Peach Flowers and Spring Growth

I planted out a lot of my seedlings and the results have been mixed; either the slugs ate them instantly, or they took off. I'm waiting to see how many survive...

But in the meantime, spring is officially here! I've been noticing new growth all around the garden, a couple of weeks before I noticed the weather warming up myself. There's been quite a bit of change in the garden over the last few weeks, and I may address more of them in a future update (I certainly got plenty of photographs!).

About a month ago, at the start of August, the bees discovered the Borage. I've since seen on other plants, but at the end of winter it was the only plant they went near.

I saw three different species within five minutes; a large bumblebee, the smaller honeybee and an intermediate bumble of some kind (Which I managed to take a photo of).





So far we have:

New leaves on the feijoa

New growth on the feijoa sellowiana out the front. It's an unnamed variety, which probably means it was a seedling rather than a graft (it was a birthday present).

It hadn't moved a bit since I planted it, which I think means that it was establishing its roots during autumn, then it went dormant for the winter. The other young trees that I planted around the same time mostly managed to start growing just before winter arrived.

My alpine strawberries and Yakon root arrived from Koanga Gardens. They will look very healthy, and it will be nice to see what happens with them. I'm hoping that the Yakon might become a good potato substitute, as I don't get on very well with potato. Either way, it's apparently easy to grow and I can stick in some horrible ground in the corner of the garden.

The alpine strawberries (three of each kind, red and white), all look very healthy and I've left them sitting in a container of water to perk up before I decide where to plant them. Some of them have flowers already. Interestingly the flowers seem to be a lot smaller than the ones I have on other plants.

This was the original Colander strawberry.As you can see,
it's doing very well and has a nice handful of fruit on it.

Nearly ready to eat I hope!

Most of my of alpine strawberries are doing really well, both in the ground and in pots. The big ones in the colanders are doing fantastically well and seem to have doubled in size. They all have at least a dozen flowers or fruit on. I tucked a few little plants in around the garden as well, and it will be nice to see how they do.

I had one small plant that I kept inside for awhile, and I managed to eat a couple of strawberries off it as they ripened over the winter.

It was one of the yellow/white strawberries, and I can confirm the pineapple taste. They were actually quite sharp - I'm going to try leaving others to ripen a bit longer once I have the patience! Although I'm pretty sensitive to sharp tastes, so I'm sure somebody else wouldn't even have noticed. From what I remember of the original fruit that were on the plants that arrived first, I think I prefer the red ones.

I've since moved it outside, because my room was so dry that I was having to constantly water it. The other plants all started flowering over the last few weeks, so I'm looking forward having more than one strawberry at a time!

Flowers and the delicate spiderweb on my Bonanza Peach

My peach trees also arrived about two months ago. They are all dwarf varieties as usual, one Bonanza, one Kotare Honey, and one Honey Babe.

The Bonanza went straight into the ground, at the end of the Apple row. It looked pretty dead when it arrived, but it started to put out flower buds about a month ago. The other two went into pots, with chamomile and alpine strawberries around the base. The poor Honey Babe, which was covered in leaves when it arrived, had all stripped off in a big storm.

I figured that the alpine strawberries might make good ground cover around the base and it would keep them contained, while also providing something similar to their normal woodland environment. The little plant poking out of the mulch on the right is actually a pea plant, growing out of the pea straw.

The Bonanza Peachtree starting to show flower buds at the beginning of August.

The Bonanza is the smallest one by far, and it's also the first to flower. It's currently covered in pink blossoms, where as the Kotare Honey has just put out its first. The Honey Babe hasn't flowered at all yet. I know that the Bonanza is supposed to be one of the earliest, but I'm not sure whether it's because it's also in a more sheltered spot.

The Bonanza a couple weeks later. The lovely flowers has been joined by the first few leaves.

It is notable that all the peach trees are flowering before they put leaves out.

The Kotare Honey starting to flower.

The Bonanza flowers after the petals dropped.

I also now own a Whitecurrant, and an additional redcurrant and blackcurrant. The blackcurrants are both in pots because they tend to spread. The redcurrants and whitecurrant started leafing out with new growth for spring.


I also ordered some blueberries, which were being sold off in the South Island where they didn't really belong (they Southern Highbush; as they're from the northern hemisphere, Southern means warmer). The varieties I got were O'Neil and Petite Blue (which I think is also known as Summer Blue).

Flowers on my Petite Blue Blueberry in the pot.

 I've planted one of each in a big pot each, and the other pair will go in the ground next to each other where they can pollinate each other. This way I should be covered against issues with soil pH in either location, as well as being able to fit more bushes in!

It was interesting to see the "two zones colder" effect of putting something in pots, as the potted bushes leaves promptly turned reddish from the cold, while the ones still sitting in a bucket of water stayed bright and green.

We've also eaten pretty much all the broccoli there was a moment, although we've got some more coming along. I have been planting out some of the potted plants, as they hit the limits of their containers and stopped growing again.

Cheap, DIY and Recycled Plant Pots

The little Sublime lime in its DIY wastepaper
bin pot.

If you have a sudden influx of seedlings and small plants, then there are a few ways you can scrounge up extra pots very cheaply.


This is the list of things that I have been doing

• Recycle all the original pots that every plant you have ever bought came in (obviously!)
• I had a vast stack of these at one point, as everything I bought went into the garden or into a bigger pot that I had to buy new. Now I've almost run out - and I'm having to find alternatives for certain sizes.
• I have a lot of tiny seedling sized ones, though. I'm going to try growing individual beetroot and carrots in them!

• Random plastic containers around the house (just make sure to add drainage as appropriate)
• E.g. I cut milk bottles in half and use them as seedling trays
• Any bottle or container can be turned into an actual pot
• Try planting a seedling or cutting on the lid and put the jar over it for moisture

• Cardboard boxes outside (will last a while and good for temporary pots, difficult sizes and 'decomposing in place' as very cheap, modular raised beds (complete with readymade mulch flaps!).
• If you have any interestingly shaped ones such as poster tubes or long boxes you can fill it with soil and cut holes along it, then turn it on its side and plant a row of plants.

• Cheap stuff from $2 type shops. 
• E.g. Large plastic bowls and basins (punch holes into them - carefully, the plastic is terrible quality). 
• Colanders are awesome for strawberries if you can find some with the right design. 
• You'll often find much cheaper hanging baskets which you can fill yourself with peastraw or newspaper (instead of getting the nice but costlier readymade coconut fibre basket padding).
• Baskets (e.g. laundry baskets and wastepaper bins) come in a variety of shapes and sizes, have readymade drainage, and often look reasonably nice. Line them with weed matting and you have an extremely cheap air pruning pot.
• These are ideal for plants that need to drain easily
• A large laundry basket is usually much, much cheaper than an equivalent sized pot.  


• Just make a rough 'fabric pot' out of double layered cheap weedmat!

• Or use a reusable bag (one of those sturdy fabric-ish type ones).

• Or just plant directly in the bag of compost - an old standby that I haven't actually done yet, because I feel like I'm 'wasting' the compost. But it's cheap (apart from the effort of hauling it home on my bike trailer - a Burley Travoy Bike Trailer , by the way, and absolutely amazing. I can carry two standard bags of soil on it easily).

Alpine strawberry plant in a sturdy colander.
If I ever want to hang it, I can easily drill holes in the handles as well!

Downsides:

The main downsides to this approach are that some of the containers will degrade quickly or require you to put them together yourself (with room for error creeping in there!).

Here we have a cheap plastic bowl to catch
run off (and keep the roots damp, as it's
a Jaboticaba) and an equally cheap wire
 basket with weedmat.

They may also look pretty ugly.

There's also the need to know a bit about the plants you're potting, as the much wider than normal variation in containers means that some plants won't do as well if you get it wrong.

Upsides:

A great deal of flexibility, both in finding pots and in customising them for the plants and location.

You can pick containers that suit different kinds of plants (such as large shallow ones for strawberries, tall ones for small trees, basket types for plants that don't like wet feet or that you're trying to keep small and air pruned, easy to hang shapes, small pots, large pots... ).

Also, CHEAP. And a great way to recycle stuff or create pots on the fly.

Examples of DIY Containers

Left: Meyer Lemon in its laundry basket. Self contained, and will drain easily.

Right: Strawberries. The large bowl at the bag has random slits and holes punched into the base. It's wide and shallow, so great for strawberries - in fact, I haven't seen any proper' pots that shape for sale at all.

 Left: Strawberry Plants.


• shop bought planters. Nice, but cost five times as much as the other options.
• cheap planters with pea straw
• 'proper' strawberry growbag (green, left)
• a colander (bright green)
• a random white basket tray with weedmat liner
• a sort of plastic sieve/colander (dark blue, top)


Right: Banana Misi Luki. The banana has been very happy in its laundry basket (with weedmat lining). Like the Meyer lemon, it needs to be contained and not get wet feet. This is also going to be easy to move, if it turns out not to work in my garden. But so far, it's doing extremely well.

Left: Plastic cover for a shop bought cake makes a good tray for a collection of chamomile seedlings in peat pots (being raised for lawn edging and eventual replacement. Vastly cheaper than buying larger plants!)

Right: Forget-me-not seedlings sprouting in their DIY basket-weedmat container (now large and healthy - the black edging is hidden under a mass of leaves.

Half a milk bottle makes a great seedling tray! 

Left: Neglected broccoli seedlings that I was slowly transplanting out

Right: Peat pots soaking in water before adding seeds (The far left is the sturdiest tray, but means that you can't use the 'handle' half. You can fit the same number of peat pots in both designs (10)

Left: Another sturdy container with readymade drainage. The broccoli in it is doing fantastically well now (see right/ this post - it's one of the first brocolli batches to flower)



Right: DIY attempt at a self watering hanging container. Half a bottle with holes inside a hanging container (the frame is from an old lampshade!). The sweetpeas and forget-me-nots haven't grown much, but nor have they died (it doesn't get enough light either - I can't reach the other hooks in that corner!).

 I've also got a few other weird makeshift pots around. I'll update with photos of them some time.