Have planted significant amounts of garlic today. If it all grows, it will be great. Garlic bhajee, here I come!

I just braved the weather to get some silverbeet, and looked over at my broad beans. There's one plant that's got black tips - leaves and I think a few of the flowers have gone black and died too. What's going on ( Read more... )

Apart from the little patch where my saffron is currently doing its thing, and the garlic will go in next to it, the whole garden has been planted, mulched and settled down for winter. More or less. The romanesco broccoli will need to be thinned, and the onion/carrot bed is full of sprouting things that may or may not be onions and carrots, so they ( Read more... )

The sewing room is nearing the moment. It's not there yet, but close. Today we moved the shelving unit in, and I touched up the paint on it. I brought down the narrow bookshelf. We put up the fabric shelves. We also moved the chest of drawers back downstairs. Tomorrow I start carrying fabric and Stuff ( Read more... )

oh, the geekery!

John Evelyn's kalendarium hortense, 1699
William FitzHerberts manual of husbandry, 1543

List of useful texts at archive.org

Prices on things everywhere

mwahahaha!

references to find:
De Re Rustica, On Agriculture and Trees ...   Columella. 60 AD
Natural History (Naturalis Historica).    Pliny the Elder   
Pliny the Younger (61-113 ( Read more... )

I arrived back in Wellington a little later than planned, so it was touch and go there for a little while if I was going to make it to school for pickup. But I did.

Had a lovely weekend visiting magsmcm and her significant other. A bit of fooding, a bit of geeking, a bit of garden geeking, more fooding and some plotting and planning. Among other things.

I ( Read more... )

Landscaping = Euphemism for 'moving great big heaps of dirt from one end of the garden to the other ( Read more... )

So, progress is happening, but it's slow. The dust is insane, it's so fine, and everywhere. At least the Metservice was on crack yesterday, so we got stuff done. I spent a couple of hours in the garden, continuing the cleanup around the side and bottom. I've suddenly cleared quite a large area now available for winter planting - except I have ( Read more... )

This morning's gardening project was to plant another set of broad beans at the bottom, and turn the compost heaps over. The first one is almost finished, when I lifted the cover there were plenty of surprised wrigglers flailing on top. It's nice, black and a little fibrous. But dry. I watered it and covered it up again ( Read more... )

planning to do gardening in the morning, housework and sewing in the afternoon for a few days. So I have now dug up all the parsley root (vegetable soup coming up!) and planted my saffron corms; redistributed borage around the place; and planted out some of the baby strawberry plants in the new strawberry bed. Also derris dusted the cabbages that ( Read more... )