Cats versus birds

I have three cats. When I started this blog, I had four. At the beginning of this year, I had five. The most I've ever had is six. The cat collecting wasn't intentional; I'm an erstwhile foster parent for the SPCA. Erstwhile because I discovered I wasn't very good at giving the cute little furballs back again, so now I simply give cash to the SPCA instead each month through their Hope donation scheme. I say this not to prove that I'm a charitable sort, but simply to give some context to my views on cats versus birds in the garden. Some gardeners demonise cats; a survey by the Mammal Society in Britain (and only the British could have such a society) a few years back found that cats ranked only one notch up from the rat in a list of pet gardening hates. But I quite like my cats, so this year has proved a bit tragic, with one succumbing to liver disease and the other dying suddenly for no reason at all.
Mind you, I quite like having birds in the garden too. Sure, the cats grab the odd one, but Snuffles, Mr Pants and (his sibling) Minnie don't pose a serious threat to the survival of any species, bar their own. Snuffles won't even go outside when it's raining; Minnie is more intent on proving her superiority over Mr Pants than anything; and Mr Pants, bless his little black and white paws, is so dimwitted that he still mistakes the fur cushions on the couch for the mother that abandoned him before he ended up at the SPCA. As for the birds, they wake me up at dawn, pilfer all the figs off the fig tree each summer, peck the guts out of my crab apples, nibble at the lemons, scratch out my vege seedlings and steal the lawn seed before it gets a chance to germinate.
Nonetheless, it's never a nice thing to turn the key in the front door and find feathers all over the floor. When I got home on Friday night there were tell-tale thrush tail feathers on the carpet. I started hunting for the corpse, but instead I found a small baby bird sitting in the middle of my dining table, being eyeballed by a small black and white cat. Mr Pants looked at the bird; the bird looked back. Neither moved. I swooped on the cat. The bird didn't even blink. So I grabbed the cat and pushed it out the catdoor. Then I grabbed a towel, tucked the baby thrush into it and tucked it into the cat cage. It chirped something in return that I translated, in rudimentary birdspeak, to mean "Cheers for that, I thought I was a goner there! Phew! Oh, and any chance of a feed?"
And that's how I came to spend Friday night feeding cat food to, well, something that a few minutes earlier had been destined to be cat food itself. I soaked a few cat bikkies in water and waved them about with a pair of tweezers until the little thrush obliged and opened its beak up wide to swallow 'em. As the night progressed, it proved quite a fan of jellymeat too.
I had to fly to Christchurch on Saturday morning, so I handed custody of the little feathered chap over to my cousin Cath, who has since given him to her mother, a registered nurse, to care for. So far, so good. The early bird in this case gets more than the worm: it's getting five-star luxury treatment, including room service. I'll let you know when it's ready to be returned to the wild.

Quack, quack

Question: Do you think anyone would notice if a couple of ducks quietly disappeared from Western Springs Park for a few days?

If it's good enough for British gardeners, it's good enough for me.

Read more here.

Loquats for lunch

I take back everything I said earlier about the lousy spring weather: we've had three glorious sunny days in a row in Auckland. And as I was squinting up at the blue sky, trying in recall the last time I'd seen it, I noticed that the fruit was starting to ripen on one of my loquat trees. Loquats (Eriobotrya japonica)are subtropical fruit trees from southeast China. I've got two in my garden - one overhangs the front fence and the other makes it impossible to walk down the front path. Both grow about 5cm from the concrete path so I'm assuming they must be seedlings, as surely noone in their right mind would ever have planted them in such ridiculous locations. Nonetheless, when I bought my property the loquats survived the initial cull and last year I harvested the fruit by the bucketload.
Fresh loquats are a bit fiddly to eat because they're small and they have 3-4 large seeds in the middle. The fruit grows in clusters so I'm assuming that, if I got up on a ladder and thinned a few off each cluster, it could be possible to increase the fruit size significantly. In the meantime, I just squeeze the skin, pop the pips out and eat the ripe flesh.
It's hard to describe the flavour. They're a bit like a juicy apricot mixed with a hint of pineapple and a dash of banana and they taste a lot better poached with sugar. Apparently the fruit also has a high acid and pectin content and can be easily turned into jams and jellies, so I think I'll have a crack at that this weekend.

Second thoughts on beer traps

Despite my initial enthusiasm for the beer trap concept (one bottle of Heineken beer in a bowl = 15 dead snails and two dead slugs), new evidence suggests it may have been beginner’s luck. I disposed of the dead gastropods and put the bowl of beer back on the barbecue table last night to see if a second wave of killings would ensue. Now, I recall from my high school science lessons that in order to be taken seriously, a proper scientific experiment needs two key things (I’m sure we used to use a much more scientific word than “things” but I’m blowed if I can recall that as well). In order for a piece of research to withstand scrutiny, the researcher needed first to formulate a hypothesis and, second, to employ a control group. Nonetheless, I’m a bit of an overachiever, so I settled on two hypotheses for my organic snail-killing recycled-beer trap experiment.
Scenario one: Beer traps are only effective when the beer is fizzy. Thus, a fresh beer is required to top up the trap each night. (I sincerely hope this isn’t the case, as any responsible host knows that free beer actually encourages unwanted guests to stick around.) If fresh beer is critical and my hypothesis was proven correct, the beer in the bowl should have been free of bloated floaters this morning.
Scenario two:Slugs and snails aren’t as dumb as they look. Like infuriating fish that refuse to take the bait, they’d keep their snouts out of the beer bowl because of the lingering whiff of carnage left behind by their fallen comrades.
As for the control group, I figured I had a couple of options. I could pour another beer into another bowl and put it beside the old bowl on the barbecue table. That seemed a little wasteful. I could pour another beer into another bowl and let it go flat, then put it outside on the barbecue table. Equally wasteful. Or I could pour another beer into a glass and drink it, and then run wildly around on the deck and squash as many snails underfoot as I could between the ad breaks in CSI. (I was brushing up on my forensic science skills, remember.)
I opted, unsurprisingly, for option three. Luckily, it was raining last night (hence the wild dashing about) so it was easy pickings – the snails were literally climbing the walls. They were sliming up out of my griselinia hedge and snuggling into the weatherboards. I smashed at least seven into the corrugated iron boundary fence and stood on five really big ones as well. I could have killed a few more, but I also wanted to find out who killed the girl on CSI.
But, while I was outside, dodging raindrops and still-squirming splodges of slug goo, I noticed a curious thing. Three very big slugs and one snail were already slithering around the top of the beer trap. The slugs were most definitely drinking, although the snail was a bit slower off the mark. So at the very least, this morning I expected to find three dead slugs and one drowned snail. But did I?
Short answer. No.
They came, they saw, they got stonkered. Then they clearly got the munchies and mauled my clivia flowers.
Which brings me to an inescapable conclusion: Beer traps appear to actually attract slugs and snails.
I’m refusing to declare defeat though. Instead, I’m moving into phase two of my search for the ultimate organic method of slug and snail bait (the aborted turtle experiment doesn’t count). I don’t eat enough eggs to scatter crushed eggshells everywhere, but I do drink coffee, so I’m going to try corralling my favourite plants with recycled coffee grounds. A friend’s husband swears by them (mind you, that could just be to justify his caffeine consumption). I’m going to stop at one of the local coffee roasters (there’s at least four to choose from within 5km of my house) to ask for a biggest bag of used grounds they have. In fact, I could even try several different brands to see if Auckland snails can tell the difference between a decent espresso and a dodgy long black.

First rose of spring

I loathe plastic name tags on plants. Sure, they're very helpful when you're at the garden centre and you're trying to choose between three shiny vireya rhododendrons, all of which sound appealing but none of which are in flower, but that's still no excuse for taking your chosen vireya home, planting it, and leaving the label on for years to come. I've been to gardens where the owners have left the labels on every single plant for so long that the printing has completely faded off, and in many cases the plastic has even managed to grow a green film of algae. It drives me nuts for no other reason than it's ugly.
Anyway, rant over, because this morning as I whipped down the road to get the Sunday newspapers I walked through my rose garden and discovered... the very first rose bloom of spring. At first I thought it was 'Mutabilis' - that delicious single-flowered variety that opens pink and fades to a blushing apricot - but closer inspection revealed that actually it was 'Papa Gontier', a pink, semi-double tea rose I ordered from Tasman Bay Roses last spring. And how do I know this? Yes, I confess, because it's written on the ugly green plastic label that's still snared on one of its prickly stems.
PS. Turtles, it appears, are more afraid of snails than snails are of turtles. Despite showing early promise, stalking up and down the tank and eyeballing the two sacrificial snails I'd deposited in its tank, my turtle guest took fright and cowered in the far corner until I took pity, scooped the snails back out and drowned them in the beer trap instead.

Gastropod genocide

The verdict is in: slugs and snails officially have a drinking problem. Photographic evidence is attached. (Forgive the shocking photo quality - my digital camera was stolen when my house was burgled recently, so I had to borrow the little snappy camera from work and I haven't worked out how to use it properly). One bottle of beer = 15 dead snails and two dead slugs. Not a bad hit rate, although I can't prove conclusively whether they were lured into the beer trap by the delicious yeasty aroma emanating from the soup bowl, or whether they simply fell in and drowned while trying to take a short cut from the tray of beetroot to the tray of coriander seedlings.
But what should I do next? Should I scoop out the dead ones and leave the bowl of beer on the bbq table to lure in another batch of gatecrashing gastropods? Or will the scent of death linger long after the corpses have been composted?
At the Soil and Health Association meeting, chickens were mooted as the most effective organic slug and snail solution. But I'm also babysitting a friend's pet turtle in a tank at the moment.... which just gave me an ingenious idea...

Uninvited guests

I think I'm a pretty reasonable person, but when I spot snails grazing in my seed trays I tend develop psycho tendencies (albeit without the shower curtain, sharp knife and spine-chilling soundtrack). When I got home from book club tonight (Mr Pip might be in the running for this year's Booker prize but opinions were divided about its literary merits) I was mortified to discover that a bunch of boisterous gastropods had gathered to take advantage of my absence. The drooling fools were slobbering all over my mesclun salad, golden beets, coriander and sugar snap seedlings... and I haven't even planted them out yet! Normally I would stomp on them with my gumboots, but I was wearing high heels, so I did what every woman in high heels does when she hosts unexpected guests: I poured them a beer. A Heineken, to be precise. I filled a soup bowl with beer and placed it smack bang in the middle of the seed trays. (I've always read that beer traps are a brilliantly successful - and 100% organic, depending on the beer brand, method - of slug and snail control, but I've never tried it until tonight.)
I figure a beer costs about the same amount as a box of slug bait, so where's the harm?
I shall report back in the morning with a head (or slimy foot) count!
PS. The marvellously arty photo of snails here is by Roland K - check out his other evocative images on Flickr.

Food miles & carbon credits: Talking 'bout a revolution

I spoke at the Auckland branch meeting of the Soil and Health Association on Tuesday night, just down the road at the Auckland Horticultural Centre in Western Springs. They'd invited me along to talk about being "self-sufficient in the city", which made me feel like a bit of a fraud, given that most of their members have been gardening, and growing their own organic food, for longer than I've been alive. (To take the shipping-coals-to-Newcastle analogy, it would be like rocking up to Newcastle with a powerpoint presentation to explain not only what coal was, but how to extract it efficiently as well.) But I had a blast - and I came home with a loaf of gluten-free bread, a slab of honeycomb honey and a few organic avocados from the trading table too.
During the evening someone described growing food sustainably as a new environmentally-friendly "revolution" and I really like that as a concept - it makes me feel like a sort of gardening Che Guevara-ess. (I'm going to get a beret and a motorbike and start printing my image on t-shirts to sell at the farmers' market next!) And I must admit that, since I set out to grow all my own food, I've found myself feeling increasingly aligned with opinions that, last year, I would have described as slightly more marginal than mainstream. I think I'm discovering my inner hippie!
In our October magazine, we've printed an extract from Prince Charles' new book, The Elements of Organic Gardening, in which he reveals that the biggest obstacle to organic gardening, when he started out twenty-something years ago, was convincing others that "you hadn't taken complete leave of your senses". And he's right. Even five years ago, organic gardeners were seen as just a bit kooky. But this year at the Chelsea Flower Show, 70 percent of gardeners interviewed in a survey by the RHS and Fetzer Vineyards nominated climate change and its effect on the environment as their biggest gardening concern. Given all the talk this year about carbon credits and food miles, I suspect a similar survey in New Zealand might also pinpoint sustainability as one of the key consumer trends.
On that note, I thought I'd post my October 'Good Life' column here as it explains my current thinking:

War and Peas
When I think of Africa, I think of lions and tigers and tourists in safari suits. I think of aloes and apartheid, followed by famines and feudal conflicts and famous people like Madonna adopting Malawi orphans. But I can't say that I've ever associated Africa with succulent snow peas (also known as sugar snaps or mange tout). Yet, for the princely sum of $1.59 per plastic-wrapped pack, I can buy snow peas at my local supermarket that have been shipped all the way from Zambia.
I didn't think it was possible to feel politically motivated by a packet of peas, but I can't find any rational reason why a central Auckland supermarket needs to sell fresh produce from the other side of the planet. Especially something as perishable as sugar snaps.
Snow peas are pre-pubescent legumes: you eat the little pods when they're all verdant and full of vitality, long before they get on with the serious business of incubating baby peas. It goes without saying that snow peas taste best when the pods have just been picked. At their freshest they're crisp, crunchy and as plump as a celebrity's collagen-boosted lips. But leave them out of the fridge for a day and they soon lose their turgidity and turn limp and clammy.
I'm no geography expert (disclaimer: I did get a scholarship in the subject at high school and I know my geography teacher now reads NZ Gardener - hi, Mrs Yeomans - but I haven't so much looked at an atlas since then). Anyway, here's what I know about Zambia. Formerly known as Northern Rhodesia, it's bordered by Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia. I'm picking, therefore, that the snow peas in my supermarket weren't shipped here from the nearest coastal Zambian port (as a landlocked nation, it doesn't have any) but were flown here, chugging carbon emissions all the way. (I could be wrong but, given that snow peas rot in my fridge within a week, I can't see how they'd fare any better on a refrigerated container ship.)
Time for another geography lesson. The rough distance between Auckland and Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, is 13,245 kilometres. That's a long haul flight. Now, I don't know about you, but I've never stepped off a long haul flight feeling radiantly fresh - so I don't blame those peas for flagging on arrival either.
The issue of "food miles" (how far your food has traveled to get to your plate) is a global political hot potato. British supermarkets have turned the spotlight on Kiwi lamb, prompting Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton to rubbish the food miles concept as "a bogus issue masking old-fashioned protectionism".
Although I agree that the food miles concept is flawed - it doesn't take into account how crops were grown before they were flown, for example - I don't think we can dismiss it completely. And if consumers want to buy local food or support local farmers and growers, why shouldn't they have the facts?
Until recently, I've never shown any hippie tendencies - but I now find myself siding with Green MP Sue Kedgley, who's launched a COOL (as in Country Of Origin Labelling) petition calling for mandatory labelling of fresh imported produce (you can download petition forms from The Greens website - the petition closes on October 17).
I asked Jim Anderton for his views on the fact that our supermarket shelves are increasingly stacked with imported foods and he argued that "consumers internationally expect seasonal produce to be available throughout the year." But I'm not so sure. Since I launched my self-sufficiency in the city project, I've lost my appetite for African sugar snaps, not to mention all the Chilean grapes, Californian strawberries, Chinese garlic and Aussie mandarins flogged by my local supermarket. After all, who really needs to eat a poor imitation of a peach or a tasteless nectarine in the dead of winter? As a gardener, I'd rather grow my own - or go without.

And here's the full reply I got from Jim Anderton:

Response to NZ Gardener on the importation of fresh produce into New Zealand
Amid all the debate about importing of fresh produce into New Zealand, country-of-origin labelling and environmental sustainability, we need to bear in mind that New Zealand is an active participant in, and a big beneficiary of, international trade in fresh produce.
When you say that New Zealand supermarkets seem “perfectly happy to ship in unsustainable products from overseas”, we need to remember that a significant part of New Zealand’s economic prosperity comes from international trade. New Zealand growers depend on being able to send high-quality, unsubsidised fresh fruit and vegetables such as apples, kiwifruit, onions and potatoes, to overseas markets, and do so very successfully: New Zealand exports of horticultural products (including wine, flowers, plants and grapes) were worth over NZ$2.3 billion last year, and went to more than 30 key markets. New Zealand exporters can only gain those benefits when they have access to overseas markets – but the flip side of that market access coin is that we see imported produce alongside New Zealand products on the supermarket shelves in this country.
Being part of the global market also means a wider choice for consumers. This includes imported produce, such as garlic from China or grapes from Chile, which may compete with local produce. Inevitably, as you say, consumers will often opt for the cheapest.
However, consumers internationally now expect seasonal produce to be available throughout the year. New Zealand ships fruit to supply consumers in the Northern hemisphere during their off-season (for example, sending table grapes into high-value niche markets in Japan); while imported fruit, such as stonefruit from California, is available here out-of-season. This expanding trade, both export and import, reflects changing demands from consumers and improved methods of harvest, storage and transport.
On country-of-origin labelling and issues to do with sustainable production, there is no doubt that consumers here and internationally are increasingly interested in issues to do with sustainability, such as carbon footprinting and environmental standards in production. These consumers are increasingly demanding assurances on these issues. Retailers and producers will need to respond to those market demands or risk losing sales to outlets that do cater to these concerns.
New Zealand producers and supermarkets are well placed to take those consumer preferences into account in producing and marketing high-quality New Zealand agricultural and horticultural products. Many producers are able to provide assurances to customers as a result of their accreditation to programmes such as New Zealand Good Agricultural Practice (NZ GAP) and/or its European equivalent.
The Labour-Progressive Government is certainly concerned to ensure that all food sold in New Zealand is safe to eat. There are robust systems in place to ensure food safety, including requirements that imported food meets the same standards that apply to food produced in New Zealand, and that relevant pesticide or agricultural chemical residue standards are complied with. The Government also administers strict biosecurity regulations designed to prevent the import of unwanted pests and organisms, and imposes sanitary and phytosanitary standards related to trade in fresh produce.
On mandatory country-of-origin labelling, on the other hand, the issues are not black and white. They pose some significant risks to New Zealand exporters while offering few benefits to consumers.
Country-of-origin labelling does not provide any meaningful information for consumers about food safety or biosecurity. Nor would such a label give any clarity around the ‘sustainability’ of a particular product.
Our trading partners, notably the United States, are considering country-of-origin measures, driven by local pressure to ensure consumers know what is locally produced and often backed by the argument that locally-produced food is the safest. But food safety is not necessarily related to country of origin and buying local is not necessarily a guarantee of the smallest carbon footprint.
Measuring only the distance food has travelled to market − so called ‘food miles’ − is a simplistic approach to the issue of carbon footprints. All factors involved in the life-cycle of the food production must be taken into account in calculating the carbon footprint. So, country-of-origin labelling would indicate the distance produce has travelled to get onto New Zealand supermarket shelves but how much more informative it would be is questionable.
At the same time, requiring such labelling would add to production costs for all producers. From the export perspective, these additional compliance costs in important markets such as the United States and Europe could make New Zealand exports less competitive, and thus serve to discourage customers in those markets from purchasing New Zealand products. That would not be in the interests of New Zealand horticulture or the wider agriculture sector.
It is probably more appropriately a voluntary commercial measure, generally with marketing advantages. There are already many food items that are clearly marked with country of origin. Producers may find it increasingly advantageous to identify their products as being “New Zealand grown” as a point of differentiation

What do you think? Do you think that we really need to be importing strawberries in winter? Post your comments below.

Building a raised vege garden

Lisa left a message on this blog a couple of days ago asking how to go about building raised beds like the ones I grow most of my veges in. "I saw your bright beds on My House, My Castle and I'd love to make some like that. You've kept me inspired with my vegetable garden - I haven't been as brave and currently only have one raised bed," she wrote. Just for you, Lisa, here it is: a step-by-step guide to building a raised vegetable garden.
Step 1: Get a bloke in to do the grunt work. My Dad is pretty handy with a hammer and he helped knock my four beds up in an afternoon. If you don't have a spouse or parent you can boss about quite so effectively, you could check out a new gardening service launched this week in Auckland called Patch From Scratch. Sarah and her team come to your place to install nifty raised beds, then she plants them up for you. Kiwibackyard also make really sturdy, kitset raised beds out of macrocarpa. To be honest, if my section was flat, I would just have bought some of theirs - they're very reasonably priced and they simply slot together.
Step 2: If you are going to build your own raised beds, you need to start with flat ground. My front garden slopes down the hill, so I had to excavate the ground at the top by about 30cm and build it up at the bottom by about 10cm to get all four beds level.
Step 3: Work out how big you want your raised beds to be. I'd recommend making them at least one square metre, but preferably 1.5-1.8m square. Don't make them wider than 2m as you won't be able to reach comfortably into the middle, which means you'll end up having to climb on top of them to weed and plant and harvest. My beds are 1.8m wide and 40cm high. Raised beds can be any depth, but I'd recommend making them at least 20cm deep to ensure you get good drainage. If you suffer from back pain, you might consider making them much taller, so you can garden without bending over too much.
Step 4: Decide what materials you're going to use to build the beds. For low, informal, rustic-looking raised beds, you can simply use railway sleepers bolted together at the corners. In a previous garden, I built a raised vege garden out of sheets of stainless steel slotted into a wooden frame. It looked cool but was pretty expensive. The four raised beds in my current garden are built from H3 (not groundtreated) sheets of plywood, with H4 4" x 4" corner posts and a cap rail of 4" x 2" timber.
Step 5: If you're building four beds at once (a good idea because it allows for crop rotation and it also looks instantly like a designer potager), get all the posts in the ground first. Dad used a post hole borer (my soil is rock solid) to dig each post down about 30-4ocm. Then, after we'd used a spirit level and a string line to ensure they were all straight and level, we used instant Quickcrete concrete to cement the posts into place.
Step 6: The sides of my beds are made from H3 plywood, which isn't treated for constant contact with the soil, so I lined them with sheets of black plastic polythene from the garden centre (I used a gun stapler). The plywood, painted the same dark red as my house, was nailed onto a timber frame between the posts for bracing support. (There's also a post half-way along on the inside of each sheet of plywood.)
Step 7: I wanted to be able to sit on the edge of each raised bed while I was gardening so each side has a 4" x 2" cap rail, painted white. And I finished it off with wooden post caps (I originally wanted fancy finials but they looked a bit daft) from The Wooden Lace Company.
Step 8: The last, and most important step, is filling the beds with soil. Because two of my beds were dug down, they only needed to be topped up with compost. The other two beds had to be completely filled with fresh soil. I used a mix of Daltons Organic Compost, garden mix and soil from other parts of my garden. It took at least 12 bags to fill each bed and the soil settled down quite a bit so I'm going to top them all up again this spring. I also use mulch around my vege plants because I find that in summer, raised beds tend to heat up and can dry out quite quickly.

Pukekos, pumpkins & property prices

You know it's spring when the birds start yabbering well before dawn. The chorus starts up at about 4.30am in my garden at the moment, which would be sweet if it weren't for the fact that I am not, never have been, and never will be, a natural early riser. Nonetheless, I was out the door at 7am this morning to take a walk in the park with my cousin Cath, who's training for the Auckland half-marathon. I wish I could claim to be in training for a similarly noble pursuit but I am not, never have been, and never will be, a natural exercise junkie either. The closest I get to a workout is a joyous snail-stomping sort of aerobic routine when it's wet, and a tug of war with my tangled garden hose when it's dry. (Mind you, weeding takes care of the hamstrings and planting is beaut for the biceps.)
Anyway, I digress. Cath was heading off for a run around Western Springs park so I thought I'd join her, if only to offer moral support while checking out the daffodils and ducklings. I grew up on a dairy farm so gamboling spring lambs don't do anything for me, but show me a row of fluffy ducklings paddling in formation and my heart melts. And not just ducklings: Western Springs is home to the city's most amorous avian citizens and fertile fowl. The park was literally crawling with cute baby coots, cygnets, goslings and ducklings. But while I was power-walking past a flock of raucous chooks, contemplating a spot of rooster wrangling, I came across a horror scene of Hitchcock-esque proportions. There were birds! And they were up to bad things! Three native pukeko had cornered a lone duckling and appeared to be attempting to disembowel it with their beaks. This trio of feathered thugs were taking turns to hold it down with their feet and peck it apart!
Sorry to sound so shocked, but I always thought pukekos were harmless sorts with their goofy, gawky gait and dorky demeanour. I never picked them as the bullies of the bird world.
I tried to intervene, to no avail. The biggest bird simply grabbed the duckling and dived for cover in a clump of flax. I shall never think kindly of a pukeko again.
If that wasn't bad enough, I also discovered today that the burglars who paid me a spring visit last week must have carried off their loot in my new backpack... with my giant pumpkin and sunflower seeds still in it after my trip to Wellington. Grrr.
On a brighter note, if you've always hankered for a huge garden but believed it was out of reach because of spiralling property prices, I have very encouraging news from Scotland. It seems a big, fabulous garden can actually make a property DROP in value. The owners of The Bank House in Glenfarg have been forced to slash 100,000 pounds off their asking price because potential buyers are apparently put off by the high-maintenance garden, with its "creatively designed beds of shrubs, mature trees and hedges, an apple-tree tunnel clothed in clematis and a circular pond with water jets, all enclosed within a serpentine horseshoe-shaped yew hedge."
Real estate agents reckon buyers no longer have the time or inclination to manage large gardens. Mark Hordern, marketing manager for the Glasgow Solicitor's Property Centre, described it as "a very sad example of the trend towards manageable gardens. People want gardens these days but they do not want to garden."
I believe charity begins at home, so if there's anyone in New Zealand with a $1.5 million dollar estate that they can't sell because of the size of the garden, let me state here that I'll happily take it off your hands for nout.

Wet start to spring

I'm trying to be optimistic but, ten days into the new planting season, spring hasn't exactly been very spring-like has it? I was intending to spend the whole weekend getting stuck into my garden but instead I was forced to duck in and out between the showers. And I accidentally left my new gumboots out overnight on Saturday too, so they're now drying upside down in the garden shed.
I did manage to get a few things done. I planted twenty globe artichokes under my olive trees, started to weed the strawberry bed, transplanted a tray of sugar snap peas and harvested the last of my onion crop. And I noticed this morning that my fledgling hedge of blueberries is already in full flower. I planted a row of 'Blue Magic' from Incredible Edibles in front of my deck and, despite the fact that they look pretty shabby, they fruited quite well last summer. I'm expecting a ripper crop this year.

First seed to sprout

I ran a couple of gardening workshops at the 2007 Kids Conference at Victoria University a fortnight ago and gave all the students a few 'Skyscraper' sunflower and 'Atlantic Giant' pumpkin seeds to grow at home. I sent them off with mini peat pots and growing instructions and asked them to send me progress reports throughout spring and summer. Well, what do you know - look what sprouted in my email inbox this morning. Phoebe Grimmer sent me this photo and wrote to say that "I planted one of my sunflower seeds in the little container that you gave us and watered it every one or two days. After a week I woke up and went downstairs into the kitchen and over to the windowsill, there was a little green stem with two little leaves at the top. So here is a picture of what it looks like now, a few days after I found it." Way to go Phoebe! Make sure your seedling gets plenty of sun for the next couple of weeks so it grows straight and strong.
Phoebe's seed-raising success reminds me that I told the kids I'd sow some seeds at the same time so they could measure their seedling growth against mine. I better do it now.

Sneak preview of the Ellerslie Flower Show

The 2007 Ellerslie International Flower Show held its official launch at the swish Langham hotel this afternoon. And how fitting that they were serving cucumber sarnies for lunch, because that's just what you'd expect to get at the Chelsea Flower Show in London... and today's big announcement was that top Chelsea designer Sarah Eberle will be creating a garden at Ellerslie this year. Sarah won the coveted Best in Show gong at Chelsea this year for a garden that depicted the sort of garden an astronaut might plant if they were trying to survive on Mars for 600 days. But Sarah won't be recreating her award-winning garden at Ellerslie because she's been commissioned to whip together a new design just for New Zealand instead. She wasn't giving too much away today, except to say that her garden at Ellerslie will draw inspiration from the work of two architects: Caesar Manrique and Antonio Gaudi. I'm not sure how wise that is, given that Antonio Gaudi is most famous for La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, a truly astonishing and ambitious building that still hasn't been finished, more than 80 years after the poor old chap was run over by a tram. I know how stressful it gets behind the scenes at flower shows, so fingers crossed Sarah's garden doesn't suffer the same fate.
The official press release says that Sarah's garden "promises an international flavour with contrast of texture and form in both manmade and natural materials. Planting will be a mix of indigenous and exotic, manipulated to create a sculptural landscape." That's designer-speak for "it will be very chic indeed".
If you're planning to attend Ellerslie this year, here's what you really need to know: the show runs from November 14-18 at the Auckland Regional Botanic Gardens in Manukau City. See you there!

Best excuse yet for not weeding

My garden - and my house for that matter - would never win any awards for tidiness. (Apparently a messy office desk is the sign of a creative mind, so a messy house and garden must simply mean I'm that much more creative, right?).
In spring I try to keep the weeds down but as the season progresses, I tend to let everything go. I'd rather spend my time outdoors pottering about smelling the roses and measuring the size of my tomato plants than bent over weeding. And provided the weeds stick to the patches between my plants and don't encroach on my crops too much, I'm not terribly fussed by them. After all, dandelions don't look that much different to calendulas, so if anyone asks I always claim to be applying the principles of companion planting or encouraging a holistic, herbal approach to landscaping. Or, I could simply claim to be a hedgehog habitat advocate.
A new study released in the UK this week is blaming a big plunge in hedgehog numbers on urbanisation... and tidy gardens. The wonderfully-titled 'Hogwatch' survey was carried out by the University of London for the People's Trust for Endangered Species and the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. Their two-year study found that development of parks and gardens has contributed to a 50 decline in the number of hedgehogs in urban spaces.
When I was growing up, on a farm south of Auckland, we'd often see hedgehogs shuffling and snuffling their way across the front lawn after dark. Saucers of milk and cat bikkies were proferred as snacks. Rarely did our summer holidays at the Hotwater Beach Motor Camp on the Coromandel Peninsula go by without at least one hedgehog sighting either, but you wouldn't see them scuttling between the tents there now. The camping ground has gone; it's now a multi-million dollar subdivision.
I think that's a shame, and not just for the hedgehogs.
PS. The prickly pin-up boy pictured here was voted 'Hedgehog of the Month' by the website Hedgehog Central.

Spring surprises

Spring clearly doesn't lift everyone's spirits. I got home from work on Thursday to find my front door had been smashed in by burglars. Among other things, they stole my laptop (I've now lost all the notes I've taken since launching my self-sufficiency project, along with all my digital photos of gardens here and overseas) and the tv (so I won't be able to watch myself on My House, My Castle on Monday night - their "Going Green" special airs on TV2 at 7.30pm). They also rifled through the pantry and pinched all the wine and vodka, although I notice they weren't tempted to pilfer any of my pickles or preserves. Go figure.
Anyway, before I get all maudlin, the police fingerprint team arrived on Friday morning to dust my house down. Clad in blue overalls, they strode up the boardwalk and across the deck looking just like they'd stepped out of one of those Crime Scene Investigation tv shows. I was well impressed, especially when the first thing they noticed was the bowl of Jerusalem artichokes on the dining table (burglars don't have a taste for organic veges either, it seems). "Are those Jerusalem artichokes - and where did you get them?" asked one of them. So I sent them off with instructions to visit Annie Wilson at the City Farmers' Market at Britomart on Saturday mornings. Mind you, it's getting very late in the season for Jerusalem artichokes now - at the market this morning Annie told me she'd sold 180kg of the knobbly tubers this winter. I think I bought at least 5kg of them - they're my new favourite vegetable.
If you've never grown Jerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus), they're a member of the sunflower family. They have golden daisy-like flowers in autumn, then, when the plants die down, you harvest the nutty tubers.
Here's what Wikipedia has to say about them: "Despite its name, the Jerusalem artichoke has no relation to Jerusalem, and it is not a type of artichoke, though they are in the same family. The name Jerusalem is due to folk etymology; when the Jerusalem artichoke was first discovered by Europeans it was called Girasole, the Italian word for sunflower. The Jerusalem artichoke is a type of sunflower, in the same genus as the garden sunflower Helianthus annuus. Over time the name Girasole transformed into Jerusalem, and to avoid confusion some people have recently started to refer to it as sunchoke or sunroot, which is closer to the original Native American name for the plant. The artichoke part of the Jerusalem artichoke's name comes from the taste of its edible tuber. Samuel de Champlain, the French explorer, sent the first samples of the plant to France, noting that its taste was similar to an artichoke."
Actually, I grow loads of globe artichokes but I don't think they taste anything like Jerusalem artichokes. Jerusalem artichokes taste more like a cross between a sweet kumara and a yam. They're delicious roasted or boiled in soups - and when those yellow flowers open in late summer, they're surely the prettiest vegetable in the patch too.