Harvest

After just three weeks, our first crops are ready to be harvested. 

I'd voted the silver beet seedlings 'least likely to succeed' but remarkably they're the first to be productive. 

We're now looking forward to fresh greens with mint and feta for dinner. 

Kitchen creations

I've been busy cooking over the last few months. I made my own mincemeat for the first time with cranberries and orange peel. I learnt how to sterilise the jars in the oven and it has kept well.

Chocolate bark was another festive success though Lark's teachers didn't thank me for this gift at the start of term when it compromised their New Year's resolutions...

I've been experimenting with cake decorating too - using a crocheted doily to make a pattern with icing sugar on a Somerset cider cake. (If you try this, do it just before you're ready to serve the cake otherwise the icing sugar is absorbed and you can't see the pattern - it took me three attempts!)

I attempted a buttermilk glaze for this plantation prune cake but it didn't really work - tasty but lumpy - so I covered it up with more icing sugar! The cake itself was popular at one of our gardening group gatherings.

I've been doing some more preserving with grapefruit cordial, using the remaining fruit from our tree...

... and pickled cucumbers (though I didn't serve them together).

Next, I think I'll try some more adventurous bread-baking - maybe rolls or hot cross buns in time for Easter...

House plants

I've been busy gardening inside as well as out. Lark and I have been busy propagating all these babies from our spider plant to provide more ground cover in some of the borders. 

And my chilli plant has been flowering well after being cut right back over winter - but no signs of chillis yet. Does it need food, perhaps?

Te Whare o Te Weta

Over the holidays, I built a bug hotel at Playcentre from recycled material gathered from kindly neighbours. 

I've named it Te Whare o Te Weta - the house of the weta, in Te Reo Maori.

After that, I felt the need to construct something at home so I started this pile of logs and pine cones under some ferns. Once I've built up my collection of pallets again, I'll start on something more substantial but this should provide some temporary lodgings.

Native bush

The native border on the edge of the lawn is coming along well. The plants have grown fatter and taller and we even had a flower on one of the native iris.

The border has benefited from some weeding by my parents and the out-laws and a bit of mulch has been added. My father also built a barrier from wattle tree logs which will prevent the mulch from washing away down the valley as it did over last winter.

I've taken out a privet or two which were crowding out a pink-flowered kanuka tree and purchased some ground-cover which you can see at the front of this picture. I also picked up two dwarf kowhai to attract tui and provide some colour.  

Unfortunately we have even more weeds to pull out now that I know that these grasses are invasive pampas rather than the native toetoe. The two plants are hard for an amateur like me to distinguish and I had hoped they were toetoe but suspected they weren't. When they flowered in January, I knew that they were weeds. We'll add them to the kill list along with wattles, privet and tobacco trees.

Complications in the compost heap

I've been diligently contributing to my compost heap for the last 4.5 years but not taking any of the compost out. And now that I have a vegetable garden ready and waiting for compost, I've found that it's not really fit for purpose. The heap is being invaded by kikuyu grass and convolvulus and I've never turned it as it's been too tricky to take it to pieces and get stuck in. Worse still, the wood is rotting after being eaten - devoured - by wood lice. 

So I've dismantled one of  the heaps and salvaged a few of the planks to make a temporary three-sided heap which I'll be able to turn more easily. So far the chickens haven't scattered the waste too far. 

I've been looking around for ideas for a more permanent construction and think that something like this might work - five pallets upcycled to create two bays. The front panel is made from a board which can be easily removed for turning the compost and then using it. 

And I'll be borrowing the pest-proofing technique from this design... 

Elders and Berries

This was my haul from the garden last weekend. Hydrangea heads for an arrangement for a party, three eggs, a dozen apples from our young tree and a few teaspoons full of elderberries - just enough to flavour an apple crumble. 

I was interested to find that the berries in the shade were ripening faster than the berries high up in the sunshine. I can't begin to explain that.

The tree was covered in sap-sucking passion vine hoppers which I'm sure are the reason for the meagre harvest.

We should have more success in future now that this young elder tree has been planted by the chicken coop. I hope the chickens will eat the bugs and not the berries and we'll have sufficient blooms for elderflower champagne.