Summer’s when you really get to enjoy your garden – water it faithfully and as the warm days extend, you’ll be rewarded with a riot of new shoots and blooms
Summer’s when you really get to enjoy your garden – water it faithfully and as the warm days extend, you’ll be rewarded with a riot of new shoots and blooms
Notes for now
• Tomatoes are gross feeders, so the more compost in the soil the better. They need a regular liquid feed from the time their flowers first appear. Remember that pinching out the upward-growing lateral shoots – appearing in the junction between a leaf stem and the main stem – will help train your tomato in a ‘cordon’ shape. It will need staking, but will produce staggered trusses of fruit with good exposure to the sun.
• Be on the lookout for caterpillars on your brassicas. It’s best to pick them off by hand and use netting to prevent the white cabbage butterfly from getting further egg-laying access to lush leaves. Alternatively, a spot of free-range badminton practice should deal to any butterflies that dare to flutter by!
• Keep sowing the likes of carrots, beetroot, lettuces, peas and bush beans, so you’ll have successional harvests and sensational salads.
• Hopefully, you’ll be harvesting some garlic in the coming months. The sign of readiness is foliage turning brown and collapsing. Lift the bulbs carefully with a fork and hang up to dry for a few days before trying a spot of plaiting. You can of course harvest garlic early and enjoy its delicious sweetness when it’s still fresh.
–Paul Thompson
Grow you own supergreens
No space for a garden — or no time to cultivate one? Try growing microgreens instead. These houseplants you can eat are super quick (most are ready to eat within a week), cheap, and can be grown all year round. Larger than sprouts but smaller than salad greens, they pack a powerful nutritional punch — many contain a much higher concentration of nutrients than adult plants. How to Grow Microgreens by Fionna Hill is an easy-to-follow guide to getting started and includes recipes to enjoy. David Bateman 2010, $30. Available from selected bookstores
Magic carpets in the garden
Backyard veggie gardening just got a whole lot easier with Woolgro veggie mats – a range of seed mats made from carded sheep dags. Sheep dags are an amazingly underutilised waste product; they’re packed with organic plant nutrients and the wool retains water and protects the seeds from cold soil, making them perfect for early spring gardening. “All a Woolgro mat needs is a bit of warmth, water and sunshine and it will turn into a salad garden in just a few weeks,” says gardening guru Janet Luke. The veggie mats are a family effort – the idea came from Janet’s brother Geoff Luke with technical expertise added by their engineer and inventor dad, Ian Luke. Options include Mesclun Salad Mix, Carrot and Spring Onion and Rainbow Carrot and Radish. www.greenurbanliving.co.nz
Heat exchange
These hotter months are perfect for ripening a handful or two of blistering hot chillies, says gardening guru Paul Thompson.
Plant some popular peppers now and the heat of high summer will still be felt long after the days have begun to cool.
Chilli peppers like it hot, hot, hot, and should mature within ten weeks of planting if you give them a sunny spot. They grow well when planted as seedlings in rich, well-drained soil mixed with plenty of organic material. In a bed, you should space them about 45–60cm apart and have some stakes on hand to support them as they grow – chillies have notoriously brittle stems and are shallow-rooted so they can be susceptible to damage from heavy handling and strong winds. In a container, ensure you provide a warm, sheltered spot and don’t neglect them. Regular watering is a must, along with a foliar feed as flowers begin to swell into elongated fruits.
When the plants get to around 10–15cm tall, pinching out the tip of the main shoot can encourage branching. This is not essential, but worth a try if you like getting hands-on with your horticulture. Depending on variety, plants will typically reach a height of 60–90cm on maturity.
Jalapenos are a commonly grown chilli and are rated ‘mildly hot’ on the chilli pepper heat scale. They are often smoked and dried, becoming what is known in culinary circles as ‘chipotle’. You’ll find several varieties available – Early Jalapeno is a good one for those eager to get their taste buds tingling. A chilli pepper’s heat comes from a chemical compound called capsaicin and the many varieties are graded according to what is known as the Scoville scale. They include the lacklustre Pimento at 100 Scoville units, up to the scary Naga Jolokia or ghost chilli at more than 1 million Scoville units. For those not wanting to get too hot and flustered, Anaheim is a comfortably mild choice from the community of chilli peppers, while adrenaline enthusiasts might be more drawn to the searing heat of Habanero or Scotch Bonnet. Peppers can be harvested and eaten green or red, but if heat is essential then be patient as the more mature the chillies, the hotter they will be. Harvesting fruit as it’s ready will encourage plants to be more productive.
Paul Thompson.
Keep the tradition growing
Grow the plants your greatgrandparents used to enjoy. The Koanga Institute’s heritage seed collection includes more than 700 varieties our ancestors cultivated, from vegetables and herbs to flowers and fruit trees. Save the seeds from your best plants to share with others — or replant next year. Buy a membership to the Institute before Christmas and you’ll go in the draw to win a collection of heritage fruit trees, as well as receiving free seed packets.
Memberships from $30, seeds from $3.50, available at www.koanga.org.nz
