Christmas-lite

December 11, 2016December 9, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

Strawberries, gooseberries, black currants, red currants, cherries, and peas—ah! The signs of Christmas! They’re red and green, just like those in the Northern Hemisphere, but the greens are brighter than pine tree green, and the reds more succulent than holly berries.

They are just as festive as the colours up north, though in a different way. While you look inward, gathering around the hearth on long dark evenings, we look outward, sitting with friends on the beach on long summer days. You dream of white snow, we dream of white sand. You have visions of sugar plums dancing in your heads, we have visions of fresh strawberries dancing in ours. While you sing ‘let it snow’, we sing ‘let us go’ (to the beach).

Now and again I miss the cosy dark of Christmas in the north. And every year, I wish summer gardening, Christmas, and the end of the school year didn’t happen simultaneously. But I’ve grown to appreciate the summer Christmas. I appreciate not having to plan Christmas dinner, but letting it spring from whatever is abundant in the garden. I appreciate being able to sit outside on the porch in the sun after gifts have been opened. I appreciate the barefoot, short-sleeved, nature of Christmas here.

It’s like Christmas-lite.

This Old House: Gifts from the Past

December 9, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Most of the time, I think it would be wonderful to have a brand new house on a property that’s never had a house on it. To not be fighting a hundred and thirty years of other’s landscaping decisions and poor house maintenance would be a delight.

But then, sometimes the property’s history is a bonus.

When we moved in over eleven years ago, most of the property was overgrown with weeds. Even the garden beds around the house were choked with grass and yarrow. We slowly hacked away at the jungle, finding many surprises along the way—beautiful old roses, dahlias, peonies, daffodils, and a host of other flowers hidden away in the weeds. We transplanted the floundering plants to new, weed-free garden beds as we re-landscaped the property.

We thought we had discovered all the lost plants, but strange things have shown up over the years.

Several years after we had cleared and replanted the area between the house and the hedge, a day lily sprang up there. We had never seen a day lily on the property before. The following year, a winter-flowering iris popped its head up there, too. Again, a flower we haven’t seen anywhere before.

Other flowers have since appeared in unexpected places, long after the areas had been re-landscaped—mostly bulbs, as though the bulb sat dormant for years until conditions were better. Either that or they’ve been growing, not flowering, and somehow escaping my notice.

Either way, they’re like gifts from past gardeners.

Watching My Babies Grow

December 7, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

Recently hatched mantids–can you see them both?

All winter I kept an eye on the eggs.

Now the preying mantids have all hatched, and I can’t help but watch them grow and develop.

They don’t tend to wander far, so it’s easy to keep tabs on them. Sometimes it takes a few minutes of staring before I see one, but then they start popping out at me until I’ve counted dozens of them.

I’m happy to report that they appear to be doing well. I’m sure that some are looking fat and sassy because they’ve eaten their brothers and sisters, but that’s the way it goes in the mantid world. Live by the raptorial front legs, die by the raptorial front legs.

This one is a bit older and easier to see.

Sometimes I wonder at myself, that I can watch this year after year, and still be excited as each new egg case hatches. I hope I never lose that wonder and joy.

A Rose

December 5, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

R Weiss
roses
Christchuch Botanic Gardens

A rose, by any other name
Would still have thorns and be a pain.

Black spot, chafers, aphids, too,
Spider mites and powdery mildew.

Japanese beetles, leafcutter bees
It’s rife with pests and disease.

So go ahead, forget the rose
Plant a flower with fewer foes.

Sunflower, Daisy, there’s really a passel
Of flowers easy to grow without hassle.

No pruning, no spraying, no disease or thorns
For none of these things a gardener mourns.

Or better yet, just live with the weeds
They grow by themselves, and spread their own seeds.

Dandelion, yarrow, catsear and cress
All grow on their own and let the gardener rest.

Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

December 3, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Clean pots drying in the sun.

Well, I’m not sure about the godliness, but cleanliness is important when it comes to growing plants.

I finally got round to washing the pots from all my vegetable seedlings today. They had been stacked just outside the shed door, waiting—calling out to me every time I went in or out of the shed. I managed to ignore them for several weeks.

It’s tempting to just put away the empty pots after planting out. It’s such a busy time of year, and washing pots is tedious. But I’ve learned that it must be done. If I don’t wash the pots, next year my seedlings will be plagued with disease. They’ll grow poorly, or die outright.

In truth, I don’t know that for a fact. I haven’t studied it scientifically, but in my experience, I have bad seedling growth if I plant in dirty pots. So I wash.

The pots don’t need to be perfectly clean—I swish them out with a brush in a bucket of water, then dry them in the sun. It’s actually probably the UV radiation that kills any pathogens, not so much the cleaning. But whatever it is, it works. A little extra care now, and next year’s crops will get off to a good start.

What’s the price of a weed?

December 2, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

This is an important question at our house, with lots of weeds and two teens looking to make some extra money.

I decided to take a mathematical approach to this question.

Crop loss and control costs for weeds in New Zealand are estimated to be about $1.2 billion per year. Add another $1.3 billion for biodiversity losses, and the total bill for weeds comes to $2.5 billion per year.

So what should I be spending on weeds? Let’s do a few calculations.

New Zealand has a land area of 268,021 km². That’s 26,802,100 hectares.

Our property is 0.6 hectares.

So our property is 0.00000002 of the land area of New Zealand.

Multiplying New Zealand’s total weed bill of $2.5 billion by 0.00000002, I should be paying about $50 a year to control weeds on my property.

My husband set the price of a 20 litre bucket of weeds at $2 (and I agreed to pay triple price for each bucket of pure thistles—hazard pay and all). That $50 is only going to pay for 25 buckets of weeds (or only 8 buckets of thistles).

Darn. I’m seriously being over-charged for weed control…

A Cauliflower Calamity

December 1, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

We’re about to be inundated with cauliflower. I’m afraid it’s all my fault.

As I looked through the seed catalogue way back in July, I saw ‘Cauliflower Orange Bouquet F1’.

The photo showed a warm orange head of cauliflower, and I thought, “Oooo! That would be pretty!”

I ordered it, of course. Never mind that I already had half a packet of ‘Snowball’ left from last year, and we don’t eat all that much cauliflower.

And then, because I can’t help myself, I planted both types this spring. After all, if orange cauliflower would look good, then orange and white cauliflower would look better, right?

Now I’m looking at 20 cauliflower plants all coming ready at the same time. That wouldn’t be too bad, if I had my beautiful orange and white colour combination.

Unfortunately, Orange Bouquet has turned out to be a sort of weak yellowish colour. If you didn’t have the two side by side, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the orange from the white.

The orange is every bit as delicious as the white, and the heads are big and compact. There’s nothing at all wrong with it. But it is a bit disappointing.

And now I’m wondering what to do with all this cauliflower…

Hmm…

I see in the catalogue there’s another variety—’Violet Sicilian’—now, that would be something! Think how all three colours would look together!

(Please, somebody stop me now, before it’s too late!)

Crane Flies

November 29, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

The crane flies are the largest family of flies in the world. There are over 15,000 species worldwide, with 1600 species in North America and 600 species in New Zealand.

The Māori name, matua waeroa, means ‘king mosquito’. You could be forgiven for thinking crane flies are giant mosquitoes—their body shape is similar. But crane flies cannot bite. The adults of many species don’t eat at all, and those that do sip nectar.

Crane fly larvae are sometimes called leatherjackets, because their exoskeletons are thick and leathery. They are aquatic or live in wet soil or rotting vegetation. Most feed on dead plants, though there are a few predators among the aquatic larvae.

When we moved to Crazy Corner Farm, and I turned the vegetable garden for the first time, I found the wet end of the garden teeming with crane fly larvae. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Every shovelful of earth came up with at least ten larvae. It was truly impressive, and the chickens loved me for the handfuls of larvae I tossed to them that year. The larvae must not like cultivation, though, because I don’t find them in the vegetable garden anymore.

I find crane flies endearing—awkward and gangly, they remind me of teenage boys who’ve just gone through a growth spurt and aren’t quite comfortable with their larger dimensions. The analogy might not be so far off. Crane fly larvae are legless and live in confined spaces. When they become adults, they suddenly have six impossibly long legs, and are airborne. It must be terribly confusing.

I spotted this beauty on my office door this morning, sitting on the glass with the white curtain behind it. I couldn’t resist photographing it.

Counting your Quinces

November 28, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

You know what they say—don’t count your quinces before they ripen…okay, maybe they don’t say that, but they probably should.

I’m pleased to count the little quinces forming this year, though. I know we won’t get to eat all of them, but it’s the most fruit the little quince tree has ever set.

I can almost taste the quince paste now…

I had never encountered quince before coming to New Zealand. It’s an odd fruit. It’s sort of what I imagine pears must have been like before hundreds of years of plant breeding—astringent, hard, and gritty. They’re not a fruit you eat fresh.

But cook them, and all their glorious floral flavours come out. Turned into quince paste, they are one of my favourite foods.

Quince paste is delightfully versatile—pair it with cheese on a cracker for a salty snack or hors d’oeuvres, or spread it on toast for a sweet breakfast treat.

Making quince paste is a lesson in patience. First, you have to wait for the quinces to grow and ripen—they won’t be mature until autumn, and they’re not a fruit you find in the store, even in season. You just have to wait for them.

Then you have to simmer those rock-hard quinces for half an hour until they’re soft enough to mash.

Then you add sugar and cook oh-so-slowly for up to 3 hours, until the mixture turns red.

You pour the hot paste into jars and wait another few hours for it to set.

Finally, you can enjoy your quinces.

So, yeah, don’t count your quinces before they’re paste.

Entogeeks Anonymous

November 26, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 3 Comments

You know you’re an entomologist when…

You find aphids on your lettuce, and eat it anyway.

You apologise to the grass grubs before squishing them.

You rescue the earwigs and lacewing larvae floating in the sink after washing vegetables.

You drop everything when you hear someone say, “Wow, look at that bug.”

You waste hours at work watching the spider on the window.

You keep a hand lens and a microscope within arms reach at all times, just in case.

The glove box of your car contains a folding insect net and several jars.

You sit down to write the day’s blog (a nice poem, you think), and get sidetracked for an hour trying to determine whether Mantophasmatodea is still considered a separate order or whether it is now grouped with the Grylloblattodea in the new order Notoptera.

*sigh*