Happy New Year 2019

Merry Christmas from Rose at the Happy Ramblings blog

It is just over one week until Christmas. This year has gone so fast! I have bought all of the Christmas presents for everyone, so there will be no mad rushing around the shops this Christmas, apart from the grocery shopping.

I will be wrapping all the presents next week, when I have a quiet day so I can enjoy some Christmas music at the same time.

Last week I went to a candle-making party and made a scented candle for myself. This year I chose a pineapple and mango scent. The scent was quite strong, so I used only half of the recommended amount of fragrance.

Yesterday I went to a Christmas card making party which was really fun. Lots of cute Christmassy paper and card to choose from and ribbons and sparkly beads. There was also a selection of stamping equipment and different coloured inks to use.

Next week I am going to a Christmas craft party where I will get to make more Christmassy things. I am taking mum along with me so that she can join in with the fun too.

I hope that your holiday season is all that you hoped it would be.

With lots of love,

from

Rose xxx

A bumper crop of radishes

Dad came in this afternoon with a huge bunch of radishes that he picked from our veggie garden. This harvest is only a tenth of what is growing!

This type of radish is called German Giant. They are very big, crunchy and juicy. Lovely eaten with lots of butter.

It looks like we will be eating radishes for a long time, as well as having plenty to give away to friends and family.

The veggie garden is doing really well. We usually start planting it during the last week of October, after all the frosts have finished. But it was such a mild Spring that we decided to start the veggie patch a month early. We have been lucky with plenty of showers of rain followed by days of blue skies and sunshine. Just what the plants need.

This is what the veggie garden looks like today.

The cavalo nero is looking good. It is the first time that we have grown it and I have never cooked it before. I will have to go online and look for some recipes. There is plenty of time to search, as the cavalo nero won't be ready to harvest until after the first frost next year to sweeten it up!

The kohlrabi stems have just started to fatten up. Hopefully the rains will continue for a long time to save me from needing to water them.

To the right of the kohlrabi is silverbeet and to the left are lettuces and tomato plants :)

Lots of smiles.

Hugs.

Rose x

Preparing the wildflower garden

Finally we managed to find another contractor, who could come quickly, to rotavate the land in preparation for my next wildflower bed. The original contractor ended up being very busy with big jobs and was finding it hard to fit our small 150 metres squared area into his schedule.

The area was rotavated on Monday, the soil was just the right wetness and has turned out well.

Dad has been helping me by raking over the soil to level it. He also worked on tidying up the edges and removing large clumps of grass. I wasn't able to do it myself as I am not very fit at the moment.

Tomorrow dad will be using our small rotavator to turn over and bury the grass clumps and to loosen where the tractor wheels had compacted the soil.

In the meantime I have been deciding on how to sow the wildflower seeds. I think I will mix all of the seed together, weigh it and then divide it into 10 lots. Then mix each lot of seed individually with 2 litres of gardeners sand. This will help to evenly distribute the seed. The idea is to sow 1 gram of seed per square metre.

I plan to sow half the seed along each long length of the wildflower bed as I won't be able to sow it from one side easily. Then I will need to very lightly rake the seeds over with soil.

I am hoping that the weather will remain good until I have sown all of the seed. Then I hope we will get a few weeks of rain. It is a pity that we can't order the sort of weather we need. All I can do is cross my fingers :)

See you again soon with more news. Thanks for stopping by.

Hugs.

Rose x

A photo tour of my Spring garden in New Zealand

I had a lovely time walking in the garden today, taking lots of photos of my Spring flowers. The weather was just perfect, not too cold and not too hot with clear blue skies. I hope you enjoy looking at my photos as much as I did taking them.

See you again soon.

Hugs

Rose x

Progress in the vegetable garden

On Monday Dad and I planted up the main vegetable patch. We had been to the garden centre and bought some vegetable seedlings on the weekend. I kept them under the cloches on the deck until we were ready to plant them out.

I was happy to find that some of the seeds have germinated under cover outside. I would have liked to have grown everything from seed, but Dad didn't have the patience to wait for them to grow. It is really a month early for planting out. We had a hail storm yesterday, so we put cloches made from plastic water bottles over the tomatoes to protect them.

It is 14 C today and showering on and off. The other vegetables don't seem to mind the cool weather.

I have 2 silverbeet (chard) plants which self-seeded themselves next to the vegetable patch which is very convenient. We have been using the silverbeet already while the leaves are young and very tender....delicious.

Dad finished fencing around the veg patch, so hopefully it will keep the pesky rabbits and pukekoes out.

Dad also dug a small area for me to grow some more herbs in. I need to mix a sack of compost into the soil as it is very heavy clay. I plan to grow dill, coriander, basil, sage and parsley there.

I am still waiting for the contractor to come and rotavate the area for our new wildflower garden. The wildflower seed needs to be sown pretty soon while we still have showery weather. I also need to rake the soil to a fine tilth, after it has been rotavated, before I can sow the seed. It is all a matter of good timing.

Last year we were a month late in creating a wildflower bed, so it was too dry for all the different types of seed to germinate. Fingers crossed that everything will be on time this year.

See you again soon.

Hugs

Rose x

Time to prepare the vegetable patches

Dad has been very busy working on clearing and digging over our vegetable garden this past week. The Winter here in Auckland was mild and Spring has arrived almost a month early, so the weeds have been growing fast and have taken over.

The large plants in the photo above are taller than me. They self-seeded here from last years wildflower bed that was located at the side of this vegetable bed. I didn't have the heart to dig them out because they have very pretty pink and white flowers. I have no idea what these plants are called. They will be left here until they finish flowering.

There is still a lot of clearing and digging to do. Plus dad is putting up a wire mesh fence around the vegetable garden to stop the rabbits, ducks and pukekoes from causing damage. The brassicas will also need netting to stop the cabbage white butterflies from demolishing them.

I have been sowing vegetable seeds in punnets over the last few days: kholrabi, cabbage, cucumber, sprouting broccoli, zucchini, pumpkin, celeriac and artichoke. Plus we have bought punnets of leeks, chives, cavolo nero, tomatoes and silverbeet. I also sorted out seeds to sow directly in the vegetable garden when it is completed.

We bought 4 large cloches on the weekend and have assembled 2 of them so far. I have put the punnets of vegetable seedlings in one and the other cloche contains the punnets with the seeds that I have sown.

The cloches are an experiment that I hope will work, to germinate and harden off seedlings. Fingers crossed.

See you again soon with more news.

Hugs

Rose x