I’ve moved on to the californian thistles after most of the noticeable hemlock has been felled – a combination of grubbing, scything, and, in the soft soil under the hawthorns, hand-pulling. I know more will emerge, but if we stop this year’s crop flowering, from our experience at home we know that next year’s crop will be minimal. I really hope the result for the thistle grubbing will be the same, but the numbers are so huge I think it will take more than one season to clear the paddock.

The scythe is the second ancient tool that has come into its own recently. Unfortunately, it isn’t mine, but belongs to D, and he claims sole use of it, but wields it to good effect on hemlock and overlong grass alike. He takes pride in keeping the blade super-sharp, which is the main reason he won’t let anyone else use it.

When he cut the long grass in our new orchard with the scythe, I used my third ancient tool, my pitchfork, to build a super-sized compost heap of cut grass, old hay and horse manure. The pitchfork has been in our family at last thirty years, but about twenty of them have been spent behind the basement door, handleless, after the original handle crumbled under a too heavy load. When we took up rural living again, D found a new handle, and it is literally as good as new. No other tool could have tossed those masses of spoiled hay over a two metre netting fence, though I do have to say, it was a less than perfect tool for round lumps of horse poo.

It amazes and cheers me to think that all these tools have been used in pretty much the same way for hundreds of years, and for the tasks they are designed for, nothing can match them for efficiency and beauty.

The glasshouse has the odd piece of glass missing, and large quantities of lichen growing on the glass top, but this helps keep it from overheating and well ventilated too. I’m thinking of transplanting a few phacelia seedlings in the earthfloor to attract the hoverflies and keep the aphids under control.

I have capsicums coming up (jingle bells) and I bought another plant similar to the fantastic one that gave me juicy capsicums last year, so I will need room for those in the sunroom. Also cayenne peppers and basil again, hopefully without the aphids this time. I am going to have a strict plant quarintine in the sunroom, and trust to the hoverflies in the glasshouse.

Beans, sugar beets, and assorted greens to put in tomorrow. Six blackboy peach seedlings now, but still only one yellow plum and no greengages. I bought a redcurrant last week that is going to go into the “chook circle” with the pumpkins and some runner beans and sweetcorn. Next year, it will provide multiple cuttings for me to start my new bushes for up the road.

Up the road is growing grass and thistles like crazy, but we are getting on top of the hemlock, I think. I would love to get some trees in to start the shelter belts, but I fear it is too late, except for the short fences down by the sheds, where we can water regularly. Back there next week to make more planting plans, while D worries about fences and sheep.

Waiting for the shelter to grow will be the hardest part. But the winds are terrific, and almost all of them seem to curl round the hill and come belting down the swale from the south-east. Apart from the ones that crash through the gaps between houses and sheds from the southwest into the brave group of just-existing fruit tress. We will be buying windcloth by the hundreds of metres, even before the trees. But not before the sheep, I fear. D really wants sheep. And some miniature horses.

So far since Friday, between us, we have walked the boundaries, taken endless measurements, grubbed hemlock and a few of the emerging thistles, mowed the longest patch in the front paddock, scythed the long grass in the “orchard” and stockyards, built a compost heap from long grass, spoiled hay and horse manure, met some of the neighbours and sat in our shed and drunk multiple cups of thermos tea. Much more of the same to come. I will try and be better about recordig our progress.

Those are the warmth loving ones that will need the sunroom to germinate.
More hardy are
Sugar beet – Kings
Carvalo Nero – Kings – loved the seedlings I got [update 1x6 cell]
Purple sprouting broccolli [1x6 cell]
Onions – red bunching and red brunswick
More spinach, probably, though I have heaps as seedlings already. Ditto silver beet
More snowpeas – looking forward to them!

To prick out: Tomatoes, bloody butcher [yes]; spinach, santana; silverbeet; beetroot; greens in the snow [update - the only other one I pricked out was the one I didn't mention - kale]
To transplant: Spinach, silver beet, pakchoi if it’s still alive [stuck some pakcho between the broad beans in the double dug bed. We'll see if they survive]
One of my lemon trees! The raspberry canes that have been sitting in a sack, sprouting

To put straight in the ground: Sprouted cliffs kidneys and jersey bennies – already have about 12 cks just showing above ground, thanks to a neighbour; another row of mesclun, more peas, carrots and spring onions

Next month - beans and corn and more pumpkins and peppers

Busy busy days ahead.

I have to get on top of grass creeping (galloping!) into the mandala – I’ve bought huge amounts of phacelia which seems to have good ground cover, and have to chop up and replant my comfrey roots around the edge. And when the base of the chook dome is linseed oiled the chooks can go back in their dome beds – they will miss the space they have now but I’ll shift them more often.

But now it’s spring – has been for a few weeks, despite the calendar, and it may be time for a fresh start – at least I finally got those heirloom apples in the ground last month, and two Pax gooseberry bushes last week. But the bigger news is that we are on the verge of buying yet another piece of land – a large back section of over an hectare down the road. It slopes into a swale and up a hill crowned with venerable hawthorns. The view is worth the clamber up the hill. Aspect of the land is to the west, curved round the swale, which should give protection from southerlies, and easterlies when the the shelter trees grow. Most of the land is slightly south sloping, but there is one protected side that faces due north I have high hopes of for chestnuts and maybe some stone fruit. The soil is a lime-based loess, very fertile and quite alkaline. (Meyer lemon at last?)

Eventually we hope to establish the sort of food forest that we didn’t quite have the scope for here with all the established trees and lawns that D was so reluctant to tamper with apart from putting in the hazels. But we want to spend a season getting the lay of the land, so D will run some store lambs, and maybe satisfy his yearning for a miniature horse or two. I know how to put photos up now, so promise a succession of photos, as we fill in the corners, bit by bit…

Today is Anzac Day. It is also one year exactly since we came here as owners for the first time. For over half of that time (since we got our chooks in September) we have thought of ourselves as living here permanently, and our house in town has become our bach. Gardenwise, I’m really proud of what we have done. We have created a productive garden from nothing – built on sand, basically, we have provided our own vegetables almost completely for most of this year, we have discovered a lot of local food resources and used a lot of them, we have planted a dozen hazel trees and planned for fruit trees in the future. We have eaten healthily, learned new skills, made friends with all our neighbours and enjoyed our surroundings. It has been a wonderful time.

This autumn is very dry compared to the autumn we arrived in 12 months ago, though it has started to rain a little and is promising more.After 4 seasons of gardening or would-be gardening, what have been the standout stars, what didn’t work so well, and what are we going to try again, or for the first time?

What worked well
The chooks have been great, both in egg production and garden cultivation terms. They are costing one dollar in feed per dozen eggs when they are all laying in full, and providing at least that much value in terms of fertilizer and cultivation in the mandala. They stay in each station about a month. I have been a bit lax with mulch, but try and give them lots of extras to keep them happy. The sand under the dome has changed in colour from pale brown to dark, and has produced a succession of good vegetables.

It was worth creating an extra bed under the clothesline to provide early greens while the mandala was getting established. The double digging provided mountains of silverbeet and spinach in particular. Will have to work to maintain its fertility without involving the chooks. We do have lots of horse manure to compost though.

The sunroom has been bloody fantastic, both as a glasshouse and a solar heater for the house. The capscums and chillis have been a special suprise, and the tomatoes would have been even better with a bit of better planning. Great for seed starting of tender plants as well.

Next post for ¨could do better¨.

First, the weather summary as background. August was mild and balmy, I think, September and October were cold with bitter easterlies. The last frost I have recorded is mid November, but that was an outlier, with the main frost season seeming to tail off in October. It must have been dry in spring, despite the cold winds, because I remember how thrilled we were to have 15 ml arrive the same day as an outdoor picnic we were hosting. After that, there was a bit of rain late December and January, but February and especially March were very dry. We had one 8ml fall at the beginning of this month. The pond has been without water for at least a month. Luckily, the river that feeds our town water has been well fed from rain up in the hills, so there have been no watering restrictions. February and March were both very warm (to us, anyway – days regularly in the 20s, nights also warm).

Tomato history in all this is as follows:
Late August, I planted Kings Subarctic plenty (SAP) and Oregon spring (OS) in seed-raising cells in the sunroom.
Late September I transplanted these into 750ml pots of potting mix
Late October (28) planted some Bloody butcher (BB) and Roma seeds I got from Kings – raised in glasshouse, I think
Early November – transplanted one SAP and one OS into large pots to raise in end of sunroom. As they grew, supported them with lengths of stretch cloth hung from rafters. Was very dilatory at pinching out their shoots, as Kings had them both down as “determinate”, what they called “bush” tomatoes that could grow without staking. A few days later planted 3 more SAPS/OSs in large pots on north side of glasshouse. By this stage they were so mixed up I wasn’t sure which were which
21 November – planted the remaining 4 of the SAPs and OSs around the NW perimeter of the mandala – mostly on old compost sites. These I just left, and they got incredibly dense and impenetrable. Won’t do that again.
About same time, a friend gave me some Black Krim (BK) and some variety of yellow (Y) tomato seedlings she had grown from seeds from the Riverton Environment Centre, and I pricked them out into individual pots, after leaving them to languish for a couple of weeks.
27 December – planted BB and R seedlings in mandala bed with broccoli and snowpea teepee.
31 Dec. Planted out the BK and Y seedlings at various posts round ouside of mandala. Staked some of these and BBs and Rs with inadequate spindly bamboo canes from tops of Chook dome bamboo.
Early feb – picked 1st red outside and 1st red sunroom tomato, within days. Difference was, the sunroom toms kept producing, but the bushes stopped more or less. If there were tomatoes in there, I couldn’t see them! Glasshouse tomatoes started producing a week or so after sunroom ones. Some were reasonable size, some marbles.
Late March – 1st BBs ripening outside. Tiny Rs green and retarded. The BKs and Ys seemed to be getting a touch of colour, but stayed the same over a week or two without developing. This month I started taking more leave and side shoots off, though still poorly staked,
Early April – because of frost fears, put polytunnel over largest concentration of BKs and Ys – taking them off their stakes. Ruthlessly decimated the bush SAPs and OSs, to find masses of tomatoes pale green underneath. The odd one that had ripened had usually been attacked by something. Exposed these to air and light in attempt to get them to ripening stage. Started covering all outside tomatoes in evening. Days have cooled a bit, but still gets warm when the sun shines.

Variety report
Sub arctic plenty – good yield, even size – up to 5cm – smooth – flavour ok
Oregon Spring – more small toms and lower yield than SAPs, but very intense flavour – my favourite so far. Slightly bumpy uneven surface, and marble-sized can have thick skins.
Bloody butcher – very heavy yield, similar size or larger than SAPs. Hang in clusters so would have done better with better staking. Flavour ok – haven’t reached that dark red colour they are supposed to yet
Roma – useless outside in this climate – not worth trying again.
Black Krims – largest fruits, some bumpy and irregular. Haven’t tasted yet
Yellows – similar size to SAPs. Haven’t tasted yet.

What I will do differently
Sow and transplant earlier – I read somewhere that the last transplant date is the crucial date that ripening is determined from.
Stake and manage better – obviously even the determinate varieties need side shoots pinching and some defoliation.
Protect outdoor seedlings from wind in early stages. Plastic covered chickenwire circles should be a good thing. We will have windcloth round the mandala also by next spring.

What was ok – pots and mediums and soil in mandala all seemed to work well.
Will use SAPs. OSs and BBs again, possible BKs and Ys if they come through ok.

My aim next season is to have ripe tomatoes indoors by new year, and enough outside tomatoes to preserve or freeze some sauce.

1. In our climate, we couldn’t leave our chookies to roost in an airy dome, so D built an extra sturdy ark, and a connecting tunnel, which we had an idea could act as an emergency run – so far not needed. This means that a lot of their fertilizer is dropped at night when they are roosting, and doesn’t go on the dome circle unless we take it out and add it, which is a bit fiddly.

2. Linda’s claim that her hens search out every weed seed and scratch up every weed root has proved very optimistic, and suggests hers are more closely related to velociraptors than mine. Ours tend to tread a cake of organic mulch and earth on the top, and leave the clods underneath, so I have to get in with a fork and dig up the roots from time to time. Mind you, she fed her chooks on what was in the circle, and we can’t do that, because a) it is fairly barren sand, still largely bereft of worms and other protein and b) we haven’t got the nerve to keep them hunting for food while they are popping out an egg a day. We are feeding our chickens layers pellets, with greens, scraps and the odd insect for interest, plus extra oyster shell grit for extra calcium.

I think when these girls go off the lay I might keep them for their scratching and let them live on what they get from what should be a much more productive soil by then.

3. Haven’t really got the hang of mulch yet – neither have the chooks. It tends to inhibit their scatching, and it’s hard to chop it up into small enough pieces. But azolla is fantastic – they love scratching in it, eat the algae attached, and it melts away into the soil. stable manure goes down a treat too. I have made a few good compost heaps, but chook mulch has always been a minority part of it, even when I use all the mulch. I have not yet planted in the mulch, but have raked it all off, forked the soil to mix (see below), and used some of our copious grass clippings as mulch instead – I haven’t had the nerve to add more than a small amount of conventional short clippings to their mulch – too many stories about compacted crops.

So far we have shifted the dome three or four times. Post shift, there is a dark layer of sand a few centimetres deep, which is the humus-added, enriched soil that the chooks have worked on. Underneath, it is quite often pure sand, but it all forks in together well, and seems to grow good veges. And it is easy to pull weeds out of, if I can reach them. We are slowly getting rid of the grass in the mandala, though some sections are untouched. Thick mats of grass clippings help

We hav decided that this particular microclimate is quite prone to frosts, despite being close to the sea. On the other hand, fine days are very pleasant. Our sunroom gets up into the 30s easily. At the moment it has a pot of mesclun and spinach coping with the heat nicely and ready to thin, a dozen tomatoes pricked out into pots of potting mix (didn’t have enough ingredients tomake some so resorted to bought) 6 basil plants that will have a permanent home in there, and a lemon tree given to us by a neighbour, in a pot but awaiting planting out when the weather is warmer. The lemon tree I brought from home and planted out was killed by frost, but we have another healthy young specimen given us by friends as a housewarming present. Yesterday potted it up from a 20 cm pot to a 30cm, which is apparently what you should do. If the other lemon does well we’ll put this one outside eventually, otherwise it will stay in a pot in the sunroom.

Anyway, after that digression, what has happened?

fruit and nuts
We have 12 hazel trees, all doing well, 10 whitehearts and 2 Mde B pollinators. On has an Auckland grated to it as well. We shall find out in a year or so if thy are the right pollinators.

We have at least half a dozen raspberry canes around the place that are sending out shoots, though we won’t get any fruit till next season.

The four blackcurrant cuttings that I brought from “home” are all doing well, though no fruit till next season again. There is a very old blackcurrant by our mailbox, but it is technically in the neighbour’s property so will have to negotiate there.

And the lemons, as above

Large fruit trees will have to wait till next winter, and will involve lots of argument about what other trees can be sacrificed to accommodate them.

Vegetable beds

The mandala has been very slow, it is going to be a long term project transforming that sand and twitch/yarrow into productive garden. On the advice of our permaculture advisor, we have dug a barrier round the whole mandala, to be circled with compact hebes at some stage – comfrey apparently dies back in winter so is no use, though the 3 scraps of root I got from a neighbour are going great guns. We have brought in a free trailer of stable manure from a local horse trainer,and I have made about three compost heaps largely from debris in the neighbouring rubbish pile. Now the grass is growing we have huge quantities of grass clippings weekly. One of the mandala circles has some seedlings doing quite well finally – it was the circle where I built the first compost heap. Another has some peas and broad beans just coming up – this had very little besides sand on – some azolla, and a bit of pea straw. Grass and yarrow are spouting up through the sand.

But we have started another garden on the lawn by the back door -much more zone on. The first strip has early potatoes just coming up with 4 silver beet plants at the end, but we added a small triangle currently for carrots (not up yet) shallots, mesclun, not up yet, though the two mini rows by the glasshouse are, and transplanted spinach raised from seed. This was double dug, and I am currently double digging a neighbouring bed. All these together will hav about the volume of two or thre mandala beds.

Running out of steam. Next post about our chickens.