Kohlrabi / 2013-2014

I'd never heard of Kohlrabi until I lived in Iceland, where someone I worked with used to bring in some she grew. The flavour is something I'd describe as something like a sweeter crisper mini-turnip.

Day X+0: Not sure when I planted it out. Like most of my seed sowing, I did it rather rough, and just put them in soil in a tray and placed the tray outside. It would then have gotten hail and snow on it, for short durations.

Day X+6: Six more days later.

Day X+45: Thirty nine more days later, planted out.

Day X+85: Forty more days later.

Unfortunately, I don't seem to have taken any more pictures. I ended up getting maybe 10 decent sized kohlrabi harvested. A rabbit or hare came along at some point and bit the top off several plants. I also put the last kohlrabi into a kimchi made from other things I harvested, but eventually yeast grew on top of it.

Osage Orange Seedlings

After reading that it made good carving wood, and good firewood, I bought some osage orange seeds from the national auction website. They produce a green orange shaped fruit. Not edible.

Day X+0: No idea when the seeds were planted out. Here they are in the rightmost lowest 10 segmented tray.

Day X+75: And planted out in pots. The broken glass was from a rabbit or hare that must have jumped on the cover pane over night. They are still in the pots now, and look a bit bigger, but have lost leaf for winter.

I've since read an anecdote by someone who attempted to deal with some of these trees. He reported that the thorns made doing anything a painful activity.

Seed Saving / Kiwifruit

Day 1: I was left some kiwifruit by a visitor. I'm not really a big kiwifruit eater, so I decided to see if I could grow some kiwifruit plants, after saving some of the seeds. The first step was digging out the seeds from it's centre, and soaking them to remove the fruit flesh which would otherwise cause them to rot. The water was changed every couple of days, to keep the seeds in a good way.

Day 99: Eventually, I put the seeds on a damp paper towel, which I kept damp until they started sprouting. Then I planted them out and put on the window sill where they continued to grow. Some time later, my first mistake was knocking the tray off the window sill. My second mistake was scooping the contents back in, and the seeds ending up under too much potting mix. So I lost a lot of them, and some I saved I had to dig out when I saw them growing at the bottom of the transparent tray. In the end, I had four or five seeds remaining, which I planted out and have growing. Come spring, I'll plant them out and grow them up a tree or trellis.

Planting & Rooting

This is a collection of recent things I have either planted out, or planted out to root for later transplanting.

Two fruit plants were donated to me, as they were not growing well in town. This is a Fantasia nectarine tree, a variety I already have one of. At worst, it's a backup tree, should the other cark it. It could also be used for grafting.

The other donation, was this blueberry. It's planted out alongside my other two varieties, one of which is Climax, and the other is Powder Blue. This variety of this new plant has been mislaid and will never be known.

I also traded a lot of cuttings and seeds online, and got two varieties of gooseberry. These were from plants themselves raised from cuttings, where the cuttings were from old farms or gold fields, in another part of the country. They should be older varieties, where most of the modern plants available are Pax and Invicta. I've got one Invicta out in my berry orchard. These are sitting in front of my north bed, which the elephant garlic cloves were planted out in.

Last year, I took cuttings from someone else's currant prunings. These I dipped in rooting hormone, and planted in a garden bed. And this year, given they grew roots in the garden bed, I transplanted them out in the field beside my purchased Magnus plant. I've also got a Cotswold Cross, an unknown red currant and a white currant. It just goes to show how easy it is to make your own plants, if you're willing to wait a year and have a source for genetic material to work from.

This year, I've got some gooseberry cuttings and black currant cuttings, which I've taken from someone else's prunings. The gooseberry are a thornless variety, and haven't had a problem with mildew. So not Invicta. The currants are likely Magnus again. Something I read, likely a fruit book I bought, recommended the black plastic to keep weeds down.

I also took two cuttings off my white currant, and have planted them out. But not photo. With a bit of luck, this will give me two more white currant plants next year. I should go out and see if I can get cuttings off the red currant. And for that matter, the Chilean cranberry. Hmm.

Propagation / 2013-2014 / Elderflower

Elderberries, elderflowers, they're something you can do something with. Champagne, cordial, and more. I've got an Elder tree on the north side of my house, but I decided I wanted some more. So as I drove around and passed them everywhere, I took note of the whichever ones looked like they had the most berries. Then I hopped the fence and took some green cuttings of new season growth. These were dipped in my inherited Grandfather's rooting hormone, and then popped in a pot each

The last picture showed their initial propensity to droop. I wondered if they were going to make it, but then they'd be up again the next morning. It was probably just an intial struggle of sorts.

A month later, they had settled in.

And a finally, two months after planting, they were obviously doing pretty well.

They will be planted out in another year or so. While my goal might be to have as much variety of plants on my property which provide edible growth, really, if I think about it, I can get as much elderberries or elderflowers as I want by driving around a bit. But then again, it's an interesting experiment in what sort of cuttings will grow.

Planting / 2013-2014 / Hass Avocado

One thing I did a more than a few times over the last year, is to try and both save seed, and grow plants from seed. In this case, I saved two pits from Hass avocados bought at a local vegetable store, germinated them, and then planted them out.

Step one, clean the pit. The idea is to hang the bottom half of it into a glass full of water, and then it eventually sprouts. It is hung by pushing three toothpicks into it from different sides, and then sitting those on the edge of the glass. Occasionally the water is replaced, and the pit is washed. It eventually cracks and the starts rooting. You can see the water line.

Here's a picture a month later. It was put back into the water, and eventually a trunk started growing. When it was perhaps 10cm long, the pit was removed and planted out.

And here is that pit, and another, planted out. Shortly after something came along and ate the trunk off both. A rat? A possum? A chicken? Lesson learned: Cover with bird netting next time.

Growing cuttings

Plants are not that expensive, but the cost adds up.  A blackcurrant bush costs around $12NZ I think, and I can get a range of other berry plants for around the same price.  But if I had access to existing plants, I would be able to take cuttings and grow more.  In this case, I've managed to acquire cuttings for black currant, black grapes with seeds and some apple trees that grow up as columns.  I don't know the names of any of the varieties.

Blackcurrant, grape and apple cuttings.

There's rules to this sort of thing apparently.  But at worst, these are free new plants.  Maybe I'll have a hedge of dwarf apple trees later on.

So, on to my unruly approach.  The long cuttings at the back are the apple cuttings, and are apparently cut wrong.  I need to make them shorter and perhaps snip off the top, I am told.  The grape cuttings in front of the apple cuttings (hard to see, I know) have been moved around between different garden locations. This doesn't seem to have done any harm - unlike the garlic cloves in the next bed, which have likely suffered from their move.  The blackcurrant cuttings, of which there are many, follow the rules.  What those rules were, and where I found them, I don't know!  But I do remember something along the lines of removing all but around three buds on each cutting.  I really need to be taking better notes.

Things are looking promising too, I was out there in the rain the other day, and I am pretty sure the currants and grapes are budding up.