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A bit more of a “before” record than a very interesting post, but at least there’s something for the breakfasting readers on a Monday morning desperate for something to enjoy over the Weetbix*. Today we managed to implement one small part of the “add some interest to flat and boring grass” plan and managed to get a trio of trees installed in one small corner of the place.

Crap photo for now, but it was getting pretty dark by the time we started planting, let along finished. (Not quite sure what’s up with the grass in the pic. It might be a bit messy, but it’s not really black out there, honest!) Must remember to take a decent pic in summer, assuming they get any leaves. At least you can see the stakes, if not the trees.

They’re a trio of tilia europaea, or English or common Lime trees. How they relate to their more fruity namesakes I have no idea. But given how big they can eventually grow I’m not sure you’d want to get them mixed up. I suspect we’ll never see them at their maximum height though.

Digging them in today was about as easy as it can be here as the ground is still soaking from a long period of rain. Definitely the best conditions for digging around here! Might have to try to quickly get on to another phase or two!

* As a side note, doesn’t Monday morning really suck for internet news in NZ!? At least while the northern football season is enjoying it’s 2 week holiday.

Stunning day here, so a bit of clean up in the garden was undertaken. All the manky celery plants that have failed to produce anything that was remotely unlike string were pulled out and thrown to the chooks, as well as all the parsnips that were lurking in the same plots.

We’d thought that this year’s parsnip crop was an abject failure, so we’d pretty much given up on them months ago, and all above ground traces of them had slowly vanished. Looks like we should maybe have paid them a bit more attention!

This little beauty weighs in at 1.447kg. Almost A&P show material! (Although you do have to have 3 matching veg for a good score there apparently, except in the giant pumpkin classification. You learn things like that out in the sticks.) And there were a few other good ‘un in there too. Looks like parsnip soup for the next week.

Which is just as well really, as there’s not much else happening out there. But at least we have some nice clear, freshly dug bits of garden for a change.

And no, I’m not talking about the after effects of a particularly vicious curry, but the after effects of a couple of particularly vicious frosts that we’ve had in the the last couple of weeks. They pretty much did it for all the remaining tomatoes and chillis left in the tunnel house so it was time for an autumn clean.

So it’s all looking a bit sad and empty in there at the moment. Some lemongrass and strawberry plants are all that’s left, as we were pretty disorganised and didn’t get anything sorted out for winter when we should have. Oh well, there’s always next year.

The compost heaps, on the other hand, are now full to overflowing.

I’ve been watching the chicken’s bum feathers get blasted around by the wind despite the windbreak cloth that we’ve installed, so last weekend we grabbed a few native shrubs to start a bit of a good looking and not too expensive shrubbery to assist them to scratch around unmolested by the breeze.

So far we’ve installed (from right to left, and really just so I have a record of what they are) Griselinia Broadway Mint, Griselinia L. Whenuapai, Pittosporum tenufolium “Oliver Twist”, and Pittosporum “Stephen’s Island”.

Four is about all I can install in a day without my wrists cracking from hitting rocks while digging, so that’ll have to do for now. Although I suspect we’ll need a few more to stop some of the other breeze directions.

And now I have a record of how big they started off so I can see if they’re actually growing.

Before I forget again, here’s this month’s wildflower.

I had to venture a little further afield to find something interesting this time – down by the bridge in the shade where these are taking over a bit of the roadside. But worth the little amble. If I thought we had any shade that would suit it I’d be thinking about collecting some if it and trying to naturalise it in the garden somewhere…

Update: I’ve just been informed that apparently it’s Chamomile. For some reason I thought that had a lot smaller flowers, but apparently not. I’ll have to smell it next time and see whether it smells right…

I’ve normally been a bit slack with plants in pots. They get installed in the pot, they hopefully look pretty, they get watered, they eventually die or turn ugly, they get chucked out. Rinse, repeat. Then A little while ago I decided that I’d try a bit of an experiment with the two biggest plants out on the deck that were starting to look like they had stopped flowering and were heading down the path towards being compost. So, a big harsh trim, followed by a bit of liquid fertiliser every couple of weeks and they’ve now turned into stars.

I guess there’s something in this feeding lark after all!

(And yes, I have realised that I managed to miss the “Wildflower” of the month for April. A bit busy. And I don’t remember anything really catching my eye anyway. I’ll have to go a bit further afield to see if I can find something for May. A good excuse to get out anyway!)

Historically I’ve been pretty bad at thinning anything I’ve sown. Like really bad! But this year we had such a good strike rate with our onion seeds that I could see things getting even more horribly squashed together than usual at some point soon.

So what better way to spend a fine autumn day than pulling out baby onions and trying to replant the best of them into new rows. So now instead of the original 3¼ rows of onions we now have 8. The big problem with that is that currently I only have enough wire netting covers for 4 rows. So let’s see how many get pulled out by birds or kitties before they get big enough to look after themselves.

Another crop that’s done well in the tunnel-house this year has been capsicums. So, what do you do with a glut of tomatoes, capsicums and chillies? Only one thing for it, brew up a batch of chilli jam!

First up, prepare the basic ingredients…

Note, that I wisely took the photo before I deseeded the chillies. I’d rather not spread chilli juice over the camera right now as we’re trying to remember to pick it up and use it more regularly at the moment. And there’s a moment every time I have to deseed a number of chillies that I’m very, very thankful I wear glasses!

So a bit of bubbling, bubbling, bubbling later, and at some random moment when we decided it was ready it was into the jars.

Now just the usual wait to let it all come together before the grand tasting!

We pretty much did everything wrong with our corn patch this year. The soil wasn’t really prepared deep enough, we had two types of corn in the same patch, we didn’t bother weeding it, etc, etc… But despite all that a fair few cobs seem to have been produced. So before they were totally munted by something we got on and had a “late summer” lunch feast of some of them.

Water boiling before they get pulled off the plants, of course, and straight in they go. Yum, yum!

Might have to try a bit harder next year!…

With the earlier demise of the cucumber plant in the tunnel house, the 2012 capsicum harvest could start to get into full swing. And I use the word capsicum here in it’s widest sense, encompassing all the many bell peppers and chillies hanging out in there.

Given that they’ve been a bit sorely neglected this year as well as everything else, they’ve done surprisingly well. And we have all sorts. We have ones that hang downwards…

Some that point up…

And a good number of big, fat, bell peppers that are about the size of my fist. (Can’t really see them in a little pic, so this one’s clicky for a clearer look)…

And a few more types too that I won’t bore you with. Aren’t you lucky! But yum, yum, yum! Expect some sort of red pepper chilli jam post soon!