The urbanpermie is back!

I've been out of action for a while for a very good reason - I was having such bad all day sickness! I'm now into the 17th week of the pregnancy and my energy is finally returning. Also I can now sit infront of the computer for a longer period without feeling so sick.

Naturally as a result of the past few months of inaction, my garden is also in a state of neglect. For a the first time in many months, my husband and I spent some good hours trying to catch up with lost time. We were pretty amazed that within a few hours, the garden was looking quite acceptable again. We're convinced that Permaculture principles works!!

All through winter, the chookies in the chook tractor were working around the vegetable beds, so I have well mulched, fertilized vege beds ready for planting. What I need now are seedlings for planting.

All the fruit trees are doing really well this year. I think it's because the Tree lucerns are doing their job in providing wind shelter. The pear tree is looking exceptionally well - it could be the comfrey plant planted at the base of the pear tree. I'll now work towards planting comfrey at the base of all the fruit trees. Having said that, the mandarine tree was loaded with fruits late winter has suddenly taken a turn for the worst and died. Not sure why.

As for the chook family, one chook died in winter. It was the weakest link and it just wasn't strong enough to withstand the constant wet and extreme cold we had this year. Sadly another chook was eating it's own eggs and were extremely noise, so it went too. That's a blog entry in itself. We are left with 3 chookies at the moment.

I guess that's me for the moment...

What' I"ve learnt this season

I've observed and learnt some things that I would like to remember for next year:

1) Sown first lot of corn in September, and second in October
2) Plant something every month - first week.
3) Italian tomatoes aren't that great, disease prone - won't plant it again
4) Start eggplants, capsicums, tomatoes indoor in July - keep this season's plants from frost and they will come back again, and you'll get fruits earlier next season. Repeat the cycle for the new plants.
5) Start Austrian Oil seed pumpkins in icecream containers in the hotwater cupboard - germinates in 3-4 days
6) Zucchini Ambassador F1 - extremely prolific especially if a scoop of cow dung is dumped into the planting hole first before putting the plant. 1 plant is more than sufficient for the entire family with more to give away.
7) Japanese eggplants is prolific and tasty, eggplant Golden eggs is late so not worth growing in NZ climate
8) Butternut Chieftain - Prolific - each plant has at least 3 good size squash (it will keep longer if allowed to harden properly)
9) Plant Basil with Capsicums, eggplants.
10) 2 crops of dwarf beans possible - Sow first in November, second January
11) Only grow the Purple Fred climbing beans - early and prolific - two crops in the season
12) 2 telegraph cucumber plants sufficient for a family
13) 4 gerkin plants if you want to preserve
14) Mulch, mulch, mulch

More to come in the next blog

Broad Beans

The dwarf broadbeans from Kings Seeds planted in May were harvested last weekend. They had stopped flowering and were starting to get rust. I harvested about 7 kgs of broad beans from a round garden bed over a period of one and half months. The bean pods were large and beautiful but it didn't have that many beans in them. There were a lot more irregular beans than the normal broadbean planted the year before.

A few points worth noting:
1) They definitely had less seed pods but the beans were sweeter than the standard variety.
2) It's an early variety so the veg bed is available for other seasonal vegs on the first week of Nov. before the weather gets too hot and rust becomes a serious problem.

I shelled the pods and freeze the beans for later.

I've planted a row of Rua potatoes in the same vege bed along side some self- sown parsnip. The mulched down broadbean plants will be used as mulch for the growing potato plants.

LeEkS take forever....

to germinate and grow. So sow seeds now for planting in January and eating in winter...no kidding.

Organic Fungal (RUST) Control

There are rust on a patch of vegetation. From my research for an organic combat, Neem Oil and Garlic sprays are two natural fungal control for Rust.

Garlic Spray:

1 garlic bulb
1 quart water
crush the garlic bulb, place in a pan of water. bring to boil then turn off heat.let mixture cool. Strain out garlic.Pour liquid into spray bottle and spray affected areas of plants. repeat as`necessary.

Garlic is known to fight many types of disease causing fungi, including mildew,gray mold, rust. Garlic has not only been shown to fight fungi, but it also has repellent qualities for other diseases and insects. Plant Garlic bulbs next to your roses, and you should not have any problems with aphids.

Milk is another combat but it works a little differently from Neem Oil and Garlic. A comment from a forum:

There are many layers of bacteria and fungi living on the outside of your plants. The simple proof of that is the rust fungus living on the outside of your plants. The problem is that the beneficial microbes, which usually live there and protect your plants from disease, have lost their ability to do that. They need to be revitalized. Your compost tea will help with that, but also I would spray separately with milk dissolved in water at 3 ounces per gallon of water. Spray as often as you want to. Up here we shoot for spraying every 2 weeks. Your area may appreciate it every week. The milk will provide real food for the microbes living on the plant surfaces and should restore the good health to the beneficials. Once they are healthy, they should eliminate the rust fungus for you.

As an experiment, I'll section out the problematic veg patch into 3 sections and try each of the remedies on 3 different areas. Looking forward to finding out the outcomes.

Rhubarb Galore...

It's time to divide the rhubarb clump. I did it last weekend and harvested a fair bit of rhubarb. Matt (my husband) decided to make a Rhubarb cake last night. We brought the cake to work, it went down like a treat. It tasted so much better the next day - 2 minutes in the microwave oven to just slightly warmup the cake. It will taste even better served with unsweetened yoghurt. The downside is we didn't take a photo prior to eating it..

Batter:
150 grams butter
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups organic wholemeal flour (it gives very different texture from normal wholemeal flour)
2 teaspoons baking powder

Rhubarb Topping:
500 grams chopped up rhubarb - 1.5cm lengthwise (remove the stringy bits)
1 tablespoon organic whole meal flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnemon
1/4 cup sugar
rind/juice of a lemon

Cake Topping:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Instructions:
Cream the slightly softened butter and sugar and then add the eggs, one at a time. After that, add the flour and baking powder, and turned the flour into the wet mixture - don't over do it.

Add all the topping's ingredients together and mix it well.

Spoon 3/4 of the batter into a 23cm square/round baking tin. Put in all the toppings. Spoon the rest of the batter on top of the rhubarb topping. Mix the cake topping together and sprinkle on top of the cake.

Bake at 160 degree centigrade for 45 -50 minutes (more if required -oven dependent).

This link has ALL the information anyone needs on Rhubarb

Snow peas...

Apparently you can plant snow peas in autumn, winter and Spring and Summer....all year round
This is new for me too...

Think Leeks and Brassicas and peas...

and then sow (seedlings) every two weeks to get a continueous supply. Once you plant a lot of seedlings into the garden sow the seeds for the next batch - it's a good habit to cultivate...a good reminder to myself here...

Still not too late to plant Snow Peas

If you had planted snow peas in autumn, you would be enjoying tonnes of yummy juicy and crunchy snow peas now. Anyway, I sowed about 20 seeds a week ago. They are sprouting nicely and hopefully will survive the slugs and snails attack.