Learn to love what you don't like.....

Sometimes in life you just have to suck it up and love what you don't like.

I grew up believing that dandelions were a pesky weed.

I grew up believing that Mason Bees were nasty bad insects that would sting you if you went near them.

I grew up believing that Mynah birds were a horrible bullying bird and my mother used to tell me they stole food from all the other birds making them go hungry. 

I grew up believing that Brassicas and Carrots were temperamental, hard veges to grow.

I thought onions and garlic were only for the 'rich' families - it wasn't until I was an adult that I found out my mother just hated them so we never had them.

These beliefs and memories stay with you, and it is hard to break the thought pattern that has been with you for decades. 

Knowledge and listening to others have led me to the real facts, and now I look at so many things in the past that I would have shied away from and see the good in them, that they are not difficult or bad and how they fit into the web of life.

My garden is getting hammered at the moment from blackbirds. 

I have planted out my first Hugelkulture bed with many seedlings and the black birds are going there and digging it up searching for bugs and grubs.

I have an entire new mindset now. In the past I would have looked at ways of deterring these birds - scarring them away - but realise now they are so beneficial as they are great pest catchers - I just don't want them attacking this area in the garden right now. 

I went to the beach a few days ago and brought back a heap of big branches planning to use them as support frames for plants, but have used these to prop against the hugelkultur mound along with a lot of small branches that I had trimmed off a bush where the black birds are digging. 

It appears to be working. 

No new holes to date. 

I walk around my garden so many times a day. I am continually pulling out the Kikuyu sprouts that have poked their heads up to get light, and I am always accompanied by my little Piwakawaka friend. Yesterday I also had a little sparrow sitting on the fence watching me. So cute!! 

Kikuyu may become another plant like Oxalis (which thankfully I don't have) that I will have to learn to love and garden with, instead of against. I am hoping that when my plants have got well established and there are thick layers in the forest, the Kikuyu may struggle and become a weak plant and decide to leave - or if not totally leave, it will be there but un noticed and not invasive. Time will tell. 

There were 5 species of birds all in my developing garden area when I looked out yesterday.  The little Piwakawaka, Sparrows, Blackbirds, Mynahs and Waxeyes. 

I am loving the Mynah birds. They are full of character and personality. 

They are not horrible nasty birds that I grew up believing.  They fit perfectly into the food chain and have definitely got their pecking order sorted! I love watching how all the birds feed together outside. 

The chooks are the boss, then come the Mynahs and the Sparrows.  The Blackbirds look out for worms and other grubs that may surface with all the birds on the ground, and the Piwakawaka flits about getting any insects these birds disturb. 

What a perfect system.

Having my chook run in the corner beside my new garden has certainly attracted many of these birds in.  It is great to share the excess scraps that we feed the chooks to all the other birds. This will help keep unwanted rodents away as there is nothing left at the end of each feed. 

I never noticed all these birds before in my garden at one time. 

Perhaps they all were there but I was looking out seeing with my eyes closed. 

The Birds & the Bees

Let me tell you 'bout the Birds and the Bees

and the flowers and the trees

and the moon up above.

And a thing called "Love"

I have always remembered this song by Jewel Akens, and it seems fitting to quote these lyrics now as I love everything about the birds and bees and the moon up above me. 

I truely believe when we provide for the bees, they will provide for us. 

I can't believe the bird and bee life that has changed already in just 3 months since I started work out the back. 

We now have a resident Pīwakawaka (fantail) who appears to be on it's own with no mate,  and follows me the entire time I am outside flitting from tree to tree and nearly landing on my shoulders.

We have wax eyes feeding off the small bugs that are around the flowering camellia and other trees and plants.

I love birds so much and my main goal is to have a garden that a Tui will want to visit! The Tui is my favourite bird and that will be the icing on the cake for me to look out a window and see one in one of my trees. 

There are bees and other winged insects flying around continually. This is all in a matter of weeks from a plain grass lawn expanse to a mulched area with fruit trees and many small plants planted. I can only imagine what it is going to be like in a couple of years time. 

The bees work tirelessly on my open flowered camellia's, flowering rosemary bush and my wild flowers that are scattered around the garden. 

Everything I plant out in the garden is either for the birds, the bees or us. 

Just before Christmas I brought some Leafcutter bees and a house for them.  Leafcutter bees are amazing pollinators, they don't sting, and don't make honey. They are a solitary bee, cutting perfect wee circles from petals and leaves to make their nests to lay eggs in. Rose petals are their favourite to cut holes from. They only fly about 300m from their nest so will stay in your garden which is so awesome for pollination. Sadly none of them have chosen to come back to the house since hatching but some mason bees have built their clay nests in there. Mason bees are good pollinators as well so I am happy. I am sure the leafcutter bees have found another nesting area close by as I saw little round circles cut in my beetroot leaves over summer. 

In the fridge I have a couple of dozen leafcutter cocoons that I harvested in early autumn and will lift out in late spring and will pop them in the big tube in their house and hopefully they will hatch. 

Below is a couple of images of the mason bee nests in the leafcutter bee's house. I am fascinated how they collect the clay to line the nest to lay their eggs in, with a spider caught and paralysed for food for the hatching babies. 

Just mind blowing!

A food forest is so much more than just an area to feed us. It is an entire ecosystem within my garden where we can all live harmoniously.

My 4 Hy-Line Girls

On the first day of Level 2 Lockdown I was off in the car to collect 4 young 13 week old brown Hy-line pullets. I had ordered them just before lockdown but had to wait several weeks until I could safely pick them up. 

It was a 2 1/2 hour journey one way to get them and I was wondering how they would travel. I needn't have worried as they just settled in the box and hardly made a peep all the way home. 

I was hoping I wouldn't have any stops on the way as 4 chooks in a box in a car could get quite hot! I was so careful not to speed as I didn't want to be pulled up and have to explain that I had 4 chooks on board. 

This made me remember of a funny thing that happened to me a while ago driving to Hamilton. I was going along at the speed limit when a Pukeko on the side of the road suddenly flew up towards my car. All I could see was it going up and over but I didn't see it land on the other side of the road. I thought it had got caught in the roof rack on my car. I couldn't really stop as the road was quite windy, and traffic was on my tail, but a couple of km's on there was a stop go and I had to stop. When I was stopped beside the lollipop lady I wound down my window and said "excuse me, but is there a Pukeko on my roof? "  She gave me the strangest look as if I was crazy and nervously glanced up towards the top of my car. "Ahh no, there isn't. Should there be?"  I realised how stupid this must have sounded so explained what had happened. She looked so relieved, then it was a green go for me so I drove off. I had a good chuckle thinking back on how this must have sounded! 

I have really missed not having beautiful fresh eggs since moving up to Coromandel, and you are allowed to have up to 6 chooks here in town, so it didn't take much convincing that I needed to get some chooks again. 

To me, chickens are an integral part of the food chain in a Forest Garden / Permaculture situation. They not only produce those glorious golden yoked, out of this world tasting eggs, but they help keep the bugs and weeds you don't want in your garden down, and at the same time leave behind rich beneficial manure. 

A win win all round! 

I was really lucky that my daughter and son in law didn't need their dog kennel anymore as their dog had become a right soft house dog, and they brought the kennel round here for the chook house and run. A quick purchase on Trademe got me 12 meters of chicken fencing which I managed to use as 2 boundaries of a run, and I used our existing boundary fence for 2 sides making a good big area for the girls to scratch around in. 

My husband Sandy made 2 awesome nest boxes and a perch that fits neatly inside the house. The roof of the kennel lifts up, so will be super easy to collect the eggs each day.

My eldest grand daughter is just so in love with the chooks, and checks everyday she comes inside the chook house incase there is an egg. I have decided that when the first egg is laid, I will leave it and get her to visit me, and let her 'find' it herself. How exciting that will be! 

The pullets came from a big poultry farm in Eureka near Hamilton and had been housed in wire cages.

It was amazing to watch them walking on the ground for the first time - tip toeing over grass and not really knowing what to do. They were pecking at everything they came across - like a baby putting everything in their mouths. I watched them for hours. 

Within a few days, they were totally behaving like normal chooks and are now enjoying any food scraps that is thrown their way and scratching and digging on the ground. 

We have a little Shih Tzu dog and I was wondering how things were going to go when she saw these 2 legged feathered things running around her yard. 

For the initial greeting, I locked the chooks up in the small run where it was totally dog proof.  She was quite interested in them, but wanted their droppings more than them! 

Gross!!!!

I let the girls out into their run, and then let the dog in with them with me to supervise.

Dog smelt chook. Chook poked/explored/pecked nicely dog. 

Dog smells chooks bum, chook nibbled dogs fur. 

Dog crouches down and yaps to play.  Chook looks at dog wondering what to do.

Dog yaps again.  Chook pecks dog nose. 

Dog backs off. 

Dog yaps again and pounces to play. Chook stands still and pecks dogs nose.

Dog gets bored. 

Dog wanders off and starts eating the poop off the grass again. 

Gross !!!!

Phew. That didn't draw blood anywhere. 

What a relief. 

I tend to feed my chooks on supermarket pellets. They are easy for me to get, and with only 4 chooks, a 10kg bag will last a long time. 

I had over 40 chooks on a previous property lifestyle block we owned a few years back and they went through so much food it was crazy - and with not great return of eggs!!

I have got a good amount of silver beet growing, and they are enjoying this. I pick a couple of leaves a day for them and from initially not knowing what to do with it, they are now pecking it and eating it with enjoyment. My last lot of chooks really loved Comfrey, so I have a lot planted around the garden so with a bit of luck they will like it too.

I am hoping that they will be laying in a few weeks time - after winter solstice on the 21st the days will begin to get longer again and egg production will be in a natural rhythm. They are 17 weeks old now, so a perfect age and time to come up to their point of lay. 

That first egg is going to be the best tasting egg ever!!!!

I can't imagine having this garden with no chooks now, and they are going to give me and many others a lot of pleasure to watch, listen and learn from them.

My belief is that a garden isn't really a garden until you have chooks......

Hugelkultur Beds

I have been spending quite a lot of time on youtube looking at various videos on Food Forests and Permaculture and the Hugelkultur Bed method kept popping up. I loved its concept and thought it would work well.  We get really dry here in Coromandel over the summer and was looking for gardening systems that would have good moisture retention and fertility. This ticked all the boxes.

Last summer, we had a small round swimming pool for the grandkids ( and me ) to swim in. I decided to take it down at the beginning of Lockdown and it left behind a lovely circle of dead lawn.  I kept looking at this area and thought that it would make a pretty cool horse shoe Hugelkultur garden following the circumference of the circle.

This shape will allow me easy access to all sides of the garden.

Sadly I didn't have any big logs, but managed to find enough decent sized branches that I cut up and laid as the bottom layer. I then put the small branches chopped up on top of that and layer by layer built it up with sacs of horse manure, grass clippings, leaf mold, compost, seaweed, and more green and brown matter layers finishing with a thick layer of arborist mulch.  

About 2 weeks after having finishing the first bed I decided to make another the opposite way round so that I would have a full coverage of sun between the 2 beds. I have blended this garden with the Keyhole garden idea, and have put a compost bin at the northern end of it ( being the highest point ) The idea is that the juice and goodness from the compost bin will seep down and feed the bed and add moisture. I can't wait to get this planted up to see if there is a difference between the 2. 

I  left the first bed for about 6 weeks before I couldn't wait any longer and finally planted some plants in it last week. 

To plant the seedlings, I dug a wee hole by hand through the mulch, filled it with compost and popped in the seedling.  I was really lucky with the weather in that it has rained a bit each day so the plants have been well watered in, and are now starting to show good signs of growth. 

I now have a 3rd bed made in an oblong shape using some small logs and branches I collected off the beach.  This is going to be interesting to see how they go. Time will tell. 

I love the look of the raised Hugelkultur's and it gives me so much more surface area to plant out in. 

These gardens are now incorporated in the first stage of my Food Forest  that is all mulched and beginning to get planted out.

I have to keep reminding myself that Rome wasn't built in a day!!

My Food Forest Journey Begins.

On March 26th 2020 when lockdown started my life and mindset changed.

For all my adult years I had been interested in, and dabbled with self sufficiency and an organic way of living and growing food.

A food forest had always been up there on my to-do’s list, but I never seemed to feel I had the right sort of property, the amount of knowledge I thought was needed to create one, or the know how, how to start.

I remember buying a book on How to Start a Food Forest and it was just a daunting read  with sketches and plans that I couldn’t even understand!!

Last September we retired up to Coromandel onto a small 650 square meter property. The smallest property I had ever owned. 

On it along the back fence was a hedge and 4 fruit trees. That was it. A blank canvas of the rest all in lawns.

I loved mowing lawns and always got immense pleasure standing back admiring my neat cut and manicured edges, perfectly straight mow lines - only to have it all undone in a few days to start the process all again. I have an electric mower so never felt bad about leaving carbon footprints or noise behind, but I began to question why do I spend so much time aimlessly mowing lawns when this area could be growing food!

Now my real story begins.

Lockdown came and I discovered a page on Facebook called Food Not Lawns.

My blinkers were off and my eyes were opened wide! 

Why had I not seen this years ago??  I then discovered so many more pages on Permaculture and Food Forests and a link to a free year long permaculture course online.

I signed up for this course and this got me going.

We had had a round swimming pool out the back up over summer for the grandkids to swim in.  When I took it down in March, it left a big circular dead area on our predominantly Kikuyu lawn. 

I looked at this for a couple of days and thought that I could make a nice circular garden out of it as it was bang in the middle of the lawn. 

I had been reading up on Hugelkultur beds, and decided to go for it and make a horse shoe shaped one around the circle. 

This completed, it seemed natural to make another opposite it to even it up and then the Food Forest Garden seed was sewn in my mind.

I COULD do this. I WILL do this.

My husband is not well, and spends most of his time inside, so this was a solo project but I was determined not to fail. 

The rest is just history really. I bought 10 cubic meters of arborist mulch which I spread thickly everywhere. I didn’t have enough cardboard to cover all the area first and I don’t spray, so I am hoping so much that the depth of mulch is going to knock the Kikuyu back, and what comes through I will hand weed out. Being realistic, if the worst comes to the worst and it starts to take over out of control in the spring and summer I have decided I am going to paint the sprouting stalks of Kikuyu with a paintbrush dipped in roundup as a last resort. It will be direct contact and this will be a first for me but hoping it won’t come to that. 

The area out the back in mulch for my Food Forest ( Stage 1 lol) is about 10m x 20m  

I purchased 4 13 week old chooks when lockdown 2 was announced and they have a good sized area they are fenced into which in time when they have scratched it all up and manured it, will be mulched and be part of the Food Forest. 

So far planted out the back is a Plum tree, 3 apples, 1 nashi pear, apricot, banana palms, tamarillos, lemonade, mandarin, dwarf peach and nectarine ( the last 4 trees were here when we brought the property )  These will become my top canopy in time and dotted around these I have got Tagasaste, rosemary, lemongrass, chamomile, strawberries, asparagus, rhubarb, day lilies, garlic, turmeric, blueberries, raspberries, parsley.

I have 2 more orders of plants arriving in the next week or 2 so that is going to fill in more gaps.

I have also got a lot of seeds started inside that I can plant out in a few weeks when they are bigger.

Last week I planted my first lot of vege plants in the first Hugelkultur bed. I can't wait to watch their progress.

A Food Forest definitely isn’t an overnight wonder- but over the next 5-10 years I expect my back yard to be full of birds and insect life and a tranquil subtropical food producing Greenhills Paradise.

I have just started a Facebook page to document daily my progress if you are interested in following this. https://www.facebook.com/greenhillsparadise/