rural life

Gardening for the Future

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

As my regular readers all know, I spend a lot of time in the garden. I also spend a lot of time thinking about gardens, looking at gardens, planning gardens …

The bare paddock: former forest, future garden

I am fortunate to be part of a local group of keen vegetable gardeners. Of course, we don’t just grow vegetables—everyone has perennial food crops like fruit trees and berry bushes, and ornamental plants as well. All of us take pleasure in planting and maintaining our gardens, as well as relaxing in and enjoying them. Some of us are in the early stages of establishing our gardens, and others have spent decades cultivating one place. But we’re all focused on the future.

I’m reminded of the quote I copied years ago from the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann:

“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.”

I look at the 3000 square metres of land my husband and I own. For thousands of years, this land was covered in forest and periodically scoured by the Waimakariri River, which deposited around 300 metres of rock and clay here on top of the bedrock. When Māori arrived in the region, they burnt the forest to flush out moa and other game birds. European settlers later brought in sheep and cows and planted European pasture grasses. From the mid 1800s to 2019, our little block of land was used to pasture sheep, and later, dairy cows. When it was subdivided to develop as residential housing, the topsoil was scraped off, leaving bare, highly compacted clay studded with rocks. Even weeds grew poorly (in places where we have done nothing to improve the soil, there are still bare patches, where nothing has been able to grow in the past 5 years).

Flaxes provide food for native birds, currents provide food for us.

There was no restoring or remaking what was once here, but when we bought the land, we envisioned a place rich in native plants that might attract native lizards, birds and insects. We envisioned a place full of plants that would provide food—an orchard, berry crops, nuts, herbs and vegetables. We envisioned a place that was beautiful, and bright with flowers. 

A volunteer lancewood.

We cannot erase the fact that the soil here has been sorely abused for nearly two hundred years. We can’t erase the fact that we sit over an old river bed full of rock and clay. Not everything we plant flourishes, and other plants have done so well, they’ve become weeds. Some insects and birds have returned, but glaring absences remain, and non-native pests still dominate.

But like all gardeners, we look to the future, our imaginations filling the gaps in what we see today. We do our best to collaborate with the natural forces at work here in order to shape a little pocket of plenty for ourselves and others.

Autumnal Beauty

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Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, most of our native trees are evergreen, so we don’t have the same spectacular autumnal colours I remember growing up in North America. There are, of course, plenty of European non-native trees planted in parks and gardens, so we do get some autumnal colour, but here in Canterbury, where summers are dry, the overwhelming landscape colour in autumn is green, as cooler temperatures and increased rainfall lead to a flush of grass growth.

In the vegetable garden, however, there’s plenty of colour. Much of it is subtle, but it speaks of autumn nonetheless.

Winter squashes offer deep green, heathery grey, and orange, first in the garden, and then in the laundry room where they adorn every available surface at the moment. They’ll also offer beautiful orange in dinners throughout the coming year as we work our way through them.

Dry beans also provide colourful beauty at this time of year. Trays of drying beans on the porch make me smile: Blue Shackamaxon’s glossy black, Bird’s Egg’s speckled spheres, and Cherokee Cornfield’s riotous mix of colourful varieties.

Then there’s the flint corn. This year, I planted Strawberry Popcorn, which produces deep red kernels, and Glass Gem, with its glittering multihued kernels. Husking corn is like opening a box of crayons.

In the greenhouses, summer still reigns, offering red tomatoes, multicoloured peppers, and purple eggplants.

On top of the colourful vegetables, there are plenty of autumnal flowers in bloom: dahlias, heliopsis, and chrysanthemums provide bright splashes of yellow, orange, pinks and reds. They also attract colourful butterflies like yellow admirals, red admirals and monarchs.

So while we may not have the colourful autumn leaves, there is plenty of brightness to enjoy, even as the days grow short and dark. 

2024 Garden Stocktake

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Autumn is well underway, so it’s time to take stock of the summer season’s garden successes and failures.

Strawberry popcorn

The biggest success this past season was in the soil. All winter last year, I incorporated fresh cow manure and composted horse manure into the garden beds. Every single bed got one or the other, in addition to my own compost in the spring. And finally my efforts to improve the soil over the past four years have begun to show. There’s still a long way to go, and a lot more compost and manure to haul, but this summer most of my crops grew well, and nutrient deficiencies weren’t obvious until late in the season. A huge improvement over previous years.

Particularly nice crops this year included:

  • Strawberry popcorn—This was my first year to plant this corn. I admit I was dubious when I opened the rather expensive packet of seed to find only 15 seeds. It was clear the corn was marketed as a fun thing for kids to grow. However, every seed germinated, and the plants grew to well over 2 metres tall, dwarfing all the other varieties of corn I grew. Each plant yielded two large ears (much larger than the photo on the packet indicated they would be—very un-strawberry-like), and a few even had a third, smaller ear. I was thoroughly impressed by how much popcorn so few plants produced. Of course, the proof of the variety’s worth will be when we pop it. The Glass Gem corn I love so much is marketed as a pop corn, but we’ve found the popping to be poor. It will be a few months before we know if the Strawberry popcorn was worth it.
  • Dwarf bean Xera Select—I had decided not to plant dwarf green beans anymore, because the runners produced more, better beans over a longer season. But I still had seeds for a few varieties, so I planted them, thinking I simply wouldn’t buy more. But Xera Select grew beautifully—long, uniform pods, and lots of them. I might just have to plant them again next year.
  • Bicolour sweetcorn—This year we managed to have side-by-side comparisons of the flavour of two varieties of sweetcorn, and we found Bicolour to be much sweeter than Florida Supersweet. The plants didn’t seem quite so resistant to drought, though, so I might plant both varieties again next year. They were both good and produced good crops despite water and nutrient stress.
  • Cherry tomato Rosella—Oh. My. God. This is possibly my new favourite tomato. This black cherry tomato has so much flavour in each little fruit, it’s addictive. Definitely one to plant again!
  • Cherry tomato Cherry Berry—I normally stick with heirloom tomatoes, but this F1 hybrid was amazing this year—excellent flavour, and SO MANY FRUITS! Outstanding value for the space.
  • Tomato Black Brandywine—Brandywine flavour in a dusky tomato. These ripened earlier than the Brandywine Pink, which was a bonus.
  • Tomato Black Oxheart—Big, fleshy, heart-shaped fruits. These were a winner in my book for sauces and drying.
  • Melon Topaz—Honeydew in texture, with flesh the colour of a cantelope, and a flavour somewhere in between the two. These were delicious. Definitely one to plant again.

Crops that were a bit meh:

  • Tomato Costoluto Fiorentino—These tomatoes are interesting, but the fruits were smallish, and so ridgy they were a pain to deal with in the kitchen. The flavour was pretty average. At some point, I simply stopped picking them.
  • Pea Shiraz—I was excited to plant a purple snow pea this year, but the variety disappointed. A poor yield of unattractive pods that matured quickly and weren’t terribly tasty. Back to the standard snow pea for me next year.

Absolute disasters:

  • All the carrots—This year’s carrot disaster had nothing to do with the varieties I planted, and everything to do with the slugs that ate nearly all seeds, and then the birds that uprooted the few plants that managed to evade the slugs. I planted carrots three times, and ended up harvesting about 6 carrots.
  • All the potatoes—As with the carrots, the near complete failure of the potatoes had nothing to do with the plants and everything to do with pests. The rats, who had a field day in the garden all summer, tunnelled down the row of potatoes and ate every tuber. I managed to snatch a few out of their greedy jaws, but only a few.

If not for the pests, it would have been a spectacular year in the garden. Even so, nearly every preserving jar is full, the freezer is at capacity, and I’m still bringing in the pumpkins and dry beans, so I can’t really complain.

The well stocked pantry

Everything In Its Place

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When my husband and I planned our new garden four years ago, a shed in the corner of the veggie patch was a must. We left a space in the garden fence where the shed would go.

The shed’s humble beginnings…

Unfortunately for the shed project, there were more pressing concerns than a shed—establish the tree crops, berry crops and native border; haul in compost and pea straw to improve the soil; build structures to support the bird netting we discovered was necessary here … There was always something more urgent.

About eighteen months ago, we were finally ready to think about the shed. What would it look like? Would it just be for storage, or would it have a potting bench? Did we want to be able to raise seedlings in it? What, exactly, would be stored there? So many questions! 

We went through many different plans ranging from the bare minimum storage closet to a full greenhouse with attached head house.

What we realised through the process was that we needed a second greenhouse. (Okay, we wanted a second greenhouse, let’s be real here.)

So last summer we built a greenhouse instead of a shed (because we still couldn’t decide on what the shed needed to do for us, but at least now we knew we didn’t need it to include greenhouse space).

Finally, this past summer was it. Time to build the shed. Perhaps we started off with modest plans—a shed just big enough for a potting bench, tools, and the lawnmower—but you know what they say about the best laid plans …

When we visited the local salvage yard looking for a door and a window, our modest plans blew up.

We found The Door.

It had obviously come from an old villa—a wooden door beside a tall leaded glass window with an art deco fuchsia motif. It was the perfect embellishment for a garden shed, never mind that such a glorious door belonged on a much grander building.

Once we had a door like that, things began to spiral out of control. Wouldn’t it be cool to echo those stained-glass flowers on the outside of the shed? I bought a handful of paint test pots and began designing floral motifs. And if I was painting flowers on the shed, maybe it needed a Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign too.

A shed that colourful on the outside should also be bright on the inside, especially since we decided that it did need to have a potting bench in it. So we whitewashed the interior and included a greenhouse panel on one gable end to let in more light.

For the potting bench, we’d hoped to use a piece of flooring that was once my office desk, but it was too short. However, we happened to have some big slabs of macrocarpa a neighbour had given to us. It made sense to use the material we had on hand, rather than buying new.

The result, by the time my husband was done, was a veritable work of art—a live edge potting bench with a backsplash and some gorgeous butterflies to stabilise a crack. How am I going to do my potting on that? I’ll feel horrible the first time I get it dirty.

Then of course there was the French cleat tool rack. Because why bang a few nails into the walls when you could have a beautiful rack that makes use of every available inch?

Then it needed a porch, and of course it needed a tap … Give us credit for the restraint it took not to add a small outdoor sink.

It might have become a bit of a folly, but when I moved in all the tools and gardening supplies, it was absolutely perfect. Now everything is handy and tucked into its place. I can’t wait until August when I can stand at my beautiful potting bench looking out over the vegetable garden while planting seeds.

And in the meantime, every time I have to retrieve a tool (now all convenient to the garden), I smile at the ridiculous whimsy of the building. Fit for purpose and lots of fun at the same time.

Summer Soup 2024

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Making and canning vegetable soup used to be a whole family activity, with the kids pitching in from a young age, picking and chopping vegetables alongside my husband and me. My husband would cook the soup while the kids and I washed dishes, and then I would can (bottle) it up.

We called it Summer Soup, because we made it at the height of the summer vegetable season (which ironically always falls in early autumn). On the cold rainy nights winter we could open a jar and enjoy a bowl of summer. 

When the kids were young, they delighted in recounting which vegetables they chopped, proud of their part in feeding the family. These days, making summer soup is a mostly solitary activity for me, the kids being all grown up. It hasn’t stopped me from making a vast quantity of soup. Last Sunday I designated as Summer Soup day because I had heaps of tomatoes, green beans, sweet corn, zucchini, and other vegetables to put in it.

Because it was Sunday, I started off at 5.30 am by making muffins for breakfast. While the muffins baked, I began chopping vegetables …

My husband had planned on baking bread on Sunday, but unfortunately he woke with a terrible cold that morning. He’d started his sourdough sponge the night before, so with instructions from him, I made up his bread dough after breakfast and set it to rise as I continued to chop vegetables.

The mixing bowls began to fill up in the kitchen as the morning progressed. After several hours and a few trips to the garden to pick more vegetables and dump scraps on the compost pile, I took a short break from chopping to divide the bread dough for loaves. Thankfully, my husband felt well enough at this point to form the loaves and get them started on their second rising, because I really wanted to finish chopping vegetables by lunchtime.

I finished the final chopping shortly after the focaccia came out of the oven. We sat down to enjoy fresh focaccia for lunch.

My break was short, because after lunch I began processing all those chopped vegetables. It was clear I wasn’t going to be able to fit everything into one pot, so I pulled out both my 20-litre stock pots and divided the vegetables between them. While the soup heated up, I prepared my jars and the pressure canner. I also filled my 12-litre stock pot with vegetable scraps and water and set it on the stove to simmer for a few hours for vegetable stock.

Much of the time commitment in making and canning vegetable soup is in the canning process. Each batch of seven jars has to be processed for an hour and 15 minutes, and then there’s the waiting time while the canner cools down enough to remove the jars before putting in the next batch.

While I was waiting for the canner to do its thing, I started in on the apples that needed to be processed. I peeled and sliced a mountain of apples. Once I’d emptied the soup out of one of the 20-litre pots, I refilled it with apple slices and cooked them up into apple pie filling—enough for three generously filled pies. The pie filling went into the freezer. 

The soup seemed to never end. Even after separating off two meals worth of soup for eating this week, I ran three full canner loads (21 quarts) of soup and one full load (7 quarts) of stock. The last jars came out of the canner at 9.15 pm.

I’m glad I only make summer soup once a year, but I’m thrilled to have all that summery goodness squirrelled away in the pantry. Bring on the rain and cold of winter—I can already taste the soup (followed by a slice of apple pie, of course!).

2024–Year of the Rat?

/ Robinne Weiss / 3 Comments
The netted ‘room’ is excellent at keeping birds out, but does nothing to thwart rats.

With a third of my garden protected with permanent bird netting this year, I was pretty smug about pests this spring. Silly me …

2023 may have been the year of the rabbit in the Chinese Zodiac, but in my garden it was year of the rat, and it seems to be continuing in 2024.

In the spring, rats ate all my pea seedlings … twice … On one of those occasions, they plundered the seedlings in the three hours the tray sat in the garden before I planted them out. I was working (planting other things) just metres away while the rat collected all the seedlings and tucked them away in its nest (I found them later when I uncovered the nest).

The rats also did good work on my first planting of corn, melons, cucumbers, and pumpkins, eating the seeds and uprooting the seedlings.

I went through three cheap rat traps (none of which actually caught a rat, and all of which quickly broke), before spending an excessive amount of money on a DOC 200 trap. This terrifying stainless-steel beauty caught its first rat within 24 hours. It has nabbed 3 rats, a hedgehog, and an English sparrow in the three months I’ve had it, which I’m quite pleased about.

Unfortunately, it has not solved my rat problem. Last week I discovered a rat (or rats) had tunnelled straight down my potato bed, eating nearly every potato in the entire bed, and damaging some plants so badly they were dying. Yesterday, I went to pick a gorgeous Black Brandywine tomato that was ripening on my now bird-protected tomato plants. I found the tomato on the ground, half eaten by little rat teeth.

I’m beginning to wonder if I will get anything off the garden this year. So far, the rats don’t seem to like courgettes or cucumbers, but my beans are planted right next to the compost pile where the rats seem to nest. Once they start plumping out, they’ll be primo rat food. And the corn? You know those rats will be scampering right up the plants to gnaw at the ears. Makes it hard to lure them to a trap when the garden is a smorgasbord of delicious food.

Makes me wish I still had a cat—the rats didn’t start to become a real problem until he was gone.

I’ve also got my first ever infestation of whitefly this year. Pretty embarrassing for someone whose Master’s degree was on greenhouse pest management. Whitefly wasn’t even on my radar, so I missed early signs of the infestation. They’re not only in the greenhouse, but outdoors as well. The key to effective integrated pest management is paying attention and catching infestations before they’re a problem, and I failed spectacularly at it. Now I’m playing catch up. My only consolation is that it looks like lots of other people are, too, because both suppliers of whitefly biocontrol agents in New Zealand are sold out. Serves me right, I guess.

So as we enter 2024, officially year of the Dragon, I’m wondering if there’s a dragon that eats rats …

January in the Garden

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January is quite possibly the best month in the garden. Seemingly overnight, the vegetables double in size. Summer crops begin ripening. Weed growth slows, and the vegetables are large enough to compete with all but the most aggressive weeds. Garden work switches from planting and weeding to picking and processing. The frenzy of December berry crops is over, and the cupboard is bursting with jam.

January is a time to enjoy the fruits of my labour. Not that there isn’t work to do, but the rewards of all my work are beginning to outweigh the effort. It’s a great way to start the new year.

Another great way to start the year is with the giant plant tags Santa Claus made me for Christmas. They’re not the most efficient markers for the garden, but they’re adorable and add a touch of whimsy.

With luck (and a lot of hard work by my husband), by the end of January, I’ll also have a nice new garden shed for storing tools and potting up plants. There will be a bit of whimsy in the shed, as well, inspired by a leaded glass window we found for it. I can’t wait to have that bit of the garden plan complete and functional!

I hope your January is full of things to enjoy and to look forward to.

A Seasonal Celebration of Food

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The traditional Christmas celebrations and decorations involving twinkling lights, snowflakes, snowmen, warm drinks and roaring fires make no sense here in Aotearoa New Zealand. But there’s plenty to celebrate at this time of year.

I always know it’s time to start thinking about the holidays when the strawberries and gooseberries ripen. I know it’s time to decorate when I can stroll through the garden, grazing on peas, gooseberries, raspberries, boysenberries and strawberries. When I can fill a colander with red and black currants. When the supermarket fruit begins to look old and nasty by comparison to what’s tumbling off the bushes at home. When it’s hard not to pick too much lettuce for the day’s salad.

Food is an important part of holiday celebrations, and for me half the celebration is the ability to eat my way through the garden. Finally in December, picking vegetables for dinner doesn’t feel like scrounging for whatever’s left from the winter crops. At some point during the month, the question of ‘what is there to cook for dinner’ shifts to ‘what needs to be eaten today’ (or processed and preserved). Jam making is my Christmas ‘baking’. Fresh berries replace the traditional bowl of mixed nuts put out for munching. Fruit ice creams and cordials are our figgy pudding and wassail. 

As we make our way toward the summer solstice, the long days provide plenty of daylight for picking and processing fruit. And because it’s the Christmas season, those long days (and nights) in the garden and kitchen feel more like a celebration than a chore.

Is there holiday stress because of the increase in garden work? You bet—I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in the car, bucket between my knees, shelling peas on the way to the beach so I can get the work done and still have time for fun stuff. And keeping up with the weeds is a struggle while many of the vegetables are still small. Then there’s the inevitable broken tap or pierced irrigation line you find the first time you need to water (which usually happens this month). And the constant struggle with the thieving birds, who want to partake of the garden’s bounty, too.

We may not have snow, but the kānuka flowers are a spectacular substitute.

But overall, the holiday season is a time to celebrate the garden’s summer bounty. It’s a time of fresh fruit and vegetables, and long days outdoors. Next week marks the end of my work year, with schools letting out for summer, and this weekend will be my first jam-making weekend of the season. Let the celebrations begin!

Giving Thanks

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Today is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. Although my husband and I don’t celebrate the day here with a gathering of friends and family, pumpkin pie out of season, and imported cranberry sauce like some American expats, I still like to take the day to give thanks.

Today I’m particularly thankful for a number of things. I’ve been home sick all week. Today is day nine of this miserable head cold and it’s getting really old. After more than a week of all the joys a bad cold can offer, I am incredibly thankful for the luxury of taking time off work when I’m sick.

I’m thankful for the riotous display of flowers outside my office window, which made me smile in spite of feeling crummy. I am also thankful for the vegetable garden’s springtime bounty, which allowed me to hole up at home without need for a trip to the grocery store. I’m thankful for the neighbour who brought me lemons, knowing I was sick. I’m thankful for the warm sunshine I sat in at lunchtimes this week.

Today, wild wind and rain are pounding the garden and house. So today I am thankful for the rain—it was much needed. I am also thankful for a roof that doesn’t leak, and snug windows and doors through which the southerly wind can’t whistle.

Those are the little things, of course. With the drumbeat of war and disaster in the news, I’m also keenly aware of and thankful for the safety and stability of my life. My easy access to food and water. My ability to plant a garden and expect to be able to harvest it. The opportunity to live in a culture in which most people embrace diversity and treat others with respect. 

So, while I’ve had plenty to grumble about this week, I’ve also been blessed in thousands of immeasurable ways, for which I am grateful every day, not just on Thanksgiving.

May your day be filled with things to be thankful for.

Wanted Weeds

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A baby lancewood! Isn’t it cute?

Over the weekend, I was weeding the native plantings at the front of the property and discovered a wee lancewood seedling. We’re quite fond of lancewood, and have planted several around the property, but none of ours have set seed yet—they’re all still in their stick-like juvenile form. So the volunteer came in from someone else’s property, no doubt dispersed by a bird.

Normally, weeds are a source of dismay, but I was thrilled to find the little lancewood. I’ve been surprised at how many ‘volunteer’ plants we get at our new property—there’s more rainfall here than at the old place, and plants tend to establish on their own, without my help. It means the unwanted weeds grow better, too, but I’ve been thrilled by what has popped up.

Among the native weeds, we’ve got coprosma, akeake, poroporo, NZ iris, snow tussock and hebes. Some, of course, sprout where we don’t want them, and I have to weed out a fair few. But many get transplanted elsewhere or potted up and given away. I love the thought that our native plantings might one day be self-perpetuating.

Rampant fumitory, rampant along the garden fence.

Among the non-natives there are some welcome weeds, too. Pansies, flax, thyme, oregano, sage, cilantro, peas and fennel are all desirable—in the right place. 

I will also admit to appreciating the flowers of daisy, scarlet pimpernel, scrambling speedwell, and rampant fumitory wherever they grow, but only because these plants are a minor nuisance and easy to pull out. Other pretty weeds, like bindweed, yarrow and vetch are on my hit list, regardless of their flowers.

Then there’s stinging nettle. I hate nettles. But lush nettles are a good sign of fertile soil, so I admit I like to see them pop up and grow well, even if I do pull them out.

Is a plant a weed if I like it? Maybe not. But all these volunteer plants do make for extra work in the garden, whether I appreciate them or not.

The volunteer pansy brigade. Who can complain about that?