28th October 2009

It was to a particularly long visit this week as it started with a trip to the Botanic Gardens to scavenge for some tulip bulbs which were no longer wanted. This was a very productive trip and we now have about 50 red flowering bulbs to go with the orange, yellow and white, and pink flowering tulips I collected there in the past 2 weeks. Thank you, City Council.

And at last the flowering cherry trees had been delivered to friends nearby - some bargain 'last year's trees' bought on the internet and when we went to collect them, we discovered they were much bigger than expected and covered in unripe cherries which the birds should enjoy.

And then a neighbour dropped in for lunch and seemed delighted with our apple cores.

We had also bought some lilac trees on our travels last weekend, so we had 6 new trees to plant - 4 for the shelter belt behind our future orchard ....


... and two flowering cherries to look at from our future living room.

The 93-for-the-price-of-none flaxes that we had planted a couple of weeks ago looked decidedly sad and would have been even more so when they discovered they were about to be moved again. We realised we had overlooked an important part of our permaculture veggie patch design and needed to move almost half and find a further 20 plants. The plants now form a circle with 6 subcircle bulges sticking out and will hopefully act as a windbreak and a barrier to the creeping grass outside.

But another afternoon with the mower provided sufficient mulch for all the new and moved plants which also received some much needed water. Lets hope for some warm weather so that they can grow big and strong.

21st October 2009

More planting was on the agenda this week. We went back and bought the 3 alders that we had intended to buy last week, which will form the basis of the shelterbelt for our fruit trees. We also transplanted two syringas that had struggled for years in our old garden in the wind and the salt spray. We hope they will enjoy life better in our new section.

We had also ordered some budget flowering cherries on the internet, but they did not turn up. Fingers crossed they will arrive soon.



And at last we had got round to preparing some homemade hare repellent, which we applied to the new alders...

and to what was left of some of the tastier-to-hares natives. Even the worst attacked do now have a few new leaves so there is hope yet.

And we did discover that, although the gums are making rapid progress, they are being outpaced by the lupins, which are making quite a nice windbreak and fixing the nitrogen in the soil for us too.

14 October 2009

Dreadful weather had been forecast, lots of wet, heavy at times and thunder later, but we hoped they had got it wrong as it started out OK.....

And we were very lucky when we went to a local nursery to buy a couple of trees and some flax and toe toe as we found that some enormous overgrown plants of both the last two were on special, so we decided to forget about the trees and fill the car up with the grasses. They looked so enormous in the shop (and the car) but somehow, when we got them to our new section, they did not seem so impressive.

Anyway, planting them was a job for the afternoon, first we had to install the new polythene catchment for our pond. This all went smoothly and was to be severely tested later on...
As you can see, mark II was to be shorter, fatter and hopefully stronger...

Then we added a final few flaxes to our vegie patch shelterbelt - 93 in total now, having come from 4 parent plants. Pretty good eh!

And then the rain came!!! By far the hardest we have experienced up there, and we both got completely soaked. Note to self, should put on waterproof clothes and boots as soon as the rain starts!

Anyway, we pressed on with planting the 16 new potentially enormous flaxes and toe toes, heartened by the fact that we would not need to water them. And we made it just about, but by then the weather was too bad to record our efforts for posterity. Watch this space.

7th October 2009

It had been so cold and wet, with horrendous southerlies for the last few days, that we nearly decided not to go to our new section this week. But again, as last week, the weather got better the closer we got and by the time we arrived it was beautifully sunny if still rather chilly. And there was snow on the nearby hills - amazing for this time of year!!

We had plenty to do - first, a man came about putting in a drive. Yay, now that would be progress.

Then we marked out the circle that should become our permaculture-based veggie patch and started to plant an outer border.


(note the snow in the background)

We are using some more refugee flax plants for the border and hope they will provide shelter from the wind as well as being a barrier to keep out the kikuyu grass and other unwanted plants.

This week we brought up 4 plants and managed to divide them into 71 new plants. Amazing! They were quite overgrown and tatty but they looked really healthy once they had been split up, cut back and all the old leaves removed.



And finally Dave cut the grass that been under the slippy slide where we were collecting water. Unfortunately the plastic has been damaged in the sun and needs to be replaced. I am not certain under which Health and Safety requirements our trusty old lawn mower falls, but I dont think it complies!!

30th September 2009

The weather forecast was very bad and we left home in heavy rain but this all cleared by the time we reached our new section.

We had been given several large flaxes that had outgrown their existing home and took one of these plants with us to split and replant.


It proved a larger task that we anticipated as this one plant split into 9 new plants, and it could have been 12 if we had had the time and energy to dig the extra holes.


We'll see how these survive the move before we bring their mates. They are about the toughest plants around but we have been told they do not transplant very well. We shall see....

And our new neighbours-to-be very kindly gave us their old letter box, just needs some new numbers. Hopefully niece Katie will be willing to apply her artistic skills...

23rd September 2009

Another Wednesday, another trip to our new section. It has been fairly wet recently and a bit warmer and the grass was showing definite signs of growth, along with the blackberry and gorse of course.

So we took our mower and weed eater and created a much larger 'front lawn', which even looks like a lawn now from a distance, and extends right round the house site.



Dave also dug out some of the toughest fennel,

and mowed the slope where the shelter belt is soon to be planted in preparation for our fruit trees.

And we ended up with some large piles of mulch to go round the still struggling natives.