there's a book coming

Hi everyone.
I've been a bit lax with writing here lately as I have have been busy with the new school year. I have also started writing an e-book about organic gardening in a small space. It should be out in the next couple of months and of course I will let you all know the details of how to get it. In the garden its harvest time and my tomatoes are going great guns and keeping the family supplied. The lettuce that I allowed to seed has finished and I have heaps of seed some of which I have planted already and some I will keep planting as long as this glorious summer weather lasts. I had a good crop of potatoes but they are now just a distant memory. My spring onions are delicious and the strawberries just keep on coming. I have planted more potatoes and have a couple of pots of broccoli that are looking very healthy. In my square foot garden one of my tomato plants turned into a tree and went over in the wind. It hasn't died though and I have laid it over an old tricycle that the kids left in the yard. It's still flowering and giving fruit but it does look a bit untidy. My borlotti beans are flowering and I'm looking forward to a good harvest from them in the autumn.
happy gardening folks
and keep an eye out for the e-book.

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Wet bits in NZ

Well the spring rains have come. Softer and warmer than the winter ones but still stopping me going out to do too much in the garden. I am creeping around my pots at night with an umbrella and a torch looking for slugs and snails but (touch wood) I seem to have done a reasonable job of wiping them out for now. I have moved some plastic sheets and large pieces of timber over the last couple of weeks and have found hundreds of snails and quite a few slugs. My organic method of dealing with them has been to put them in a bucket and smash them up with a thick branch. The resulting pulp I have buried deep in the hottest part of my compost heap in the hope that at least some of the nutrients they have acquired can be returned to my garden. The snails and slugs I have found recently tend to be very small so I am hoping that I have destroyed the breeders. But I know they will return.
I have been spending my time reading up on organics and found some interesting books from the second hand book sale last week. Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening has been great but I have also been reading Organic Gardening in New Zealand by Richard Llewellyn Hudson which give some interesting information on NZ conditions as well plant by plant descriptions.
The other book that has been a regular companion is The Fruit and Vegetable Gardener's Handbook edited by Robin Wood from material which appeared in Grow Your Own. This has very detailed plant by plant descriptions but best of all clear instructions on when to harvest. Other gardening books tend to say harvest when ripe or mature or something and for a beginner like me it's not always easy to tell when that is. Both the latter books I have were published in the early 80s but the information still seems goood.