In the microgeens garden

In the microgeens garden

I started an indoor garden as a hobby during the New Zealand lockdown, and continued to develop into the winter months. We attended farmers markets and then went on to sell locally and to private buyers. The project continues to deliver microgeens to order. We have a dedicated growing space in a controlled environment suitable for 20 trays of greens. Our preferred microgeens are radishes and basil.

Jan 2021: Happening in the garden

Jan 2021: Happening in the garden

It’s 11th of January and I have a Product Manager interview at 10:30am, as a way to relax and prepare I decided I would get some gardening tasks completed and generally have a walk around in the cool of the day.

Kumera is growing well in the clotch.

Strawberries are continuing to produce. This year we forgot to cover the plants, but what we’ve discovered is a complete lack of blackbirds that would usually swoop in and gobble up bright red berries.

Cabbages are growing awesome, we’ll have to start harvesting these shortly.

Potato strip down the back path has worked well. Good crop and added diversity to the area beneath the fruit trees.

Apples are coming along nicely and are a bit unexpected considering the losses we’ve had after the late frosts, many of our fruit trees are bare this year.

The biggest delicious delight is found under a mass of peach leaves.

360 Photos Road trip Canterbury to Nelson

360 Photos Road trip Canterbury to Nelson

Here are a few pictures from our travels over the 2020-2021 holiday season.

First we visited Conway, stayed overnight near the beach and watched dolphins. The next morning we traveled up the east coast to Mapua, stopping along the way taking photos and 360 degree video.

The bulk of our time away from Canterbury was in the Nelson and Mapua area, with five nights in Redwood Valley and 3 nights at the Mapua camping ground.

We saw New Year’s Eve in at an off the grid log cabin in Glenhope on our way back to Canterbury. Two fantastic nights and lots of river walking! Simply beautiful territory.

Water catchment

Water catchment

Having arranged the water storage for garden use, I noticed that there were other down pipes that could possibly reduce the amount of water caught. If I could reduce run off without increased chances of flooding, we should be able to collect more water per down pour.

The idea is that if water could be dammed at two points, we could increase the volume of water able to be drained into the barrels.

The catchment area is approximately 150 square meters.

The spouting is 5cm deep before it overflows into the house, and the dam wall is 2cm, which means that in a significant rain event the water can spill over.

Waiting for the next rain event to test system…

Water storage

Water storage

With our summer looming and the cost of domestic water increasing we have been increasing the amount of water collection and storage.

We have a water diverter on one primary down pipe that first fills a 1000 lt tank, this over flows then to 4 x 200 lt barrels. Additionally we have a 300 lt barrel that collects water from our shed.

The black barrels are gravity feed from the larger tank, via a 13mm plastic pipe that only starts filling the black barrel when the 1000 lt tank is 75% full.

The two black barrels are connected together and have plastic pipes that drip line to fruit trees at key points. Into these barrels a nutrient mix is added.

The two blue barrels have taps on them to manually decant water for buckets. The two blue barrels only fill when the primary tank is full.