They're special, our wee furry friends

Ahh that large white poppy is 17yr old Francesca cultivar

It's all learning, it's all valid, and it's all about connecting with and resourcing our communities.

We all have different ways of approaching our gardens, varying amounts of time we can commit to gardening, various levels of health and wellbeing, and various things that we are and are not interested in/able to focus on/play around with.

In light of making sure we resource ourselves with seeds and seedsaving opportunities that meet all different lifestyles, I'm in the process of making sure theres a wee thing/basket or shell or something in the library in St Kilda that specifically contains flowers and veggies that self sow.

but there will still be a fair it to get around gardens.

It is a self seeding cool season plant originally from Europe. You can direct sow some in your garden, and then it'll just self sow year after year.

I also have seeds from the garden here (seed originally from both the school garden and from a seedsaving friend in the North Island). This guy mostly self pollinates and in retrospect, I should have popped a mesh bag over some of the plants to collect seed,

Brilliant, thank you for this.

Its interesting, and itd be interesting to know if other natives ... or non natives (theres a bamboo doing a gregarious flowering this year down St Leonards

Luckily, with having so many beaches around, and a car that transports everything from bees, bamboo, manure, fishframes and seaweed, coffee grounds, hession sacks, we can collect every weekend, especially in the warmer months, which gets us away from town, & pays off in quality soil

and I look at it knowing it'll be part of the soil next season, supporting the growing out, likely beans and peas over winter, and probably pumpkins after that.

When we collect seaweed and seagrass, we are trying to be really careful to only take a couple of buckets-worth at a time.

Combined with previous layers of seagrass, hession, wool, comfery, autumn leaves, aged manure, it allows soil to replenish itself over time, allowing this really nice, dark soil full of different species of fungi and it's mycelium. The seaweed is full of beautiful ochre olive and brown colours,

They went into the garden potion). The family tolerates a great deal in service of this garden, which is something I really appreciate.

Seaweed is a good mulch for Summer, as it dries, which sets a nice protective layer atop the soil.

(Three fresh Blue cod frames washed up while we were there, as well, so they came back in the car too. They were hidden in one of the buckets, buried under thick seaweed to hide the smell - all very successful, mostly because of the lowish temperature.

Yesterday, we popped over to one of our favorite beaches (quiet, away from town, and often has all the seaweed species that this garden prefers) in Waikouiti.