Compost–a really rotten subject

April 10, 2025 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Talk to a serious gardener for more than a few minutes, and you’ll probably hear about compost. We all have our own composting methods, and we’re all passionate about how well our methods work.

If you go on line and search how to make compost, you’ll find a range of suggestions, most of which involve building your pile with ‘green’ and ‘brown’ layers. There are lots of suggestions about what to, and not to, put in your compost, and how often to turn it. I find many of these suggestions take a lot more time and effort than I’m willing to put into my compost, and they don’t necessarily take into account the effects of climate on compost making.

I’ve made compost in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Panama, and New Zealand. Every place I’ve done it, it needs to be done differently. Few of my compost piles have followed the ‘rules’, yet I’ve almost always gotten fine compost out of them.

In Panama, the compost pile needed to be protected from too much rain, or it would get waterlogged and go smelly and anaerobic.

At our first place in New Zealand, the compost pile needed to be watered regularly and covered with a tarp or it would dry out and not rot at all.

Our current location is a sweet spot for compost making—not too wet and not too dry. It’s almost impossible to avoid making compost, because plant material rots beautifully. But making a ‘proper’ compost pile speeds up the process.

I have two compost bins measuring 2 m by 2 m. One serves as a holding bin for plant waste while I use the finished compost from the other. When one bin is empty, I turn the material from the holding bin into the empty bin.

As I turn the compost out of the holding bin, I layer it with manure and give it a good watering to ensure that there aren’t dry pockets in the pile. I don’t follow the ‘green’ and ‘brown’ layer guidelines, but I do try to make sure that woody debris is well mixed with leafy green stuff, and that there’s a good amount of manure in the mix, too. I find the key is not so much the exact nature of each layer, but that I don’t end up with a thick mat of one hard-to-compost thing. The manure and the watering both give the pile a good kick to speed up decomposition, and in the days after the pile is turned, the smell of rotting vegetation can be strong, and the pile reduces in size rapidly.

As for the rules about what goes into a compost pile, I ignore them all. Cheese and other oily things go right in, as do non-recyclable paper products like butter wrappers, paper towels, greasy paper bags, and used baking paper. They all break down just fine, particularly because they form such a small component of the total pile. Do those things attract rats, as the composting guides suggest they will? Yeah, probably, but rats are also drawn to my vegetable garden, where they eat raw potatoes underground, pumpkins on the vine, and peas and beans off the plants. ANY vegetable material in the compost is going to attract vermin—I’m not sure a greasy butter wrapper is going to increase the number of rats attracted to the compost. I keep a trap next to the compost pile to snap up rats and hedgehogs as they arrive to feast. Any animals my trap catches go right into the compost pile, to give back whatever nutrients they’ve consumed from it. The neighbourhood cats also help keep the rodents in check. These rodent-control measures are necessary, but they’re no more than I’d already be doing, as rats and hedgehogs are a problem everywhere here.

I do try to make sure that plant material is chopped into short pieces before I put it on the compost. This not only helps it break down faster, it makes turning the pile much easier.

And there are a few things I won’t put in my compost pile. Thick branches take far too long to rot, so they get chopped into short pieces and spread under the trees in the native garden. And twitch (couch grass) gets put into black rubbish bags for about 18 months before going on the compost—otherwise it will sprout and grow through the compost, then plant itself all over the garden when I spread compost. Twitch is an aggressive weed that’s almost impossible to eradicate once established, so it’s worth keeping it out of the vegetable garden at all costs. I’ve learned this lesson the hard way over the years. My rule of thumb is that until the twitch has rotted enough that I can’t identify it, it could still grow. A year and a half tied up tightly in a rubbish bag seems to be what it takes to reach this stage.

Although the centre of my compost pile can get quite hot, not all of the pile reaches the high temperature needed to kill weed seeds, so I do have weeds in the compost. But I don’t particularly worry about weed seeds. All the weeds in the compost came from the garden in the first place, so I’m not introducing new ones, and aside from twitch, the weeds are manageable. I have considered sterilising small quantities of compost in the microwave for use in seed raising mix, where I don’t want any weeds, but have never tried it.

Overall, I think too much emphasis is placed on making compost the ‘right’ way, and it can scare some people off even trying. But decomposition is a natural process that happens whether we “compost” or not. By setting up even a small compost bin, and making sure the compost stays moist but not waterlogged, so bacteria, fungi and invertebrates to do their work, gardeners can reclaim nutrients from their plants and return them to the soil. It may take a little trial and error to find out what works best for your climate and your level of enthusiasm for compost management, but it’s well worth the effort.

Happy Autumnal Equinox!

March 21, 2025 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Some years still feel summery at the equinox, but this year, the weather is decidedly autumnal. Monday, we hit our highest temperature of the summer—a blustery nor’westerly day that had my students wilting by 10 in the morning. It was 31 degrees at 5 pm when we left work. Dinner was a summer feast of sweet corn, soybeans and zucchini.

We slept with the windows open, covers kicked aside on Monday night.

Tuesday morning, I went out in the dark to water the plants at about 5.30. It was still 23 degrees. As I watered, the wind shifted.

By the time I left for work an hour and a half later, the temperature had dropped to 16, and rain spattered the windshield in fits and starts.

By ten o’clock, the skies had opened up. Wind drove the rain in sheets, and the temperature continued its slide downward.

Driving home from work, the temperature registered 11 degrees. Traffic moved slowly through the downpour, wind rocking the car and thrashing trees alongside the road. When I got home, I stripped off my rain soaked cotton clothes and replaced them with cosy wool. We had potato soup for dinner.

We woke on Wednesday morning to full autumn. Summer had been scoured away by over 40 mm of rain, and stripped bare by gale force winds.

A dramatic entrance for the season. But the truth is, autumn was already well underway. Our first frost came weeks ago, on 6 March. I picked the pumpkins last weekend. And the zucchini, tomatoes and other summer-loving plants were all showing signs of being nearly done for the season.

And, of course, squirrelly me has been in autumn mode for weeks, preserving everything I can in preparation for the dark days ahead.

Today we step into the dark side of the year. Although I very much enjoyed our last couple days of hot summer sun (and today promises some beautiful sunshine), I’m looking forward to all that the dark side has to offer.

Autumnal Harvest

March 14, 2025 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

The weather has turned decidedly autumnal, so while the sun is still summer-hot, the air has gotten chillier, and the weather more unsettled.

And it means I’ve gone into my annual squirrel mode—harvesting and preserving summer’s bounty so we can enjoy it all winter.

Last Saturday was summer soup day. Long time readers of my blog will know this is a key part of my gardening year. When the children were young, it was a whole-family event, with everyone pitching in to pick and chop vegetables. It’s become a more solitary activity for me in recent years, but no less important in my annual calendar.

With just my husband and me at home now, I always think I’ll make less soup. And this year, I was a little worried I wouldn’t have enough vegetables for a big batch, because January and February were so cold and wet, the heat-loving vegetables sulked.

I should have known better.

I needed both my 20-litre and 18-litre pots to cook the soup, plus the 12 litre pot for making vegetable stock from the vegetable off-cuts. In the end, I made 23 quarts of soup and 13 pints of stock. That’s Monday dinners for almost six months, plus stock to flavour 13 more meals. Not bad for 13 hours of work.

The day after summer soup day, I tackled the sweet corn. I usually sow three plantings of sweet corn, two weeks apart, in the spring. The first two plantings were desperate to be picked, so I harvested 63 ears of corn. Blanched and cut off the cob, it yielded 5.3 kilograms of corn, which went into the freezer. That’s a year’s supply of sweet corn for us, to be used in casseroles, stews, and side dishes.

I had hoped to also freeze some soy on Sunday, but I’d waited too long to harvest, and about half the beans were too mature. So we’ll save the majority of this year’s soy as dry beans instead.

And speaking of dry beans, in the last fortnight, I’ve harvested my Borlotti and Black Turtle beans, and have started harvesting the climbing beans: Blue Shackamaxon, Bicolour Peans, Bird’s Egg, and Cherokee Cornfield. The harvest of the climbers will go on for the next month as the plants continue to grow and put out new pods while the older ones mature. Not quite as neat and tidy as the bush beans, which all mature at the same time, but in the end, I’ll get more beans from the same amount of garden space off the climbers than the bush beans.

I’ve also now harvested most of the potatoes, which did beautifully this year, with the cool rain. The spuds are tucked away in a dark corner of the laundry room, and should last through much of the winter.

There are still more vegetables to squirrel away in the next few weeks: pumpkins, hopefully more tomatoes, more basil (in the form of pesto), and the rest of the beans and potatoes. As I do every year, I mourn the end of summer’s bounty, but I look forward to the ease of winter meals that come from the freezer or pantry instead of directly from the garden. There is something delightful about knowing that the hard work has been done, and the food is tucked away, ready to be eaten.

Oven Fried Zucchini Sticks

February 20, 2025 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Many years ago, I posted a blog titled 50 Ways to Eat Zucchini. Since then, I’ve gotten much better about my zucchini planting—I plant half as many as I used to. Of course, that still means we have too many. We’re currently giving away 5 to 10 kg of zucchini a week, eating it in every dinner and baking it into desserts.

I don’t mind having too much zucchini. It’s a versatile vegetable that can be grated into all kinds of dishes (chilli, pasta sauce, enchiladas, burgers …) or featured in beautiful slabs or rounds (zucchini and tomato tart, grilled zucchini, frittata …).

One of my favourite ways to eat zucchini is as breaded, oven fried sticks. These tasty ‘fries’ take a little work, but are well worth the effort. I fill a large jelly roll pan with them, and they vanish, even when it’s just my husband and me for dinner.

I don’t have a set recipe, but here’s an approximation of what I do:

2 small to medium sized zucchini
1 egg
1 cup bread crumbs
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp chipotle
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp dry oregano
small handful of fresh parsley or basil, finely chopped

Cut the zucchini into thick sticks, about the length and thickness of a finger. Whisk the egg in a small bowl. Combine all other ingredients in a separate bowl. Generously oil a large baking sheet.

Dredge each zucchini stick in the egg, then the breadcrumb mixture and set on the pan.

Bake for about 20 minutes at 200℃, until browned and cooked through.

Serve hot, with your favourite dip, if desired. We love chipotle mayonnaise with them, but they really need no further embellishment—they’re delicious as is.

In Praise of the Sauerkraut Crock

February 6, 2025January 31, 2025 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

There are certain pieces of kitchen equipment that don’t get used often—the milk frother, the crinkle cut knife, the herb scissors … Most of these items are really unnecessary, and some don’t work very well, so they’re only pulled out on rare occasions when you feel like faffing around with something.

Other equipment is absolutely essential, but serves a specific purpose.

The sauerkraut crock is one of those.

This heavy, straight-sided 3-gallon stoneware crock is the perfect vessel for fermenting cabbage. It holds a large amount of cabbage, and is easy to pack and empty. With straight sides, weighting the cabbage while it ferments is easy to do, and we’ve made a custom ‘chaser’ for this very purpose.

For six weeks of the year, the sauerkraut crock is full of bubbling cabbage.

For the remaining forty-six weeks, it sits in the corner of the living room—a dubious decoration in an otherwise unused corner. It’s pretty much useless for anything else in the kitchen—it’s heavy, bulky, and an inconvenient shape. The custom chaser, too, is of limited use—it gets tucked into the unreachable cabinets above the refrigerator.

By the time I pull the crock out again, it’s full of dust and dead insects.

You might think it’s not worth keeping around. And for many items I use maybe once a year, I’d agree.

The milk frother, crinkle cut knife and herb scissors … when they break, I won’t replace them. The sauerkraut crock, I will.

Because I can’t imagine not making sauerkraut, and the crock is the only tool that will do for the job.

January in the Garden

January 31, 2025 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

It is the last day of January here, my favourite month in the garden.

This January has been more difficult than many, with cold wet weather rather than the usual dry summer warmth. But the garden has still been a January garden.

December is a month of weeding, because my vegetables aren’t yet large enough to compete against most weeds. The weeding effort spans the entire month, and I always aim to have a weed-free garden on Christmas Day.

All that effort pays off in January, when, as if by magic, the vegetables are suddenly huge, crowding out the weeds and basically looking after themselves. I pull the occasional weed that manages to pop its head above the vegetables, and I keep the paths relatively clear, just so I can move easily through the garden. I water as needed. Otherwise, there’s little to do to as far as maintenance goes.

In January, the gardening effort switches from establishment and maintenance to harvesting, reaping the benefits of my hard work. It’s not that we don’t eat from the garden all year long, but the stretch from January to March is a magical one, where production vastly outstrips our ability to eat. In January, the freezer and the cupboards begin filling up with fruit and vegetables preserved for winter enjoyment. The squirrel in me chitters smugly as I stash away the fruits of my labour, already savouring the meals, snacks, and desserts to come.

It’s as much work as the establishment and maintenance phase of the year, but the reward is immediate and tangible. By mid-March, I’ll be exhausted by the harvest, tired of making sauces, jams, and preserves. Tired of having to deal with overflowing baskets of vegetables every day. But here in January, the novelty hasn’t worn off. The excitement of each new crop coming on is palpable. The thrill of lining up jars of preserved food on the shelves banishes any fatigue.

So I say farewell to January with reluctance and look forward to several months more of deliciously exhausting harvest. And I’ll take you on a tour of my January garden. Enjoy!

Why Garden?

January 10, 2025January 3, 2025 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

“Gardens are fashioned for many purposes with many different tools, but all are collaborations with natural forces. Rarely do their makers claim to be restoring or rebuilding anything from the past; and they are never in full control of the results. Instead, using the best tools they have and all the knowledge that they can gather, they work to create future environments.
If there is a lesson it is that to think like the original inhabitants of these lands we should not set our sights on rebuilding an environment from the past but concentrate on shaping a world to live in for the future.”
–Charles C. Mann (1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus)

Many years ago, I wrote this quote into a sticky note on my laptop. I look at it regularly, and it resonates with me every time. It expresses a mindset my husband and I employ on our little plot of land.

As I sit here on the porch on a warm summer afternoon, I can’t help but think back to what this section was like when we bought it—a bare paddock so devoid of nutrients that even the weeds were sparse. Sitting here today, I am surrounded by a mix of food crops, beautiful flowers and native plants. Five years ago, this plot of land could barely sustain the scraggliest of grass. Today it feeds us, provides food and shelter for native insects and birds, and is a welcome escape from all the ills of modern life. In time, as plants grow, it will hopefully become more sheltered, more resilient to temperature and rainfall extremes. In time, it will hopefully take less effort to maintain. In time, perhaps we will see native bellbirds and tūī as often as we see non-native blackbirds and starlings in the garden.

This is what we aim for. But, as Mann said, we’re not in full control.

Native skinks seem to have disappeared from the garden, despite the abundant food and shelter we’ve provided. Perhaps the influx of domestic cats is at fault. Or maybe some other factor outside of our control. Unwanted weeds continue to invade from neighbouring properties. Plant diseases take advantage of favourable conditions to decimate crops from time to time. Hail, floods, droughts, and wind all take their toll.

So the resulting garden is a compromise. What can we reasonably grow this year? What needs to be abandoned, either temporarily or permanently? What new opportunities are presented by quirks of nature or chance?

Guiding every decision is the question, what do we want the place to look like next year? In five years? Because, as Mann said, we’re shaping a world to live in for the future.

Incidentally …

If you haven’t read 1491, do it. It will shatter all those Eurocentric views of the world you’ve been steeped in since birth and change your whole attitude towards the history of the Americas.

Holiday Traditions

December 13, 2024 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

At this time of year, I love chatting with others about their holiday traditions. Every family’s traditions are unique—a combination of family history, ancestry, and geography all mashed together with individual preferences.

Trifle has mostly replaced cookies as my Christmas baking of choice.

And they evolve over time. The Christmas traditions I grew up with are not the ones I practise today. They took a dramatic shift twenty years ago when we moved to New Zealand from Minnesota—northern hemisphere traditions make no seasonal sense here, where Christmas and the summer school holidays coincide.

So my husband and I adapted. Like most Kiwis, our holidays involve travel—we have a tradition of a family backpacking trip the week before Christmas. I always carry a little stuffed reindeer, strapped to the top of my pack, as our holiday hike mascot. We pack Christmas cookies, and usually include one ‘fancy’ camp meal (especially if the tramp extends over Christmas Day).

Our Christmas tree isn’t a pine tree—a cut tree would last about three minutes in the summer heat and wind. Instead, we make our ‘tree’ each year out of whatever materials we have on hand. Making, then decorating the tree is usually a whole-family event.

The LEGO tree of 2019 was one of my favourites, with a motor powering moving parts.

Our big Christmas meal (if we’re not on the trail) is on Christmas Eve—calzones full of vegetables from the garden. We make extras, and enjoy the leftovers for lunch on Christmas Day.

The big day is meant to be a day of relaxation for everyone, so Christmas breakfast sticky buns are made the night before, and rise in the fridge overnight, to be popped into the oven in the morning. After a lunch of leftover calzones, dinner is a big salad accompanied by cheese and bread. Simple as. No slaving in the kitchen on a beautiful summer day.

Boxing Day is beach day for us—along with most of the population of New Zealand—a day to relax with the family and celebrate summertime.

It’s a long way from the hot cocoa, turkey dinners, and carolling of Christmases in my youth, but our traditions do what all good holiday traditions do—they provide opportunities to spend time with family while enjoying seasonal delights.

So happy holidays to you all, and may you enjoy your own traditions, whatever they are! Add a comment with your own traditions!

Thankfulness

November 22, 2024 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. Since we’ve been in Aotearoa New Zealand, we don’t celebrate the holiday—who has a harvest festival in springtime? Add to the seasonal disconnect the dumpster fire that is world politics at the moment, and you could be forgiven for not feeling terribly thankful this Thanksgiving.

But it’s good to set aside all the frustrations in life (like the frost that has hit the vegetable seedlings every single night since our ‘frost free’ date), and reflect on the good things.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for a multitude of things …

My coworkers at my day job—teachers, teaching assistants, and support staff—who are all absolute legends, working under stressful conditions for lousy pay, usually without any recognition of the amazing work they do.
The fellow authors in various author communities I’m a part of, who are supportive of all writers and work together to support, encourage, and promote authors, books, and reading. You are rock stars!
The members of my local garden group, who share freely of their gardens, knowledge, and experience. You are inspiring!
My garden. Maybe it is weird to be thankful for it, because it doesn’t just happen—my husband and I have worked hard to turn this sad paddock into an oasis of food and flowers. But I am thankful for all the plants and soil organisms that have worked with us to make our efforts pay off.
My husband, who is my best friend, greatest fan, and partner in all things.
My kids, whose passion for the people and the world around them remind me that all is not lost yet.

Do you notice the pattern? It’s all about communities—of people, of living things.

I don’t know what’s going to happen in the world over the next few years. Much of it will be pretty bad, I’m guessing. But there are communities around us working for good. There are people who want all our tamariki to be able to read, to have healthy food to eat, clean water to drink, health care and mental health support. There are people around us who don’t think in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’, but embrace humanity as a whole, in all its diversity. There are people everywhere who care about the people and the world around them.

I am so thankful that these people exist. I am thankful to be part of some of the communities who put this caring into practice in their daily lives.

So, while the world burns around us, I give thanks for the small communities that work tirelessly to put out the fires.

The Importance of Microclimate

October 18, 2024 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I’m part of a local group of keen vegetable gardeners who meet fortnightly throughout the growing season. Each meetup involves a tour around someone’s garden, and then a cup of tea, while we discuss our gardens and gardening, complain about the weather, and generally catch up with each other.

Our most recent gathering was at a garden just 200 metres down the road from our house. Bev’s been gardening there for over 20 years, and the property is beautifully sheltered by large hedges and mature plantings.

And even though we live only a three minute walk away from one another, our gardens grow remarkably differently.

Bev’s is almost always a week or two ahead of mine. And not just because she plants earlier than I do—her tree and berry crops leaf out, bloom and fruit before mine do. She plants out her tomatoes before I do, her carrots germinate more rapidly and grow more quickly, her peas outstrip mine within weeks of germination, her green beans produce pods a week ahead of mine. The differences are remarkable.

We are so close to one another, the temperature and rainfall on our two gardens is all but identical. But Bev has created an amazing microclimate for her plants with rich soil and excellent shelter.

Other women in the group have done similar wonders on their properties, creating striking pockets of abundance by carefully manipulating the microclimate in their gardens. In fact, my garden is sometimes behind other group members’ gardens in colder locations.

It’s something to aspire to. Having started with a bare paddock with no topsoil four and a half years ago, we’ve come a long way on our property, but we also have a long way to go. We are incredibly fortunate to have amazing gardeners nearby to inspire us to keep working towards our own pocket of abundance.