Month: November 2024

We have a resident pair of Kingfisher near the house that nest in a big old Phoenix Palm beside the swimming pool. They have a luxury roost!   On the lawn about 20 metres away is our rain gauge, and one (or maybe both) of the Kingfishers recently decided that the rain gauge was a brilliant perch for sitting quietly and catching prey.   Clever stuff, except they sat and delicately pooped straight down into the rain gauge!  Pete was getting a bit miffed with having to constantly clean it out and it was hampering his rain recording accuracy too!   What to do!?  From my experience with bird behaviour, I suggested Pete plant a higher perch in front of the rain gauge

in the direction the Kingfisher usually sat.  It worked perfectly!  No bird likes to be out perched!  S/he now takes her place daily on the specially made perch with dowel just the right width for best grip.  I watched this morning as it scooped up a skink and sat on its new perch, consuming its prey in seconds.

In that same area is one of four little Kawakawa saplings that I planted to see if I can grow these native medicinal trees to supplement the ONE mature Kawakawa tree we have on our 6ha.  Our beautiful 5m high x 3m wide verdant Kawakawa tree is near the house, behind the vege

gardens.  It’s growing below a sandy/clay cliff of about 20m, at the base of a little hill we call Pig Hill (cos we had Kunekunes there once).  I love this Kawakawa tree which is sprouting candles again this spring.  It’s a taonga/treasure that clings on about a metre up the cliff where it must be relatively free draining.

Concerned that we only had this one tree, a few months ago I bought four young Kawakawa saplings about half a metre high from a local grower.  I planted one in the same bank/cliff about 10m along from our thriving Kawakawa, but this new one is struggling.  Its leaves are a pale washed out green.  The second one, I planted across the shady race from the happy older tree, among other natives like karamu coprosma and pittosporum.  Its doing well with lots of new dark green leaves.

Goodness three years have passed since my last entry!  Too busy to ramble ay!  Twin grandsons and a whole lot of life later, I’ve decided to again keep a farmlet diary of sorts.

Our vege garden is pottering along after a good Spring and it reminded me of the “Green Fingers” thing.  When you get a good harvest, people tend to shrug and say, well you do have “green fingers” meaning I think, a natural bent for growing plants.   My experience is that you have to grow green fingers.  Maybe some people are born with a natural ability to grow anything anywhere?  I’ve found in ten plus years living here, that my knowledge and ability to grow good veges has increased season by season as I’ve tried new crops or new ways of doing last season’s crops.  Give it a go and you soon find out what works and what does not!  Vege gardening is definitely learning by trial and error!  Water is crucial to most vege plants – they can put up with a few dry days, but a warm windy week will stress them out totally.   Water water water!  And you can water rhubarb all week, but if you don’t feed it generously, it won’t thrive.  Ours was looking a bit strung out until I emptied the chook shed pooped on straw around it.  Boom, instant success!!

My latest epiphany is the power of biochar to supercharge the soil.  I use it layered in our Bokashi bucket and by the time each cured bucket mass is ready to bury in the vege garden, it’s all on!  Into the Bokashi bucket goes the 2-3 days of organic kitchen waste, squashed down with a garden fork/trowel combo tool, sprinkled with Bokashi Zing, and then a layer of Biochar.   Lid on and aerobic processes begin!  The bokashi mix charges up the multi-faceted Biochar and gets it singing.  Layer after layer of kitchen waste/zing/bichar fills the bucket over a few weeks.  That bucket is put aside to “cure” when full, and the next bucket is started.  When I’m ready to use the fully cured bucket, I find a suitable spot in the vege garden plots where I want to enrich the soil.  We dig a trench, add in the bucket of zingy biocharred bokashi, cover it well with soil and usually add the week’s coffee grounds across the top which helps deter wildlife from investigating.  Leave it to rot down and power up for about a month and then plant over the top.

I’ve been so concerned about tired soils in our vege garden that I planted a green crop of lupins and mustard seeds to fix nitrogen and give the plots an extra boost before summer cropping.  Looks like this is working well, but mostly this month’s success is due to the bokashi! Like the little Roma acid-free tomato seedling I planted over the top of a recent bokashi-ed area! After 2-3 weeks it has grown soooo fast and looks healthy and happy!