Mt Pisa – Central Otago … stunning!

We spent about 3 days in Central Otago last week, which was a spoil. Such a beautiful part of NZ and while pretty damned cold, there is something magical about the place. Must be all those vineyards!

Meet those dorper sheep. Poppy and Lucy

My Oscar Neo has arrived. A white cold press juicer which looks smart sitting on our kitchen bench. I have only used it a couple of times, but have already decided that it is superb. It slowly wrings the juice from the vege or fruit which flows into a plastic vessel below with the spent stuff squeezing out the end, which by the way, goes into the chooks brekky! Thanks to my good buddy Kate …

Recipe

• 3 celery stalks with leaf
• 1 green apple or some yacon if you grow it
• half a cucumber (expensive component of drink)
• lime with skin removed
• coriander
• 3 lettuce leaves (I used Great Lakes from our garden)

Just delish and so easy to do. The most important thing is that the veg needs to be cut into relatively small chunks. Easy pesy – cleaning is a breeze too!

The weekend was spent hoisting out weeds and some borage, and yes I replanted the phacelia in the insectary. I finally managed to get out the weed eater and trim around the orchard and at last, I mulched the rest of my garlic too – if I could reach, I would pat myself on the back.

A pot stuffed with lemon grass and tansy …

Walking past one of my rather large plastic pots stuffed with lemon grass, forget-me-nots and tansy (yes tansy), I was surprised to see it flowering. Tansy is one of my perennial favourites from the Asteraceae family, which is particularly good in drought conditions. It is apparently good at keeping borer at bay in the citrus orchard (yes I have it planted in mine) plus it is great as a companion plant for your spuds too. I also have heard that it is great in a ‘do it yourself’ potpourri mix to deter flies and ants. A great plant to have in the garden, but watch it, it likes to grow and can ‘take over’. Time to get it out of that pot! Oh, and don’t forget it is poisonous, so keep it out of the kitchen!

Now this is what you call a bag of yacon! Yum ..

So once I had done my garden stuff and settled indoors to type up my blog and bits, Andrew presented a rather large bag of yacon, which by the way, will go perfectly in my vege juices as it is sweet without adding the calories. I have to be honest though, the bag is chocka with yacon, question is, are there any left in the garden? Andrew assures me there are!

At last my chooks have seen the light and decided that they should consider providing me with the odd egg from time to time. Nice to be able to give our good buddies some to take home when they come to visit.

Happy gardening!

PS Evidence of possums at work in the garden. Night time snacking …won’t be a great outcome for the tree!