I finally began preparing the garden for winter, here’s the work that’s been going on and photos to go with some of it:

12 May – I began weeding the garden beds.  I also dug up most of the potatoes (I’m sure there are more of them in the beds!) – pink skinned (Desiree or Van Rosa – I forget which), white skinned (??), large purple skinned with purple flesh (Crop 33 or Purple Heart) and small purple skinned with very dry purple flesh (Maori).  I’ve kept a few of each as seed potatoes, the rest will be eaten.

Potatoes for eating – left bucket has the pink and white skinned, the right bucket has the small, dry Maori

Seed potatoes – clockwise from top left are pink skinned, white skinned, crop 33, Maori

13 May – More weeding.  I also removed the remaining old plants – cabbage (there were 2 small regrowth cabbages to be picked and eaten), corn, zucchini, pumpkins and cucumber (all to the compost bin).

The last 2 regrowth cabbages

14 May – It was a cold day outside, so I removed the seeds from the oil seed pumpkins and gave the shells to a neighbour for her pigs.  The seeds were roasted at 100°C for 2 hours (longer than normal as they weren’t in a single layer – next time do them in a single layer in several batches – I put them in a container only to find that when I opened the container a couple of days later, they were still damp and needed further drying).  There was 2.6kg of wet seeds, 1.5kg of dry seeds.

Empty Austrian oil seed pumpkin shells

Wet seeds form the Austrian oil seed pumpkins

I did some reading about the cross-pollination of cucurbits (pumpkin, zucchini, squash etc) and found that plants of the same species will cross-pollinate unless there is at least 400m between plants, but they will not cross-pollinate between species.  I had grown:
Cucurbita maxima – Hopi grey winter, Zambezi gem
Cucurbita moschata – Butternut
Cucurbita pepo – Zucchini, Austrian oil seed.
I have saved seeds from Zambezi gem and Austrian oil seed.  Next season I will plant some of these and also some from Koanga gardens and compare the plants.  I quite like the Zambezi gem as they are very small (1 per person) and versatile, although the flesh is reasonable dry and flavourless on its own – needs butter or stuffing.

18 May – I cut back the asparagus, fennel and jerusalem artichokes (all to compost), also pushed the yam plants back into the garden bed.  Now I can easily use all of the garden paths.  While I was doing this, I found 5 more gem squash (75 altogether!).  I also did a little more weeding – 1/2 of the garden is now done.

19 May – Nathalie, from next door, wants to start her own garden, so we have agreed to help each other in our vegetable gardens.  Today she came and helped with my weeding.  Only 1/2 a bed to go!

20 May – The weeding is finished!  I harvested the first feijoas and grapefruit (both delicious).  I also did the compost bin shuffle – first, I removed the most recent half of the contents of Bin 1 (put them on a tarp and dragged it out of the way), emptied Bin 3 into the wagon, moved contents of  Bin 2 into Bin 3, contents of Bin 1 into Bin 2 and refilled Bin 1 with the stuff from the tarp.  It all looks lovely!

Compost bins after the shuffle

The contents of Bin 3

21 May – I spread the compost onto 1/2 of Bed 1, strawberries and asparagus.  Next time I will only use it on asparagus and strawberries as it is very easy to distribute there – it’s nice and dry compared to manure sludge.  The contents of the manure and seaweed bins were tossed onto the other 1/2 of Bed 1, Bed 2 and most of Bed 3.  After forking the semi-solid material onto the beds, I raked it around with the thin layer of pea straw that was on each bed.  Each bed now looks like it’s covered with a thin layer of pea straw.  I still have 1 bin 2/3 full of seaweed liquid, 1 bin full of manure liquid (had no solid material – I was supposed to use this over spring and summer!!!) and 2 bins 1/4 full of manure liquid.

Now all that remains is the refill bins with manure (I’d like to fill 3 bins with manure – so I need to do something with the bin full of manure liquid until I use it in spring – perhaps I can put some on the celery, brussel sprouts and leeks) and cover the empty areas of the beds with a thick layer of pea straw.

Awaiting a thick layer of pea straw