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.

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.

Buckets of learning

  

Its not just learning how to grow new things, but learning how to pick and process and how much you get from everything.

Am getting buckets of flowers and have so many bees.

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. 

Poppies and bumblebees.

What a time waster. I spent so long today watching big fat bumblebees trying to land on flimsy floaty poppies. A crazy dance.

The poppies keep just out of reach as the draft from the bumblebees wings pushes it away.

There where a few successful landings by the most persistent bumbles.

The poppies petals only last a day due to this persistent pestering.
 

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.

Happy solstice

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

Solstice ramble salad for lunch.

End of summer jungle

 

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.

Bee watching!!

Watching bees.

First you have to sneek up to flower. 

Make sure your shadow is away.

Slowly hold flower and if you are gentle you can bend it towards you and get really close! 

New tree systems

Meet our new wicking tree propagation unit. Thanks to the help of our amazing Woofers Renata and Tiago we now have;

-over 20 different varieties of semi-hardwood cuttings in our unit (so will see what works).

-a dedicated area in the community tunnel house for tree propagation from seed.

-loads of air prune pots.

-a shady area for potting on our seedlings (we already have; Inga bean, Custard apple, Tree Fushia, Currents, Honey locust and are awaiting more pots for; Tagasaste, Tamarello, Peaches, Plums, Raspberries, Pawaw,..and loads of natives.)

 

Sunflower pruning

This year I have been pruning my sunflowers and wow!!

After pruning they grow fast. It is simple I run my hand down the stem and the leaves snap off. This is great as I often plant sunflowers in amongst corn and curcubitae so this allows a lot more light into the understory. 

Next year I will do this more regularly as I noticed some of the pumpkin leaves got burnt as they went from shade to bright sunlight too quickly

Companion planting

 

To me companion panting includes a whole succession of diverse plants working together to achieve abundance. 

It spirals out from this garden bed to our whole farm and plants grown for other gardeners (birds, insects, worms, fungi...) what we want to eat,  and then scaled down through the farm to the whole garden rotation, annual and perennial crops, seasons, microclimates, seeds to save, earth covered for as long as possible.....A crazy dance.

Photo number 1 is of a mixed greens bed planted into the mulch of winter cover crop (Lettuce, radish, red onions, rocket, cornflower, sorrel, sweet pea, ) Last summer this was a kumara bed that was replaced with a diverse cover crop. The path is mulched with bark from the bottom of our woodshed as this path will be walked often when collecting salad.

Photo number 2 shows the rocket flowering and magenta spreen coming up. We have just planted some Hyasinth been vine down the middle to add beautiful flowers to our summer salad and shade to the salad greens. Because I will be saving the lettuce seed I will be leaving the lettuce in for a while. Next summer this bed will be a grain crop.

Planting tomatoes

Can you see me!! I am standing up. This is before I moved all of the bumblebees and edible broad beans and picked a salad (spinach, kale, edible flowers, lettuce, sorrel, carrots..) I used a mower to mulch everything and after a little weeding planted my tomatoes into deep mulch.

My cover crops are getting wilder and it is getting harder to mulch them as they are so full of life and food!!

 

Crop Swap Flowers

During lockdown I have been even more aware of all of the plants and learnings I have gathered from Crop Swap. Even though I am missing the amazing people I am reveling in the connections I have in our  community and know as we unlock we will be able to meet again.

Here is a link to the first Crop swap day.

Sharing

Some things are just too good not to share.
This bumble bee and Copper butterfly.
Often sedum plants have a wide variety of pollinators all at once..
They are an easy care perennial plant that is easy to divide and spread around your garden

Lettuce flowers

Lettuce flowers with a Blue butterfly pollinator.

The whole ecosystem benefits from plants going to seed (if it is not an noxious weed).
Flowers for pollinators, seed for next year, soil shaded and fed by living plants for longer, higher proportions of carbon for compost and as the leaves can die back an opportunity to plant your next crop as an understory.

Sunflowers

I am loving sunflowers.

In summer whenever I have a spare bed I sow them as a part of a diverse cover crop.

We have beautiful flowers to share, food for pollinators, petals to eat, are deep rooted for loosening soil, create mychorrizal connection, create a great nursery for winter kale and spinach and grow lots of carbon for compost.