I was given a division off someone's garlic chive plant, which I just threw in my concrete tank. It had some dead flowers on it, so I saved the seeds from those. Then I chopped off the top and left it. Finally, the chickens would hop up and bathe in the dirt on top of it. And now, it's growing back nicely.
Day 1: This is one of several cheap passionfruit plants I planted (maybe ~$5NZ at most). There are two varieties, Elite and Black Beauty. I am sure the fruit is indistinguishable, and any difference is purely for marketing purposes..
Day 14: Just two weeks, and there's significant growth. I bought a trellis from Bunnings (for around $20NZ I think) and borrowed a suitable drill, and mounted it for the passionfruit to grow up.
Day 29: Almost a month, and the passionfruit is already halfway up the trellis.
Day 56: Nearly two months, and this isn't far off where it stopped growing.
It's still looking pretty good, and hasn't suffered any damage in the few frosts we've had so far this winter. Hopefully will get some fruit off it later in the year.
You're supposed to plant garlic on the shortest day, and harvest it on the longest day. I think I was a week or two late in doing this. Anyway, my hugelkultur raised bed is doing okay out in the paddock. There was a side of it which wasn't planted out, and it's been too wet for most of autumn and what winter has passed, to dig more. So the garlic was going in there. I moved aside the mulch.
The garlic is takahue red bought from Koanga. Last year's garlic was okay, but this is supposed to be a larger cloved variety.
I poked a stick in the bed to make a hole, then pushed in a clove. And repeated heaps of times. There were lots of worms in the bed, and they were often in the poked holes in the way of the garlic.
Now to just wait six months until I can see the results of this.
Day 1: At the front are from left to right, chives, thyme, borage, marigold, french sorrell, lemon balm. At the back from left to right are rosemary, some bee attracting flowers and passionfruit. And the tree there turned out to be a nectarine.
Day 38: Everything has taken off. Well, except for the thyme and rosemary. The borage is the biggest grower. It was apparently used in the pimms drink, as it tastes like cucumber. But it actually tastes like fish. I think it only has that cucumber taste when it is older.
Day 63: The bumblebees loved the borage.
Day 79: A bit lusher.
Day 135: The chives died of some black insect. The borage I guess reached the end of it's season. The chickens eventually got in and ate the french sorrell up. The thyme probably didn't get enough sunlight to thrive. The rosemary disappeared. The nectarine gave me perhaps 9 fruit. The epazote never grew from seed.
