Tag Archives: Feijoa

Late October Promises a Change in the Weather

October 26, 2021 Irihapeti Leave a comment

Warmer Weather

Entry to the vegetable garden is through the hidden gate in the stick fence.

Time has scooted by. I last wrote in June and since then, South Head has experienced days, weeks and months of disappointing weather. Strong winds that have swept branches off trees. Downpours so heavy that gutters have overflowed, whole sections of the garden borders have been submerged, and fragile seedlings have been battered. We’ve had numerous power cuts and the gravel road outside our property has been chewed up by logging and stock trucks, or on the rainless days (I hesitate to use the word ‘sunny’), clouds of dust have drifted onto the solar panels, propelled by any car that takes the slope down past our place a little too fast.

While I can’t do anything about the vehicles going past, November is in the air, and perhaps the weather will finally settle.

The garden, overall

The easterly gales of the past few days have done their dash, allowing the sun to finally slip out from under her korowai of clouds. After lunch today, the temperature climbed from 17 to 24 in the space of 30 minutes. I was intending to study, but instead of once again putting blogging on the back burner, I chose instead to defer my study . 🙂

Of course the gardens don’t care about the miserable weather, they’ve just carried on doing their stuff. In fact everything is horrifically lush, and it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the weeds and the lawn mowing. Nothing holds the natural world back; last time I posted we were still collecting feijoa and now they’re back in bloom for the next season of fruit.

It’s the same with the avocados. We’re still harvesting the crop from last year’s flowering, while alongside them on the tree, the new baby fruit are starting to set. I guess this at least shows we had some windless days. It’s difficult for bees to pollinate flowers when its blowing a gale.

Fruiting cherries don’t do so well this far north, they like a hard frost, but our two struggling trees still manage to produce some blossom. The same can’t be said for limes. The two lime trees are smothered with flowers, despite being afflicted badly by citrus borer. And there’s nothing nicer than seeing the first plump buds on the pear tree.

This year I was determined to raise all our flowers and vegetables from seed. I’ve had some disappointments – baby plants being dug up by blackbirds, or chewed by beetles, slugs and snails. Some have failed to germinate, but I haven’t give up. Some I clearly put out too early, even though we don’t experience frosts this far north. My earliest gherkins, zucchinis and squashes just sat in the ground looking sorry for themselves before finally curling up and dying. But, I’ve had many more successes than disappointments.

Things we can eat

Broad beans

The broad bean plants were only a few centimetres tall in June, but now we’re consuming their crop. I like to nuke the beans into a paste with a little butter and miso. The plants themselves have grown far taller than we expected. The seed packet suggested staking them at one metre, but they’ve kept on growing, and now reach to over two metres. Every time a wind has howled in from a new direction, we’ve had to scurry outside to re-tie them.

Tomatoes

Some of our 25 tomato plants. To the left is our first ‘baby’ bloody butcher.

Our tomatoes are many. I think I counted 25 out there. The three varieties I chose to sow this year are Black Krim (a delicious heirloom variety), Bloody Butcher (a good all-rounder) and the cherry tomato, Indigo Blue Berries. The first fruits are forming and I can’t wait to have fresh outdoor tomatoes again. Proper tomatoes. Through most of winter I’ve resisted buying store tomatoes as they just aren’t the same. Tomatoes are just about my favourite plant to grow. They’re so easy, and so versatile, and after having lived in Dunedin for 25 years, I still haven’t quite gotten used to growing them outdoors.

Garlic and Egyptian walking onions

The garlic and onions are going well. This was one of the patches we completely covered during winter.

It was April when we put down the groundcover on a complete length of the vegetable garden. This activity certainly paid off and the patch is now home for garlic, onions, lettuces and tomatoes. We’ve mulched them with compost a couple of times already, but it’s already difficult to see where it was. Compost mulches will be critical as the days grow warmer. They protect and feed the plants, and keep the moisture down in the soil when the summer sun is doing its best to evaporate it off.

Grapes

This grapevine has been slow to get established, unlike the white variety that grows rampantly on the northern side of the barn. The grape is Albany Surprise and in my opinion is far superior to the white grape, due to the sweet and spicy flavour of its juicy bunches. The vine is looking really good this year, with numerous clusters of fruit.

Gardens new and gardens relocated

The new melon bed, with our first seedlings, a dozen rock melon plants.

Ben has dug me a brand new garden – a bed for melons. We’ve tried to grow these before and we just put the plants in the back paddock and left them, assuming they’d survive. Well, they didn’t. Or actually, they did, but I think all they produced was a couple of tiny, tiny fruit. This year we have a dedicated bed filled with compost and in sunlight for most of the day. I’ve raised seedlings of rock and watermelon, and am hoping for the best!

The bed is in the middle of the lawn close to the house so we can easily keep an eye on it, but already the sparrows have been in and have tossed the compost around. Fingers crossed the plants will get their roots going and dig in before they, too, are evicted. Only the rock melons are planted for now; I need twice as much space to fit the watermelons in as well.

Strawberries

Another task we achieved since June was to dig up our congested bed of strawberries. We selected a few strong plants, and replanted them beneath the lemon verbena. We’re hoping that they’ll do better there, especially with the netting cover. Usually our strawberries get picked to pieces by the blackbirds who nest in the trees near the vegetable garden.

Beehive update

The olive trees are covered in flowers. Bees collect pollen and nectar.

One of our three hives failed over winter. We lost the queen, and think that she most likely died of natural causes; she was never a strong queen. We weren’t completely surprised, as even before we confirmed the loss, the hive had very little brood. So we cleaned up the hive and surrounding area and last weekend added the honey boxes to the brood boxes.

The two remaining hives are buzzing! And on days like this the bees are out and about collecting pollen and nectar. There are so many plants in flower this time of year that there’s nothing to hold them back. Standing beneath one of the olive trees, earlier today, all I could hear was the satisfying hum of the bees.

Plants of the flowering kind

We cleared out the garden by the pathway using our own compost. Lettuces are sprouting everywhere amongst the dahlias and poppies.

My new project has been to clean up and tidy the strip of garden alongside the pathway in front of our kitchen window. It has always been a problem due to a nasty weed (a bulb) that I haven’t been able to eliminate. I’ve been trying for years.

Ben became so fed up at the hours I’ve spent in this small area, that he suggested digging out and removing all of the soil, and replacing it with compost and new soil. It was the best thing we could have done.

I love this new garden and even though it’s still early days and there’s not much flowering there yet, I can see it from the kitchen window and it always cheers me up. An amusing extra is that the compost was filled with seeds from the vegetable garden. Lettuces, dill, coriander, even a couple of tomatoes have sprouted. I doubt that the dill can stay there for long, but I might leave a couple.

I’ve planted the majority of my basil seedlings there, as well as pinks, dahlia, zinnias, poppies, bellis, and viola, so it will be a cottage-cum-kitchen garden. I’m looking forward to posting some photos once the seedlings begin to mature.

A trio of flowers: Bird of paradise, aquilegia and Emma’s rose.

Despite the shambles in my various flower beds, it’s still lovely to see the spring flowers. Every flower gives me a good feeling.

Whether it’s the poppies I’ve raised from seed, or the blossom on the fruit trees. Each flower is a promise of something… a pure splash of colour, a beautiful aroma, or a juicy piece of fruit.

Native Garden

I thought I should mention our small native garden. This is situated in an area that was just weeds and junk when we first bought the property. It’s got to the stage now that trees self-sow, and our original specimens are reaching up to the sky.

Not bad for less than ten years of growth!

Garden reality and reminiscing

View of the garden looking north-west. Kumara mounds in the foreground.

The garden is still untidy and there’s always more to be done. Sometimes it feels that for every step forward, there are two steps backwards. Once the weather begins to warm, which it’s doing now, everything just takes off.

This time last year I was staying at Mt Maunganui with Dad, and regularly visiting Mum in the rest home. While I was there, I was yearning for my garden, so I can’t complain about the work now.

My love of gardening and of having a garden began when I was a small child. In the early years Dad kept a vegetable garden, and we had fruit trees. From Mum I picked up a love of the beauty of flowers and trees. I regret that Dad never made it back to my garden. I’d always imagined a time when he would see out his last few years here, pottering around doing the outside things he liked to do.

On a garden rake
Dad tows me between the rows.
Moist earth, a bird cries.

(26/10/2021)

South Head, Writing

Winter

June 16, 2015 Irihapeti 4 Comments

June

The pomegranates we hoped to sample have burst.
Firmly secured to their bare branches,
they are still too high for us to reach.

Corpulent macadamia pods fatten ‘on the vine’.
Smooth brown nuts in moss green shells,
each day I gather them from the ground.

The last feijoas lie scattered, rotting away on the soggy earth.
More than one hundred have passed my lips this year.
They still taste sweet.

Across the road, black and white cows munch away on green grass;
One or two have lain down in the sun.
Beyond, the Kaipara is soft in shades of blue and grey.

Yesterday at dusk I heard the chirping of a cricket,
then a cold wind chased me indoors.
Surely June is too late for a cricket’s cry.

Jane Percival, 2015

South Head

Changing of the Season

April 10, 2015 Irihapeti 1 Comment

End of Summer

It’s definitely Autumn. As I sit at my computer I can hear the rumble and whirr of the combined maize harvester driving along the paddock adjacent to our property. As it moves down the rows, capturing everything in its path and discarding all but the individual maize kernels, great clouds of dust rise around it.

The wind has picked up this afternoon and is blowing in from the north… It was supposed to rain, and perhaps it still will, but right now it’s a mixture of bright sunlight and racing clouds.

The Garden

This beautiful buttercup squash weighed 3.189 kg. — This beautiful squash, ‘Burgess Buttercup’ weighed 3.189 kg.

Clean Up Tasks

It’s the time of year for clean-up and maintenance tasks in the garden. The squash and pumpkins are ready to be cut from their vines and stored in a dry and airy place.

The twisted brown tomato stalks need to be pulled out and burned, along with the remains of our former passion fruit vine.

I made the decision to remove the vine after it had finished cropping, due to it being afflicted with disease. It has been incredibly productive this year, and I’m sure we have eaten more than 200 individual passion fruit. So, it was with a heavy heart that I cut it away from the fence yesterday. All that is left is to dig the roots out of the soil.

Fruit

Plump feijoa and red and yellow guava are strewn on the grass outside our kitchen window; an array of yellow, green and red baubles.

While the guava are quite definitely edible, now that the feijoa are ready they won’t get a look in with me. Back in Spring when the blackbirds were stripping the petals from the flowers, I could not have imagined that the trees would be so heavily-laden.

A pair of kererū in the yellow guava. — A pair of kereru in the yellow guava.

For several days we’ve had two plump kereru camped out in the fruit trees. At night they seem to seek refuge in the golden totara, but by day they stay in the yellow guava, gorging on the fruit (they can swallow the guava whole!) or just sitting still in the sun.

We’ve also had many pears. The only problem is getting to them before the blackbirds! But if we go out early in the day we can usually rescue most of them.

Vegetables

peppers — Capsicum, Eggplant and Chillies.

For the first time, we’ve had eggplants that have grown to maturity and we’ve had an amazing crop of capsicum. I’m hoping that these will keep cropping until May or June. We also have abundant habanero and one other (unidentified) chilli pepper. This latter plant came from a packet of chilli ‘Caribbean Blend’ so I’m not really sure what it is. We sampled it (with trepidation), and although it was hot, it didn’t seem as hot as a habanero, nor did it have the beautiful floral flavour that a habanero has.

Chilli peppers strung up in the barn. — Our new seasons’ chilli peppers strung up in the barn.

As you can see from the photo above, I’m going to dry the chillies this year. We have such a huge chest freezer, that even with the baskets at the top, we tend to lose track of small things. It will be interesting to see if I’m successful or not. I thought it would be great to grind them up and use them with a pepper shaker.

This morning I took a bucket to the farm across the road and collected some field mushrooms. Yum!!! These are my favourite funghi. They have such a rich taste in comparison with button mushrooms purchased from the supermarket.

Field mushrooms, freshly-picked this morning.

They’ll be great sauteed in butter and stirred through some freshly made pasta.

After the Harvest

The harvester has finished in the field. All that is left behind are the husks and a few dried leaves. It’ll be tough for the small shrubs we have on the fence-line, especially now that the wind is coming from the north. For a good six months they’ve been sheltered by the maize!

The maize field is now stark against the sky.

Garden Notes, South Head

Winter!

June 17, 2014 Irihapeti Leave a comment

Nuts in June

The nuts are starting to drop from our macadamia trees. I’ve collected over 100 in the past week, with more falling when it’s been breezy overnight. Even our smallest tree is producing a few this year. We still have a decent amount of nuts from 2012, which we’ll have to get through. It just takes time to crack them but it’s something that can be done in the evening while watching TV. Once they are shelled, I’ll be toasting them and then grinding them; mixed with a little sugar and coconut oil, they make a really yummy gluten-free, vegan crust for a dessert pie.

Bristly Ox-Tongue

I’ve finally managed to identify a weed we have on our property. Helminthotheca ecioides, or Bristly Ox-tongue. It was apparently naturalised in NZ in 1869. It’s a horrible weed as it grows up with nasty hairy spikes on its stalk and leaves, and these can really hurt if you try to pull one out with bare hands. We’ve mostly eradicated these from our property, but they still come up here and there. This is one ugly weed.

The Prodigal Hen

Strangely, Lottie came back last Friday. It was a rainy, squally day and I hadn’t been outside much, but when we checked the hen house after dark before closing the gate of their enclosure for the night, Lottie was sitting on the very top perch (having evicted Lulu and Leila) as if she had never been away. The poor Orpingtons had had to vacate the bottom perch and were sleeping together on the floor. We were away overnight Saturday / Sunday and weren’t sure what we’d find when we came back on Sunday afternoon – I was very curious to see if Lottie was still at home, and if she was, what shape she was in.

When we arrived, Lottie, the two White Orpingtons (Francesca and Pearl), and one of the Black Orpingtons (Fatima) were nowhere to be seen. Lulu, Leila and Hannah (the youngest Black Orpington) were pecking around the property in their usual fashion. We called and called, at first to no avail. Then the four wanderers appeared, casually walking back from across the road. My heart sank at the thought that Lottie might start luring the other hens away during the day. That night when we shut them into their enclosure, we wondered what would happen the following day.

As it turned out, as soon as I let them out on the Monday morning, Lottie strutted off at great speed, across the grass, past the garage, down the driveway and across the road. She hadn’t even had the decency to lay an egg before leaving! Fortunately the other hens didn’t notice her departure, so not one followed her. She didn’t return on Monday evening, but to be honest, I wasn’t worried as my thoughts were that she was likely to cause more problems if she did come back permanently.

Then surprisingly, later on this afternoon, who should we see but Lottie making her way back home across the road. Tonight she has been shut in a separate area of our enclosure, and I won’t be letting her out tomorrow. We’re going to see if she copes with being kept shut in for a few days… it will be interesting to see if she lays an egg while she’s here. When we checked her tonight, she was sleeping on the top perch of her house – all alone (of course). At least she won’t be pecking and bossing the other hens around, and nor will she be leading them astray (tomorrow, at least).

Seasonal Fruit

We are still eating feijoas (although surely they will have all finished ripening, soon) and are starting on tamarillos. There is a farm up the road that sells bags of the latter for $2. These are so much nicer than any I have ever purchased from a store, and our own orange variety, ‘Tamarillo Bold Gold’ is also producing fruit for the first time. The fruit is smaller than the reds, but very juicy and sweet.

The bananas look like they are starting to ripen. They are certainly getting fatter and the top rows are definitely turning a lighter colour. As these are the first bananas I’ve ever grown, I have no idea what to expect as far as time to maturity is concerned.

Our two young lime trees are a mass of flowers and small fruit. Typically, a strong wind started blowing in today from the North West. I’m hoping that it doesn’t inflict too much damage on the new growth. The lemon trees also look to be producing buds, but not as energetically as the limes.

Garden Diary

It’s been wet off and on for over a week now. We do get a degree of sunshine during most days, but then the clouds build up and it’s gloomy again. I think this June our solar generation will be the lowest ever. Thank goodness it’s not long until the shortest day.

In the vegetable garden, broad beans have come up, as has curly kale. The Egyptian Walking Onions are looking good, as are our mixed lettuces, beetroot, rocket and radishes.

I don’t know why I grow radishes – probably because the variety I have sown, ‘Easter Egg’, is so pretty when they are small – white, pink, purple and red – but I tend not to eat them myself as they are too peppery for me. And this from someone whose favourite chili is the Habanero. 🙂

Speaking of which, I am still picking habaneros, and our basil still hasn’t died off, although it’s getting a little straggly as I have omitted to keep up with removing the flower spikes. I have had absolutely no luck with parsnip seeds this season – nor with leeks. I’ve sown a couple of rows of each of these, but none have germinated. Very annoying.