The tail end of a South Pacific cyclone called Lusi whipped the north island into shape with rain and wind gusts. All bearable mind you … however at Frog Pond there was a power blackout and thus we had a candlelit evening Saturday night.
I have had the best weekend though – I’m gloating a ‘wee bit’. In fact, I even had help today on the beach collecting seaweed. How good is that?
What do I do with it? I put much of it in my seaweed fertiliser bin which is very smelly and incredibly potent. Plus it makes great mulch and rots down beautifully when dug into the garden – hose it first of course.
The rather tired runner beans have been carefully removed from their trellis and I have retained the shrivelled brown pods for their seeds. The trick with these, is to pop them into the freezer to kill off any resident weevils. A week in the chill box should do it.
My toms also got hauled out and their spent greenery chopped up ready for the rubbish bin. I don’t put this in the compost as sadly the plants have blight. This year was incredibly bad for my tomatoes, but rather than chuck the dummy out of the cot, I have decided that next year I shall only grow the Cherokee variety – which are stunners!
The zucchini which was sporting powdery mildew also got removed and again, the spent greenery will need to be binned or burnt. Those fantastic blokes also helped me to get the bed ready for the next planting. Into trenches went, seaweed and food scraps, and was then topped off with a rich organic compost, bit like making a lasagna. This is going to be my garlic garden so it will get a break for the next 6 weeks or so. I’m excited!
My ‘three sisters’ garden is doing nicely, although some of the sunflowers copped a hammering in the winds over the weekend. The corn is looking great the ears have started to ‘fatten up’. I also harvested the few ‘Jack be Little’ pumpkins which were in the same space. Tasty little guys which are divine roasted!
To top off a super day of gardening, we dug up the spud bed, which had a lovely rich layer of mulch. Wonderful Lisetta, Rua and Nadine potatoes plus a self-seeded kumara which were all hiding beneath the thick mulch. Nice! This bed will be planted with brassicas, which are perfect to follow a root crop. Big thumbs up.
I couldn’t help myself either … time for a pic of my gorgeous Lenny. Our diabetic kitty who has been with us for many years now … a great old guy.
And just because I really like this bit of drift wood …
Happy gardening