New Roses

With such an extensive garden I'm always looking at planting, what I should put where, how big it will grow and how expensive it is.

Lately I've been trying to take cuttings and grow from layered pieces of existing plants.

I travelled up to Motueka last week to visit my parents and while I was there we visited Tasman Bay Roses.

What a display in their growing paddock

The sales area, this was the best kept bit

 So many varieties, and colours, and fragrances! it was a pity that the yards were not better kept, for if someone had whizzed round with a weedeater it would look better.

They have rows and rows of roses as a "garden", which was unfortunately neglected.  The roses needed a prune, deadhead and a weedeat.  There didn't seem to be any order to the rows, with roses of different colours and types just lumped together.  No labelling had been done either, or pricing, which was a great disappointment.

I could not resist though, and bought a "Jude the Obscure" and something else which I can't bring to mind right now.

We also visited the Memorial Rose Gardens in Motueka, which were looking lovely.

The Year of the Berry

Last year was the "Year of the Strawberry".  We picked kilos and kilos of them, in fact our freezer still has a few bags waiting to be used.

This year is going to be the "Year of the Berry".  Boysenberries, Raspberries and Currants.

Just over 3kg of Raspberries

over 3kg of Boysenberries

Getting ready to cook jam

Jam in progress

33 jars of Berry Jam, Done!

Last week I picked 8.5kg of fruit and made it up into jam, yielding 33 jars of mixed berry jam.  Enough to have one every fortnight for a whole year.  I can think of lots of things to use it for, jam flan, Bakewell tart, jam donuts and more.  Hmm, must get my pinny on.