers started producing before mine.

Use the slideshow below for closer pics of each product.

Getting back to the garden....there will be lots more fruits to harvest soon...Click on the small photos below to see some of them via the slideshow.

This compost pile is nearly as full as it's going to get - since taking the pic I've added another brown layer on top - just waiting for some rain to give it a good wetting and then I'll cover and leave it, and start another pile. I'm aiming to produce as close to 3-4 cubic metres of compost as I can this year. 

When mowing the lawns I left this patch of clover for the bees, along with plants that are around the edges of the pumpkin patch. It won't take long for the clover in the rest of the lawn to spring back to flowers, and once it does I'll mow this patch. 

Five varieties of potatoes in pots next to the bed with the choko are doing well. 

Now to the greenhouse...slideshow with captions below.

And in the front garden (below)...over the last weekend of the month I started working on this....laying cardboard down after roughly weeding this bare part (and also removing a wooden edged garden bed that was there). More posts from the dump and old timber we had lying around form the edge of where I want to put a garden bed.

About 3 inches of compost added

I've started to lay woodchip on the paths. Bee boxes added in the foreground will be filled with soil, topped with compost, and planted in beneficial flowers for now. Later I'll remove the boxes, add an edging, and plant strawberries along there. The space this side of the bee boxes is full of couch and buttercup - I'm going to lay the plastic down to kill that off before I finish expanding the gardens to fill the available space - there is a fence off frame to the left that divides this area from a rough lawn that the sheep graze; I want the fence re-done with a deep root barrier below it to stop the weeds spreading back in.

In the past week I've, taken out most of my year-old broccoli and kale plants, leaving in two broccoli to flower for the bees, and couple of kale stubs to regrow. I'm thinking now though I may clear them all together. The late planted zucchini in the middle is doing well. This bed will get an inch of compost added as a much before planting out new seedlings that are nearly ready to go. 

These pics below were taken on 21/2 - these plants were put in last March and have been steadily producing heads and side shoots ever since. I've just got tired of broccoli and it's time to make room for something else. Besides I have more broccoli a couple of beds over. As you can see I haven't been keeping up with picking them.

Really pleased with how my Russian Silvery Fir bush tomatoes are doing under the micromesh - lots of fruit forming - even some at the far end that are becoming red. Lettuces planted along each long side are also doing well. This is definitely proving to the be the best (basically only!) way to successfully grow this variety of tomatoes.

The messy bed at the end - producing lots of broccoli, lettuce, spring onions, celery and perpetual spinach. But needs the nets removing and a good weeding!

Sweetcorn and marigolds coming along nicely. Need to pop in some pea seed along the base of the trellis soon. The corn was a late addition, but hope to get some nice cobs from it.

Sage, mint, stevia and perpetual spinach along the back edge. Where the stool is I'm going to add some thymes that are growing in my kitchen currently. 

More bottling - the Garden Goodies Pasta Sauce is what I use lots of marrows and tomatoes in, along with lots of other goodies as the name suggests. And my pickled cucumbers are always big favourites.

There's always more to see, but I'm going to sign off here and go set up another batch of pasta sauce to cook. I've got beef stock loaded with veges simmering in the crockpot, and I'm going to brine a rooster to tenderise it before slow cooking. I better check the sauerkraut that is fermenting on the bench too. 

I'll leave you with a pic of the first harvest of nectarines from a seedling my son dug up from the side of the road, that had sprung from a discarded pit, and I've had sitting in a pot ever since. This winter I plan to plant it out, along with more fruit trees, in part of where my pumpkin patch currently is. They were yum!!

Happy gardening everyone!

This is the time of year of rampant growth, flourishing critter populations (for better or worse), and lots of harvesting. A month ago I posted pics of my garden - the difference between those and these pics is amazing!

The pumpkin/zucchini/watermelon patch which was tiny a month ago is now a veritable sea of green, with lots of flowers and small developing fruits. On Jan 24th, I extended the area by adding carpets that we removed from our house and some extra black plastic in one corner, to keep down/kill off more grass and weeds, to give me a bigger area to develop into new gardens after the squash etc are finished. The plants have almost entirely covered all that as well as their original patch.

Clearly, I was overly optimistic when I planned to keep the two rows of pumpkins turned away from the row of watermelon and zucchini in the middle! Still working on it, but it's getting harder and harder to get in there to do so. 

The three zucchini plants in this patch are now huge, and have started producing. I picked this washing basketful yesterday from them and the two plants in my greenhouse. I gave some away, kept some for fresh eating, and dried the rest to make zucchini flour - more on that in another post.

In the last few days I've gotten nets up on my Damson plum (which will be ready to harvest soon) and over my grapevine (after giving it a summer prune), to protect the crops from the birds. After these photos were taken, I also netted my dwarf double pear tree. I do have another grapevine I leave unnetted, so the birds are welcome to feed from that - but they're supposed to stay away from my covered ones! Every year there are some Houdini's that get in, so we'll see how we go this time.

This garden bed has flowers at one end, a self-sown choko on the edge of the middle section which has some shallots to harvest and then I'm going to give a make-over to, and marshmellow with beetroot and kohl rabi at the other. The pots have some potatoes that I just want to keep perpetuating for now. 

In this half of my greenhouse I've weedeatered, laid down cardboard, covered it in a couple of inches of compost, and topped off with woodchip from our trees that were pruned last winter, then watered it. I'm just going to let that sit for a while. The zucchini in the corner was already there - it was looking quite pale-leafed and sad compared to it's neighbour; I was tempted to pull it out but decided to lift it a wee bit, put down the compost etc, not under or around it per se (as the compost was very fresh and not safe to put on plants yet), but up to the edge of it's outer leaves. Within a few days it perked right up and the leaves have darkened to where it looks like the healthy one next to it, and is once again producing well. On the right, is a choko in a pot which is growing up a trellis that extends across the roof. I haven't grown one indoors before - it's partly an experiment to see how much I can extend it's season (outdoors they are killed off by the first decent frost). 

Russian Red tomato - less vigorous than the Moneymaker I usually grow, I have not taken off laterals etc, just lifted and loosely tied those that start to sprawl in my way. Have been steadily picking off it for the last month. 

A couple of weeks ago I sowed a lot of seed - lots are coming up. A few aren't though - either it's too hot in the greenhouse for them, or I need to ditch some of my older seed and get fresh. Top shelf is all plants started from cuttings which I need to plant out, plus two apple cucumbers a friend found for me after I mentioned I was looking for another cucumber seedling to plant. 

Out to my front garden now. These Russian Silvery Fir tomatoes were planted as small seedlings on 1st Jan, under micromesh. They're doing wonderfully, as are the leaf lettuces planted along both sides (there's parsley hidden down the middle, but it's completely overshadowed now). Lettuces planted in a neighbouring bed, partly shaded but without mesh, are struggling considerably compared to those under the mesh. We, like much of the country, had a week of extremely high winds and storms; these tomatoes can be quite fussy and delicate, but they took the storms completely in their stride, thanks to the mesh. It's the only way I grow this variety now.

My broccoli is still steadily producing lots of side shoots (pic taken just after I'd done another picking). In all honesty, I'm suffering from what one might call "broccoli fatigue"  - I just don't feel much like eating it any more so am giving most of it away (also have plenty in the freezer). I may pull the plants out soon, but I don't need the space just yet for anything else, and they're providing for others, along with the kale, so they can continue for a while. White butterfly are around now, but not causing any more than minor issues - the rampant nasturtium I have elsewhere keeps them somewhat distracted, and the predatory insects I encourage keep them mostly under control, assisted by birds which I often see hopping around under the plants picking off any bugs.

Now this bed is empty of garlic, I plan to remove it, spread the compost in it out, and add a couple new rows of beds in here, no dig style. This end of the front garden is the only part that gets enough sun in winter for crops - where the kale and brocc is in the next space gets partial sun, and the rest of it is nearly fully shaded. So I'm planning to plant some winter crops in what will be the new beds here.

None of the beans I sowed along the trellis came up, but the corn seedlings I popped in behind are going strong, as are the marigolds I put along the front. A few volunteer radishes need picking too. Behind it is a weedy area that I'm leaving for now, as the flowers and things there are attracting various beneficial critters. 

This end bed is doing fine, with a mix of celery, leaf lettuce, spring onions, broccoli and perpetual spinach.

I want to get back into composting on as large a scale as I can manage. I had one of those tall, square plastic compost bins given to us, with three layers inside. Frustrating thing. So I pulled it apart and laid it's sides on their edges, with a little help form some rebar stakes, to create this temporary bin to get started with. Ultimately I want twice that depth, and about four times the surface area in various bins, likely made out of pallets once I acquire some new ones, or similar.

There has also been quite a lot of preserving to do this past month; I bottled apple with a light honey solution, made this batch of Harvest Sauce, did a big batch of pasta sauce, and when I took some kale to my neighbour's chickens, she sent me home with an armload of cucumbers, so I could do some of my favourite pickles.

It's been a month of extremes - from wind storms to cool 4.9C nights, to 31 degrees-in-the-shade days. I'm just hoping the "summer" lasts long enough for me to have mature pumpkins and Silvery Fir tomatoes! 

The last couple of years, I've done very little gardening compared to previously (and even less posting on this site). And quite lot of un-gardening - by which I mean stripping away the previous garden infrastructure - the beds and trellises and other things I just couldn't keep on top of any more. Between a back, knee and hip injury that just won't go away, becoming super busy with my developing home business, lots of long term houseguests and all my kids having left home and moved away, I just have not been able to spend time in the garden like I used to, and of course I didn't need to grow as many veges for the most part - though what I have grown has still been handy with all the people who have stayed with us for extended periods over the past couple of years!

However, I still love gardening, and if the past year has done nothing else, it has reminded me how much I NEED it - for sanity, physical activity, as well as delicious, nutritious food with minimal cost. It has also taught me that unless I make some deliberate plans and take action, the gardening is easily neglected after a long day in the office and with everything else going on. I first started this blog (under Kiwi Urban Homestead) in late 2012 as a way of sharing with interested friends how I was progressing towards my goal to grow 1000kg of produce in 12 months, and to hold myself accountable, knowing that if I made my goal public I would make much greater progress and be less like to abandon it than if I kept it to myself. 

In the same spirit, I'm posting here an honest look at what my garden currently looks like, and some of the things I hope to work on. I haven't not set much in the way of specific goals for this year yet - still mulling those over - but will post when I've decided. Meanwhile, let the garden tour begin - with all the good, half-pie and bad. The reader may also wish to check out photos of my garden in previous years to compare - for example HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Let's start at the entrance (below) to what used to be my main garden area in which I grew most of that 1000kgs of produce. This is across a small lawn from the entry to our house. The banksia rose provides shade for the swing seat we originally got for free, though the rose has become big and strong and overwhelmed the trellis holding it. I keep meaning to cut it waaay back and then retrain it, but always keep leaving it for the shade. A job for next winter. The cherry on the right has never done very well. It does provide some summer shade for the caravan (our "spare room"), but I'm thinking to replace it. The nasturtium you can see along the fence is self-sown. Unfortunately convolvulus has crept into that bed; I really need to dig the whole thing out and reform it.  

Just through the gate to the right is an area where my daughter helped me lay weedmat and astroturf last summer, mostly to kill off the convolvulus (bindweed) and couch grass that had taken over what used to be a growing area, as well as provide somewhere to put the outdoor set that had been sitting boxed in our shed after we acquired it from my father's estate.  The strip along the front is where I intended to put a flower bed, but that hasn't happened yet. The zinnia in pots on the table are intended to go there. Behind this area to the right is a triple grafted apple tree and meyer lemon, both doing well. I hung pheremone traps for the codling moth this season, and intended to spray, but never got that step done, so once again will have damaged apples. Ah well. To the right of the pic next to the lemon is a strip containing thyme, a carpet rose, oregano and a few other things. It's pretty overgrown and hard to access due to the rose, which I need to cut right back. 

Under the trees I put down cardboard under weedmat topped with bark last summer in an attempt to kill off all the bindweed and couch so I can put a flower bed in there again. It's an improvement, but now lots of weeds growing on top. Still haven't removed the weedmat or carried on there. Last year I grew a hugely successful choko in a pot against the fence there; have another in a pot for this year if I get to putting it out. The rosemary and sage plants I popped in one corner last season are doing well though - they had a tub of geraniums right behind them last season (now off to the side a bit), and I think that's the reason that my sage did not die off in winter for the first time ever - the bit of shelter and thermal mass created by the tub.

Behind this all is a fairly big garden bed (originally my spud plot back in 2013), which has two chives at one end, did have a row of parsley which I've now pulled out and will replace, probably with some flowers. In the boxes are 5 different varieties of potatoes I grew there last season just to perpetuate them. I need to dig out the ones now sprouting and put in big tubs so I can clear this space. Behind them is a row of celery now in full flower. I intend to cut off some parts and freeze it to use in making stocks. I'm inclined to leave the flowering plants for the beneficial insects it is attracting, but we'll see how long I do that for. Then there is the space in the middle which was full of rainbow chard before it went to seed, and still has some bunching shallots growing, as well as weeds coming through, and a self-sown choko growing. It's too late to move it - I may whack in a trellis and just let it run, maybe. I'm contemplating putting down cardboard and compost through the middle of this bed and then just planting in it...I also may need this space to start winter veges in a month or two. To the left are marshmellow plants - I harvested the four plants that were about in the middle of this bed a while back, and replanted bits of root to carry them on. Under and behind those are a row of beetroot and purple kohlrabi. The slideshow below gives closer pics of the various things in this bed.

One of my problem spots - under the gala apple is a raised area in which couch and bindweed is rampant - the last few weeks I've been layering grass clippings on there just to get it down a bit, but the bindweed is happily growing right through it (no surprises there). I may have to resort to using black plastic over it to kill everything before reestablishing some kind of mulched bed here. In the corner is lovage, which comes back year after year, and a stray potato plant.

Below: a couple of months ago I finally got around to taking this fig out of the half-barrel it has been languishing in for years and planting it in the ground. It's looking much happier! I'll need to prune it each year to stop it becoming a very big tree.

Dwarf pear, in another very overgrown raised bed. Rosemary and lemon balm behind it. Whole thing needs work.

In this next slideshow is an area where my original main garden beds were. If you're viewing this on a laptop or PC, those are the beds you see in the banner at the top of the page on most sections of this website. A couple of years ago, after I'd removed the last of those original beds, I started revamping the area, and grew some very successful crops. But then it all got overgrown with couch etc again, and I couldn't keep up. Eventually I got it all weedeatered and mowed down, while I pondered what to do with it. There were ridges and hollows due to the previous beds. I decided that since I needed a space to grow some rambling crops, to use this area by putting out long rows of compost in the hollows (creating new ridges), then covering them with weedmat, and covering the areas between with re-used black plastic (partly inspired by my previous similar and very successful squash growing). The aim being to create a good growing area for squash and watermelon for the season while killing off the grass and weeds, while I decide what's next here. See the slideshow and captions for more specifics.

This is the first time I've included these slideshows on this site - they're quite easy and fun to include, so here comes another, showing what else is in this part of my yard:

Just a few of my sheep - mum (white) surrounded by her triplet lambs in the foreground. They came for a nosy when they saw me in the garden taking pics. I've got rid of all my ducks and chickens over the last few months, needing to simplify life as much as possible. May get more poultry in the future, but for now am content without them. The neighbours have chickens, and wild ducks live in the pond behind us (and pop into the garden sometimes), so when I need something to feed garden pests or waste to, that's not a problem! (And I don't have to pay for feed or organise their care if we go away).

Through here (below) is the 50 sqm where I grew 378kg of squash three seasons ago, and then slowly started turning back into general garden beds, and process I still haven't completed. Despite many predictions from other gardeners that using black plastic over this area to kill off the weeds would render the soil infertile, that was never an issue - everything has grown well since. More on what's growing below. In this pic you can see part of the overhanging camellia (left), a kowhai from a seedling my son rescued, with a carpet rose climbing it. 

Let's use another slideshow to wander around the front garden:

Next up, my greenhouse...mostly weedy but some productivity....

And finally, some random additional shots of things I need to attend to. This blog is handy as a garden diary too - so I can see my own progress over time :-) 

Well, I hope you have enjoyed this wander through my garden. Future posts will (hopefully) be more regular, and much shorter - this one took many hours to upload and put together. With limited time, I plan to do a brief weekly update or so, going forward. Until next time....happy New Year, and happy gardening!