Summer 2015/2016

I can't believe we are nearly half way through February, the last month of Summer.  This summer surely has flown by, even the daylight hours are reducing by about 2 minutes a day now.  So I'm really focused on enjoying every moment as if it was my last summer, life doesn't get much better!

So far it's been a hot sticky summer, last summer was very dry, this summer it's been very humid, but don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. This time of year my plants are at their best, I'm really enjoying being outside working in my garden, feeling the warm sunshine on my skin, enjoying a refreshing swim at the beach or just picking a warm cherry tomato straight off the vine and enjoying the taste explosion in my mouth.

Although if I was to complain, it's been perfect grass growing weather, and I'm so over mowing the lawns! It currently requires a weekly mow, and my lawns are far to big for a weekly mow, especially just being down to a push mower at the moment.

If I was asked to pick just three great memories of summer 2015-2016 it would be spending time with my family over Christmas here on the block, swimming with Gary at Te Aria beach and eating my first lot of Cape Gooseberries.

This summer we had my sister Kelly, her partner Ryan, my nephew Justin (8) & niece Katie (6) visit, along with Mum & Rex. It was great to have them up for a week over Christmas, many wonderful memories and it was great to see the kids and how quickly they are growing.  Watching Kelly my little sister be a great Mum to the kids, and seeing how cute the kids are, especially watching them putting cookies and milk out for Santa on Christmas Eve. Adorable! It was a fantastic week for me, it really had been a long time since we had all been together, so a great time.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love Cape Gooseberries! I love, really love Cape Gooseberries, they bring back many happy memories as a child on the farm in Ohangai.  They used to only ever grow below some trees down at the bottom of a sheltered valley at the back of the farm. During the summer holidays when dad was moving the sheep, when ever we ventured near to where they were growing we would wonder off to pick/eat some. So with these happy memories in mind, I had raised my plants from seed last year, and was eagerly waiting for the fruit to ripen, carefully tearing the little cases open just to have little peak inside to see how the fruit was coming along.  Then that day finally arrived, I discovered they were ready... I was like the cookie monster... I was devouring them with great enthusiasm! Not one made if out of the berry patch!

Below are some pics of this years summer harvest....

Passion Fruit,

Cape Gooseberries, so Yummy!

I think it's a rock Melon or Honey Dew Melon (I lost the label),

An Apple,

Another Apple... hopefully more next year, 

Gary's Chillies are doing well,

A variety of Tomatoes... more than I can eat... so I made some sauce:

I was also kindly given some peaches... which I stewed...

Below my hard work... 2.5 bottle sauce, and 4 jars peaches...

And finally below... my last two evening meals...

Cherry Tomato, Cape Gooseberry & Passion fruit for Dessert :)

Should I have any Cape Gooseberries left over, I want to turn some into jam. I remember Nana used to make Cape Gooseberry Jam, Nana was big into making conserves, and we were always was given many jars of jam and fruit, but we were only ever given 1 jar of the Cape Gooseberry Jam at a time, so it was treasured, as there was never enough of it to go around. I just need to find a good recipe.  

I will double or triple my production of Cape Gooseberries for the next season as they have really grown so well here.

.. (note to self add more pics of fruit coming along, Cranberry, Blackberry, Nectarines, Feijoa, Citrus)

It's A Busy Life Down Wattle Lane...

I've been a bit slack lately updating our posts, but it's been a rather busy time, and even with the longer days with daylight savings, there is just not enough hours in a day.

We've started and now nearly completed building the garage.  With the help of our neighbour, who is a builder, (to which I can highly recommend his services), the garage is about 90% complete, with just a few finishing touches to do.  

I must say the kitset instructions are not very clear and lacking detail, and it has taken twice as long as I thought it would take us to build the garage, and I'm not sure how I ever dreamed I could do this all on my own.

Building the double garage door, took about half of the entire time we've spent building the garage. Kitset means kitset. Everything is kitset.  Overall it has taken about 5 full days of work to get it up.

In addition to work, building the garage, mowing lawns which is taking about 5-6 hours to do the lot, we've been trying to keep on top of maintaining the garden.  We're kept busy with weeding and feeding and watering. 

The weeds are growing so quickly, by the time you weed around the base of every plant, you have to start again, right back at the start, and start the process of weeding again.

However the plants are looking good, but October 2015 has been very dry, we've had less than half the average rainfall.  So we've now started putting in some irrigation lines, not sure what I'm really doing with that, but I have a seeping hose in the vege garden, and I've managed to put in drip lines around the grapes, and it all works.  So we need to continue this along to the citrus trees, and berry fruit. 

We're using water from the garden shed water tank, but when this runs out, we intend to pump water from the pond into this tank... again, this is something else that I need to work out how I am actually going to achieve that. I'm thinking of a little windmill water pump??

But the rewards of our hard labour are starting to show, we've had our first few raspberries.

The passionfruit are doing extremely well. I think the passionfruit will be the major success story this summer! More fruit than I can count!!

But also showing signs of fruit are the blueberries, plums, feijoa, nectarines, all have some baby fruit starting to show, even the cranberries are showing signs of fruit.

We're very happy, and loving every day down here at Wattle Lane. We would love to share this experience with anyone who wants to come and help weed the weeds! haha.

Spring 2015 Has Arrived

You know it's coming, it arrives every year, but after a long wet, windy and muddy winter, spring has finally arrived. I'm sure winter seems longer when living on a lifestyle block.  

When we hit the shortest day back around the 20th June, I was looking daily at the sun rise and sun set times, counting each minute of daylight that we gained.  Then a week ago we reached that magic number of 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of night time, and now that daylight savings has started, its practicably summer! Hooray!

I love everything about spring, the warmer weather, longer days, sheep with their lambs, ducks with their ducklings, buds bursting open with their new flowers and the honey bees are back doing their thing! It's just a great time to be back out in the garden.

I was a little worried about not having any bees to pollinate my fruit trees, with the varroa mite having destroyed the wild bee populations. However, fortunately, someone nearby must have a hive, as the bees have arrived.  I've been planning for their arrival, as I have planted a variety of flowering plants, along with a wildflower bee mix too attract them. Now the visiting bees have plenty of food sources to tell their friends about, and they will keep coming back to my garden to pollinate my flowers.

Above the bee's seem to love the Lavender.

Below the wild flower mix.. it's a bit weedy.. but I enjoy the wild look of it.

Below the grapevines have sprung into life.

Below are the nectarine trees and their flowers!

A spectacular display... when the trees are bigger they are going to be amazing, as I have them planted along the driveway!

But... as suitable as spring is for my plants, it's also perfect grass and weed growing weather... I spent about 4 hours mowing lawns today, and that was only about 75% of the lawn.  So it's busy as always down here at Wattle Lane.. but I'm loving it. 

Our Little Wall

While the contractor has been busy preparing the concrete pad for the garage, we've been busy building a small retaining wall near the drive.  I've added some updated pics in the "A New Garage - DIY Style" post.

Our little retaining wall, is more just to tidy it the parking area up a little, and also to control some of the water that comes rushing down the drive and lawn when we get heavy bursts of rain.

By putting in a bigger drain, and the wall, and deeper culvert, we hope to stop the gravel washing away whenever we get a half decent downpour.... and ultimately stop Max trekking 4 paws of mud into the house.

Step 1, Dig...

Step 2, Get your supplies & dig post holes

Step 3, Cement in posts

Step 4, Put up wall, backfill with drainage material, & bring back top soil

Step 5... still working on it... 

But, we are going to cement the culvert along the bottom of the wall down to the drain sump, and we need to put capping on the top of our wall and then finally and get more gravel to level and tidy up parking area. 

The contractor who is putting in the concrete pad for the garage, is also going to concrete the footpath from the drive up to the house.

The above pic shows the slope that we are working with, it is not a huge gradient, but the amount of water that comes down is quiet a lot, so hopefully now a good amount of that is redirected to the pond.

Orchard Update - Goal: 300 Fruit Plants In The Ground This Year... 2015!

For someone who is a little impatient and prefers an instant result, growing plants can be a little testing at times. They take forever to grow, and some plants take 3-5 years before they start fruiting. So this year I've set a goal... get 300 plants in the ground... so they can start growing.

So for the last few weekends, we've been busy planting.. which has involved a lot of digging, moving soil/compost about the place.

So far we have in the ground:

Year 2015

26 Grapes (4 varieties)

80 Raspberry Plants

10 Blackberry Plants

16 Mandarin Trees (2 varieties)

16 Orange Trees (2 varieties)

8 Villa Franca Lemon Tress

80 Cranberry

16 Blueberry (2 varieties)

So that is about 252 plants so far.

So another 50 to go!

Next on my shopping list is Heritage Apples, more Passionfruit if my seeds don't sprout... and another variety of Raspberry... and I would like to add some more Plums.

Since purchasing the property... we had already planted about 40 plants... a mix of Nectarines, Meyer Lemons, Feijoa, Plums, Pear, Apples, Mandarin, Orange.

So we are getting quiet a bit of variety...

Below are some progress pics... my apologies on the quality.

I'm Loving The Passion Fruit

One of the many packets of seeds that I've purchased were for passionfruit. A very yummy fruit but very expensive to buy at the shops... $30KG. So I've been very keen to give them a go.

I managed to grow 4 plants from seeds:

Most Beautiful Flower!

We have only had 2 fruit in their first year... but hopefully if they survive winter we should have plenty next year.

I'm growing them along the pond fence, and I'm very impressed at how well they have done, so I'm going to increase the plant numbers... we have 4 plants on one side of the fence, so I will add another 8 plants in to cover another 2 sides of the fence. The fence is possibly a little on the low side, but I will see how they go before I think about raising it.  

My attempt at raising a second lot of seedlings from seeds has not been that successful so far. Fingers crossed they sprout soon.

The Girls Are Getting Their Groove On!

It has taken some time... but finally all 3 chickens are now laying!  

Look... 5 eggs in 2 days! 

Obviously one of the girls has been dropping the ball a little, but hey... I'm happy!

I must say the Golden Laced Wyandotte Chickens are very good layers once they get going. Big Momma is a daily layer, only missed a couple days since she started laying. Hopefully her good work ethic has rubbed off onto the two chicks!

Goodness Gracious Grapes...

The "Forbidden Fruits" or the "Fruits of the Gods", two very different descriptions for the delicious grape. Whatever the case, we've just planted 26 grapevines. So does that make us Sinners or Gods... or Sinful Gods? haha.

I think the "Forbidden Fruit's" might have been the variety of grapes that wine is made from, so I think we are ok, as we've planted Table Grape varieties, although, I'm sure if you tried you could make wine no matter what type of grape it is.

Anyway I digress, I was trying to think of an interesting way to start this entry. Long and short of it... we've planted 26 Grapes! It looks amazing! I'm Very Happy. A good start to our orchard.

After some research we decided on the following varieties:

> Candice Grape - A red seedless grape. (x6)

> Himrod - A green seedless grape. (x6)

> Buffalo - A blackish red grape I guess purple but with green flesh. (x6)

> New York Muscat - Similar to the Buffalo but the best tasting grape! (x8)

So it has been a busy couple of weekends...

Firstly we erected the trellis posts creating 4 rows, facing north. Posts are 4 metres apart and rows 2.2 metres apart, with anchor posts on the end. The setup costs, were a little more than I expected.. timber is so pricey!

Once the posts were all in, we marked where the plants were to be planted, and then scrapped off about 5cm of the top soil/grass, removing about 50cm by 50cm squares. We were trying not to take too much top soil off, but remove all the grass. The reason for this was to create less competition for the young vines.  

We then turned over the ground adding to that a wheel barrow of compost and new topsoil and digging that in well creating the little mounds ready to plant in.

Once the soil was prepared, then it was just a matter of stringing the centre wire, and making sure that was tight with wire strainers and then planting the grapes. Easy Peasy Grapes Are Squeezy!

We are yet to attach a T bar on the top of the fence trellis, which we will run two wires down, to create a greater leaf canopy and hopefully creating more fruit.  I'll update this entry once I've done that, hopefully this weekend if the weather is favourable.

But for now... Grow Babies Grow!!

We really don't know what we are doing, so any tips, advice is always appreciated.

Starting Out On Our Orchard

There are many excellent reasons in deciding to move into the country, but one of those was having the space and land to have our very own Orchard supplying our pantry, filling our bellies with our very own fruiting plants. 

There is nothing better than eating fruit straight off the plant. This takes me back to my teenage years working with Nana & Poppa in Orchards during my summer vacations. Many pleasant memories.

We really want to grow and produce more of our own food, and knowing what goes into that, living that more natural lifestyle and getting back to the basics.. it surely has to be a better way.

We've planted a few fruit trees to start with, to see how they went, but we want to step that up a gear in 2015 as it takes time for things to grow. So this Autumn/Winter/Spring we want to get in as many plants as we can into the ground to get them underway.

As we are working essentially with a blank canvas, I've again been searching the internet for ideas, but the best source of information to date, was having a local landscaper come around to look at the property to discuss various ideas with and to find out what grows well up here in Kaipara. Thank you Sharon I love your service :)

One great tip, was to find out how deep the top soil is. Where I had been planning to plant a variety of larger trees had only 30 cm of top soil before hitting limestone.  So with the post hole borer machine, I set off drilling test holes around the paddock looking for deeper top soil... which I found as I moved down the paddock.

A problem that needed to be seen too before we start planting was creating some drainage. We noticed last year during winter, with a lot of rain, the paddock becomes rather wet, and I think due to the limestone the water doesn't seem to drain through that.

So I contacted Mangawhai hire, who delivered a digger to home for a small fee, and then the chap from Mangawhai hire gave me a half hour lesson on how to operate the digger. After a bit of practice I got the hang of it, and spent a day digging some drains and what a lot of fun that was! I must say, I had excellent service from Mangawhai hire, I was very pleased, and highly recommend them.

I believe the digger was a 2.8 tonne digger.

So the main drain, runs along the fence line, and has a downward run to the other end of the paddock which enters a natural water course down the hill. 

You can see I got a little too close to the fence at times, but it should be ok, I hope. The drain is about 40cm below the the top paddock on the left side of the fence, which where I plan to start planting.

To be honest I wasn't too sure what I was doing, but in my head I was thinking if the water in water sodden soil has an exit, which would have to be at a lower point, then the excess water trapped in soil should hopefully drain out and away freely by having an open drain/culvert.

But I will see how it works this winter, I might have to get the digger back.

A New Garage - DIY Style

Our little 3m x 3m garden shed is bursting at the seams, you have to climb over the ride on mower to get to the fire wood, climb over the bags of compost & quick set cement to get to the hand tools... its a bit of a nightmare situation and not to mention perhaps an ACC claim waiting to happen.

So... it's time to build a garage... a few years earlier than what I had planned.

We've spent hours searching the internet for ideas, obtained a few quotes for complete builds which were coming in around $25K to $30K for a simple double garage.... so in the end we've decided to go down the DIY road again.

Essentially it is just 4 walls, a door and a roof... how hard can that be...? 

We've decided that we will build the biggest double garage that $15K can buy. Granted $15K doesn't buy much to be honest, and we will be stretching that, which is why we decided to give the DIY a go.  

Hopefully it doesn't turn into one of those DIY building nightmares you see on TV, but in reality it should be easy, you get a contractor in to do the foundation work, and then you just put it together like kitset furniture. Easy!

After researching a few kitset options, we decided that Versatile Garages was the best way to go. For $10K we were able to secure a 6m x 8m double garage but we changed the cladding, as we wanted to be able to paint the garage the same colour as the house... so it all matches. Versatile has been easy to deal with, quick on email replies etc and very good to date on the many questions I've sent their way.

So a quick run down on the figures:

Kitset:  $10,000

Paint:   $200 - (we have paint left over from the house, so will be minimal)

Concrete Foundation: $5000-$6000 (contractors estimate)

Council Fees: $1300

Water Tank & Fittings $1000

On paying the deposit to Versatile, you are sent full building plans which you send to the council, with the building consent application, and they have sent out a 45 page instruction manual on how to build the garage. Looks all very simple, but I intend to study that in great depth over the next few weeks. 

It might seem daunting, but submitting the building consent application on Kaipara Council's website was much easier than I thought.  In fact I thought I had missed something as it was so easy, and sent a message saying that to the council.  The very next day I received a call from the Council, just confirming that I had done everything correctly. Pheww! So not just a 20 business day wait to get the consent.

Once the consent is received, I will get the contractors in to start the foundations, and Versatile will start building the kitset.  Once the kitset is completed, I pay the balance payment to Versatile and then it is trucked out from their factory. Easy Peasy! 

Below is what we are planning to build... 

Update.... the contractor has been busy preparing the concrete pad:

Site Preparation

Ready For Council Pre Concrete Pour Inspection

Due to the slope, we've put in another small retaining wall on the lower side of the garage.  We will put in some good stop soil and make a garden bed out of it, which will be handy, and we will not have to bend over to weed this garden bed. Bonus!

I will add posts once we start building... should be interesting. :)