Back to school! I was pleasantly surprised at the state of my plot - our wet-dry-wet-dry weather has kept things alive and green. It was looking pretty respectable, with the corn green, healthy-looking and about 3ft high. No sign of the holy climbing beans - definitely consumed by something (probably feathered), methinks, since the ones at home are ( Read more... )

A very wet, grey day. We had a practical assessment for composting today, but put it off until the end of the day hoping for a fine break. Fortunately, we just got one before the weather closed in again after class finished for the day. So, we began the day with theory. First we went over what we need to do on our compost and worms rostered weeks ( ( Read more... )

Got to Lincoln today to bad news: there'd been a frost out there, on Monday night/Tuesday morning. Just after I'd planted out my tender little corn seedlings ( Read more... )

This morning I spent some time before class preparing my personal plot for planting out my sweetcorn seedlings. I made holes in the pea straw mulch down to the soil and added a bit of compost to each hole, which was all I had time for before 9am ( Read more... )

Wednesday's class started with botany again, today looking at the cell structure of plants. It was a class that had me reaching back into the very dark and distant recesses of my mind to recall fourth and fifth form science. That was a long time ago... ;-) All made pretty good sense though. We're starting to get assignments - most of out ( Read more... )

Well, muck anyway. :-) I am feeling slightly like less of a weakling than I usually do, however, since today we were assessed on our ability to double-dig a short patch of ground. To double dig, you first remove a trench of topsoil to a spade's depth and place it to one side. Then you dig down another spade's depth into the subsoil below (in our ( Read more... )

Today's classes started not at the BHU but at Landcare Research Manaaki Whenua, down the road towards Lincoln township. The bus got me there early and I stopped into the New World supermarket across the road before heading over. This New World has only been open 5 weeks, according to the shop assistant I spoke to. It has two wind turbines in the ( Read more... )

Today's classes were on planting and sowing in the morning and worms in the afternoon. Our tutor for these classes prefers to teach out in the field while we're actually doing stuff, which I think suited the class just fine. It's getting hot already though - I had a hat and long sleeves on, but forgot my sunblock and that's definitely not a good ( Read more... )

Monday being a public holiday (yay!) there was just the one class this week, which I'm a bit late on writing up since we seem to have suddenly become social butterflies. :-) Started the day digging over a bit more of my patch. I'm torn about taking out the artichoke - there are quite a few little artichokes forming on it, but it takes up well over ( Read more... )

Started my day this morning by getting a bus to site early (saw one other fellow-student on the bus), grabbing a spade and scooting down to the student gardens to start digging mine over. I'm a fairly slow digger so I figured I'd get it done in small bites around classes. Morning is definitely going to be the time to do it though - it was already ( Read more... )