Choko

 

This is one super productive plant.

It's around 15 years old now and the vines reached around 10 meters long after I harvested heaps for mulch on top of collecting tips for greens. How's that for biomass? I gathered the vines today for a final mulching session before they die back with the frost.

We have been eating the fruit for over a month now and add them to lots of curries and stews. They are also great fried, roasted, pickled, with rhubarb in a crumble and you can eat them raw.

As a plant they create the most wonderful deep shade over summer and then die down with the first frost. Dropping all of their fruit for collection.

My sheep love to eat leaves and vines and the chooks and pigs eat any surplus fruit. This year we had half a trailer load!!

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.

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.

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.

Guavas

 We are never far from a snack around here -especially when you have children/harvesters visiting!!

 It's guava time and the Tamarello, mandarins and last of the apples are still around.

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.

Happy harvest

 Ours was spent with the best of friends. Sharing kai, clay creations, great conversations and of course music late into the night.

We ended up staying in the tipi overnight. Breakfast was leftovers and foraged fruit.

Mushrooms are go!!

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

A trailer load of harvest

 Corn harvested and ready for hanging. Thanks to all of my helpers!!

We dreamt up a harvest party while shucking corn and collected corn silk for rongoa too.

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

 

Tomato seeds

 The best of the best.

This is the time for tomato seed saving. I choose from the healthiest, tastiest, highest producing plants. Let the fruit ripen fully on the plant and then squeeze some seeds into a small jar to ferment.

This sits on our kitchen windowsill until the seeds fall down and we get a beautiful white lactobacillus bloom on top. Then I rinse and hang above the wood range to dry before storing.

This year we a trialing a range of yellow and orange tomatoes from Mark Christensen's Heritage food crops trust collection and will save our favorites to go with our long standing bunch.

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.