shiny posts

Stewart island potato Found by Kay Baxter rowing wild in a clifff face along the shore on Stewart Island around 1990. It is an extremely beautiful variety similar in shape to Whataroa and Chatham Islands however this one has p…

Note from Koanga institute about huakaroro taewa potato

Sent to Koanga by Rex Mundy of Kerikeri. He said it came from the Banks Peninsula, "growing there as long as the locals can remember at an isolated bay, among the boulders on the foreshore. The runners went lon…

Growing notes for: huakaroro taewa potato

2012 - Medium height, strong top growth but very very crinkly leaves, and some yellow blotching average weight 1kg

2013 - More even line, but poor yield. …

There are five new buttons on the top of every page in Growstuff this week. They're the five most useful actions for someone tracking their garden.

"My Gardens" is where you can see what's going on in your garden, and for perennial crops, you'll see how many days to harvest, and a progress bar t…

This week I met with Rory who is the founder of FarmBot. He's offered me their CC-0 licensed icons they created. These are a dataset for their OpenFarm Project (so they're considered data, not code, so isn't in git) The icons are for a crop. e.g. one for corn, one for tomatoes

They look useful. …

we have a puppy. She's gorgeous but she's also destroying my garden. This year I think i won't be planting out a garden, because i know she'll dig it up.

Beans, peas and corn: remove husks and allow seeds to dry out – this may take a couple of weeks, then remove casings and store.

Pumpkins and melons: seeds need to be washed and set aside to dry for a week or so before …

I've been growing several indigenous plants recently. Theres a miro tree that will eventually have berries. I've added karaka tawa, and hīnau to the growstuff database too, as these were (and are) food sources for the people living here for centuries…

I'm going to attempt to grow potato over winter. To prepare I'm going to do a full garden bed of mustard and then dig the greens into the soil. Add compost and blood and bone. I've never attempted potato over winter. It can get very wet here, and in August it dr…

Cyclone Gita is due here on Tuesday. I'm gonna need to bring in the tomato stakes and other items that might turn into projectiles.

Something i've been working on is the predictions on GrowStuff.org. If you go to you gardens page there's now a progress bar for each annual planting. That's plantings that are expected to complete there lifespan in 2 years or less . the progress bar is % until the plant is finished and can be re…

I intend to remove the raised beds, and just dig the lawn up to be garden. It'll give more area. The current wooden raised beds might end up. On the front lawn.