Diversity

My new (only had for three years) pumpkins. I love this butternut as it is so quick to peel and cut because the whole long end has no seeds. They also store well and look really funky.

Over the last few years I have been trialing some new varieties of pumpkins (more variety in the seed bank). To keep seed true to type this has meant developing more isolation gardens (more work).

I love the new varieties so am looking to find some people to help with all of the mahi so our seed bank has a little more diversity.

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.

Tansy

Tansy is a constant presence in my garden. If allowed it will grow up to 2 meters all and run riot with beautiful yellow flowers.
I use it for an ever ready source of chop and drop mulch, food for insects, flowers for my table and as it is a perennial it provided growing roots in the soil all year.

Next years potatoes

Last years potatoes where a big experiment. We planted them into sheet mulched straw.

After harvest the potato patch was converted into a diverse cover crop. The seed were coated in a vermicast slurry and broadcast.
Buckwheat, corn, sorgum, sunflowers, oats, wheat, linseed, kale, spinach, fennel, clovers, phacellia, blue lupin, broadbeans.....
Come spring this will be mulched and corn planted into another diverse mix.

This year the potato experiment continues...
We have made a big compost windrow next to the cover crop and as we turn/move the compost we will sow a winter cover crop. At potato harvest time this will be mowed and potatoes planted in to cover crop an finished compost.

Cricket song

These guys sing as they munch on the roots and shoots of your plants.
This is an introduced cricket. It is much bigger than its native cousin.
They love hot dry summers when the ground cracks and plants get stressed.
Stressed plants send out signals to call in the clean up crew.
Crickets can damage already stressed crops badly.

Cooler evenings close the cricket chorus for the year. It is

Changing seasons

Harvest is just about finished and the cover crops are emerging through the mulch.

It is always so satisfying to see the soil covered in diverse crops and to know the soil food web is being fed over winter by the growing plants and mulch from previous plants.

This year I have various clovers, buckwheat, radish, lupins, broad beans, kale, spinnach, oats, rye, peas, linseed, some herbs that were always there and of course weeds that will fill in any leftover space.

Cold wasps

As soon as the weather starts to turn hornets are everywhere. 

Hunting our warm fences or sunny places.

Most of the queens have fattened up on autumn flowers and are hibernating in a nice warm place.

All that is left in the nest are workers with no work to do and the odd male. 

As the weather cools further they will die off. 

There work done for the season.

Memories

 

Seaweek

WOW!!! Seaweek 2020.

This event has now been running for years. I was lucky to be invited back and to see how it has emerged.

I designed some activities that would hopefully create spaces for people to stop and interact with the beautiful harbor environment.

I believe to observe  fully (while immersed in natural ecosystems) with all of your senses is the start of so much. To freely question and then to interact (process or play/exploration) is to form connections, understandings, literacy,  ......

My hope is that these exploration possibilities sparked many wonderings.

Children’s explorations are so rich to join so we had a wonderful morning.

Herb flowers

Herb flowers are always popular with pollinators. I wonder what sort of powerful rongoa they share.
This blue butterfly is drinking Thyme nectar.

Summer chorus

Cicadas sing all day  long here in summer.
They are sap suckers and also tree pruners who damage small branches when they lay there eggs -this damage makes the branches susceptible to snapping in the wind.

They suck sap from plant roots in there nymph stages and then move above ground when they emerge in late spring.

This one is enjoying some corn.

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

Hay

Many hands make light work.

Haymaking is so  much fun when you have extra hands to help out.

This year we had more hands than pitchforks so had fun.

The haystack at the end is always so satisfying.

House moves in

And the house moves in!!!

This amazing house has been built with many hands over a few years.
Beautiful house built by and for beautiful people.
It was scary moving it to this resting place -and it fits beautifully.

So privileged to have such amazing people doing such amazing mahi here.

And to cook it!!!

We have had so much fun building this oven. We had some great helpers and now can have some great bake offs.

While we build we discussed fire and clay. How we can honor it. How we came to be able to use it and the stories that have been passed down to us about them. The little nook in the fromnt of the oven is to place a ??? to remind us of this.

Thistle flower

Not everyone loves thistles.

They are an indicator of compacted low calcium soils. Funny that they have deep taproots so can help rectify this.

I have noticed that they move through the landscape. It would be interesting to see if there were many changes in the soil after they have been.

This small patch is full of bees, beetles, small butterflies and a katydid.

Daily move

I love watching these guys every day. What herbs or grasses they eat first, how they dance into the next paddock all this knowing daily moves mean regeneration of soil systems.

Detectives

We have been exploring our land in places we have not been before. Finding clues. Still to find out who has been living here.

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.

Bonfire charcoal

After the bonfire is charcoal!!

This charcoal is mostly bamboo so should be nice and dense. I will inoculate it and turn it into bio-char before I spread it around.

3erd hay

This paddock was compacted and waterlogged. Not much grew and it was hard to find a worm.

We cut down tall kanuka for our winter wood and then;
-pulsed chickens through with bales of hay for fertilizer, seed and organic matter.
-made a giant carbon rich compost (after turning once we added a lot of leaf litter from our bush). To bring back a diversity of microbes and fingi.
-planted the drain with native stock fodder, plums and tagasaste for diversity, shade and ramial wood.
-replaced an old blocked drain.
-put on some lime for calcium and to flocculate soil (soils are very high in Magnesium).
-annually we add a compost tea/slurry.
-managed the animals with portable netting so that they were only in a 'paddock' for one day at a time, let the pasture recover for longer, left more residue behind animals.

We still have a way to go but it is so amazing now!!
We have gone from  2 days grazing to 8. Residue, diversity, recovery and worm numbers are all up. It is also very easy to put in standards now.

As life is I cannot wait to see how much more this paddock will improve?

Kibbler

This grinder saves me so much time.

It kibbles my chicken food, and grinds up charcoal for bio-char and pigments for paints and plasters.

This dry clay is being ground for seed balls.

Pototoes

Dreaming or potatoes. Step one broad fork. Step two add compost. Step three roll out straw. Step four wait until the weather warms. Step five add the chickens (this was not planned but the slugs loved the straw soo much -and the chickens loved the slugs).

Step six will be plant the potatoes under the straw.

Edible weeds

We grow sorrel in our garden but this wild sheep sorrel has a muck more intense flavor. It seems funny calling it an edible weed when it is such a beautiful plant.

Garlic

My garlic is growing up through its blanket of mulch. Nice and early so it is well established before rust.

Mulch

Whether living or decomposing (living in a different way) mulch cloaks the soil. These mulches will protect and feed our soil over winter. As well as providing us with fresh greens. In between the plants are lupin seeds that will be pruned back so they do not shade out the edibles.

Turning compost

And the compost gets turned.

Each time you can see the amazing mahi of the invisible and then visible composters all working for us. Breaking down plant material and then each other into a beautiful mix of soil food ready to me turned back into the system.

Fungi flower

Mulcher

We sold our van and brought a mulcher.
It has been so good to have our own.
We are mulching everything; apples for cider, fish for hydrolysate, garden materials and loads of great ramial wood for mulch and compost.

Vermicast

Vermicast -or some would say liquid gold.
I am adding more and more carbon to my worm farms to try and encourage a much more fungal dominated cast.
From this I then make, seed treatments, compost teas and slurries, potting mix, and compost for planting.