Hello friends,

Back in late December 2025, a neighbour turned up on my doorstep with a very large bowl of apricots in her hands, an entire bowl of unripe apricots she had harvested off the apricot tree outside my home. The tree had been planted by our local council on public land, with the intention that any fruit produced would be shared among the neighbours in our street. The fruit had just begun to ripen and fall, and I had been keeping an eye on the tree, and picking up the first few apricots dropping onto the grass each day.

My neighbour had decided to pick every single apricot off the tree in one go — they were not ripe, and were still very bitter. Her intention was to turn all the apricots into jam for herself, because she said she hated to have any fruit wasted. She thought it would be fair to give me a small amount of apricots because I had been looking after the tree throughout the year. So, she gave me a small bowl of apricots, and then went on her merry way to turn all the rest of the apricots into jam...

I have to admit I was annoyed with this occurrence, first of all it meant that no one else in the street could pick any apricots this summer, and two, I now had a bowl of unripe apricots which I now had to ripen. Luckily I had some ripe apricots for eating in my pantry, so I nestled them amongst the unripe apricots, and left them at room temperature with the hope they would indeed ripen.

Five days later, and with the majority of the apricots ripened, I broke them apart to remove the kernels, and then froze them away until I knew what I would make with them all. After taking some time to decide, I found a couple of recipes online, and chose to make some apricot nectar with the apricots, as I am very fond of drinking it on hot days, as it's very refreshing and cooling.

The first step was to defrost the 1 kg of apricots, and then I added it to a large pot along with 1 L of water.

I simmered it for half an hour, until the apricots had completely broken down.

To the pot I then added 500 grams of granulated sugar, and the juice of 1 large lemon, and then simmered the pot for a further 5 minutes while stirring.

At the end of the 5 minutes I took the pot off the heat, and let it cool.

The last thing to do was to pour the apricot nectar mixture through a fine sieve set over a large bowl, and push the apricots through the sieve until no more juice and puree came out. My mum happened to be visiting during this step, so she assisted me with this. She took the apricot remains from the sieve home with her, so she could put them on her Weetbix for breakfast, and she said it was very tasty.

With the sieving of the apricots done, the apricot nectar was ready to use. 

I added a small dash of the concentrated nectar to a glass, and then topped it up with some chilled sparkling water. It was very refreshing, and it tasted just like the commercial bottles I had bought. Most of the nectar remaining was stored in the fridge for drinking over the next week.

I decided to dehydrate the remaining apricot nectar into fruit leather, using my dehydrator, and it was equally as delicious as a fruity snack. It was so tasty, that by the time it had dried properly, hubby and I had already started eating it straight off the drying sheet.

All in all, despite the frustrating start to this project, the resulting apricot nectar and fruit leather were very tasty, and I will look forward to repeating this with more apricots each year.

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.

Tags: 2025, 2026, Apricot, Apricot Nectar, Food Processing, Harvest, Harvesting, Summer, Tree, Trees

Hello friends,

As part of the Floret Flower Farming workshop, it was suggested that we get soil testing done in our gardens/flower farms to check what our growing conditions are like.

So I dug out my horticulture course book on Soil Properties, and got to work. If you are ever thinking about studying horticulture, I do really recommend Open Polytechnic's "New Zealand Certificate in Horticulture", which is a free online course for anyone in New Zealand. I completed this course over a period of two years from 2016, and it was really worth it in my opinion.

First up was looking at the soil profile in my back garden by cutting a vertical profile through the soil with a spade. The organic horizon was 3 cm deep, followed by the topsoil (A horizon) which was 9 cm deep. Next, was the subsoil which was at 12 cm (B Horizon), and only was 3 cm deep. And lastly was horizon C, which is the weathered parent material.

Things to note in the soil profile: the top soil was dark brown in colour, but contained no earth worms, and the roots from plants only penetrated 10 cm down into the ground. The subsoil layers were yellow/orange in colour and formed very dense clods that were sticky when wet. This means there is not a deep topsoil layer for plants to grow in, and the lack of earthworms means that they are not bringing stuff down into the soil to improve the soil structure. This can be amended with compost and mulch, and hopefully with time earth worms will come into the garden.

Next up was the soil composition tests, which are the thread test, the ribbon test, and the soil settling tests. The thread and ribbon tests are qualitative, and the soil settling test is quantitative. Both the thread and ribbon tests (not shown), predicted the soil type was silty clay. This wasn't surprising because the suburb of Mosgiel sits on a flood plain.

The soil settling test was next, and it's a very simple experiment to do. First, dig down to 10 - 15 cm in the garden, and  get a long bottle or cylinder with a lid, and fill the container half fill with soil at that layer. To the soil add 1 tablespoon of dish washing soap (this will help break the soil down into its components). Then fill to the top with water. Shake for 30 minutes, or until the soil is completely broken down to it's individual particles and no clumps remain. Let the particles settle at the bottom of the container, and as a warning, this may take weeks to happen if there is a high clay content in your soil.

Here is the result for my backyard soil, and my sample did indeed take weeks to settle because of the clay content.

The bottom layer in the bottle is the sand layer (usually only takes about a minute to settle). The middle layer in the sample is the silt layer (which takes 1 - 2 hours to settle). And finally the top layer is the clay layer (and this took about 3 weeks to settle). Qualitatively the silt layer is the thickest, followed by clay, and then sand. To measure it quantitatively you just need to measure the total depth of the sample, and then each of component layers, and then work out the percentages of the sand, silt and clay in the sample compared to the total soil measurement.

The quantitative results show that silt makes up 61.5% of the soil, clay makes up 23.1% of the soil, and sand makes up only 15.4% of the soil. This indeed makes it a silty clay soil.

The good thing about silty clay soil is that there are a lot of nutrients, but the bad thing about silty clay soil is that it dries as hard as a rock in summer, and is sticky and wet in winter. This means that in summer it's hard for the plants to take up water. And in the winter, the wet and sticky soil means that the plants can very easily rot, especially dahlia tubers...

The best ways to improve silty clay soils is by doing the following: add organic matter in the forms of compost and mulch, add a clay breaker (to help break up the clay and silt), avoid compaction of the soil by not walking on it wherever possible, and plant strategically with plants that will tolerate the current conditions. I plan to do all of these things in my garden beds in the coming years. I am already adding Tui Mulch and Feed to some of my front garden beds (I've been picking up some bags whenever I go into Mitre 10), but this will take a long period of time over the coming year as I can afford to buy the 40L bags. The thing I like about Tui Mulch and Feed is that it contains "A two-in-one combination provides the benefits of mulching whilst the healthy additions of blood and bone, mulching straw and sheep pellets replace vital nutrients used by your plants."

The next soil testing I wanted to do was using the soil test kit "Soil Check Now Kit" (which I purchased from Gubba when they had a sale) to check pH levels, along with Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium levels. Each kit comes with a bottle of demineralised water, which is enough to do 10 tests each for pH, nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium.

After reading all the instructions, and making sure I had the materials needed (like paper cups, measuring spoons, and mixing spoons), it was time to take the soil samples. I decided to test a sample of back garden soil, and also some glasshouse soil. I dug down to a depth of 15 cm of soil in the back garden and the glass house, and took soil samples of each equivalent to a large handful, before laying each of them out on some newspaper, crushing any lumps with the back of a spoon, and leaving them to dry overnight. After this, it was time to begin soil testing...

 Glasshouse results:

The pH in the glasshouse was 6.5, making it slightly acidic, and it is the perfect pH for growing most plants.

The phosphorous levels in the glasshouse is high, at around 7 g/m², which is good for plant growth. This high level means I do not need to amend the soil in the glasshouse for my tomatoes, cucumbers, and capsicums.

The nitrogen levels in the glasshouse are high, at around 36 g/m², thanks to compost addition in the glasshouse each spring.

Potassium levels in the glasshouse are also high thanks to compost addition, at around 7 g/m². No amendments need to be done for potassium in the glasshouse at the moment.

Overall in the glasshouse has had significant amendments done to the soil each spring, with the addition of compost before tomato, capsicum, and cucumber plants are planted into the ground. At the end of this growing season I will repeat the soil testing to see if the levels have changed, and then I can make a decision whether more compost needs to be added to the soil in the glasshouse next spring.

Back garden results:

The pH of the back garden is pH 6.75, making it very slightly acidic. Most plants prefer it slightly more acidic than this, so I'll think about how to amend the pH in the back garden at the end of this growing season.

In the back garden nitrogen levels are at a medium level, around 18 g/m².

Phosphorous levels in the back garden are at a medium level, which is around 2 g/m².

And finally, potassium levels in the back yard are high, at around 18 g/m².

For the back garden, the medium levels of nitrogen and phosphorous in the soil, along with the high levels of potassium in the soil, means that the soil only requires moderate levels of fertiliser added over the season as plants take up nutrients from the soil. I will also be adding compost and mulch to all the garden beds in my garden over the coming year to build up the top soil and organic soil layers. Hopefully these soil amendments will improve the soil structure and bring earth worms into the soil.

In the meantime I have bought two organic fertilisers from Seacliff Organics (which is near Dunedin), to test their products on my garden.

First up is their Seacliff Opulent Bloom Mix, which is a topdressing powder to sprinkle on soil around flowering plants, and I plan to use this on my Floret zinnia beds this summer. It contains Fish Bone Meal, Langbeinite, Gypsum, Potash, TM7, BioPhos, and has an NPK of 1.7 : 9 : 5. It also contains a good dose of magnesium which is needed for flowering plants.

I also bought some horticultural coconut water to try, which contains "Naturally occurring bioactive enzymes, including acid phosphatase, catalase, dehydrogenase, diastase, peroxides, and RNA polymerases. Coconut water is rich in b-vitamins, sugars, minerals and traces of calcium, iron, manganese, magnesium and zinc. Coconut Water Powder is fairly innocuous, making it an awesome candidate for regular watering to aid general plant health."

Overall, I can't wait to get started in improving the soil health in my garden over the coming years.

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.

Tags: 2025, 2026, Backyard Science, Garden, Gardening, Mulch, Soil, Soil Composition, Soil Testing, Tui Mulch and Feed

Hello friends,

Today I thought I'd share with you my recent shallot and garlic harvest, which happened in the third week of December in 2025.

All the way back at the end of May in 2025, I sowed shallots for the first time, along with three garlic varieties, Printanor (which I sow each year), Creole, and Fire. Every single year in early December my Printanor garlic gets rust, because in early December our spring weather pattern changes from sunny and dry conditions, to cloudy and damp conditions, which last until after the new year has begun. So in May 2025 I decided to grow two new garlic varieties, Creole, and Fire, with the hope that one of those varieties would be less likely to contract the garlic rust fungus, and give me a better garlic harvest for the season.

The first task was to harvest my shallots. It was my first time growing them, and they were very easy to grow. By the time I harvested them they had all flopped over, with each sown shallot producing 6 - 7 new harvested shallot bulbs. None of the shallot plants showed any sign of rust, even though they had grown side by side with the garlic varieties all throughout the winter and the following spring.

Next up was harvesting the three garlic varieties, which all had contracted the rust fungus in early December. The Creole garlic plants had the least amount of rust on their leaves, but they also had the smallest garlic bulb harvest.

The Fire garlic variety had contracted the worst case of garlic rust fungus on their leaves, but they also gave me the biggest garlic harvest.

And finally, the garlic variety Printanor contracted a moderate amount of garlic rust fungus on their leaves, but they also had a moderate garlic bulb harvest despite the fungus infecting the plants.

All in all, none of the garlic varieties were spared from being infected with the garlic rust fungus in early December, but the Fire variety of garlic did grow the biggest garlic bulbs despite the infection. Unfortunately this means that I haven't found a garlic variety yet that will resist contracting garlic rust in early December, but I can harvest a decent crop of garlic from the Fire and Printanor varieties at least. Garlic plants infected with garlic rust are safe to eat, but they do not store well, so the garlic bulbs have to be processed in other ways to preserve the harvest.

As a bonus while harvesting my shallot and garlic plants, I also harvested a rogue potato plant which had grown in the same garden bed, and we had enough potatoes harvested from this to feed us that night for dinner (and for leftovers afterward). It was our first potato harvest of the growing season, and we enjoyed the boiled new potatoes with a sliver of butter for dinner.

And as for deciding what to do this coming autumn at garlic planting time, first, I think I'll go hunting for some more new garlic varieties to try, and second, I'll grow the Printanor and the Fire varieties again with the hope that maybe, if I'm very lucky, this year my plants will be spared from the dreaded garlic rust virus.

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.

Tags: 2025, 2026, Food Processing, Garlic, Harvest, Harvesting, Infection, Rust Fungus, Shallot, Summer

Hello friends,

In the spring of 2025 I managed to accomplish a couple of spinning projects using my drop spindle and spinning wheel, spinning up two braids of fibre I had in my stash.

First up was 100 grams of Fibre to Go "In The Shade Jewels" braid, made from 70% merino and 30% Silk, that my best friend Karyn picked up for me at Fibretron in Hamilton in the winter of 2025. Unfortunately after searching through all my photos I couldn't find any pictures of the braid, or of it being spun up on my drop spindle, but here is the finished yarn in all it's glory.

The rainbow jewel shades against the black are just so pretty, and I can't wait to use it in a weaving project in the near future. Unfortunately the yarn colours ran when I washed the skein of yarn after plying, but it did clear up in the rinses afterward. This yarn ended up being fingering weight width.

And secondly, I spun up a 100 gram braid from Handmaiden's July 2025 Fibre Club, containing 75% Corriedale, 15% Llama, and 10% Rayon, in shades of graduated pink, purple, blue and white.

With the rayon content being flecks of fibre that would come out easily all over the place while spinning, I decided to spin it with a high twist on my spinning wheel, in order to reduce the amount of mess all over me and my craft room floor. I split the braid vertically down middle to retain the colour changes in the braid, and then spun up the two singles in the same direction, followed by plying them together as a simple 2-ply yarn. The resulting yarn was my usual fingering weight yarn width.

The resulting yarn mostly kept the colours and colour graduation together, but there is always some sort of shifting that happens due to unbalanced dyeing on each side of the braid, as well as uneven splitting of the braid when pulled apart.

The yarn was then set in place using a gentle wool wash, and then dried, before being stored away in my large pile of hand spun yarn.

I'm very happy with the resulting yarn, and plan to use this yarn as a warp in an experiment to create a stained glass scarf for my online store Hearth and Oak. It is always very fulfilling to take a braid of fibre, and spin it, before weaving it into a finished project.

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.

Tags: 2025, 2026, Crafting, Crafts, Drop Spindle, Fiber, Fibre, Spinning, Spinning Wheel, Spring, Yarn