If you’re thinking about gifts, here are some ideas:
1. A place on the fresh food garden course. They’re sold out for this year, but the next one is Saturday 30 January 2010. I’ll send a gift card you’re buying it as a gift. $120.
2. Ten packets of seeds – my pick would be: spring onions, carrots, cos lettuce, herbs, pak choi, rocket, white turnips, perpetual spinach, french beans, beetroot. With all these you’d have vegetables or salad for most of the year. $30.
3. Offer to create a herb garden for a loved one in a garden bed or a big planter box. Mint, chives, vietnamese mint, thyme, rosemary and french tarragon are all perennial so will come up year after year. Sow basil, dill, fennel coriander and parsley from seed each year. $50
4. Sixteen strawberry plants to fit in a 1.2 x 1.2m garden bed. About $40.
5. Give the gift of hope through World Vision or Oxfam. From $20.
6. One, two, three or even four Campbell Tools in a gift box. A delight to use and they’ll last you a lifetime. From $50.
7. A pair of muckboots. I love my red bands, but not as a gift. $150.
8. You can’t go far wrong with a good book.
9. A Gubba trug – get the genuine article as the cheap imitations crack and split in the sunshine. $24
10. A pottle of Trilogy ‘everything balm’ – for soothing hands, heels, elbows, knees and lips. $20
I’ve tried a variety of supports for climbing beans but this is my preferred method. I cross over pairs of 2.1m bamboo canes in a line, pushed into the soil as far as I can. I secure the tops tightly to a horizontal cane with a cable tie. At the ends I use 2.1m plastic coated metal stakes. The canes will last a few years if you store them somewhere dry when the season’s finished. If it’s too windy where you ar for climbing beans, sow some bush beans instead.
You could use the same support arrangement for training cucumbers, pumpkins and tomatoes vertically, although they’d need tying in, whereas beans twine themselves around. I also use string to support cucumbers, tomatoes and pumpkins if I’ve got a strong overhead support. I twist the stems round it as they grow and pinch out the side shoots.
You might need to water this week after the windy, dry weather – particularly seeds and seedlings. Keep sowing seeds, weeding, mulching, planting out seedlings. Water with seaweed tea weekly. Pinch out the side shoots of your tomatoes at the same time.
There are a few places left on the last fresh food garden course of 2009 on Saturday 5 December.
There are a few places left on the last fresh food garden course of the year on Saturday 5 December 2009. You’ll be able to see seaweed being used in all these ways. I use any mixture of seaweed types straight off the beach without washing it or chopping it up, including any sand stuck to it. Wellington City Council has some rules about collecting seaweed from the Taputeranga Marine Reserve (Houghton Bay to Red Rocks, including Island and Owhiro Bays).
1. Mulch potatoes
The very best way to use seaweed is as a mulch around potatoes. It keeps them moist, protects the shoots from the wind, prevents green potatoes and feeds the potatoes. I spread two layers making nests around each set of shoots. One when the shoots are about 20cm high and another about a month later. When you dig the potatoes they come out clean, there are lots of worms and you’ll dig in whatever remains of the seaweed leaving beautiful rich soil for the next crop.
2. Liquid feed
I stuff a porous sack with seaweed at the beginning of the year and leave it to soak in a barrel of rainwater with the lid on. I add a slosh of EM liquid to keep it smelling sweet. When I water I add 1 litre of ‘seaweed tea’ to a 10 litre watering can and top up with rain water. I top the barrel up with water at the same time. All crops benefit, including seedlings, but particularly strawberries, zucchinis, cucumbers and tomatoes.
3. Foliar feed
Plants can absorb nutrients through their leaves as well as roots so when I’m watering with seaweed tea I make sure I get plenty on the leaves. This also helps with…
4. Fungus prevention
Misting with a 1:10 solution of seaweed tea and water not only feeds them but also prevents many fungal infections such as blight, mildew and other moulds. It’s said to be a good preventative for peach leaf curl too but I haven’t tried it.
5. Compost ingredient
If you’ve got enough seaweed left, it can always go in the compost. That’s where I put the remains from the sack when I’ve finished making seaweed tea at the end of the Autumn.
Here’s one of my honey bees busy on the red kale that’s gone to seed. It’s been the coldest and wettest October for years so there’s no honey in the hive and the girls are making the most of every fine day to gather provisions. Bees and native birds both benefit from plants that provide pollen and nectar. They also need a constant source of easily accessible water. On a sunny day the bees will be resting on the rocks by the edge of the pond for a drink.
It’s time to sow more seeds, plant out seedlings and keep weeding. Mulch potatoes and garlic if you can. You’ll probably have some ingredients to make compost. If this is one of the things you struggle with, the fresh food garden course will help you. We had another enjoyable course on Saturday and there’s a couple of spaces left on this Sunday’s course if you’d like to come along. Thank you to everyone who came to the Ohariu Valley Garden Ramble and entered the draw for a place on the course and came to my talk.
Martin Bosley on Radio NZ lamented the lack of broad beans so far this year but gave a delicious sounding recipe for asparagus salad with broad beans and salmi. My broad beans are nearly ready and I’ve pinched out the tops to stop them getting too tall. Even if you don’t like broad beans they’re a good green manure crop, fixing nitrogen from the air into the soil.
I may be the last person in New Zealand to discover the joys of popping corn. That all changed when I visited the wonderful Somerset Cottage near Tauranga. I’m now determined to grow some of my own popping corn. I’m probably also the last person to read a Dan Brown book so I’m starting with ‘The Lost Symbol‘.
