31 More Day's To Spring!

Not that I'm counting, but we have 1 more month of winter, then it's official we are in spring!  

I wonder why NZ doesn't celebrate spring, as other parts of the world have great big celebrations, but not so much here, I wonder why? An excellent reason for a public holiday if you ask me, and a great way to see out winter. 

Knowing that spring is just around the corner I am busy getting myself organised, I want to double my efforts this year with the goal of creating the most bountiful garden to date. Last year was a bit disappointing as I was so busy with other projects and the vegetable garden was neglected, however 2016/17 will be the year of great growth!  

So I've scheduled in a week off work this month, so I can get my preparations underway.  Living in Kaipara we have a very mild winter, so spring really is already upon us I feel.

Last weekend I spent a day building my little seed raising glass house.  Small but it should do the job. I purchased some old windows off trademe for $10, and then with left over timber from other various projects I built the below, although I just need to do some painting to seal the windows better, but overall, not too bad if I do say so myself...

Now that I have my little seed raising house, I just need to decide on what to grow.  Every year I purchase a few more packets of seeds, and well after a couple of years, you end up with a mass of seed packets, although there are a couple new plants I want to try growing this year, so I see a few more packets being added to the collection before the month is out. Long term, I really need to get into the art of collecting my own seeds... maybe at the end of this growing season I'll give it a go.

Tip: Get yourself an Egmont Seeds or King Seeds catalogue, or if a little greedy like myself, both! Awesome selection of seeds to choose from, a great deal more than what you will find in store. You can order online, or they tend to send out a new seed catalogue each season after a few purchases. Very handy, with some useful information, new ideas and inspiration each year. 

Over the next couple of weeks, I need to:

1. Start sowing seeds,
2. Create another new garden bed, which involves boxing and moving soil.
3. Prepare the existing garden beds, which mainly involves weeding and turning the soil a few times.  
4. Make the garden fence a little more pest proof, mainly from the chickens and turkeys.
5. Also I have another new 20m fence and gate to instal next to the garden.

Part of the new fence is to allow for an extension of the garden, but also part of the fence is a new sheep pen/yard, which is on the other side of the same fence, so when we do get a few of our own sheep, we will have a little yard for shearing etc.  

But do you hear that sound... whenever I mention fence, you can hear the sound of sobbing in the background... do you hear that?  Well that's my credit card sobbing, whenever it hears the word fence or timber, my poor old credit card knows its about to get a hammering, poor old credit card, I do hope to put you into retirement soon.  Timber isn't the cheapest of materials, but the only way for us to keep the costs down is if we do all the labour ourselves.

If I can get all the jobs done before end of August, I will be a happy little camper.  Doesn't look too difficult, but working the above in between your normal daily chores, weeding, & mowing lawns your time slips away pretty quickly. So chop chop!

Winter 2016... Wet Wet Wet

My last post was way back in mid summer, and it's now mid winter... I know I've been slack with updates on our adventures, but it's not as if I've been sitting around doing nothing! Living on a lifestyle block there is always something to do, so I will briefly recap the last few months.

Well as I mentioned it is winter, and it's been a very wet winter, the ground is very water logged, you just can't go anywhere without gumboots on.  So far we have only had 2 frosts, and daylight is currently gaining by about 1 minute each day... I can just feel spring is around the corner.  Even the chickens have started laying eggs again, after about a 6 week break during June.  Also a wild duck was walking her chickens through the paddock the other day. Bring it on! Spring & Summer, I Can't Wait!

Poplar Trees: 

Our boundary line runs along the neighbours drive, and we own about 100m of very tall poplars, I would say 25 metres plus tall, they've been there for a very long time.  I think they are a beautiful asset adding to the rural view and outlook of the property, also the stock love their leaves, and they provide shelter and soak up a lot of the excess water from the paddock.  

Well, one of our neighbours, Barbara thinks differently, and she very verbally abusive on one particular day, and complained to me about the trees, as they overhang their driveway. I got my back up a little about that, I mean the trees are well over 20 years old, and we didn't plant them, and we only just moved here, and from what I understand she has lived here for 10 plus years.  I told her she is welcome to prune the trees on her side, I have no issues with that. I had to bite my tongue a few times, to keep the peace.

I'm a little bit of a greenie at times, and believe we need more trees in the world, so I'm not in the mind of removing them, but I will prune them as required, but in my own time, not because Barbara demands it, "I must remember, bite my tongue, bite it!

Well mother nature jumped the gun, and during autumn we had an awful storm, even the house was vibrating with howling winds, it was the biggest storm to date that I have experienced. It was a little scary in the middle of the night, I got out of bed a few times to make sure the garage and chicken house were still standing.  Not that I could have done anything in the middle of the night if all hell had been let lose, but I grabbed Max our cat, and locked ourselves in the bedroom.  

Come morning, I could see the damage from my window, the storm tore off many branches, and pretty much covered the entire neighbours 100m drive. So at 7am with chainsaw in hand, I started the clean up with help from the  other neighbours.   The next weekend I hired a cherry picker, which could stretch to 11 metres high, and we pruned about half the trees along the drive, so they were not overhanging as much as they were.  I don't like these sort of heights, I get the shakes in my legs, which doesn't help when you are on a wobbling cherry picker 10 meters up with a chainsaw in hand... the entire thing just shakes that much more.  But I told myself, just put on my "big boy pants" and get on with it. Thankfully some of the neighbours helped. About 4 properties share that boundary line, so I appreciated the help from Steve & Bob, thanks guys!

One of the branches snapped in the middle.

We will have to do some more pruning, it will be an ongoing thing, but I do like them. Big Beautiful Trees.

Fences:

Essentially when we purchased the property, it was all just one big paddock. There were two internal fences at some point of time in history, but now there is not much remaining other than a few posts, nothing to keep anything in our out.

So the last few months we have been working on the fences, we just keep chugging away at it a little bit at a time.  The first task was to make the house/garden area sheep proof, which we have now completed.  Then we will work on splitting up the remaining paddocks.

First take down old fence and cut back grass (above),

Then below the new fence... there are now two bottom wires

and a electric wire on the other side of the fence.

Max showing off on the new fence.

Water Trough:

We need to put in a couple water trough's so I purchased one to start with, and I didn't go too big as I had to man handle the thing on my own. So I was having to get a little creative to get the darn thing off the trailer, and into it's final location.

The final resting place was midway down the hill, from the top of the drive, so at the top of the hill I unhitched the trailer from the car, and basically slid down the hill as I stood on the trailer tow bar, before jumping off and throwing a chunk of wood under the wheels when I needed to stop.  Then tilting the trailer, I could slide the water trough off the trailer, and using that old technique of round roller posts under the trough to move it along the ground.

Connecting it up wasn't too difficult, but the entire setup cost around $200, trough and fittings.

We put some gravel under/around it, but we need a whole heap more, we've recently had some little ponies from my neighbour grazing the paddock and drinking from the trough, but it's still getting a little messy around the trough.

Max... Living The Dream:
We've come to the realisation that the only one in our household who is truly living the rural lifestyle dream is Max. Gary lives in the city during the working week, dealing with a rather stressful job, and I commute 130kms a day to my job, which too has become very stressful of late, and just seems to be taking up more and more of my time outside of work.

But here is Max, just owning the place... while Gary and I, are a slave to the man Cat! Right now as I type this, since I had dinner at 6pm, Max has been lying in front of the log burner, and its now 8.45pm. 

I'm actually jealous of Max, as he gets to spend his entire day here in Paradise, spending his days sleeping, eating and wandering around the property just enjoying himself. It's about time he went and got a job and started contributing to the household!

Up & Coming:
In addition to lawnmowing, gardening, we've also added some steps to the deck, so we truly have indoor & outdoor flow now from the deck to the lawn. We just need to stain it, once the weather sort's itself out, and then I will add some additional photos. 

Again, subject to the weather, this weekend hopefully, I will be building my little glass house box to raise my seedlings in. I will start sowing seeds at the start of August. Our vegetable garden will be awesome this year! I'm going to be much more organised this time round.

Also soon, hopefully, we will be purchasing some Arapawa sheep/lambs. If I have any money left!

But that's all for now, a rather long update this time, but I will try to be more regular with shorter updates :)

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.