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Blog feed

The simple chronological feed of all the blog posts published on this site.

From the most recent to the oldest post, follow the entire journey.

Garlic beds 2021

Garlic growing 2021: the experiments

Each year I experiment with new garlic varieties to see if they’re worth adding to my “garlic collection”. This year I’m trying 3: Russian Red, Spanish Red, and Kakanui.

Daffodils in the flower bed

Garden of smiles

I’m slowly learning plants don’t have to be “useful” to be worthwhile. So this week, I planted a flower garden just to put a smile on my face.

The white, and the white-and-ginger rooster

The roosters

A couple of months ago, we welcomed some new chickens, and now the roosters are crowing.

Hine's photobomb

Animal tales part 3

Roxy catches her first pig and Hine makes her first photobomb in this continuing series about the animals in our lives.

A bed that has self-sown with lettuces

The lazy woman's garden

Spending less time in the garden, and still harvesting from it by letting nature do the gardening for me.

Orotere Outpost May 2021

A slew of updates

Generally, I blog about what’s new, and what’s going on right now. Today, I’m looking back and providing some updates on stuff from the past 2 years.

Trees in our native bush

The value of the bush

Musings on what value we place on our native forest remnants.

A collection of native trees relocated from the driveway

Sourcing native trees

In order to plant native trees, we need to source native trees. I went tree-hunting this week.

Chickens in the chook house

The zoo grows again

One person’s problem became our new friends with the arrival of 7 new chooks.

Takahue garlic

Everything I know about planting garlic

Everything I’ve learned about getting a successful garlic harvest in the ground.

Hine toa and Roxy getting to know each other

The visitor

We’ve a new friend at The Outpost. An Airedale Terrier named Hine Toa.

Taiwan cherry blossoms in NZ native bush

The beauty of weeds

Looking at the beauty provided by some of the weeds on the property, and getting a bit philosophical about it.

Compost bin containing the humanure

The composting toilet

Pooping is such a basic part of every life. We’ve got a little closer to our poop since we moved to The Outpost by composting it through our composting toilet.

Echeveria prolifica - Violet Queen

Some of the succulents

A short tour of some of my succulents and cacti.

Steak that was cooked in compost

Cooking in compost

A big compost pile generates serious heat. Enough to cook a steak. Yes, really.

Citrus collection - mandarin, lemon, finger lime, and Tahitian lime

A selection of limes

I’m up to 5 lime trees. Am I obsessed? How did I get here?

Oyster mushrooms growing in a ball of spoiled hay

Fungi friends

Following a huge rain, a bunch of mushrooms and fungi have begun to bloom.

Leeks grown in my previous garden in 2018

Planting leeks

It’s time to plant leeks! There’s a bit of a trick to harvesting a good leek, so I thought I’d take a moment to show you how.

Roxy digging in the garden

Digger dog

It turns out our dog, Roxy, just looooves to dig!

Kat and her giant compost pile

The giant compost pile

Finding myself with many piles of rotting organic matter, I build my first hot compost pile.

Backlit_xeronema_flower_raceme

Xeronema callistemon (Poor Knight's Lily)

How I fell in love with and acquired a new native plant for my collection.

Harvested garlic laid out in a drying tray

Garlic harvest 2020

Now the garlic is out of the ground, I take a look at how I did this year.