Christy's Journal

I hived my bees last night - the techy description for taking the bees from the cardboard boxes that they came in and transferring them to their new permanent home. Wielded my smoker with a bit more expertise than the last time, only had to re-light once. I'm using pine needles as my fuel as I frequently raid the neighbours trees for my blueberry mulch anyway. Old sacking seems to be the most popular (I'm guessing easiest) but I'm a bit concerned about chemical treatments on sacks nowadays. Once I get the hang of it I think the pine needles will be just fine.

Friends that have been round in the last few days have been fascinated by what actually is inside a beehive. So here's my step by step as I was putting it together.

First up is the hive floor. Traditionally a solid wooden bottom (and this is what the commercially available ones are), but for varroa mite screened floors are recommended. When the mites fall off the bees they fall through the mesh and can't climb up again, which they would be able to do with a solid floor. Plus you can also use put a sticky board under the screen floor to monitor varroa. I'm intending on doing quite a bit of monitoring as I would like to manage as organically as possible, and that means keeping a close eye on them to make sure the mite levels aren't getting too high. I ran out of time to attempt to make my own floors, so got a local woodworker to make mine. So they are beautifully done, I particularly like the rounded edges for the landing platform (Thanks K!). They are made out of a hardwood decking timber (non-treated). They also have a slide out solid floor so I can put in in winter if I want to, to reduce draughts.

It's obviously the week for new arrivals. I picked up a few thousand bees today. We still have thirteen ducklings left but am down a couple of bees already - I managed to squash a couple already today, even though I was trying to be careful. I think beekeeping is going to be a good for me, I can see there are lots to learn, and lots to practice, plus somewhat challenging.

But first - the preparation. Nowadays you can make it easier for yourself and buy everything pre-made and pre-assembled, and there is a move towards plastic components too which make setting up pretty straightforward. But no, I didn't do that! Instead am doing the traditional way using wood, and wires, and beeswax. But I did buy kitset frames and boxes.

My nailing skills have improved considerably, especially under the watchful eye of Liz, who has been an excellent teacher.

The other two adult females visting. The male stayed well away. I've isolated mama and ducklings now so there is no potential jealousy issues. They are in a completely enclosed area as pukeko predate on ducklings. Fingers crossed I've done a good enough job - there's about 6 pukeko who have taken up residence in the duck orchard.
Mama duck originally laid a clutch of 19, which is quite big I think. She then ditched 4 about a week ago. I'm assuming they were rotten, I wasn't quite brave enough to find out, they were buried whole in the bush. So with a duckling count of thirteen, there must have been two left still that didn't hatch. When she finally leaves the nest I'll see if they're left.

Melina jumped up and down with excitement when I told her they had hatched. Alex looked at me and said ' I think I'm going to cry'. In a few days I'll let them hold them. Looking forward to that myself.

The loquat tree didn't know what hit it this year - fertilised (more than once!), mulched and now netted from the birds. The fruit are now three times as big as last year, and deliciously sweet since they have been left to hang on the tree.

Planning to make jam, chutney, and a compote for guests breakfast.

Other exciting fruit tree news - the nectarine tree has fruit! Conversely the almonds have put on a poor show this year with only about two fruit.

Our Kindergarten craft group had a stall at the Michael Park School Fair (a steiner school, so lots of sympathetic customers). Despite several late nights previously we had fun on the day, and made nearly double what we did last year, so quite satisfying. We're going to use funds raised for more library books and a couple of trestle tables, and stock up on craft supplies. I took a few rushed photos at the beginning.

Here's one of our raffles: mad by one of our talented mums who we are all in awe of. It's a seasonal tree. It stands about 40-50cm high and has been mostly needle-felted. Here it is dressed in it's spring colours - the fleece on the top can be removed, and replaced with summer one, then autumn colours, then winter has just the branches. Alex fell in love with it, and was very upset when the concept of a raffle was explained. He asked in a teary voice that if we didn't win could we please not tell him who did as that would make him sad. I'm half tempted to have a go at making one myself, but it's a lot to live up to!

It's been full on around here ever since the family got back from holidays. I might have got a little too used to my own company actually as it's been a bit hard to settle back in, but a new project should do the trick - today I bought my first lot of beekeeping equipment. Slightly nervous about the whole deal, but have a friendly mentor (paid for, but still very reassuring to have). I've decided to go as natural as possible with the bees, but must be pretty hard to be completely organic with the varroa mite. So I'm eschewing the easy options like plastic comb foundation, and going to learn how to wire my own frames with traditional wax foundation. Don't worry about the technical terms - I'm only just getting familiar with them and am still confused easily. I'm hoping it's going to be a lot more obvious when I actually start working with them. My 'nucs' or small starter nucleus colonies are due to arrive at the end of November. Before then I need to make a flat hive site, get the rest of my equipment, and assemble my frames and boxes. I've assured M that this is all going to be a breeze.

Other news - the duck nest is up to about 12 eggs, but she hasn't started sitting on them yet. I'm hoping she will otherwise there is a lot of lovely eggs going to go to waste. We were short of eggs the other day, and Melina suggested we go and help ourselves to the duck ones. Melina is enjoying the ducks - well actually mostly the duck food. I have this nifty system from the company 'Nosloc' where you fill up a big hanging bucket with food, and it has a nozzle in the bottom where the ducks peck at and the food comes out. It means I don't have to worry about feeding them every day. I was a bit worried they would be too dumb to figure it out, but thankfully it only took about 24 hours. Anyway Melina is fascinated by the feeder and likes to take an empty conatiner down, and then poke at the nozzle to fill up her container. I don't think she's quite got the concept of feeding the ducks yet. So far I've dissuaded her from taking the duck food back into her room.... The ducks think I'm wonderful at the moment. I've been planting in their orchard, and as soon as I dig a planting hole they waddle over and gorge themselves on the unearthed worms.

We're planning a trip to Melbourne at the moment to go to a friends wedding. It's at the beginning of December, so we've decided to take a week. Looking forward to it very much. Just need to find somewhere to stay.

Alex is back at school and seems to be enjoying it. He has opted to continue with Ukelele lessons which is great. He does have a good ear for music (unlike me). They are studying plants at the moment and the teacher requested some indoor plants for them to study. Today I visited a garden centre in town (bliss!) and bought him a venus fly trap. M swatted a fly and we fed it to the plant. Alex loves it.

And back to the garden. It's really becoming an increasingly bigger part of my life, despite my best efforts not to make this a gardening blog. Anyway the garden centre was fun. We only have a small one on the Island, so I thought a day in town to pick up laundry would be much improved by a trip to the garden centre. I bought two roses (to replace ones that had died in the vineyard), a greengage plum for a wedding present for a friend (they requested fruit trees for their orchard - I approve!), a herb plant just because I didn't know what it was (centella - which I've googled and seems to be good for all sorts of things), and two grafted tomato plants to conduct a scientific experiment. The tomato plants were hard to buy at $9 each but I do really want to see if the grafted ones make a difference to production. So I bought two 'roma' plants, and I have some of my own roma ones planted from seed. If the grafted ones work well, I might see if I can do my own grafting for next year.

That's about it from me, must head off to bed now.

The spring growth has been phenomenal in the past three weeks. Here's some summer anticipation - blueberries - first time to be harvested this year as I ruthlessly culled all flowers last year much to family's disappointment (to help the plants concentrate on getting established first).


And first raspberries - these are from my autumn-fruiting raspberries - they produce 90% of their crop in the autumn, then the same canes produce more laterals in spring and produce the remaining 10% of the crop in early summer. Well that's the theory anyway, will see what happens. I've pruned my raspberries in two different ways to see what happens to crop levels.


And the tiniest cutest furriest littlest peaches. The pukeko are not going to get them this year!

Woohoo! It's finally finished! Work started on this the week we moved in, but stalled for various reasons, not the least of which was that it turned into a much bigger project than anticipated. 3 1/2 years later, it's finished. The original plan was that it was going to be my vegetable garden. It's a steep slope, but the only place that is sunny, and reasonably sheltered, that didn't already have someting else on it (i.e. a vineyard). I always wanted berries, and they ended up taking up half the space. But I do love them, and have no regrets about giving them such a lot of prime space.

This garden has also ended up being something of a 'show' garden. I guess because it is right in fromt of the house, so very visible, also to justify the $$$ spent - it'll appeal to the paying guests. So now have to keep it looking pretty. I was thinking about it today while I was working down there, there will have to be a balance there as I still want the kids to be able to do stuff and play down there, and also help themselves to produce.

Anyway, how about some before and afters. I did kind of try to take some of these to match. Had to trawl through the picture files quite a way back to get some of these 'befores'!

First up the stairs. Because we've had the below slope for the past couple of years, which has seen a few out of control wheelbarrows.

And now we have this. I don't think M will miss the weed eating. These are in the middle of the garden, berries on right, vege beds on left.

We've got ducks! I must have checked on them about 10 times today, but despite the constant intrusion they seem to be settling in well. We have four beautiful cayuga ducks - three female and one male. They came home yesterday with me via a 2 1/2 hour car trip, then two ferry trips (from devonport into the big city, then across to the island), then the final car trip home. There were a few protest quacks but overall they coped quite well. Although they did look a bit miserable all huddling together on the rolly waiheke ferry, especially as we got a doozy thunderstorm as well.

They are for my new 'food forest' area, and are hopefully going to keep the slugs and snails under control, spread a bit of fertiliser around, provide some eggs, provide some ducklings for the children to nurture, and maybe even some ducks for the pot. I've been much more excited by them than I have been by chickens, not sure why, but I find them really appealing. But am slightly apprehensive now that I am responsible for something living that is not a plant. If my plants die I can just chuck them in the compost heap and no one knows, but I think even M might notice if a duck or two goes missing. I have been practicing for the upcoming responsibility actually - I've managed to keep a sourdough starter alive that someone gave me for almost a month now.

Here's Klaus putting together the duck house that he designed for me. You can lift up both sides of the roof to check for eggs. It has no bottom so that you layer it with straw then when it gets mucky you simply pick it up and wheel it to another spot, then put in some more straw. A duck house isn't necessary for keeping ducks, but I want to collect eggs without having to hunt for them every day, I'm hoping this will be an appealing duck laying place!

The last 3-4 weeks really have been gorgeously spring like, and I've been getting a gardening itch quite often. I've been waking up early the last few days and on a couple of them I've even got up and gone into the garden for an hour or so before the rest of the family emerges. It's very quiet and peaceful. Looking forward to daylight saving, when I'll be able to spend some time after kids in bed out there. I do enjoy having the kids with me when I garden, but I also cherish that quiet peaceful time when I'm by myself. Instant stress relief.

My front vegetable garden, which has been a work in progress ever since we moved here 3 years ago, is finally being finished at the moment. So that is very exciting for me. I've been wanting to take some pictures but thinkI will wait till it's all done. Only got the main entrance steps to do now - should be finished about Wed next week. When I will actually be away... But will be looking forward to coming back to them! Have been feeling a bit sorry for the landscaping guys - I've been thinking and planning this garden for so long that I know exactly where I want everything and how it is to be done, so they haven't had any creative licence at all.

In the mean time there are pockets of the garden that are being distinctly spring like. These globe artichokes surprised me yesterday when I noticed them.


Actually this is more a last of winter photo, but I was quite amused by what is quite possibly my largest leek and my smallest leek. Both planted at the same time and treated exactly the same.


The vineyard of course is the most important spring time indicator around here. I really enjoy the 'bud burst' stage.

Then watching the new leaves unfurl. They look a bit like a new-born baby sometimes does, covered with a whitish layer. Or maybe not a good simile. I might be getting a bit too attached to the vines.

Here's a post for the gardeners - if you're not, feel free to skip through! This also serves as documentation of the process for me, hence the detail.

I've been thinking about this one for a while. It's taken three years to get to here, but now that I've got a definite vision it's quite exciting for me! The basic idea is that it is a sub-tropical 'food forest' style garden, designed with permacultural ideals in mind. So inputs should be minimal with mulch and fertiliser provided as part of the garden.

The site is less than ideal, being south facing, poorly drained, classic waiheke/auckland foot depth of topsoil then solid clay pan, and mostly sheltered, but not always. I despaired for this area for a while because of all these factors, but have gradually come to think about ways to work with all these issues, rather than against them. I also don't expect everything I do/plant to survive/do well. So a lot of it is experimental, but that's quite fun. Having said that I'm going to do my best to make it is a success. We never do anything by halves around here! (If it's worth doing, it's worth doing properly...).

Below picture shows my first 'before' shot. It is currently the location of the citrus orchard, and over the last couple of years all the oranges have died, and there has been very little growth on most of the other plants. The biggest problem for the citrus is the drainage I think - in winter if you listen you can hear the water trickling through the soil. The area is about 30m by 15m, and on a slope.



Here is another shot, from the bottom looking up/sideways, although have done a little work here. I've marked out the duck fence (more on that later) , planted a few more things, moved M's boat trailer to the allocated boat parking space (may be a little small...), and put bamboo stakes in with plant names on as part of my planting plan.




The first thing I did, apart from observation of the site over a couple of years, is draw up a to scale plan of the area. Then I use post-it notes to decide on what goes where. I do tend to draw up quite a detailed plan before I do a new large garden like this. The finished product often varies a bit from the plan but it is great for really thinking about where you want everything to go, and how it is going to work. Unfortunately I seem to have lost the drawing otherwise I would have taken a picture of it (a bit annoyed about that still, hoping it will turn up somewhere...).

So the plan.

1. The whole area is going to be mulched so there will be no grass. I have done small bits and pieces using seaweed, horse manure, leaves, and then covered with wood chip. This is ideal, but the area is too big to do it all like this, so the majority at the beginning will be covered with cardboard then have wood chip/mulch on top. I'll announce a working bee when I'm ready to do that!

2. Fertiliser and mulch materials will be provided by:

• comfrey strip 1m wide running down far left border, cut back a couple of times a year and distributed round
• lucerne strip planted next to comfrey, again to be cut back each year
• canna edulis (arrowroot) planted thickly in one corner for mulch
• abyssian bananas planted for shelter and mulch
• nitrogen fixing plants interplanted including dwarf kowhai, kaka beak, one inga bean, acacia floribunda
• native mulch plants interplanted: whau, coprosma (any other suggestions?)
• duck poop: I have four cayuga ducks coming to live. The whole area will be fenced to knee height to keep them in, and they will have a duck house and a pen area to shut in at nighttime so we can also collect their eggs.

3. The plants. Some of these I already have, a lot of the smaller ones I am growing from cuttings or seed, and others (the bigger trees particularly) I have on order to pick up later in the year. This is my current list. Some of these are probably marginal, although one big plus of this site is that it doesn't get frost (well I haven't seen one there yet, fingers crossed). (Sorry about some of this formatting, blogspot seems to have its own mind sometimes).

Canopy layer

• Existing fruit trees - mostly lemons, limes and grapefruit
  Bananas
  (Australian ladyfinger, ladyfinger, misi luki, island sweetie)
  Babaco
  Casimiroa
  Cherimoya
  Davidson’s Plum
  Kaffir lime
  Kaipara lemon
  Longan
  Loquat
  Lucuma
  Mountain Paw Paw
• Mulberry
  Pineapple
  Paw Paw
• Persimmon

Shrub layer

• Cardomom (false)
• Cape Gooseberry
  Guava – red & yellow
  Chilean Guava
  Elderberry
  Ginger – Chinese
  Pink Pineapple
  Pomegranate
  Sugarcane

Herb/ground layer

• Aloe Vera
  Alpine strawberries
• Bulbs (daffs)
  Cranberry
  Lemon balm
  Lemon Grass
  Nasturtiums
• NZ celery

(this is just a starting list, more will be added)

4. Other

Also will have an area for basket willows (hopefully, space is now starting to get a little tight!)

And a couple of beehives (another project I'm working on).

Here's a couple of plant markers. Putting these out was fun! And is good to play around with them before committing to it with actual plants. Now that they have been there a couple of weeks there are some that I'm definitely going to change.

a while ago i posted a picture of some rot wich was discovered in one of our guest bathrooms. it turned out that when they built the house there was no waterproofing in any of the bathrooms (!). so they all had to be re-done (arrrgghhhh!). the guest bathroom was obviously the most urgent with all that festering mould so we got stuck into that one straight away. we have two bathrooms in the main house which are being done mainly during the upcoming school holidays. we took the opportunity to fix up the numerous annoying things in the guest bathroom and gave it a complete makeover. the house bathrooms are not getting that treatment, and won't look too much different so thought i should post about this one anyway.

but first - the main room of the guest room - we had already planned new curtains, because the ones already there
a) were stained permanently
b) didn't go all the way across the window
c) got jammed as you pulled them across
d) were a cream colour which clashed with the white walls
e) and one tall window, in the right hand side of the pic below, is a tall window which was obviously too hard to deal with for the previous owners put a board half way across the window to hang a curtain from which left the top part of the window uncovered, which i know annoyed people.

i forgot to take before photos, but this is an old one taken when we were looking to buy the property, so has previous owners other furnishings (please note!). tall window not so obvious but is on next pic.

and below is after shot. we replaced the tall window 1/2 curtain with a blind. am very pleased with the new curtains and blind, makes me happy every time i walk in there!