Busy in the garden

A lot has been happening in the garden in the past few weeks. The first lot of early seed sowing included Scarlet runner beans, Cabbage ‘Copenhagen’, Baxter Early Bush tomatoes, Pumpkins ‘Jack be little’, ‘White Scallop’ and ‘Kumikumi’, Onions crystal white wax, Purple basil, and lettuce ‘Paris Island Cos’. These all went into seed trays as it still a bit cold for direct sowing. But that didn’t stop some things being planted out in the ground, so the NZ spinach, bok choi, and some more spinach was sown outside. I picked up a few seedlings too to help get a head start of great lakes, red oakleaf and lollo rossa lettuces, and more broad beans to top up my meager patch where only 3 seeds came up.


I’ve acquired a few other plants along the way, I got some rhubarb plants from my Gran, bought some Jerusalem artichokes from the kerikeri growers market, and picked up some maori potato seeds from Koanga Gardens. My great aunt also gave me some heirloom tomato seeds to try, they are seeds she saved from some of her favourites that she grows every year. I’m going to wait until it warms up a bit more before I sow those because I don’t want to waste the seed.

I have also done a bit of preparation work out in the garden for the ever nearing spring. Today I started a new compost heap, as the current one was put together before I got here and isn’t doing too well. I think the contents are a bit too chunky. So I just made another heap beside the last< and used the compost building as an incentive to do a bit of tidying up. I collected armloads of green material from the abundant weeds that are starting to take off as it warms up, and collected brown matter from a heap of tree trimmings piled behind the grapefruit tree. It was a good opportunity to start tidying up that pile too. I think the resultant heap should do well, and to help it keep warm I covered it with a pile of newspaper and a piece of old carpet I found in the wood heap.

I’m also starting to reclaim some of the area that used to be vegetable garden, but was retired and covered over with shadecloth before I came here. The shadecloth hasn’t stopped the weed growth but at least it is minimized and what is there is easy to pull out. The ground is nice and soft too for digging over, but still fairly wet and very clayey. I hope my compost cooks quickly because I could sure use some!

I have to hurry up and get myself a new camera so I can post some pictures, my old one seems to have given up the ghost.