Autumn brings changes...
As I write this blog post, we are about to step into the final month of Autumn (or Fall for those in the USA) and Winter is just around the corner.
I have been a bit remiss recently regarding writing blog posts and I mean to rectify this.
Traditionally this is a relatively quiet time for gardens as everything starts to slow down. So, the plan is to write blog posts that are not just about the garden and the amazing produce we've been growing. I want to try to encompass everything that makes me feel like I am actually living a good life.
So future posts, as well as having gardening updates, will also include other things I am passionate about including, but not restricted to....travel, photography, literature, the broader subject of the arts and more.
Meantime, back to the garden......
The strawberries are finally almost finished. They hate the wet weather and a few promising sized strawberries that were doing quite nicely have been reduced to rot and mush.
The raspberries have been absolutely wonderful and have continued to produce sufficient for breakfasts every day. However, the end is also in sight for these. Colder, shorter, wetter days will mean fewer and fewer berries.
I have already ripped out the many runner bean plants. They had been a wonderful crop this year until the green shield NZ stink bug got at them. Even so we managed to harvest many, many kilos and they have fed us well throughout the season as well as providing sufficient extra beans to freeze or otherwise preserve. I have of course also kept some mature bean pods to provide us with seed for next springtime.
The pumpkin and squash have done reasonably well. Some are still not quite ready to be harvested, but are not far away. We should end up with between 25 and 30 of them. Some will be given away, some stored in a cool dry airy place and others made into pumpking soup and frozen inside old icecream containers for future use.
(Photo above - pumpkins and squash of various sizes)
A nice tasty pumpkin soup can be made using butternut quash (roasted), onions, grated ginger, garlic and adding a chopped up hot pepper.....plus some veggie or chicken stock. Yum yum! Particularly delicious when eaten with fresh crusty bread, from the farmers market, smothered in butter.
(Photo above - pea plants, growing where runner beans had been growing)
We've had a lot of self seeded lettuce come up over the last few weeks, so these have been pricked out and replanted in 3 different garden beds, giving us about 50 or so plants. We've also put in several rows of beetroot, there are a few rows of leeks and onions coming along and I've made use of two of the bean frames by planting peas. One lot I put in much earlier are already almost to the top of the bean frame and the other lot are not far behind. As long as a severe frost doesn't kill them they should be ok. There are also a couple of short rows of celery doing very well and enjoying the wet weather.
(Photo above - lettuce, beetroot and celery growing in the autumn garden)
There are a few other tasks to be done in the garden at this time of year including digging yet more beds ready for sringtime and adding compost and lime. And talking of compost - the compost heaps need to be turned......we'll see how much of that rich black crumbly "gold" is under there.
The walnut tree has again dropped nuts all over the garden and on to what little lawn we still have left. No doubt we'll cointinue to find walnuts as we harvest the remaining pumpkins and clear away the old vines and long grass.
(photo above - walnuts drying near the fireplace)
About 3 years ago the council removed a number of large trees, which bordered the front fenceline of our property, in order to make room for the new cycle path. They left us with a stack of large rings of wood (some a metre across) needing to be split to provide us with firewood for our wood burning stove. It seemed like a huge task, seeing all those rings of wood still there, in a row along the side of the house a few weeks ago, but little by little and one at a time I've been nibbling away at them and have already chopped about half of them up. Our wood bins are now well stocked and will see us through winter.
(Photo above - one of our firewood bays - split wood ready for winter)
The bonus of our wood stove is that it has a wet-back (what we used to call a back boiler - in the UK) so we get lots of free hot water for bathing and washing.
In addition to the wood I've been splitting, we were also given a trailer load of firewood from a friend (Darren Myles), so are well and truly set for winter.
We have already started making use of the peaches we bottled earlier in summer to supplement the reduced number of berries being harvested.....and pickles and various chutney's and relishes.
We already have over 20 fruit and nut trees in the ground, plus 2 more fig trees in pots to go into the ground and I have about a dozen or more peach saplings in pots......some will be given away as we are running out of room. BUT we still want to get a feijoa and an avocado tree and have a couple of spaces behind the shed where they can go.
There are a couple of other trees that need to be dug up and moved to more suitable sites in the garden, one being an elderberry tree that I need to move from the side of the house and plant along the fence line in the front yard.
So although things are quietening down in the garden, there is still work to be done in readiness for Springtime, including building a greenhouse. I'd like to get an earier start this coming growing season so if I can get my tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers started a few weeks earlier by using a glasshouse, all the better.
Until next time.....life is good.
