Tomatoes

The change to the watering regime in the tunnel house is working. The tomatoes are late, but will be prolific. I'm picking every couple of days and the haul is gradually increasing. 

Incidentally, the bowl is part of a big dinner service which was a wedding gift for my great-great-grandparents (who married in 1887). Parts of it have survived remarkably well and I have a variety of plates, bowls and serving dishes; all in good condition.

Back in the tunnel house, the cucumber plants need some extra attention. The plants are alive and green, but they're not thriving and the fruit is growing painfully slowly. So I'll give them still more water and some food in the shape of a dose of nettle/comfrey tea and diluted whey. This will be repeated every other day for the rest of the season: assuming of course that it benefits them.

The day has mostly been about watering outside as well as in the tunnel. Things have dried out terrifyingly fast and I've moved onto the watering schedule for drought conditions. 

As a sign of how dry things have become, we are under a Total Fire Ban. I can't even use my fire pit until further notice. I get twitchy about bushfires in these conditions. The property has trees on two sides and would go up like a torch. 

It seems weird to be thinking about the dangers of bush fires when everybody in NZ has half an eye on the approach of Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle from the north-north-west in the Coral Sea. By the time it reaches the North Island it will be an 'ex-Tropical Cyclone' which means it no longer has an eye and will have spread out over a much wider geographical area. It does not mean that the wind-speeds will abate. It's a Category 3 at the moment and is likely to be down-graded to a Category 2 in the next 36 hours with 89kmh - 117kmh winds. And it'll be packing that sort of a punch when it arrives over Northland, Auckland and the Coromandel.

Those areas are already sodden and not fully recovered from the deluges a couple of weeks ago, so there's another disaster looming. The only good thing is that there has been heaps of warning this time.