Late october/ mid spring/ early summer

It's a good time in the garden, it's all promise and bluster, even the aphids are only just making an entrance. Planted 12 sweetcorn seedlings in a bed of their own,'florida stay sweet' deep yellow colour with a sweet flavour, at 3-4 cobs a plant, that's a lot of corn! Yum!



I gave them a tent to stop cats birds and whoopsy daisy from disrupting the babies



The tomatoes are happy, they have shown growth and extra flowers

  


Put out 16 white onion seedlings we have been have raising.
Killed the pea frame and it's increasingly diseased hangers on.

Planted a great looking tree, 'eddie's white wonder' saw it in Rotorua flowering wondrously all around the old post office building. Pulled into to Palmer's on the way home and the person we asked knew it instantly and was very enthusiastic. Nek minute      $45 tree in car...

at the moment its pretending to be a stick, this may take a year or two.
 

Time for the summer garden

It is Labour Weekend, officially now it's warm enough to put in the summer plants. Best gnome daughter and I ventured to the garden center to choose a couple of tomato plants. We were both astounded with the selection of plants available now, easily over 40 different types of plant from strange purple and wrinkly orange types to beefsteaks and romas as usual. I choose a good sensible grafted truss tomato ( same as the wonderful one I had 2 years ago) and a supertom Kakanui Choice which apparently has a wonderful flavour.
Also scored a large wildfire chilli plant (already has chillis on it) and a couple of genovese basil seedlings.
Here they all are ready for planting, I thought a shot like this is good for remembering what was  planted and how they looked.

Their labels

Now I need to clear space for them all, I am reluctant to pull up the leeks and peas as they look so nice and abundant at the moment.

The Potato plants are starting to show flowers so hopefully tubers are forming under ground like mad

The temperature has risen markedly in the last few days so growth will really start to get a hurry on, it's an exciting time of year!
:)

Painters have Painted!

So normal peaceful life can resume around the garden, the last few days have been the painting of the windows and doors, so all of them was were wide open with heads and legs to be seen from any one at any time. like living in a fishbowl Mrs Gnome was heard to exclaim (not really).

I noticed today the first bean is just nudging out of the ground, planted them last Sunday just before a day or two of rain, not ideal as they should be planted into moist soil and not watered for a few days to avoid them rotting etc. But all seems good. At this time of the year everything is bounding out of the soil, almost time to plant a couple of tomatoes!

The plums have set well and there are many along all the branches

The garlic leaves look nice in black and white

Had to support the potatoes, the heavy rain hammered them down, also gave them a mulch of grass clippings and dried leaves from the driveway, keeps the blackbirds at bay a bit. There is serious nesting an egging going on, any bugs, slugs and snails better beware!

Lovely bluebells

And clivia

Busy weekend house fixing

There are unwashed workmen about the house, they paint and paint and paint, it's wonderful and seems to go quite fast. During the weekend I realized that there was the odd hole in the house that needed patching before they came to those bits. Quite a buzz when I manage to find just the right bit of wood to patch perfectly. Then to use my fixit skills to fill the gaps and make it all look as one.
Some woodcurls

The garden has been growing wonderfully, there is day by day change, the snowball tree is hinting green and the forest pansy is popping tiny deep red leaves.

We had a risotto with one of the leeks, it was pronounced very white and large and leek like!   :)

Left a couple of spring onions (now the size of leeks themselves) to got to flower, got this big fat bumble bee going about his business

 A young pea showing it's promise

Chopped down the large broccoli and left these new sproutlings that are erupting from around the roots of the old plants. You can see the stumps of the big plant in the foreground. The new ones look very nice and fresh and should provide another harvest or two of tender florets

A first harvest of beetroot this season, they are lovey roasted with other vegetables!

Starting to make room for a couple of tomato plants in a week or two...