Codling Moth!

My parents have two old Golden Delicious apple trees on their section. This year, they have been badly infected with codling moth. I haven't grown fruit before, and didn't realise anything was wrong until I saw all these ugly holes in the fruit! Good old Google and I had some more information:

The little blighters burrow into an apple, grow inside as tiny caterpillars, then come out to be little moths and do the whole thing all over again. They are very hard to treat in the caterpillar stage, as they are safely stowed away inside all our apples by then! It seems the most effective option is a trap that attracts the male moths...but the garden centre had run out! Other options were various sprays. Nasty, nasty, nasty - there was no way I was putting any of that stuff on my food. I mean, they stated on the boxes that they kill bees, which we need for pollination, and can cause harm to human respiratory systems. Nope. So not interested. We will cope with the moths! By then it was all a bit too late anyway.



Despite the codling moth, the trees are having a good season.

We have just started eating the first windfall fruit of the year. I've found that if I cut them up there's still a fair bit of apple left for us after the codling moths have been and gone. It sure feels better than having to throw them all out!

Out of all this I have learned an interesting lesson. If you want to grow food in your backyard as a bit of a hobby, no worries. It is pretty easy to grow a few lettuces or herbs, or even a lemon tree or two. The hard part comes when you want to grow food all year, without big gaps, making the most of the available space, getting to eat most of it yourself rather than it being scoffed by the birds, and not resorting to the supermarket because your lettuces all went to seed or your broccoli were all ready at once! That is quite a tricky skill and one which I suspect will take the rest of my life to develop.

How about you? Do you find vegetable and fruit growing easy, hard, pull-your-hair-out-challenging, exciting or a bit of everything?

Amy

Growing in the Garden This Week

I have just been out in the garden, wandering around. I must admit to spending an awful lot of time just wandering the garden. I find it therapeutic to just amble, gaze at this plant or that, contemplate what needs to be done, and enjoy watching the fruits of my labour grow (literally!).

Here are a few of the things I've enjoyed looking at over the past week:

The raspberry canes are fruiting well, particularly for their first season! I have never been partial to bought raspberries, but have discovered that there is a marked difference in flavour between the pale pink, plastic clad berries you buy at a supermarket, and these dark, juicy ones straight off the canes. Yum!

Next year we hope to have even more, with some Christmas fruiting canes sending out their fruit-bearing runners this summer in preparation for fruiting next year.

We have been chuffed to find a self-sown watermelon in the garden. Doesn't it look scrummy?! Now the family is debating whether it is ready to eat yet.

We moved a few self-sown pumpkins so they could ramble out over the lawn: here's one doing nicely. I think there might be at least 5 big grey pumpkins developing.

On a less exciting note, yet another
lettuce has gone to seed. Typical for this time of year in Tauranga! At least we might have got some of this one first.

Finally, here are seedlings waiting to be planted once it gets a little cooler this evening. These are the first of our winter crops to go in: pak choy, broccoli, cabbage and silverbeet mostly. It will be interesting to see just how well they cope going in this early in a Tauranga summer. You can see the grape vine enshrouded in its cloth bird-protection in behind the garden, and the fresh mushroom compost we put on every available garden space last night.

Thanks for coming by. What are you growing in your garden this week?

Chooks

I just LOVE chooks. I think they would have to be my favourite animal, followed by guinea pigs. I have always loved chooks (chickens, hens, poultry, fowl!). As a child, I had a little bantam named Henny Penny. She got a bit lonely and sad though so eventually had to go join some other little ladies.

I think part of my love for chooks is a feeling of affinity with them. Have you ever done one of those ice-breaker games where you are supposed to draw a picture of an animal that you feel is like you, and then hold it up and explain to the group how you are like that animal? Every time I do that game, I draw a chicken. I think it is that they are industrious - always busy. I like to be busy, especially with my hands. And I like how they are sociable and chat away happily and quietly to each other while they work...but that they are always busy working, getting things done. And I love that they give us eggs. They have multiple uses really - gardeners, destroyers of bugs, egg producers, makers of compost, eaters of leftovers, plus of course the quiet presence of a living thing that they bring to the garden.

My husband does not share my enthusiasm. He seems to find their clucking annoying, rather than soothing. We only got chooks after our attempt at purchasing some land (acreage/lifestyle block) fell through and he knew how disappointed I was to have to give up the dream of having chooks and a big garden. Our first 4 chooks were bantam/Arucana mix and quite stroppy. They were given to me as chick and grew up to lay beautiful little blue eggs on a regular basis. We had 5 originally, but early on could tell that one was a rooster. I was careful not to get attached as I knew he would die young, but Boyo insisted on naming him Frank. So from now on all roosters in our family will be called Frank...or at least those destined for the dinner table. Frank did meet an early death after he started crowing (no crowing allowed in town folks!); a friend came and flicked his neck for me - a very quick way for him to go. We even had him for dinner. Being a young bantam rooster there wasn't much to taste but what we did have was very tender and delicious.

The first 4 chickens when they were still babies!

The 4 girls ended up returning to their acreage home as they got into bad habits of standing in their yard and creating a fuss (VERY loudly) all day.

My second attempt at chooks went better. I was given 4 Sussex girls; a throw between the Light Sussex and Buff Sussex (not sure if those are the right names). They were beautiful, docile big girls with a mix of golden feathers. Mayberry (May), Rose, Pollyanthus (Polly) and Primula (Prim) were named on the suggestion of flower names by my mum.

Stories of their antics will be kept for another post (suffice to say for now that their antics were many and varied - perhaps several posts will be needed!).

But here they are:

Polly (dark with yellow legs), Rose (dark with white legs)

Prim (light with yellow legs)

May (light with white legs)

Thanks for coming by. I hope you like the photos! Amy

Cot Sheets

I'd heard that you could use old single, double, or queen sheets to remake into cot sheets and we had 2 spare sets of what I think were doubles. They are in quite good condition still, not having been used much on the spare bed (our bed is a queen and they didn't fit it very well). I figured that seeing as we had them already and they weren't being used, it would save me having to buy some cot sheets.


So I got to work and after a quick search for correct sizing online, turned our 2 double sets into 3 cot sets. I had enough to make 1 set of each colour, then used the extra pieces to create 2 double-coloured sheets, just for fun. Once again this has proven to be a great project for my novice sewing skills.

Here's the two colours just before joining. A bit different from your usual cot sheets! Grin.

Using Tomatoes

We have a bit of a tomato glut at present, and as many of them are rather large, I've been thinking of different ways to use them up. Their fresh flavour is a bit blah...kind of floury without much juice (still trying to work out why). I have found that once cooked they taste like all good tomatoes should though!

Last week I had a go at making a big pot of tomato soup, and this week Mum and I did some pasta sauce. Tomato soup is so easy to make. I lightly fried an onion, then used about 8 big tomatoes and a zucchini, together with some parsley and spinach from the garden, added 1/4c of red split lentils, some paprika, sweet chilli sauce and salt and covered half of it with water before cooking. I think tomatoes on their own with garlic and/or onion would be completely fine; the extras in this just added more flavour, vitamins and substance!

I have eaten quite a few big bowls of steaming tomato soup over the past week! For this one, I added half a tin of baked beans, a slice of spelt toast, and a sprinkle of parmesan for a complete meal.

The pasta sauce smelled absolutely delicious as it cooked the other night! And so it should. It had garlic, marjoram, oregano, italian parsley, rosemary and thyme from the garden, plus a few onions and some salt. Yum yummy! The big pot was full to the top, and we now have lots of little pasta sauce bags in the freezer. I imagine we'll need to do another lot in a week or so to use up the next batch of tomatoes. Not that I mind. I happen to be quite partial to pasta with tomato sauce and cheese.

Why I Won't Make a Great Landscape Designer

In 2004 I studied Landscape Design. I loved learning about plants and picked up a huge amount of information from having a University Library at my disposal. My favourites times though were sitting down in the edible gardens at Unitec, next to the Food Forest in the peace and quiet while eating my lunch.

But the Diploma itself didn't end up as a good fit and I've spent quite some time trying to work out why. Here's some recent thoughts...

Design isn’t what motivates me. Problem solving does though, and in a big way. So I approached a site looking at “these are the problems that need to be solved,” when a good Landscape Designer requires more creative flair than anything else, I think. It is not that I do not possess creative flair. Give me a bunch of flowers and a vase and I can show you plenty of creative flair! I just seemed to lose the visual impact, the theming and creative scope that many of my classmates showed by being bogged down in logistics. I found it so hard to ‘see’ the final picture without worrying so much about how I would make it ‘work.’ That’s why I don’t make a good designer.

But plants, and how they look and feel, and work together, that I do love. And sustainable design, permaculture, growing anything I can eat - these are all concepts I first really discovered my deep love of while at Unitec.

It has taken me 6 years since studying Landscape Design to work this out. I just couldn’t understand why I made such a great student, and yet would not make a good designer. I think that’s an important distinction to be able to make: a great student of something does not necessarily translate into a great employee or worker in that field. It requires something more, something different. A great student is just that – a great student.

The decision to withdraw from my diploma in Landscape Design after my first year was fuelled by a combination of financial difficulty, poor health and wondering whether the course would in fact take me where I wanted to go. But whatever the reasons, I’m glad I did not try to become a Landscape Designer. It would have been a path fraught with disappointment and confusion.

The funny thing is that I was so sure when I started studying that Landscape Design was what I wanted to do. I mean, I wasn’t fresh out of highschool. I’d had three years to think things through. I genuinely thought I loved design. I see now that I love problem solving. So design involving problem solving is all good, but design on its own really doesn’t mean anything to me. Looking back, I really, really, really did not know myself. I have only just started to discover who I am over the past two years. And the more I discover, the more I realise just how much on an enigma I am. There are layers upon layers of hidden motivators, talents, hold-backs and more. So the questions I now find myself asking are:
What would I be great at? What am I already great at? And what can I do with that, where can I take it?

Nappies!

With a baby on the way, I have been suddenly thrust into the world of nappies, change mats, cots, booties, car seats and various other paraphernalia. Sometimes I think there should be a user manual somewhere, on what to get and how to use it and whether we really need it! It can all be a bit overwhelming. I’ve been amazed at the enormous range of useful, decorative or just plain weird things available for babies. And I’ve been horrified at how much all these things seem to cost!

At the moment, we are trying to focus on finding a unit to rent before going to town on lots of baby gear. With only our 2 rooms here, there just isn’t a great deal of room for storage. We already have a new fridge, freezer and washing machine stored in my parents garage, plus a stack of boxes reaching to the ceiling in the ‘book room’ adjacent to our bedroom – vacuum cleaner, blender, pots, and so on. We figured that as we were planning on moving soonish and didn’t really ship much more than our bed back to NZ, it would be a good idea to avail ourselves of the Boxing Day sales, particularly for our large appliances. Seeing as we needed to buy them anyway, 20% off was a good incentive!

So with needing to set up a whole household first, my baby preparation over the summer months has been limited to nappies. Having several friends who have used (and raved) about the new generation cloth nappies, I have done my research on the various types available. Using disposables was never something I wanted to do, due to the huge environmental cost of something that sits in landfills for forever (or close enough to it). On top of that, I am a little dubious about putting all that plastic and chemicals on my baby’s behind. Surely that can’t be particularly good for them?

The great news is that where previously the only options were good old fashioned cloth or the not-so-disposable disposable, now there are many options in between. This has something to do with new fabrics becoming available, both man-made microfibre and natural hemp and bamboo. After many hours surfing internet sites, a visit to a friend who showed me her stash of all the different types, and much debate and deliberation, I decided to make some pocket nappies.

The reasoning? While the new generation ‘all in ones’ are fabulously easy to use (they act just like a disposable in putting on and taking off), and easy enough to wash, they take a long time to dry (it’s all those layers). Pockets, being a soft inner combined with a waterproof, breathable PUL outer have a ‘pocket’ in the top that you slip an insert into. Because you can take the insert out, unfold and dry it separately, they dry nice and quickly.
Pocket nappies usually cost around $30 each, and the general idea is to get around 12 nappies if you will wash every day. They usually come in different sizes, so you’d get 12 of each size your baby needed as it needed them. Fairly pricey as an upfront cost, but most people estimate savings of several thousand dollars per child from not using disposables…so definitely worth it in the end, especially if you have more than one child as you can reuse your nappies for ages and ages! Apparently they have good resale value too if kept in good nick, so can always be listed on Trademe after we are done with them.

My initial estimates are that I can make us a full set of small and medium pocket nappies for under $400NZ – not all that much more than the cost of standard cloth nappies, which would have been my second choice due to cost ($200-300NZ). My friend, Casper, who both showed me her nappy stash, lent me a pattern and then actually sewed 2 nappies with me to get me going, reckons most kids don’t go past the medium for this type of nappy so I will make just the two sizes for now.

So I took the plunge and re-learnt how to use my sewing machine which had been in a box pretty much since I bought it before leaving Townsville. I am now an expert on threading the needle and winding bobbins. I commandeered the dining table upstairs, and over several weeks have completed 18 pocket nappies, 16 inserts and 6 boosters (made from the scraps that were too small for full inserts).

Some red 'day' nappies waiting to be sewn.

My mother will back me up on this – if I can sew nappies, pretty much anyone can! My very limited sewing skills have even improved!!! I’ve been wanting to learn to sew properly for ages, but never had the gumption to get myself motivated and start, so this was the ideal project to move me along. The sewing is very basic; mostly straight stitching, with the elastic being the hard part to put in (you have to pull hard while sewing). And having a friend there to answer questions and show me the best way to do it was amazing (thanks so much Cas!).

So there you go. I made nappies! They look so cool too. Sadly it is time to start study for the year, so the medium nappies will have to wait until I have some time…maybe next summer??? Munchkin should hopefully not outgrow the smalls until at least 9months old.

2 finished Pocket Nappies with an insert ready to fold and slip in the top! Blue is for nights, having slightly wider legs than the reds.

Oh, and as so many people (even retailers of cloth nappies) have recommended that we use disposables for the first 4 weeks or thereabouts (new babies sometimes being a bit small, and new Mums and Dads a bit tired!), I have found a brand of ‘disposables’ that really are! They are called Moltex, and are made without chemicals and actually break down properly. I can pick up a box from a local store to get us started then we will transfer to my cutie pockets when we are ready. Munchkin is going to be one stylie, eco-friendly bub!

http://www.thenappynetwork.org.nz/ – cloth nappy forums, etc
http://www.greenbeans.co.nz/ – nappy fabric
http://www.ohbaby.co.nz/article.aspx?ContentID=1512 – review of Moltex disposables