seasons

Sharing Gardens

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

It’s easy to feel like the world is going to hell in a hand basket these days. You can readily believe that there is no kindness left in the world. That no one cares about the earth or community. That values such as integrity and selflessness are dead. That people’s only motivation is money.

Of course that’s not the case, and I’m reminded of that regularly.

I am blessed to be part of a community of vegetable gardeners—people who can restore my faith in humanity. I’ve written about gardeners in the past, but it bears saying again. These are people who have a deep sense of community. They pay attention to the effects their actions have on the land. They give of their time and are generous with food, seeds and plants, sharing what they have with others.

They organise local food pantries and community gardens. They raise funds for charities. They give away produce to those in need. They share their knowledge and skills freely with others. One gardener I know even hands out jars of jam to strangers.

And when those gardeners get together, they can make a difference in communities. Here in New Zealand, it is common for houses in towns to be surrounded by high wooden fences. But in the nearby town of Akaroa, fence heights are restricted, so that people share their gardens with the street. What a difference it makes to the entire feel of the community! It actually feels like a community, and not a collection of houses. I love walking the streets and enjoying everyone’s beautiful gardens.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve turned to my own garden to escape the drumbeat of depressing news from around the world. The flowers and vegetables transcend politics, war, economics and societal dysfunction. They centre me and give me a respite from the troubles of the outside world.

And as a gardener, I feel compelled to share that respite with others. 

So I invite you to come on a brief tour of some of my garden. Stop and smell the roses. Enjoy the scent of the herbs as you brush past them. Munch on some early produce from the vegetable garden. Say hello to the chickens. Bask in the warmth of the greenhouses. Take a moment to unwind and relax.

And most of all, stay safe, stay hopeful, and look after one another.

The Importance of Microclimate

/ 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.

The natural microclimate of our property is apparently perfect for dandelions, because they are abundant and healthy everywhere.
We haven’t managed a good microclimate for citrus yet, except in the greenhouse.
We do manage to grow great broad beans!

Enjoy the Garden

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

It’s always exciting when we cross over onto the light side of the equinox. The whole garden responds to the rapidly lengthening days. Daffodils and tulips run riot. Pale fingers of asparagus poke up through the mulch. Artichokes spring up from winter-lush plants. Perennial herbs suddenly flush green with new growth. Fruit trees turn snowy with blossoms. Vegetable seedlings seem to double in size overnight.

The weeds, too, spring up overnight. And the rats and devouring sparrows multiply. Aphid populations explode. Spring isn’t all fun and games.

Fortunately, the gardener responds, too. I wake with the magpies warbling as the sky begins to shade from black to grey. I spend more of my weekend hours in the garden. I snatch a few minutes to water or weed before and after work. On my writing days, my lunchtime walk is replaced by lunchtime gardening. Daily life begins to mould around the sun and the plants that respond to it.

It is exciting, and it can be daunting to look forward to all the work that the new growing season entails—the planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, processing …

But it’s important to simply sit and enjoy. Our garden is four years old this year, and this spring I feel as if it is coming into its own. My husband recently built trellises for espaliered apple trees, and with the planting of those trees, the gardens in the front are finally ‘finished’. Not that there isn’t lots of work to do out there, but all the pieces of the plan for that space are in place. 

In the vegetable garden, too, the final piece—the garden shed—is enjoying its first spring of use (and what a joy to work in there, potting up tomatoes or planting seeds!). After the application of, literally, tonnes of manure and compost over the last four years, the garden soil promises reasonable productivity, and we can count on plenty of fruit and vegetables in the coming months.

I find myself spending more time enjoying the garden this spring than I remember doing anytime recently. What better excuse for a cup of tea on the porch than that the daffodils are spectacular, or the bees are humming in the rosemary blossoms?

So here’s a bit of my spring garden for you. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Canterbury Springtime

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

We’re two days away from the official start of spring here in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the atmosphere is definitely vernal.

The daffodils are up, and I expect them to be in full bloom within a week. The tulips are following close behind them.

Artichoke buds are beginning to form, nestled among winter’s leafy growth, ready to shoot up and deliver gourmet meals for the coming three months, and the fruit trees and berry bushes are flowering and leafing out, despite the fact there are frosts to come.

In the tunnel house and cold frame, vegetable seedlings bask in the sun. The first ones will be ready for planting out this weekend. In the warmth of the living room indoors, seeds germinate by a sunny window. They, too, will end up in the tunnel house and cold frame before long.

The bumble bees and honey bees are blundering around in dandelion blossoms, the ladybugs are out and about, and I’m keeping an eye on a preying mantis egg case which should hatch before too long.

The sounds have become spring-like as well—frogs trilling at night, magpies warbling before dawn, and white-faced herons croaking in the treetops. 

Along with the bucolic scenes of flowers and bumble bees, spring in Canterbury brings howling wind. The wind whips up clouds of pine and wattle tree pollen, which settles like gritty mustard powder on every surface. The windows are hazy with it, and I find myself swiping my computer screen clear several times a day. 

The wind makes springtime a challenging season—blossoms blown off the trees; fresh growth flattened to the ground; trees (and the occasional camper van or centre pivot irrigator) tipped over; trampolines, greenhouse panels and rubbish bins flying free … A lot of people struggle with springtime wind here. And of course, there will be more frost. There may even be snow yet to come. Plants out in the cold frame will have to be hauled back into the house and out again several times, tender plants will have to be covered with frost cloth. Invariably it will be too hot and dry for the early crops one week, then too cold and wet for the late crops the following week. There will be multiple disasters in the garden due to weather, pests, irrigation malfunction, or any number of other factors. I’ll struggle and I’ll stress …

Moody springtime sky, with rain obscuring the mountains.

But there will be moments when the wind stills, the sun is warm, and I can sit among the spring blossoms drinking a cup of tea and watching the bees and dreaming of summer. 

Winter Tidy

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Last weekend was quite warm—temperatures in the mid to upper teens—with sunshine to make me think of spring. It was a gift I didn’t want to waste.

A tidy herb garden. The wooden step had been nearly overgrown by the thymes on either side.

Most years, we have a window of beautiful weather in the depths of winter. It’s a great time to get out and do some tidying in the garden.

So last weekend, I deadheaded and trimmed the herbs and flowers. I had mostly kept up with the deadheading through the autumn, but I trimmed sparingly then, trying to coax a few more blooms out of bedraggled plants. Last weekend, I was ruthless. With fresh new growth just beginning to show, I cut away all of last year’s rangy branches, even if they managed to make it through most of winter with a few leaves intact. 

The thyme, finally mostly done blooming, got a major haircut. I reclaimed paths from great swathes of creeping thyme and from bushy thymes muscling out over the edges of their beds. I cut the mint and oregano to the ground to encourage nice lush cushions of leaves in spring. I cut off dense clumps of dead flower spikes from the winter savoury, and hacked a rangy sage back to try to improve its look. I hauled four wheelbarrow loads of dead leaves and flowers and trimmed herbs out of the front gardens. 

I actually rescued this path two weeks ago. The wet area shows where the creeping thyme was cut away. Other paths were equally invaded.

Then I turned my sights to the basket willow. It never fully loses its leaves here, but at some point in the winter, it needs to be cut to the ground. I harvested four hefty bundles of long sticks from it. I’ll use those sticks in the garden over the coming year to support plants, frost cloth and bird netting. Once the trees were levelled, it was time to tackle the thick layer of leaves they’d strewn over the path and the stones of the Zen garden. I raked them up and tucked them underneath other plants as mulch.

After the plant tidy-up, there was the garden shed to tackle. In two weeks, I’ll start using the shed weekly for starting seeds and potting up seedlings. It needs to be clean and tidy for that. So I sorted through all the stuff that had carelessly been tossed in there over the past couple of months—sacks of bird netting and potting mix, plant trays, irrigation hoses … everything that came out of the garden at the end of summer and had never been properly put away. 

My husband finished a beautiful rack on the back of the shed on Sunday, so the tidying expanded to include going through the pile of wood sitting in the orchard, and organising everything worth saving onto the new rack. Some of the things weren’t worth ‘saving’, but were worth using right away, leading to a new bench in the fern garden that I’m looking forward to sitting on with a cup of tea some day soon.

And of course, while I was at it, it was time to tidy the pile of fencing, hoops and stakes I use in the vegetable garden every summer. These items sit atop a wooden platform beside the compost pile. I hauled everything off the platform and realised the rats had shoved compost under it, nearly filling the space. 

So, the platform had to be lifted, and I hauled almost two full wheelbarrow loads of beautiful compost out from underneath and spread it on the garden. 

By Sunday afternoon, a walk through the yard was a delight, with everything neat and tidy. I had lunch on the porch, gazing out into an immaculate herb garden. I hadn’t considered it messy before, but the difference was stunning. The Zen garden, visible now that the willows are down, is a little gift every time I step outside. And I can’t wait to start seeds in the tidy garden shed.

Unfortunately, there will be no sitting outside to enjoy the garden this week. The clouds rolled in Monday morning, and by the time we got home from work, the rain had begun. It promises to be a proper winter storm, with wind, rain and temperatures in the single digits. (The snow won’t reach us here, but the mountains should be spectacular when the clouds clear.) I’ll have to enjoy the garden from indoors this week.

Frost Heave–Moving Mountains

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Sometimes it’s the littlest things…

I enjoy winter hiking—I enjoy the crisp air, the opportunity to hike without sweating too much, the snow on the peaks. 

One of my favourite winter phenomena is frost heave. This is when moisture in the soil freezes. Since water expands when it freezes, the ice crystals push soil and rocks upward. We get frost heave at home, but in the mountains, where there is both more water and colder temperatures, the phenomenon can be spectacular.

On a cold Matariki morning a few weeks ago, I snapped a photo of five-centimetre-long ice needles near Foggy Peak. Each needle was topped by gravel—the whole top centimetre or more of the sloping surface lifted. As the sun rose and melted the ice, every rock fell a few centimetres downhill from where it started. I imagine this process happening daily all through winter—a slow-motion conveyor belt shifting the mountain downhill. 

Meanwhile, higher up on the mountain, water seeping into the cracks in rocks and then freezing shatters them day by day into smaller fragments to be added to the icy conveyor belt.

It is such a small thing, frost heave. But its slow action has a big effect. 

The Southern Alps are rising at a rate of 10 to 20 millimetres per year—some of the fastest rising mountains in the world. If no erosion had ever occurred, the mountains would currently stand over 20 kilometres tall. Our tallest mountain, Aoraki Mount Cook, is 3754 metres tall. 

Of course, when we think of erosion, we think of the big events like landslides and rock avalanches. These events can be spectacular. 

On 14 December 1991, a rock avalanche on Aoraki lowered the summit by 10 metres over the course of a few hours. Fourteen million cubic metres of rock and ice tumbled down the mountain at speeds of up to 300 kilometres per hour. The shock waves from the landslide were recorded on seismographs as far as 58 kilometres away.

But without frost heave, the 1991 Aoraki rock avalanche might never have happened. Frost heave slowly weakened the rocks, slowly snapped them into smaller and smaller pieces, slowly shifted their weight. Centimetre by centimetre, those little ice needles brought the mountainside down.

I like to think of frost heave as a metaphor. Each of those tiny ice crystals, by itself, can move a pebble, and together they bring down mountains.

Planning Obsession

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

How many varieties of tomato are too many? Do I need green and purple broccoli? Can I fit a sixth variety of carrot into my garden plan? Should I try a new type of runner bean?*

These are just some of the many questions I tackle each winter. July is a relatively quiet month outdoors, so I turn my garden energy to planning this month.

My husband laughs at me every year, because I am obsessive about planning and documenting the garden. 

In July, before the new year’s seed catalogue arrives, I create a garden map. Consulting last year’s map to be sure I’m rotating my crops from bed to bed, I mark out where each crop will be planted. That way I’m sure not to plant the potatoes next to the tomatoes (because the potatoes will no doubt sprawl into the tomatoes and make it hard to pick them), or plant my popcorn and sweetcorn next to one another (they’ll cross-pollinate and I’ll get odd corn that’s not particularly sweet and doesn’t pop). It ensures I think about how to make the most of my space. It also ensures I don’t fill up all the space with early crops, leaving no room for the later ones.

Additionally, because I know what’s going into each bed, I can easily assess which beds need to be prepared each weekend in the spring so they’ll be ready in time to receive their crops. 

Then I assess my seed situation. I keep a spreadsheet (don’t laugh—I have a lot of seeds) detailing how many seeds of each variety I have, and the plant by date (or harvest date if they’re seeds I’ve saved) of each. With all the seeds catalogued, I can make notes as to what I need to purchase.

In theory, this prevents me from spending a lot on seeds I won’t use.

The reality? I still end up with a large seed order every year. But at least I know I NEED those seeds … or something.

When it comes time to planting, I record all the seeds I plant in a garden notebook, noting how many I planted, when and how (direct seed or in pots). Later, I can then mark which seeds had poor germination or didn’t grow well. These notes get written in red pen, so I can easily locate the information when I’m deciding what varieties to plant the following year and what seeds to throw away.

And if that all sounds excessive, then you can relax—it means you don’t have a gardening problem like I do. 

And now, if you’ll excuse me, this year’s seed catalogue arrived today—I need to go choose some seeds.

* The answers to these questions, in order: you can’t have too many, yes, yes, and yes.

Mānawatia a Matariki

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Today is Matariki, and like new year celebrations all around the world, it’s a day for assessing the past and planning the future. It’s a day to spend with family and friends. It’s a day to remember and honour our connections with other people, the seasons, and the land.

Spending time with whānau wasn’t an option for me today, so I thought I’d celebrate my connections to the seasons and the Earth instead. Before dawn I drove to Porter’s Pass and hiked up towards Foggy Peak. It was dark when I began the ascent, with just a hint of light to the east. I hiked the first 40 minutes or so with my head torch, before it was light enough to see the track.

Being midwinter, I expected it to be cold. It was actually surprisingly warm to start—the air temperature was above freezing. But the wind was stiff, and the temperature was still falling. Thankfully, there was no problem staying warm on the uphill. 

But the wind grew more fierce the further up I went. I stopped frequently to enjoy the beauty of dawn in the mountains, to gaze back at the bright smudges of towns dotting the plains, the pinpricks of light from the cars crawling up the mountain to Porters Pass. I never stopped for long, though.

I’d hoped to catch the sunrise from the summit of Foggy Peak, but as the scree gave way to icy snow, my progress slowed, and I wished for crampons. I watched sun strike the snowy peaks of the Craigieburn Range and decided that that would have to be good enough—I could push on to Foggy Peak, but I wasn’t going to sit there with a cup of tea and watch the sun rise as I’d hoped. Even if I’d been in time, it was too windy and cold.

So I had my tea in a sheltered spot lower down, where I could sit and enjoy the view. It wasn’t the summit, but it was a beautiful way to start the new year.

Mānawatia a Matariki! Happy Matariki!

The New Year Begins in Darkness

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
Frost on the winter garden.

Seven o’clock in the morning and it is still dark outside. Indeed, it is darker now than it was at two, when the moon hung high in the sky, bright enough to cast shadows.

It has been an unusually dry start to winter, so here at the winter solstice the darkness feels less oppressive than it sometimes does. There will be sunshine today, at least briefly.

More importantly, there will be summer’s bounty to eat, even in the darkness. 

Just a few years ago, shortly after we’d moved into the new place, I blogged about eating the last of the black currants on the winter solstice. This year on the solstice, the cupboard and freezer still groan with summer fruits and vegetables—a testament to how far the garden has come in a short time.

And because it has been dry, I’ve spent more time in the garden in May and June than I normally would. Summer’s dead plants have been cleared away, the fruit trees and berry bushes have been pruned, and the view of the garden on a frosty morning is one of tidy rest, of anticipation.

I am already thinking about spring. The autumn-planted broad beans are lush—sitting quietly in these short, cold days, but ready to burst into growth as the days grow longer in the coming weeks. I can already smell the musty scent of their September blossoms.

In the kitchen, every meal is a gift from the summer garden, from the summer me, who spent long hours picking and processing vegetables. It is hard not to feel guilty for how easy it is to prepare dinner in winter—heat a jar of vegetable soup, toss a jar of pasta sauce over noodles, thaw some frozen corn and peas … But maybe the guilt is not because I barely have to work for a meal in winter, but because I didn’t appreciate summer’s bounty enough when it was fresh. 

Here in the dark of winter, vegetable soup is a blessing, frozen sweet corn is ambrosia, and homemade tomato sauce is a more potent antidepressant than Prozac. 

Plant tags ready for spring.

And so, there is joy and pleasure, there is the flavour of sunshine, even in the darkness.

And next week, the days will be a little longer. Next week I will take stock of my seeds and begin planning next summer’s crops. Next week we will celebrate Matariki, the start of a new year.

Autumnal Beauty

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

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.