Building a Bamboo Trellis

We have a  little bamboo patch in the backyard. It's a good and possibly bad thing. If they start taking over the entire yard, then it's a bad thing. If they stay in their own area, I can use them for various purposes. I knew that I wanted to use them to make trellis for growing anything that climbs.  A couple months ago I planted my kiwi vines out in the garden. They have really flourished. This week is spring break, and I knew that I had to take this opportunity to cut down some bamboo and make a trellis for the kiwi vines.

I have the perfect tool for sawing off the bamboo. About four years ago, I bought a Pocket Boy. It's a cute little saw that can easily hurt someone seriously.  It only took seconds to saw off a bamboo stick. I saw off about 20 of them.  One thing to watch out for is getting splinters from the bamboo. They are so fibrous and sharp. I put on some gloves after getting many tiny splinters.  I saw off the top part with the leaves before pounding the bigger ones into the soil. I used some ribbon from old gift wraps to tie the horizontal sticks. They aren't all straight and even, but that's okay. I think they will be functional. Once the kiwi vines wrap around the trellis, you won't be able to see much of the trellis itself anyway.  I will show you how it all looks in a few months.

Transplanting the Kiwi

Shortly after moving to the new house, I got myself a pot of one female and one male fuzzy kiwi plants.  For months, the pot lived in the corner of my kitchen. I watered it regularly but the leaves continued to dry up and fall off until there is hardly any leaf left. I was concerned at first and read many articles about growing kiwi particular growing kiwi in the Bay Area.  It turned it is normal for the leaves to fall off during the winter.

As the weather starting to warm up, I decided it is time to move it outside so they can expend their roots and get open air and rain.

It took some struggle to remove the plants out of the pot. I laid the pot on the ground sideway and pressed it all around with my knee and shin to loosen it up.  I almost wanted to just cut it open, but I had something else in mind with the black planter and didn't want to destroy it.  Finally it all came out in one piece. There are so much roots. I spent a great deal of time trying loosen and break open some of the roots so that they can integrate into the ground better.

Now I am just going to hope Cracus will leave it alone otherwise I would have put up a barrier of some sort.

New Fruit Vines for New Home

With my new garden, naturally I have to plant something new. Since my gardening time is now extremely limited, I decided that I needed to just get a small plant instead of trying to grow something from cuttings. I stopped by one of my favorite nurseries in the area, East Bay Nursery, to check out their fruit trees. Initially I was very interested in a persimmon tree specifically of Jiro variety, the flat round kind not the pointy kind.  Persimmon trees are quite expensive, so I started looking at apricot, avocado, pineapple grava (feijoa), etc.

I know with our cool weather in the East Bay, growing avocado and pineapple grava would be tricky. I went back to East Bay Nursery a few days later to take a second look. To my surprise, they have kiwi vines, which I completely missed during my first visit. I searched online for golden kiwi vines, but the only vendors selling them are in New Zealand, and they can't ship them to the States. Having been deeply in love with New Zealand, the decision was for me. I knew that in order for kiwis to fruit, there have to be a male and a female vines growing close to each other.

East Bay Nursery has both male and female vines. They also have one last pot which has both male and female vines in the same pot growing next to each other. I grabbed that pot and took it home. I have been keeping it in my kitchen for now. After reading more about growing kiwis in the Bay Area, I am considering the possibility of growing it inside. Alternatively, I could transplant it in the yard in the spring.

My kiwi vines

Top Three Things to Eat in New Zealand

Here are the 3 things any Middle Earth visitor should try. One is kiwi especially the golden ones. Green ones seem to be very common around the world, but I haven't noticed gold ones until recently.  I was able to get a box of 10 from New World Market for $1.99 when they were on sale. It even came with a little "kiwi" spoon, which I am keeping with me as a souvenir. The golden ones are less tart than the green ones. I like them a lot.

New Zealanders are very proud of their coffee. They have a popular coffee drink called "flat white" here. It's not latte, and it's not exactly cappuccino.  I had to look it up on Wikipedia, and it was developed in Australia and New Zealand in the 80's. I can get a small flat white from a 24-hour convenient store for $1, which is fully self service. This machine is amazing. It makes 9 different coffee drinks.

A small flat white and lemon coconut slice with cream on the side

Alternatively, You can go to one of the many independent coffee shops all over town and have someone prepare the coffee for you.  I stopped by The Coffee Club this morning to get a cup of flat white with some pastry on the side. Starbucks isn't too popular here, which is just fine by me.  Although you can definitely add sugar to your flat white, I find it so good that I just drink it straight. I found any dairy product to be excellent in this area, which makes total sense since it is their number one export earner.  I had some amazing New Zealand yogurt yesterday, too. 

Another thing to eat is a hamburger. A burger can cost anywhere from $5 to over $20 here depends on where you go. It might be cheaper at Burger King and McDonald's, but I wouldn't want to go to one of those places. Burger Fuel seems to be a good place to go as it features 100% grass fed New Zealand beef patties.  I went there today and had a Hamburgini (one of their smaller burgers) with kumara (sweet potato) fries.  They were great and cost only $11.80 for both.  I couldn't even finish the fries.