copse's doings

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I typically plant corn 4 cm deep. I've never yet found a bird interested in digging it up.

[flowerweaver]

I have to short fence everything with an outward facing underground "L" to keep the armadillos out. They aren't interested in the plants, but the irrigation attracts grubs for which they will uproot everything. And one day in the Texas sun can pretty much kill anything that's been uprooted.

[copse]

Nov 21, 2014 20:42:49 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

I typically plant corn 4 cm deep. I've never yet found a bird interested in digging it up.

They're not interested in digging them up.  It's more that they just manage to scratch up the ground, and either bring the seed to the surface, or uproot (similar to flowerweaver's armadillos) the eventual seedlings.  This happened last year when I hilled with 4 plants per, and I had to continually come back and fix things up.  The hilling was part of the problem I suspect, as they tended to dig their way into the hill.

[steev]

Armadillos are quite tasty, not unlike pork; oh, wait..you're a vegetarian, flower; never mind.

[copse]

Most of my plants are mid-growth, not much to see. A matter of waiting.

Went out and checked on my licorice, which had pushed itself out of the soil due to silly hugelkultur below it. Dug it out and replanted it in a raised bed, so it can recover. I have a second licorice, which seems to have gone missing along with it's accompanying other plant.



Heard a buzzing sound, and went out to see what was up. Assumed it was cluster flies, but found something promising. I wish I had built the beehive I was toying with earlier in the year, would have come in handy.



I bought a bamboo some time back, as an investment in order to get both shoots to eat and poles to use as stakes. It hasn't really done much, and the leaves started yellowing a month or so back, so assumed it was going the way of my jujubes and other associated failures. Went out to check it an hour or so ago, and found three soft erections extending from it.

[12540dumont]

Nice bees....better get your suit on!

[copse]

Harvested a supermarket bag full of hawthorne from some of the roadside trees that still have fruit on, and turned it into leather using the dehydrator. There are still some trees that haven't dropped their fruit, so I plan to give it another shot and to try and do a better job of the next log. The Ray Mears video on YouTube cheats, and makes it sound straightforward. My next attempt is going to be: wash fruit, pick out all twigs and leaves, squeeze and then pick out all the stones which will be a slow tedious process.

Harvested bags full of apples and juiced them using an ancient borrowed juicer. I mixed in the remnants of a bottle of Bragg's raw cider vinegar, and it's in the hot water cupboard hopefully turning into apple cider vinegar. It's already smelling alcoholic. I'm also going to try another approach where you just use chunked apple pieces and theoretically don't need the Braggs, as a backup.

I also followed an approach to making a sourdough starter, where you add cabbage leaves (I used cabbage, and two types of kale to get more variety) to flour and water. It kind of worked, but I don't get dough that rises from it, so I guess it really didn't.

First frost two days ago. The only thing hit are the pumpkins where my father is using some of my land. They're all seeds he saved, growing on variety in town, and they've crossed with some neighbour's plants. Not the best, but still edible.

I've gotten together about nine or ten varieties of broad bean to plant together land race style. There's not that many varieties available in New Zealand. But I haven't had the time to prepare the land, so they might end up waiting for spring. richardw has provided me with seeds of Scottish Heritage broad beans, which will go in the mix.

Gherkins and courgettes were afterthoughts this year and were surprisingly prolific considering their neglect, which is a good thing considering how expensive they are in the stores. One of the courgette plants started sprouting fruit from it's base in the last couple of weeks, which I am assuming is an anomaly.

The okra are very lacklustre. There's some forlorn looking stalks with small fruit coming out the end. I'll have to try and work out

The popcorn patch looks like it pollinated really well. There are seeds from five different sources, in five rows. The only one that popped very well when tested before planting, was the commercial supermarket variety sold for consumption. I saw some information about how to get the right amount of moisture in the corn for popping yesterday, so I will retest with some of the left over kernels in the cupboard.

I have a seed bed of red ursa kale growing quite well. It has minor damage, which I observed happening the other day when I went outside. About five magpies were having battles over my fenced garden bed area, and the battle moved to the ground amongst the cover of my kale which suffered for it. The kale seed bed is a couple of meters over from where my red russian kale went to seed, and a few self seeded red russian kale have come up. No visual difference between them that I can tell so far.

[copse]

Finally dug out and planted my broad bean garden beds for my attempt at landracing them. There's probably two broad bean varieties I know about in New Zealand that I don't have, and I have about 10-11 varieties. Been recommended a calligraphers brush for hand pollination, so will be looking for one of them.



I have about 8-9 maxima pumpkin varieties I've acquired for my attempt at a pumpkin landrace. Have to plan that out, but we're still in the tail end of the middle of winter, so some time yet.

[richardw]

I take it that that photo is looking south, is the wind much of a problem though ive noticed the broadbeans just grow shorter if they are in a windy spot

[copse]

A good wpring snow happening this morning. That and a split pipe certainly give that winter feeling.

The larger beds should be east to west. And the front ones north to south. Your scottish are the tallest and are in the back bed. And then in front of that are the mid-height ones, and in front the smallest at ~1m (going by the packets and "internet research). I read somewhere to plant the beans N-S so both sides of the rows get equal sun, and the taller beans just got put at the back.

I'm not sure that the wind situation is that simple. We do get extremely strong winds for days, but we might get them several months apart. So the beans could in all likelihood get to maximum height and the wind will strike. When they do, it'll knock the broad beans over the netting and let the chickens in. That happened with my sunchokes last year. I was going to put 2m poles on the corners lined with lengths of trellis wood along it for support. I made the mistake of using string last year. But.. I don't know.. maybe it's a better idea just to pinch the tops off.

In the long run, it makes no sense to select for the taller plants here.

[richardw]

I heard your area had snow, only had rain, but bugger all of that too, bloody drought

[copse]

Finally, two nights of warm ~5C temperatures after a week of frosts. Been putting frost cloth over the apricot trees which are the only fruit trees that have been flowering until now. I need a better solution, as rain followed by frost means frost cloth frozen to the flowers.

The tree below is obviously not going to get covered with frost cloth. It seems to have avoided the frost damage my earliest flowering younger trees have, although I noticed it's flowers are pointing downwards unlike the younger trees.



I saved seed from my hostas from last year. The seeds are paper thin and I wasn't sure they were viable. Googling for hosta seed didn't seem to find anything helpful. In the end I just bunged them into a pot and scattered potting mix over the top and put them outside under a sheltered eave. Ideally if anything germinates, I'll be able to grow out and plant out quite a few around the orchard and it'll serve as chicken fodder. Then again, I saw them selling for $5 a piece in a local nursery. If I ever plan to sell at the local market maybe..



Among the other stuff, I've also planted out some chilean guava seed I saved from last year. This is the one berry the chickens won't eat, and so far neither do the birds, and of course it tastes quite nice.

Looking forward to seeing your garden video richardw. Hope you get some rain, we're starting to get the wet fogs here in the morning.

[richardw]

My chilean guava's got absolutely munted this winter, they will come back from the base again but it will be two years before they are the size they were before winter, getting bugger all rain doesn't help then to try and make it through such a cold period.

Noticed a bit of apricot blossom on one of my young trees this morning, just dont need a frost for a while, looking at the long term forecast we wont for about a week at least.

Yes i do plan on doing a video, i'll do that i the next day or so

[copse]

Another lovely spring day. Despite forecast of frost, and it being a clear stary sky last night, it was ~6C when I got up. The moons still out.

Paddock, NW View - 2015-11-01

I've gotten lazy this year. I put the corn out to germinate early spring under the eaves on the north side of the house, rather than inside by a sunny window. In past years, I got a 100% germination rate. This year I got around ~75% germination rate. At least I can tell myself I am selecting for hardiness..

The unfenced chickens have kept sections of the paddock clear. I decided to take the easy way out and not dig the ground at all, and to just poke the seedlings in. In addition, as bird protection from both the starlings and the chickens, I put down old fencing down to prevent the plants being dislodged. So far, I've only lost one plant to the starlings. My only regret is that I didn't get have more plants in the ground. I'll definitely be taking this approach in future years.

Bloody butcher:

Corn, Bloody Butcher - 01 - 2015-10-18 - 03

Painted mountain:

Corn - Painted Mountain - 2015-11-01

The broad bean landrace is coming along. I'm hoping the corn grows large enough to not require the fencing protection, so I can reuse it to support the broad beans in the wind.

Broad bean - 2015-11-01

Hoping to get some more beans in this year. This one is planted out with scarlet runner beans. The large stones prevent the chickens getting in and scratching, and the sticks prevent the starlings from getting in and scratching. Not sure if it's possible to tell from the photo, but is probably around 4 meters high.

Bean, runner - 2015-11-01 - 01 - Bean frame

I had left over garlic, and it was sprouting on the bench in the shed. So I decided to just wander around and poke holes with an old pointy tool, and drop cloves in. They won't be watered and will have to compete with the grass, but at the end of the season I'll dig them up and see how they went. If they do okay, I'll litter the field with them.

Garlic - 2015-11-01 - Random plantings

Here's my seed bed of red ursa kale. The neighbour's paddock is just being prepared for the winter crop of feed kale now, so there's nothing for this to cross with that I know of.

Kale, Red Ursa - 2015-11-01 - Seed bed

The apricots are looking really promising. Just need to keep an eye on them and net them when the time comes.

Unknown:

Apricot, Unknown - 01 - 2015-11-01 - Profile

Apricot, Unknown - 01 - 2015-11-01 - Close-up

Moorpark:

Apricot, Moorpark - 01 - 2015-11-01

Cluthagold:

Apricot, Cluthagold - 01 - 2015-11-01

Time to go out and put in some more bean frames.

[richardw]

Its looking nice and green down your way atm copse, i take you are not in drought like we are