Vertical Gardening

A while back I wrote about my grey water garden.  It has gone through several incarnations, I think since Hubby got involved each has become less successful than the last, but we will get there.  Along the edge there was a cut or slipped wall of earth.  It looked dreadful, but was a fairly good spot for a garden.  It faced North and East, was sheltered from the South and West and was near where the grey water came out.

I came up with the idea of building a stepped retaining wall type thing along there with tyres.  Inside the tyres I would grow veges.  It would be a great place to move some of the strawberries that were threatening to take over every available spot in my other vege garden.  I would also fill some of these tyres with the large amount of stones we have and make them into steps leading down to this area.

Hubby couldn’t ‘see’ it.  I drew a picture, he kind of got it, but not really.  He’d brought most of the tyres he’d found up to a spot very close to where I wanted to do it, so I just started to do it.  I’ve spent months on and off, working at it.  I’ve filled tyres and gaps beneath the tyres with weeds, lawn clippings, pig and chook poo - every organic scrap you can think of.

 

 

I didn’t realise just how many stones are needed to fill a tyre.  That’s been quite a mission.  It took a few tyres before I realised that I really needed to make sure I also filled the rims of the tyres.  It can be quite disconcerting to have them move under you when you step up or down.  It got to the stage where anyone going down the paddocks would pick up an armload of rocks and stones on their way back up to toss into the tyres.

We opened up a new patch for the pigs and for some reason they dug this bit over - something they hadn’t done anywhere else.  This gave us plenty of easily accessible rocks and stones, but also a great patch to plant spuds.

 

The tyres I hadn’t used yet - although I haven’t finished building my wall - were getting to be a nuisance, so I made three ‘pyramids’ from some of them.  A 3 x 3 square on the bottom, 2 x 2 on the next layer and one in the middle on the top.  I filled these with pig poo and the fallen oak leaves from their paddock and threw a handful of pumpkin seed in each tyre.  In one I used watermelon seed.  Only two plants have come up in that one, but (I’m guessing through the pig poo) we have a couple of tomato plants popping up there too.  They’ve been simple but effective.  The pumpkin plants have been doing reasonably well, we have more than we expected so Hubby is keen to start more. 

 

He pointed out that (when we buy it) a bag of pig nuts is between $25 and $30.  This seed has cost us nothing as it came from last year’s pumpkins and the pigs love pumpkin.  The cattle will also eat it.

He also now loves the tyre wall and is helping me to work on it.  I noticed that I keep getting big healthy grass and weeds come up along the front at the bottom.  They can be quite a challenge to pull out and they drop seed all through my tyres.  So I decided we needed a path in front of the tyres.  We’d found plenty of weed-matting in all the crap piles and sheds and there was probably a couple of trailer loads worth of small rounded stones in a paddock.  I found that quite by accident - it was overgrown with sorrel and grass.

The hard thing about that is the soil we’re digging up for the path.  It’s clay with a disproportionate amount of stones.  It’s taken at least 6 hours so far to get about 4 metres along.  First it needs loosening with a pickaxe/grubber type tool.  Then I’m screening what we’ve dug.  The soil and small stones are going into tyres for veges, the weeds are going into a compost drum and the bigger stones are going into step tyres.

 

Pumpkin Pyramid

All the organic material that has been going in is settling too.  It’s an ongoing thing to top up the tyres with fresh soil and compost and try to keep them going.  I don’t think this is a project that will be finished any time in the near future, but we’ll get there eventually.

Although chances are, by the time it’s nearly finished, Hubby will have a new grand scheme and want to pull it all down and start again!

One Man's Trash ...

One big bonus with our little block (that at the same time seems to be a huge pain in the proverbial) is the amount of well, crap that was left lying around.

We’ve cleared sheds that were chock full of “other people’s treasures” and found more and more just lying around the place.
 

Hubby gets on a big neat binge every now and then and goes through it all, sorting and tidying while trying to be hard and throw away what isn’t going to maybe be useful someday.  We’ve found leftover rolls of chicken wire - mostly in 2 metre lengths that did get used in the chook run after I spent a painful and painstaking day tying all the bits together.  Bits of sheep-fencing mesh, one I found when it blew against a fence from Gods know where and my darling heifer Brownie got her head stuck through it.  Poor girl, I guess we were both lucky that she is so tame and didn’t panic when I was untangling her head and horns from three or four layers of fencing.

Some of the irrigation hosing (as far as we can tell it’s been partially set up but never used) has been useful, some of it has perished or been damaged by animals.  There are jets and sprayers and bits of every imaginable type and level of usefulness.

Pipes, tanks, tubs and hoses galore.  Enough corrugated iron to build a chookhouse and to go around the pigs.

And tyres.  So many tyres.  Every so often, Hubby gathers up more from the various spots we’ve found them.  I would have assumed that there was a huge silage pile at some stage, if only they’d all been remotely near each other.

We try to make use of these bits as much as we can.  We don’t have a lot of spare income and we do have a lot of grand ideas.  Being resourceful with this stuff is also part of our self-sufficient philosophy.  Why buy stuff new if we can make the old stuff work for a while?  Although the gates held shut with baling twine are a very temporary measure - especially since we’ve found the steers figured out which bit to pull on to open the gate!  Might have to go to proper knots rather than slip knots for a while.

Hubby also started to bring home pallets from work for firewood.  Every so often he’ll spend a day with the skill saw cutting up pallets and filling the woodshed.  It only takes a day or two to fill our small wood shed.  Although, with the storm a few months back, we have probably enough macrocarpa drying for at least one winter.

The pallets have turned out to be useful in so many other ways too.  I know there are plenty of sustainable living websites that show ways to make furniture out of them, but we’ve used them for pig fencing, building compost bins and some are being pulled to bits to make a bench seat around the deck.

For me it is a point of pride to be making useful stuff around here out of what would otherwise be rubbish.  I love that we didn’t need to buy a single thing to be able to build two chookhouses.  The only purchases for the farrowing shed were the electrical components.  We still have a number of projects in mind and the first place we look is at the crap pile!

Crochet Easter Bunnies

These cute little bunnies stand 10cm (4 inches) tall when made with DK yarn and a 4.0 mm hook.  I'm considering trying one with two strands and a 6.5 mm hook.

I'm using American terminology in this pattern.  Most of the pieces are worked in rounds, spiraled so that there is no joining at the end of each round, you just work on top of the first stitch of the previous round.  For the Body, Basket and Arms, I carry my start tail with the work and weave them in as I work.  For the other parts, the tails are needed for attaching the different parts - well, not so much with the ears, but it's difficult to carry the tail in the work for them.

Body and Head (Make 1)

For some reason loading this pic keeps rotating it.  Sorry it's upside down.

Round 1: Start with a magic ring, sc 6 into the ring. 
Round 2: Sc2 into each st (12 sts).
Round 3: (Sc 1, sc2 into next st).  Repeat for entire round (18 sts).
Round 4: (Sc1 into next 2 sts, sc2 into next st).  Repeat for entire round (24 sts).
Round 5 - 9: Sc in each st.
Round 10: (Sc1 into next 2 sts, sc2 together). Repeat for entire round (18 sts).

At this point, I find it easiest to stuff the body - not too tight.

Round 11: (Sc1, sc2 together). Repeat for entire round (12 sts).
Round 12: Sc2 together for entire round (6 sts).
Round 13: Sc in each st.
Round 14: Sc2 into each st (12 sts).
Round 15: (Sc 1, sc2 into next st).  Repeat for entire round (18 sts).
Round 16 - 18: Sc in each st.

Lightly stuff head.

Round 17:  (Sc1, sc2 together). Repeat for entire round (12 sts).
Round 18:  Sc2 together for entire round (6 sts).

Fasten off leaving long tail.  I like to use my yarn tail to stitch around the hole and pull up a little tighter.


Feet (Make 2)

Chain 6, join into a ring with first sc of next round.
Round 2 - 4: Sc into each st.
Round 5: Sc2 into first 3 sts, sc into next 3 sts (9 sts).
Round 6 - 7: Sc into each st.
Round 8: Sc2 together 3 times, sc into next 3 sts (6 sts).

 Fasten off, leaving long tail and stuff very lightly.  These feet look a little clumsy to begin with, but when sewn up and sewn to body seem to work quite nicely.

Arms (Make 2)

Chain 6, join into a ring with first sc of next round.
Round 2 - 4: Sc into each st.
From here, we change to rows.
Push hook through next st and through last st and sc the two sides together.  Do this twice more to make 3 sts on the row and single thickness.
Work 3 rows in sc.
Next row: Ch 1 (turning chain from previous row), sc 2 together (2 sts).
Work one row.

Fasten off leaving long tail.


Ears (Make 1)

Ch 6, turn and sc into 3rd ch from hook, sc 3.
Ch 1 and turn.  Sc 3, hdc2 and dc3 into next st.  Dc3 and hdc2 into next st. Sc 4.

Ch 8, turn and sc into 3rd ch from hook, sc 3.
Ch 1 and turn.  Sc 3, hdc2 and dc3 into next st.  Dc3 and hdc2 into next st. Sc 4.

Fasten off.



Basket (Make 1)

Round 1: Start with a magic ring, sc 6 into the ring. 
Round 2: Sc2 into each st (12 sts).
Round 3: (Sc 1, sc2 into next st).  Repeat for entire round (18 sts).
Round 4: (Sc1 into next 2 sts, sc2 into next st).  Repeat for entire round (24 sts).
Round 5 - 9: Sc in each st.

Fasten off leaving long tail.

To Make Up:

Stitch toe end of feet.  Run thread through foot and stitch in place to underside of body.

Stitch basket down the belly of the bunny and along both feet (as shown).

Stitch arms to body and to basket.

Stitch ears together - I go up about 2 sts.  Weave a line of stitching through the base of the ears and pull to gather lightly.  If you wish, you can also run a little yarn partway up one ear and pull to give the ear a slightly lopsided look.  Stitch ears to top of head.

Find spot for tail, sc 3 and use tail of yarn to loosely stitch it into shape.

Sew on eyes and nose.  For the nose, I've been doing one full stitch with long tails, then I tie a reef knot and sew the tails through the head.

Add an easter egg :)

If you try this pattern and something doesn't work - please let me know.  I've just been making these purely on improvisation and while I think I've worked the pattern out right, I may have made a mistake or 3.

It's supposed to be late Autumn... isn't it?

The weather last year had me a little concerned.  Our winter was rather mild - not that I'm complaining about that - I was worried when I started seeing things I associate with the first stirrings of Spring in early July.

There is an old English/modern Pagan festival called Imbolg.  Sometimes translated as "Ewe's Milk".  This is February 2nd (approx) in the Northern Hemisphere and August 2nd down here.  The festival is supposed to mark the first stirrings of Spring, not the full arrival of Spring.  Over the years I've seen various things work as markers for this - leaf buds appearing on fruit trees, spring bulbs poking their leaves up out of the soil and things like that.  Lambing (as is evident from the name) was once a marker, but as breeding is fairly well controlled by the farmers these days, it's not necessarily an accurate one anymore.

Most of these "markers" as I've called them, I normally start seeing and noticing in early August.  I may not feel much of a change in the air temperature, but the plants are noticing something.  Last year, I realised that most of these markers were occurring very early in July.  My big oak tree had old yellow and brown leaves that hadn't yet fallen and new green ones opening on the same branches.  I was afraid to prune my nectarine tree as it never quite made it to 'dying back for the winter' and I worried that cutting branches would cause it to bleed to death.

New growth on my potatoes

This year, it's even weirder.  It's almost as though the clock turned back after mid-Summer and we're having a second Spring.  My paddocks are still growing with that Spring flush type growth and speed of growth.  The lawn still requires mowing pretty much every week.  My tomatoes are still flowering and fruiting - although they're ripening a lot slower lately.  My potatoes are throwing up new plants and each decent sized spud I dig up has up to ten baby spuds hanging off it.  My pumpkins did nothing all Summer.  We were undecided whether we weren't watering enough, the soil (well, it was 90% pig poo) was too rich, or the distinct lack of bees was the problem.  Now, however, I suddenly have a heap of small (just bigger than apple sized) pumpkins that have appeared on the plants and the runners are finally doing their bolt across the paddock.  A neighbour has commented that her apple trees have started flowering again.

New Pumpkins growing

We've had 20 degrees Celsius this week.  Trying to find information on what the averages are historically has been interesting.  One website suggests the average high temperature throughout March, April and May in Christchurch (because Amberley is too small to count) is 18°C, another gives the May average around Christchurch at 8.9°C.  Niwa's website, based on 30 years of record keeping puts it at 14.7°C.

As I realised last year, there's not a lot we can do to change the weather right now.  I can't do anything about this new growth that will probably all be killed in a heavy frost next month.  All I can do is prepare for what may be coming and try to save what I can.

I'm not sorry that it seems we won't need any hay this year.  We still have plenty of feed around the place and with three cattle beasties going in the space of a week, we have a lot less demand for the feed we do have.