Garden

Winter in the garden means that plants slow down. Some carry on growing albeit slowly. The temperature goes down to below 0 at night and we have had a couple of ice forming frosts so far this year. But most days the sun comes up and the temperature steadily climbs to about 15C. So plants experience a wide fluctuation in temperature. The sub-tropical plants do not like this and die. We plant them next to the house where there is protection from the cold. We have guava and tamarillo in fruit as I write this. Down at the bottom things have to take their chances. We have been doing a fair bit of work on the middle field this year. When Walter was here the boys dug quite a lot of holes for new plantings of olives and natives. I have a snakey path that connexts the dam to the bottom field. The plan is that there will be a band of native planting to the left of this path. There will be a temperate orchard on the other side. To this end I ordered 6 rare breeds of apple trees from tastytrees.co.nz . These are grown by Chris and Brit who live way up in the hills near Mangamuka. Brit delivered 6 bare rooted apples yesterday. For the first time ever I was ahead of the game because most of the holes were already dug! I still spent 1/2 hour planting each tree as they will hopefully grow strong and produce lots of fruit. Today I planted a Cox's Orange Pippin and a Merton Worcester. The pictures show some close ups of a tree lucerne (tagasaste) that is flowering. I grew this tree from seed bought from Trademe. I do not think that they like our wet clay soil. But this one has lasted long enough to flower. They put nitrogen into the soil and are favoured by food forest gardeners. There is also a picture of a globe artichoke in flower mid-winter. What is that all about? Close to this plant are a couple of capsicums that have fruit on them. I found them to be perennial when planted close to the house, but did not expect them to be so hardy. Thanks to Hunter for pointing out that there were spelling mistakes in this post. Have I found them all?