Rasins?

 

Raisin trees are a great easy care tree.

The raisins are the very sweet swollen base of the flower stalks. Sweet and crunchy.

These trees self prune, are an amazing bee tree (buzzingly so), creates beautiful shade, fast growing, deciduous and can cope with dry.

Am propagating more this year to spread amongst my chestnut and avocado orchards.

Winter tea

 Lemon verbena is an amazing addition to a cold or how brew. 

Before the frosts I harvest, bunch and hang. All winter long a few leaves can be added to teas.

I grow lemon verbena with citrus, other deciduous trees and with rhubarb, comfrey, mallow, berries....

Planting, planting, planting.

 

And another round.

Native broom, bottlebrush, wattle, and hebe as in photos.

Then rice bush, brunia, poplar, tagasaste (always) cardoon, jacaranda......and loads of perennial flowersand herbs.

So grateful to everyone who has brought flowers and foliage and has contributed.

Bamboo

It's not just  me that loves hanging out in the shady bamboo understory.

The violet patch is thriving...........and I found evidence of some one making potions.

This is one of my timber bamboo groves. As I harvest every year there is  room to move, play, set up hammocks... 

Out of the sun, next to the stream, rustling leaves... what more would you want?

Hedegrow update

 Eucalyptus doing well.

Mulched around them today.

Then planted around 50 understory plants -Hebe, caprosma, tagasaste, rose geranium....

Proudly all propagated by me. It feels so great to be able to raid the nursery and deliver wheelbarrow loads of plants around the property.

Flower delivery

All bunched up and ready to go!!!

This is my car every Wednesday evening as I deliver fresh flower bunches to Cafe Coco.

Mixing it up

 Nothing like a good guild of plants.

Sunflower seedlings on left where planted into a cover crop blend of seeds (peas, lupins, spinach, oats, crimson clover, wheat, buckwheat...) The sunflowers provide shade and then when harvested the cover crop grows until I'm ready to plant the next crop. Diversity of food, height, roots....

And well the flowers on the right are just a riot. All taking up different spaces and places. Shadign and feeding the insect life and soil in their own unique ways. Loving the purple millet and am going to save so much seed this year.

Chrysalis everywhere!!

 I am on high alert in the garden at the moment.

There are so many of these beautiful treasures hanging everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I have swan plants scattered throughout the garden and loads more zinnea's (butterflies love these the best) and other flowers than ever.

Weeding is now worrying after I pulled out some plants with a chrysalis on -yes my weeds are big.

Its time consuming to check each plant before mulching.

What an amazing problem to have!

I am a flower farmer?

Even though I'm trying to grow enough flowers to sell I cannot help growing as much food as I can squeeze in as well.

The lettuces and parsley are loving the dahlia overstory -not that they get much choice. They seem to be flourishing and I reckon its partly because of the summer shade.

By planting them it also meant the soil was covered quicker too.

Can you spot the sunflowers behind? 

It is blowing me away how many flowers I am adding to our gardens without compromising food production. 

Mixed bed full!!

This bed has, pansies, strawberries, rosemary, dahlia starting to grow, chives, chamomile, lambs ear, a whole lot of weeds, jerusalem artichokes in the back and every now and then a wine cap mushroom pops up too.

 

Sharp tools

Just finished doing a little sharpening on my favorite tools.

You never know how blunt they are until you sharpen them.

It makes things so much easier/quicker.

Lots of planning underway so my pencil sharpening has been a lot more regular.

Baby blues

New road = new fences and new opportunities.

These Eucalyptus are going to be a canopy in a hedgerow to provide; shade and shelter alongside paddock, more foliage diversity for my foliage business, make beautiful scented bath teas, provide pollinator food, capture nutrients to be given back to paddock, stabilize bank, add diversity and provide a sight screen from the road.

Underneath will go comfrey, hebe, caprosma, rose geranium

Also in hedgerow will be bottlebrush, manuka, macadamia, native broom, tagasaste.....

 

Happy solstice

 A beautiful frosty start here followed by glorious sunshine and gathering.

Solstice ramble salad for lunch.

Scaffolding

 Need scaffolding.

Just go and harvest some!!!

This is one of my favorite plants to visit. 

Its nestled in a small food forest with; Cherimoya, Banana, Sugarcane, Kefir lime, Fejoa, Pine nut, Avocado, Passionfruit, Loquat,....and of course since we are harvesting sunlight some solar panels.

Mushrooms are go!!

 Our Strophoria have left the mushroom patch for our garden paths. And wow there are so many.

Brownies in the garden

This afternoon I had a wonderful group of brownies in the garden. We wandered tasted and wondered. It is amazing what is edible and how much fun you can have mixing it up.

It is amazing how much of a jungle the garden is at this time of the year.
 

And thank you to Pam Pearse for taking the photo. It is not often there is one of me!!

End of summer jungle

 

Changes

 

This photo was taken 10 years ago when we started the first stage of our road. 

Since then this area has fed us, many friends and an ever increasing diversity of wild and farmed animals with an ever evolving succession of kai.

From the seeds grown and saved here we now have a community garden, seedling house and propagation area to distribute plant material into our community. 

Thanks to our friend Byron we have a birds eye view of this craziness.

Summer garden

 The Kumara is the only wide angle shot I can take at the moment. Most of the garden is so high you cannot see very far.

That is until you have a friend with a drone visit.

Thanks Byron . What a cool perspective. And you can see the whole garden. 

The job of the day was harvesting potatoes (bare ground). A day later and winter cover crop is sown, soil mulched and it should be green in a few weeks.

Tagastaste are up.

 These seeds are sometimes hard to germinate.

Lucky me. I had a whole heap of little fingers to help me collect them and then we made a worm cast potion for the seeds to soak in for a week before planting.

Germination success!!

These are some of the most valuable trees on our place. Tree fodder for Kereru, Tui, sheep, and cows, mulched for compost shelter for emerging trees....