Guilding the garden.

[mischief]

Its now spring and we're heading into our third year with the garden.
I've decided that this year we need to work on connecting the dots.
I think we've gone about the idea of diversity the wrong way by trying to get as many different things into the garden as we can without really paying attention to the way things relate to each other.

I have been trying to get a grip on companion planting and putting guilds together but have found that all to often you get told that it also depends on the local climate etc. which is abit off putting, not to mention reading that alot of the traditional companion plantings are said not actually do anything.
To my mind things either work or they dont work, so this year we are going to try some of them out and see what happens.

It actually feels like we have started again from scratch.

Got a newly revitalised dome,with the broken bit on the bottom fixed, bracings tightened, windbreak instead of wire mesh.
Got new chooks arriving probably either tomorrow or sunday from the neighbour of someone I work with.
These will be a mixed bag of bantams and various types and colours of chooks but best of all most of them will be point of lay hens rather than the end of lays we have been rescuing from the battery farm.
Paths are all freshly laid out with shredded tree mulch so we have a reprieve on getting a long term solution in place for this area.

This year however, I have competition as my daughter, brother and mother have all decided to get serious in their gardens.

I have got my own copy of a companion planting book called 'Carrots love Tomatoes' as well as copious notes from my net searches and am now the proud owner of a Modern version of the Yates garden guide book...
I think hubby felt sorry for me 'having' to use a geriatric copy that touts the wonders of DDT of all things.(I just ignored those bits of it)
And dads copy of the Nz gardening calendar, so lack of adequate info is no longer an issue.

I feel quite nervous now and have all fingers and toes crossed for a good year.

I have been working on getting the last of the privet hedge grubbed out from along the north bank.
This was supposed to have been finished last year but....
not much more to go, although the bit with the plum tree on it will have to wait now til next mid winter.
Below the bank needed alittle leveling and clearing out too.
I noticed that the adjacent bed was still somewhat lumpy bumpy so the top soil went up to help make things more level and the rest is being used to fill in hollows elsewhere.

One area we had trouble with was in front of the boundary hedge.
I had made a walkway from soil left over from the driveway regrading which worked a treat in getting too all the hedge to trim it properly, but a pain trying to get the dome along it, so some of the bank soil has also gone to gently slope the three beds in front of this walkway.
The violets along here have gone absolutely mad and have taken over the walkway which hopefully will means not so many unwanted types settling in here.

With the part where the old steps up to the lawn used to be, the lavendar on each side of the steps had been taken over by the Japanese Anemone and pretty much succombed, so this was all cleared out and the swing seat put in there instead.
I spent ages wandering around looking at different things trying to work out what to plant underneath this.
It needed to be tough so it would stand up to being trod on,has to be able to look after itself and fend off unwanteds,low growing with leaf and flowers that were subtle and not in your face.
And the winner was the one with the little flowers that remind me of little blue cats with green ears and milk on its chin.
Apparently its a type of veronica persica from the net search I did on it.
I dug these out of the garden in whole mats and after roughing over the soil sort of nestled them into place and then stood on them.
After a week they are standing up all perky looking great.

We are going onto broadband whenever the modem arrives and mum has said I can use her camara to take pictures with which is great cos hers has a rechargeable battery....so we'll re start the photoblog too.

[pebble]

Can't wait to see the photos!

I wish someone would write a book specifically on guilds (preferably a temperate climate one).

[mischief]

I'm hoping that we can get a thread going on what we've tried out and how it all goes.
Maybe you could collate it for us and write that book.

Im not too keen about the pics to be honest,especially at the moment with some major earth moving being carried out it looks raw and the trees I planted still look like so many sticks.
But the mustard is starting to flower and that does look good.
I will keep better photo record this year tho I promise.

[pebble]

Progress pics would be good. You could just post them later once there is a sequence.

[eco4560]

Yay! New chookies!

[mischief]

Actually Eco thats not a bad idea (on the pics)
I did think it was silly to post 'raw' one month and then 'full' few months later.
It didnt really seem to have alot of continuity.
Before, during and afters, in the same general area is a better idea.

We got some really ferocious winds again today and the swing seat was blown up onto the garden area- that has never happened before.
We are definitely going to pegging the tarp over the dome separately from now on.
Lucky it wasnt the dome that blew over.

[Woz]

>getting the last of the privet hedge grubbed out

I've got Broadleaf Privet here and am slowly taking most of them them out. But I am leaving a few in out-of-the-way places as they coppice very easily and the new shoots grow fast, vertical and straight - perfect garden stakes. And by cutting them before they flower the risk of the spreading by seed is negated. Just a thought.

[mischief]

Thanks Woz,
No I didnt know that.
All our privet is in the hedges and unfortunately whats left of them along the boundary wall is growing up thru a barbed wire fence, which has put me off trying to get rid of the odd bit of privet.
I dont really understand why anyone would want barbed wire in the fence around their house, its still really sharp too.

[mischief]

Opps Pebble sorry it was you that gave me a better idea on the progress pics not Eco.

The new girls have settled in and started laying.
This is probably the first time I have ever had young birds, some are pullets, which I took to mean that they are just starting their first year as laying hens and some are 1 year olds.
The eggs are quite alot smaller than the end of lays we have always had.

I didnt have to show them how to roost and they scratch like mad, I have moved the nest box over one spot so they cant get out of the dome.

We actually got 8 birds this time, just in case one died or we got an egg eater that needed to be removed.
In the nest box I tried something different and put in a layer of broken up small twigs with a lot of dried leaves covering the whole thing.
This has been rearranged so that the twigs are now in a circle around the main nesty area and all the leaves have been moved so they make up the nest proper- the bowl shape.
What professionals these girls are.

I finally started to get into the seed sowing and so far have leafy greens and herby things coming along.
I put off starting too early this year and as I had read in afew places to start sowing around 6 weeks before the last frost date.
The last one we ever had was the week after labour day-second to last monday in october.
I hope the snow we had doesnt mean that it will be later than that.

The Bio Dynamic calendar is on the table and I'm checking it to see which type to sow before I do it-trying to be systematic rather than impulsive this year.
One thing that has puzzled me is that the moon is supposed to be showing the last quarter-before it isnt there as the new moon.
I couldnt find it tonight when I went out to see what it looked like, isnt it supposed to show up every night until its 'the new moon',ie on the other side of the planet for that time period?
Thats supposed to be next week, have I got this wrong?

The new Plum tree started to flower, which I dont want it to do this year so these have all been carefully pinched off.
This should encourage it to concentrate on producing a good root system.
The only trees that havent started to bud up still are the pomegranate and the mulberry.

We decided that all the fruit plants should be around the edge of the vege garden rather than in it and I think we managed to get all of them safely out of the middle of the garden and around the north perimetre,(with the exception of the orange tree which will remain where it is here on out).
The black currant is staying put too as I know it definitely is not in the way of the dome.
There was really only the red and white currants to move which was done before they had got any leaves on them and What I think was the thornless blackberry that has reappeared this year.
I couldnt find it last year so I'm hoping that its not from seeds that the birds have dropped.

I snuck the two Chestnuts down the back on hubby's side hidden in the Bears breeches.
These are going to be coppiced regularly for stakes and will not be allowed to grow into monsters.
I have told my neighbour that if anything happens to me then he is quite welcome to come over and grub them out so they dont become a nuisance.

Today, I went around the treelings along the roadside, they are all looking good and the Alders are leafing up.
The Olive trees still had the tape attaching them to their stakes so this was taken off, dont want them to get strangled.

Last year I tried the same thing that Eco did and got a whole pile of different seeds, some probably on the too old side, and sprinkled them merrily all over this area after it had been mulched.
The only thing that actually came up even after all this time was a very pretty red stalked silverbeet, which is disappointing.
Looks funky with mushroomy things growing around it.
They are probably there because of the shredded tree mulch we put down at the beginning of last year.

For some reason one half of a double row of the broadbeans seems to be dying off, I dont know why,the peas growing between them seem to doing okay though.

The raw areas where I moved soil from the bank onto the vege garden was sown with buckwheat soon after that but when I checked I couldnt find any that were sprouting.
I found instead empty husks.
Maybe I just fed the birds or the ants or maybe they were sown too early.
The three I did find after half an hour on my hands and knees were put in with the strawberries so hopefully we can get some seed to start again.grrr

[eco4560]

I couldnt find it tonight when I went out to see what it looked like, isnt it supposed to show up every night until its 'the new moon',ie on the other side of the planet for that time period?

It's a time thing. At full moon the moon rises exactly at sunset, and with each passing day it rises later and later, until the new moon that rises at sunrise. So just a few days before new moon you won't see the moon in the night sky until about 4 am or so.
It's interesting what germinates when you do the chucking out seed thing. The plants obviously decide when they want to come up. I tossed out old flower seeds with some fresh nasturtium seed a year ago, and recently the nasturtium has come up along with something that looks like stock (which I don't even remember being in the mix!). It surprises me how long they stay dormant for before they germinate!