Pamela Moresby
I live in central Auckland with rich volcanic soil. Bit by bit, they are digging up land and converting it to house the homeless and create more houses for an expanding city. It is the largest city in New Zealand but not the capital.
So as it is a Housing New Zealand place I don’t have a lot of say as what will become of the future of these units where I live. I may decide to live in the country if they make us all leave and create apartments with no land for gardening..That is going to happen but it is only a question of when.
Meanwhile I create a garden and what is the rest is probably mainly weeds, that will take time.
The Thumbnail is my garden pool, really a kiddie pool picked up from the road side because no one wanted it, but I use it as extra water for the garden. If I get really worried about mosquitos I will pour oil on it or introduce gold fish …
There is something like 2 shopping bags, they are really clothes baskets and are made of plastic. I thought they looked nice, I added weed matt to that and put in agria potatoes in one and in the other Red Kumaras. I covered with compost mix and as they grow I put more of that on top of that so by Christmas or when ever, I receive home grown potatoes and Kumaras which are sweet potatoes.
I would love to kidnap a few hens running wild in Titirangi and get a hen house so I can receive free range eggs. These creatures need to be taken care of, instead of being run over by cars and being wasted..as a road statistic!
A dream, not only self sufficient but doing my part to help Mother Earth. Yes, I have a compost bin.
#1 Looking down on my first step this year.
It took me 3 or 4 days just to clear the mess. Now I have planted mainly silver beet and spinach here, edged with flowers. A red chilean guava tree is on the end. Now the cats like to use gardens as kitty litter so I put some thorny citrus plant on top to discourage kitty litter use...
Also have broccoli planted.
#2 What I use bags of compost for..
I now have 24 strawberry plants in 3 bags of compost, they don't do well ground level. The other 2 bags, one with dwarf green beans and the other dwarf butter beans...A couple of trees, a lime that does not fruit and a dwarf apple tree.
Yes, I try to grow things inside an old used tyre but will restrict that to flowers only in future,
#3 By the fence
A collection of potted plants, potted trees and the tree here is my avocado tree, it will need to soon be sprayed with honey water when it flowers for spring. There is a tree to the left which is my Meyer Lemon tree.
I have planted Rosemary and lavender by the fence to keep the soil right and also attract honey bees.
#4 The 2nd major gardening project
took me a week and a half of pulling out stubborn kikuyu weeds, quite awful and not got rid of it all. There is Pak choy a type of chinese cabbage, and broccoli and spinach.
I have some dill in the orange pot and that palm like tree is something I picked off the road to use as a garden edge but it grew into a tree.
There is a Samoan Capiscum plant here as well. I used a plastic large water container as a hot house for a broccoli plant.
