Child of the Planet

I hear that a global recession is imminent, so like the NZ govt, I’m embarking on a series of infrastructure projects to bolster the local economy. This is the new roof for my wood shed…. The old one was steel Which was rusting through     I ripped off the steel One of the beams was sagging so I added a new one    The new roof will be constructed out of recycled products. These supports are surplus decking Bolted to the decking is plastic roof sheeting I need to patch up the old screw holes. This also gave me an opportunity to plan out how I was going to construct the roof. The overhang is to keep water out of the shed, and to divert it to the two apple trees. We get some decent wind here in the winter so I added some braces    

This year's garlic crop has spent a month in the garage drying out. I’m sorting the bulb by location in the bed, and the amount of rust they suffered. I'll burn the leaves once the fire restrictions have been lifted. I’ve sorted out the best for next year's seed. I’m keeping them sorted so I can track them when planted.

The front gardens have been 'going at it' pretty hard over the last couple of years so I thought I'd give them a break.     Some ash, a cardboard barrier to weeds, and some mulch.

The grapes have started to ripen.... Which means my competition with the birds is on. The local black birds don't seem to be concerned with how sweet the fruit is. They will happily eat the green unripe grapes. I've noticed them swallow fruit whole so I don't think they care about taste. Word seems to be being passed about. The number of visitors seems to be increasing as the month slips by. I have been protecting individual grape bunches with plastic mesh bags. Ran out of bags so tried to protect the rest with a net.       These birds are diabolically sly and managed to muscled through gaps. I've purchased some more bags and now what is left of the crop has some sort of protection. Found that the birds have now started to pull the bags off, so I'm securing them with clothes pegs.    

I've had a couple of black passion-fruit in the ground for more then a year and they are now fruiting. Decided to plant this little guy at the base of a third tree stump. It's a golden variety.        

Bit of a mixed bag this year. Plenty of plants but the quality ranged from decent bulbs to quite a few that were under developed.       Bee popped by to investigate. I sorted everything into big/small and how infected with rust the plants were. The garage roof seems to be a good place to store the produce.

This years garlic has been under cover since planting. The aim is to protect it from the winter westerlies, and to see if it has an effect on rust. A few plants have ended up growing outside the cover and I'm using these as a 'control' to see if there is any difference.     When I took the covers off, the first thing I noticed was that the plants have been bent by the cover. I'm thinking of buying taller frames for next year. There is a bad patch of rust halfway down the bed. Planted here was a small group of stiff neck variety. Each year that I've grown garlic, the rust mainly hits in December, so it doesn't have a big impact on the growth of the garlic. None of the garlic that was outside the cover was effected by rust. The rest of the crop is looking good, but the rust is spreading out from that small patch in the middle.    I pruned off infected leaves and burnt them.