Strawberries. Strawberries Everywhere.

I now have 40-50 strawberry plants in pots, hanging baskets and random containers. The varieties are Chandler, Camarosa and Red Gauntlet (though I've already started to lose track of which is which). They aren't going into the garden, because strawberries tend to take over and I haven't got the space for that. I should get a good couple of years of fruit, and then I can just repot a bunch of runners.

I've also got a handful of random ones that sadly turned up with some sort of scorch fungus disease on. I planted them anyway, away from the others (apparently it travels through splashing water).

WALL OF STRAWBERRIES
This is the northern end of the house which gets
the most sun. So that's where all the strawberries are.

Camarosa Strawberries in cheap planters from
nice TradeMe people
(A really nice lady gave me the wooden one
 along with a raised bed!)

I also started buying alpine strawberries (which are really hard to find! The odd seller on TradeMe and a couple of tiny nurseries around New Zealand). They're much less invasive, fruit all year round, and should do well tucked under the borage and the various bushes and trees, as they're much happier with shade than the bigger version. So far, I only have an unknown variety of yellow ones, but I have a mixed handful of colours on the way (nobody in NZ seems to know what variety they have!). They're also apparently easy to grow from seed, so I should be able to grow plenty more.

From left: The Kotare Honey peach waiting to be planted
Alpine strawberries in a colander container
Broccoli plants in a big pot
Chilean Guava and a spreading manuka spp. that are being grown up to a better size
The raspberry pot (I may need to separate the two varieties for easier pruning)
A grape and a fig (both tiny little stubs right now).

The borage, by the way, is doing fantastically. It's huge and producing ongoing flower stalks and has been a great groundcover between two of the apples (it's sheltering the curled parsley, and I have chamomile growing under it). The comfrey in the useless soil corner isn't growing much, but you're supposed to give them a year before seriously harvesting anyway. I did scavenge a leaf to make DIY rooting hormone for some of the cuttings (which appear to  be rooting - the Myrtus ugni and the Feijoa Bambina have tiny threads poking out the end now).

Bought three dwarf peach trees; Kotare Honey, Honey Babe and Bonanza. They should all fruit at slightly different times, but we'll see. The Bonanza is in the garden next to the apples, and the Honey Babe is in a big pot. I'm still deciding where to put the Kotare Honey.

Yellowing leaves on the orange. It is almost certainly
due to all the rain leaching out nitrogen from the soil or
cold temperatures "locking up" the magnesium.
It should bounce back again now the rains have moved on.
I gave it a heap of grass cuttings under the mulch, and some
blood and bone to help cheer it up.

I'm not sure how well they'll do, as peaches as notoriously disease and pest prone, but the steady breezes around the house should keep them well free of mildew.

My currant collection is now rather respectable: two blacks (Magnus and Sefton, I think), two reds (Gloria de Versailles and Myra Mckee) and an unknown white. I'm planting the blacks in pots (as they spread) and the others along the fenceline out the back, behind the guava and feijoas and in the shady bits.

One of the grapevines (the seedless Candice) has gone in behind the apples and the peach - it should grow up over the edge of the deck, where it can be easily pruned and kept at a manageable size.

I'm also eyeing blueberry and papaya seeds; both should be easy to grow in containers and produce decent amounts of fruit. I want a Southern highbush variety of blueberry, because they're smaller than the rabbiteye and do well in the Auckland region. I'm looking at seeds because it's a lot cheaper than buying actual plants and it means that I don't need to find space right away (I need to stock up on giant pots as it is!).

The peas are starting to go a  bit weird now. They're still producing, but the pods are usually a bit discoloured. The two weeks of rain probably doesn't help - it's also been pretty bad for the citrus. My Meyer lemon and the orange have been looking a bit yellow around the edges due to the constant watering.

On the citrus front, I also picked up a Sublime lime - a container sized variety of key lime that apparently does very well in pots. The Meyer lemon has started flowering properly.

The tiny Sublime lime in one of the makeshift
air pruning pots (i.e. a metal wastepaper bin and
weed matting liner)

The first Meyer lemon buds have opened
(also note the yellow tinge on the
leaves from the rain)

The heritage raspberries that were produced in late autumn withered away and died over the last month, so I pruned away the rest of the stalk. There's plenty of new growth showing around the roots.
The more sensitive deciduous trees, the pears and the cherry, have all dropped all their leaves now. The little almond has dropped most of them. The others are doing fine; a few yellow leaves on the apples, and nothing else. The banana has just unfolded its eighth big, beautiful leaf.

And the broccoli has started to flower! Tiny little broccoli heads are showing on the ones planted out first into the garden and the ones in the white container (I was a bit worried about them as they need a lot of space, but the three survivors are doing really well).

The first broccoli flower. 

Comparison with Cat for size (I never could quite tell how big the
plants were going to get from the internet)

Three big happy broccoli plants in another makeshift container.
One has a flowerbud. There used to be more, but they crowded out the weaker seedlings,
which is fine as I had too many from the start.

I've started a seedling collection indoors, trying to get some tomatoes, melons and cucumbers started. The beetroot and the stevia have actually sprouted, so I'm crossing my fingers for the rest. I also found some neat carrots - Paris Market carrots - which are basically like orange radishes. They're great for containers and bad soil because they just don't need to grow much.

And I've also torn out that darn spider plant that the previous owners left. It has a massive root mass of weird tubers! It's gone into the drowning bin, where all the invasive weeds go. The bin is now full of dark brown, stinking, liquid and half rotted vegetation, and should be pretty awesome fertiliser. I've been trying to dig out or smother the onion weed that has sprouted all around the garden as well. I'm throwing cardboard down and starting the slow process of creating a new bed in the worst patch (currently it's all being held down by pots. I have some plants to go there eventually, like lavender and thyme, but they're all so tiny right now that they'll be overrun by weeds as soon as I turn my back. I'm growing up a few things in pots and then will see what fits there).

More Chilean Guavas, Peas and Dwarf Manukas

The Huia I planted a couple of months ago is
still tiny, but flowering at last.

I've ordered five more chilean guava bushes and a bunch of dwarf manukas (found a nursery selling off all their little cuttings, so i got them all for about $2.50 each instead of $15). I will then have ten Chilean guava bushes!

I currently have four in the garden around the place, and one in a retaining wall/rockery bed.  (The three decently sized ones which will produce maybe half a bowl of fruit this year, the other two - from Bunnings - are tiny). I'll keep most of the new ones in pots. BIG pots.

They're awesome plants; they don't need full sunlight, and grow in pretty much any soil, and have no real diseases or pests. They're like blueberry bushes that you don't have to worry about. They're also self fertile, and after 3-4 years will be producing 1-2 kg of fruit (and escalating with size). I can prune them, plant them out, keep them in pots... you can even topiary them!

Manuka Wiri Kerry, complete with some flowers

I've got three already, two tiny little Huias that just sit in corners being bee attractants (hopefully), and a larger one (Wiri Kerry, I think) with crimson flowers. I've planted that one as a backdrop to the apple/herb/broccoli bed, as it is large enough to be seen, looks rather striking in contrast and should be flowering around the same time as the apples.

And best of all, the fruit is lovely, and can be cooked or eaten raw, and easily given away if I have too much of it. It's super reliable, and the birds apparently ignore the berries until they are overripe. By which point I will have eaten them all anyway.The dwarf manukas are a mix of Huia and Kiwi (slightly different sizes and flowers). I intend to plant them down the edge of the driveway, as they won't get to big, will look really nice, and will be very low maintenance. Manukas are tough plants! Plus, the more natives and flowers around, the better.



The peas are still coming! The Easy Peasy ones are my favourite, because you can eat the whole pod, but the dwarf bush ones were more likely to survive. Some plants are starting to die off now, but there are plenty still coming into flower.

Unripe dwarf peas

Easy Peasy pea pod ready to eat!

The Meyer lemon is covered in buds. Far too many for it to bear, so I'm sure plenty will drop off, but it's nice to see. It seems pretty happy in its makeshift laundry basket lined with weed mat - as is the banana, which now has seven leaves, and the new leaves are three times the size of the ones it had one arrival.

Meyer lemon flower buds

Happy banana tree!

I also have to remember to go hunt for the dwarf beans, as they are always hidden under the leaves.
I should have two peaches and another columnar apple arriving next month. I want to plant one peach, and pot the other (the apple is easy to stick anywhere - fantastic for small gardens, though apparently not the best tasting apples). 

Dwarf bean lurking under the greenery

The Heritage raspberry (autumn bearing) has run out of ripe fruit, but flowered and is producing more. The summer bearing Nootka variety is also putting out new growth around the base.

Heritage raspberry fruit

My broccoli plants are rather fascinating. I had all my seeds come up (which I didn't plan on), and had at least a dozen plants (after giving some away). Broccoli needs a lot of space, so I've semi-accidentally staggered all of mine by staggering the transplants into larger pots (and eventually the ground - any seedlings that went straight in the ground were chomped almost instantly by slugs).

So I now have some very tiny ones that I only just potted (I was growing them in the little peat pots), some twice the size from the week before, and six or seven larger ones in big pots. And then two huge ones in the ground, that used to be the same size as the other large potted plants. Once they hit the limits of their container, they just stop dead. I'm looking forward to being able to harvest broccoli over several weeks now.

 These broccoli are all the same age and were photographed at the same time!

The last seedling in their peat pots (not doing too well - right before I transplanted them)

Seedlings I potted out a week before - twice the size!

Broccoli I planted about a month ago, that has reached its limits

Broccoli that I planted out in the garden (one each side of the tiny dwarf apple tree) a week ago - already significantly bigger than the potted plants.

And I've bought a Hungry Bin (flow through worm farm/composting system). I could have made one myself (for a lot less money), but this one is:

a) compact (and my garden space is small, so that's important)
b) really well designed (easy to use, no vermin can get in, looks nice)
c) easy to 'harvest' soil and worm tea from so that I can just add it to the garden over time (rather than a big 'dig up the whole thing and use it and pick all the worms out' effort).
d) combines composting and worm farming really well, so I get the worm farm benefits for the garden, and the food waste disposal benefits for the house. It's also more efficient than a standard worm farm.
e) supports a local small ecobusiness

The borage plant is huge, flowering profusely, and attracting bees.