The Garden Share Collective ~ December

The Garden Share Collective is the brain child of Lizzie from Strayed from the Table. There are a group of bloggers from all over the place who chat about what is going on in their gardens, with hints and tips. Pop over to Strayed from the Table to check out all the others.


This is going to basically be a veggie post this month, because things are finally really growing.

 The Veggie Garden

I've now got tomatoes ready, lots of greens coming along nicely. In the gaps I mentioned last time I planted things that will take up a lot of space ~ I went for butternut squash, crown pumpkins, a watermelon and a honeydew melon. Quite excited to see how they all do. I've had success with all but a watermelon before.

Courgettes looking good - it always has a bit of a setback when I transplant it outside - I may have been a bit early this year!

My 2 different types of cucumber ~ a lebanese and an apple one ~ are going amazingly!! Perhaps I wont give up on them after all. I can even see  some teeny tiny cucumbers appearing.

The butterbeans are going crazy. The snake beans are growing really slowly. It would appear they had a bit of an aphid problem. So I neemed them! what a difference that made!

Some of my sweetcorn. Every year I plant this is stages in the hopes that the corn will come ready at different times, and every year they all seem to  come ready round about the same time anyway. Still, I keep at it.

So, that's about it really for the veggies. They're doing what they're supposed to.

The Greenhouse

I washed the outside of the greenhouse a couple of days ago. Over the last year it had got terribly green on the roof and walls. I thought it looked dirty! So I got the garden hose and a broom, and just brushed the green off and sprayed it clean - it looks lovely again.

I wish I'd planted peppers/capsicums in the greenhouse last year - they are just doing so well!

The aubergines are growing like weeds in here, but I'm not too sure if my experiment is going to be a success or not. They're dropping their flowers rather than setting them. I've been reading up about flower drop and it seems that it could be either not enough water, or temperature fluctuations - which they do not like. I can control the water issue, but not so easily the temperature. Not sure what I'm going to do with them. Hope for the best I suppose!

Here's a wee overview of the tomato side of the greenhouse - I've pruned them quite heavily and nipped the tops out so that they don't grow any more - my plan is to harvest these tomatoes over the next 4 weeks, then plant out some more from seed. I'm sort of hoping they grow over summer and we'll have late tomatoes.

The chillies are coming on brilliantly!

 This is a wee harvest of tomatoes, the branch on one of the plants was so heavy that it broke off when they were all still green. So I picked them off and just put them in the trug to ripen.

My hydrengeas are out in force now!! I LOVE them!

 More exciting news!
Elizabeth hatched 5 out of the 6 eggs I put under her. She really is the most gentle mum. Gerald, my white leghorn is the dad. The mums are some of my white leghorns, and three mixes! You can see how strong the leghorn gene is as they are all yellow. Two of them have wee black spots though! They're like Dalmation Chickens!

 I adore having chicks around the place!!

So, there you have it!
See you next month!

It's winter, pretty much...

So I thought I'd have a wander around the garden to see what's going on.
It's been wet recently, we've had some rather spectacular rainy days, so it's all a bit boggy out there!
As you can see the trees have turned! This is a Japanese Maple and every year it puts on an amazing display for us.

And it's camellia time of year. We have camellias round the deck of the house, white ones at the front and pink ones at the side. They are spectacular right now.

Next it was a wee wander round the veggie garden. It's a bit of a sorry sight right now. I decided not to do any winter planting in here at all, except for some Aldermans Peas which are the most amazing heritage pea, ever! These grow very well up here, even over winter.

The rest of the veggie garden beds are empty, fertilized and mostly under hay! The asparagus bed needs the ferns cut down now, and fed and covered, but even though these berries are poisonous, I think they look really pretty.

I purposely left a few sweetcorn plants for the birds to have something to eat when it got colder. It's amazing. They open the cobs themselves and just eat further down each day. Impossible to photograph them actually going it though, which is a real shame.

Next into the citrus orchard. This year our keffir lime if covered in limes, which is brilliant as they are totally amazing to cook with. And the smell is gorgeous.

Bananas! This year has been a spectacular year for them. I think they really enjoy the droughts. We'll let these get a bit bigger then take them off to ripen. We just ripen them on the deck.

 Here you can see how they form from the flower. What you can't see is how many bees are buzzing around the pollen!

Then I went into the greenhouse, where I am growing things over winter.  Since this is my first year of having the greenhouse it's all very experimental for now. As you can see the second I went in there the camera lens instantly fogged up because of the heat!

This, I am very excited about. I grew some tomatoes from seed a few weeks ago - I did a bit of research and found Sub Arctic Plenty, and Oregon Spring. I think these are my best hope of having winter tomatoes.  The plants are growing beautifully and if you look closely - through the fog - you can see wee flowers starting. It remains to be seen in I can actually ripen anything.

I've also planted some herbs that would normally die back in the herb garden over winter. Coriander and basil, we use these all the time.

And the chillies! They are still growing like wild triffids. I trimmed them back hugely a couple of weeks ago, and already there are lots of new leaves growing from the ends of the cut bits.

Here's some of the garden markers I made at pottery - just cos!

And the sudras - remember the rogue, self seeded chilli I found in the veggie garden and potted up and put in the greenhouse? Well, its growing up a storm. These are so pretty and really long. Lloyd assures me they have a lovely flavour.

Then I thought, I haven't taken any photos of the chickens recently...
My girls really do do us proud, in the 7 years I've had them we've never had to buy eggs, and this year they've almost paid for their own food too!
You haven't met Gerald yet! He's my white leghorn boy, he was one that hatched at the beginning of the year. He's very handsome. Still young though.

This is Beatrice, she's one of my Barnvelders. They're very pretty and lay really lovely dark brown eggs.

Here's some of the gang having some scratchy -  there's Barnvelders, NHRs, Barred Rocks, Araucanas, Leghorns, a Campine, Wyandottes, and some mixtermaxters!

This is Sparrow, shading herself, she's a cross between a NHR and a Leghorn

 
Here's Maude. She was my very first chicken and she's 7. See how grey she's getting. She's not laying right now as she's just coming out of a moult, but she still lays regularly. She's my best girl!

This is one of Gerald's sisters. She's Glinda ( the good witch!) Not laying yet, too young.

So there you have it! What's going on here.

I've been invited to take part in The Garden Share Collective. It's a monthly post and it should be very exciting! The next one will be on the first of July - I'm just getting you all ready!!

I love my chickens, I Iove their eggs...

...but I especially love the blue ones.
They don't taste any different, and all eggs are beautiful, but there's just something about these.

They're laid by my gorgeous Araucanas, and range from pale blue, to an olive green to bright turquoise.

beautiful

the chicks..

Five hatched. Well actually all 6 hatched, but the last one had something wrong with it so poor Lloyd had to deal with it while I sobbed. To have come so far. It's really sad. And I should be delighted that there are 5 gorgeous, robust, healthy babies, and I am, but it's just slightly marred by the wee one that didn't make it. I'd way rather it just never hatched at all.

Constance/mummy was in the old smaller broody house, so yesterday afternoon I moved them all to the new bigger one. I put Constance in first, then gathered up all the babies and put them into a wee bucket, to make it easier to carry them all over at the same time. They looked so cute I had to take a pic!

Then they were very quickly reunited with mum, who instantly puffed up and they all ran under her!
They're very game wee things - they're not afraid of me at all. When I peek in or put my hand in to give them more food or whatever, they all run towards me and are very happy to be stroked. Maybe it's a bred thing. I've never had leghorns before.

On a totally different note, Lloyd and I and NandS went to see The Life of Pi last night at the cinema. It is absolutely amazing. Recommend it to anyone. I loved every second of it.

Could this be the first chick of 2013?

The leghorn chicks were due to hatch today, but yesterday afternoon when I checked on mummy chicken ( Constance) there was a teeny, tiny, yellow ball of drying out fluff peeking out.
I've seen this so many times now, but it never fails to get me so excited. Poor Lloyd has to stop whatever he's doing as I thrust a camera in his hands!

So, here it is, newly hatched and still a little damp. This morning 4 more have hatched over night and the last one is pipping so I hope it makes it as well. These are white leghorns, I drove down to near Whangarei to pick them up and they came from a really lovely looking place.
Here's hoping lots are girls! Or at least a decent ratio...or one!


We're basking in glorious weather right now, and it's lovely, but poor Lloyd has a tummy bug and is not a happy bunny, so I hope he gets better soon

It's that time of year again!

Broody chickens all over the place. The 2 mummies that I had sitting on eggs hatched them yesterday and last night. Maude only hatched 2 - one of her 4 eggs broke and was infertile and she threw one out of the nest 2 days ago. It was fertile so I don't know why she did it. Her 2 babies are one black with white wing tips and one brown striped one.
Mabel has hatched 3 tiny black chicks, all with white wing tips.
George is dad to them all and it was a mixture of eggs. I didn't even know if they were fertile so it's nice to get some chicks. I have a buyer for them already!
(But I know I'll hate to see them go!)

So, the mums and babies are taking up my two broody houses and today I've got 2 more broodies in the big house. It's a bit of a pest really as I have nowhere to put them to either break their broodiness or let them sit safely without the other chickens wanting to lay and eggs getting pushed out of nesting boxes - already this morning there was one broken egg.

This problem has led me to fork out for yet another small chicken house which we will only use as a 'breaking broody' house!!
We got this one - which in actual fact, we'll use as a proper house and use one of the older smaller ones as the breaking broody house!

And here are the new babies.. this one is very pretty!

This wee one looks a bit dusty!  It was lounging around in the food bowl!

what's been going on?

I feel like I've not written anything for ages!
So, what have we been up to?
Well, we've been spoiling ourselves rotten!

We spent two days down in Auckland.  Lloyd had a dental course to go on and I just went down to keep him company and organise my summer wetsuit. Which was all good, but the highlight of our stay was "Tiffin" at The Langham. We've actually tried to book this before, but it's always so busy that this was the first time they've had space.
It was well worth the wait!

The Langham is simply stunning so we had high expectations.
You start off with savoury things - which we ate all of!

Then you move on to all the delicious wee sweet things - we almost ate all of them too! Also it's inspired me to make some more macarons. Long term readers of this will know that this is a huge step for me as I was somewhat traumatised the time I tried to make them before.



After we'd eaten our weight in food, I rolled off to the pool in an attempt to work some of it off. What a losing battle that was! But totally worth every calorie.

Lloyd then went on his course and I had a day in Auckland - I spent most of it getting my wetsuit measured and stuff. Which was fun! And a wee trip to a garden centre. Then time to get Lloyd and head back north.

But we hadn't stopped spoiling ourselves! Oh no!
A few months ago, along with  four of our friends, we'd bid on and won a charity auction to go and stay at Eagles Nest. Now usually this stunning place is way out of our price range, but we've admired it for years, because when we're out on the Bay you can see it from the water. Anyway, our winning bid was a fraction of the usual cost and we did wonder if we'd get duff days to go and no choice of which house to stay in and no service! How totally and completely wrong we were. ( I would like to say that I had every faith that we'd be treated the same as "rich people!" and my faith in mankind was not ruined!!)
We were treated amazingly and they spoiled us rotten! If anyone comes into a fortune, wins the lottery, sells soul to the devil, ( wins a charity auction) that sort of thing... you must go there!

Here's the deck, with the infinity pool, a spa and amazing views over the Bay of Islands

The pool had lights that changed colour and looked totally amazing at night!

Enjoying a glass of Champagne on the deck in the afternoon sun. 

 Swimming off the excess  in the pool!

It's a hard life!

Sunset on our last night

MMmm mmm yes... the not sensible group shot!

And after all that loveliness it was back to earth with a bump! Got home, to find that 2 of my lovely chooky girls had got under their fence and into the veggie garden! There were only skeleton chards left!! It didn't matter as I planted it for them anyway. Thankfully they didn't like garlic and I hadn't panted any of the seedlings out as the weather is so rubbish! Whew! Then I noticed that one of my bought in Araucanas has scaly mite (so does the other one but not so advanced) I was horrified as my chickens have never had anything like this before. Turns out that they would have had it when I bought them, but in such early stages I didn't see it - even when I checked their legs.

Here's what it looks like for anyone that's interested! This is earlier stages, on Consuela. You can see the scales just beginning to lift on her legs.

And here's poor Conchita - more advanced. I got a lot of invaluable advice on Lifestyle block. The legs don't look like this until the mites have been there for a wee while as it's their poo that builds up and and lifts the scales off.   I should point out that this isn't bad (yet). Some photos I saw on the internet when I was researching what to do look truly awful. But my poor girls!

There are many and varied treatments. I ended up going for the flea spray ( that you get for cats), spraying their legs with it then covering their legs in vaseline. The vaseline  makes the mites unable to breathe and also softens the scales so that they come off more easily when the new ones grow underneath.

I have to repeat this weekly.

I also disinfected their house ( which I didn't actually need to do as the mite spend their whole lifecycle on the chickens legs!) but it was good to get it done anyway. Then they got nice new bedding. It was a job well done but a far cry from the luxury of the weekend!