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!

In November 2016 I started a blog post by saying "My garden is humming with bees of all kinds.." This year it's January, and I can't find any honeybees in my garden whatsoever. I think the number I may have seen over the last couple of months could be counted on one hand. I was thinking that it's been a slow-to-warm-up season, but the temps are now high, and still no bees. And yes, it can very from season to season and place to place. However, given what is flowering in my garden right now, I would expect to be seeing at least some honeybees. This includes: marshmellow (normally swarming with them), sage (likewise), nasturtium, buttercup, big patches of white clover, some red clover, feijoa, zucchini, zinnia, purple deadnettle (they usually love that), pansies, roses, agapanthus, dahlia, brassicas (also normally a huge draw), strawberries, chives, celery, dandelion, convolvulus, star jasmine, potato vine, raspberries, comfrey and more. 

Bees do have a very powerful sense of smell - about 100x stronger than ours - and there is major work being done a couple of kms from me, which includes river dredging, earth moving, and the laying of massive amounts of very fresh, very stinky compost. The smell is close to unbearable in many parts of town, including here. Maybe that's scared them off. This work has been going on for a while, but the smell has only been bad since they started with the compost a week or so ago. So it doesn't explain the bee free summer. I have a commercial bee keeper based in the street behind us (on a small block); I should ask him whether he has any hives at home currently, and how his bees are doing!

Anyway, whatever the reason for the current dirth, the main point of this post is to discuss all the pollination that is STILL happening, even without the honeybees, and how. As gardeners, we WANT lots of pollination - without it we would severely lack in a lot of crops, and also wouldn't get viable seed to save. Bees are in trouble all over the world; they are very important, but I think folk are often not aware of how many other pollinators there are out there. When we think about encouraging beneficial critters to our gardens, we should not plant only for bees, but also consider the more humble critters and their needs. Even some pests have their upsides in terms of the pollinating services they provide. 

So what is doing the pollinating? Honestly, ALL the insect numbers seem to be down so far this season (possibly due to the cold - we had the fire going on three days between Christmas and New Year!), but over the last few days I've been paying close attention to what is out there, and I've observed:

• Bumblebees - there is a nest of them in the space between the walls of my greenhouse and a shed, and they are actively working in the garden. Bumblebees are fascinating critters - read more about them HERE.
• ​Drone flies - these are often mistaken for fat bees, but are in fact a type of hoverfly (named drone fly because of their resemblance to a bee drone), and are excellent pollinators. They breed by laying eggs in water with high organic content - I must put out a bucket of manure and water to encourage them. The larvae are called rat-tailed maggots and often freak people out, but they are harmless. When ready to pupate they crawl out of the water and drop to the ground. 
• Native bees and wasps - there are a number of species of native bees and wasps, some of them very tiny and easily overlooked. The bees in particular are important pollinators. I've noticed a few in flowers around the garden. 
• Flies, gnats and mozzies - the bugs everyone loves to hate. But in the garden many of them do an amazing job of pollinating - flies are considered second only to bees for pollinating, and in some places there would be major crop failures without them, especially when bees are scarce.
• Butterflies - there aren't many monarchs around this year either yet, and white butterflies are only just starting to pick up in number. Both are excellent pollinators, along with most other butterflies. 
• Moths - most moths feed on flowers and thus are also excellent pollinators, including those moths whose larvae are pests, such as brown moths (green looper caterpillars), Diamondback moths (larvae eat brassicas), etc
• Syrphid (hoverflies) - these wee critters hover in the air and then zip quickly from place to place. They are also great pollinators, especially of plants with small flowers. I've spotted them in my flowering celery. 
• Other pollinators -  number of other critters pollinate various plants too, ranging from weevils to birds. I may not have seen them all in action, but I know they're there. 

Like all critters, all those pollinators need food, habitat and (often) water. Some ways to encourage them include:

• Plant lots of flowers - some favourites are phacelia, calendula, clovers, oregano, lavendar, rosemary, borage, yarrow, tansy, fennel, chives, nasturtiums, foxglove, echinacea, sage, lemon balm. Aim to have a number of things flowering at any given time, year round.
• Leave some plants to flower you ordinarily wouldn't - all the brassicas are great, celery, carrots, parsnips, leeks, spring onions etc all attract lots of bees and other pollinators.
• Avoid using sprays - nearly all sprays are harmful to more than just their targets. 
• Think about how you manage pests - some of them are also doing you a service. Finding the right balance is key. 
• Have "wild areas" in your garden - that might be a corner where there are tall grasses mixed with weeds and wildflowers which you allow to get messy; this may be key habitat for hiding both beneficial pollinators, and natural pest predators. 
• Consider making a "bug hotel"- a structure with a variety of materials and spaces in it that various bugs can make their homes in. 
• Have shallow, clean water available - a bird bath or bowl which bees and bugs can get water from without drowning is what you want. This can be achieved by putting bricks or rocks as landing platforms into a bowl of water too. Birds also appreciate water to bathe in and drink.
• Have some flat rocks or old bricks here and there. Blackbirds and thrushes loves to use them to smash snails against. Lizards may soak up the sun on them. Worms may enjoy the cool moisture underneath them. One always has to think beyond the immediate and consider the bigger scope of what a diverse ecosystem in your garden needs to sustain and balance itself.
• Be observant - wherever your go, whether in your own garden or elsewhere, notice what is growing, and what critters you might see. Consider whether this gives you ideas of what to add to or increase in your garden. 

Back when I first started seriously gardening in 2013, I concentrated on growing crops to eat. Within the first year, though, I quickly began to realise how important a range of beneficial insects and other creatures in the garden is - for pollination, pest control, and the overall health of the garden. So I started planting more flowers, flowering herbs, etc in my second year. It was incredible how quickly a diverse population of critters moved into my garden! Over time, the predatory ones began to control many of my pests - taking care of the looper caterpillars, most of the brassica pests, even psyllid and other problems. Others continued to pollinate or support the garden in other ways. And yes, to have good populations of anything beneficial, you also need populations of the things they rely on. Ladybugs, for example, are good pollinators too. But they also need aphids to feed on, especially for their young. Same goes for lacewings. If I made it my mission to kill every aphid, well I wouldn't have many ladybugs or lacewings working in my garden. 

With the more limited gardening I've been able to do over the last couple of years, there are a lot less flowers in my garden, though still a fair range. One of my intentions is to add more and see an increase in overall beneficial insect populations, including pollinators.

Sometimes it's important to think outside of our usual "box." Also, by doing the things mentioned above, we can play our part to help the honeybees as well as our native bees and bumblebees (many of these are endangered), as well as the wider pollinator population.