New Year Update
It's been a real up and down first month of summer here in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. We've had downpours of rain turning our gardens into paddling pools, thunder and lightning and now days of 32 degrees C of scorching sunshine. What's to come next?
Our garden has both failed and thrived....depending on what crop we're discussing. I'd put in around 300 strawberry plants this year and due to the wet weather we have lost most of the strawberries to rot, in spite of adding a good layer of pea-straw mulch.
The raspberries on the other hand were amazing. Most days we picked two x 400gm tubs and some days we picked as many as four or five tubs full. Some were given away to friends, family and neighbours and what we couldn't eat fresh, got frozen.
Last year we grew about 30 tomato plants and even though we froze and bottled/preserved a lot of the crop, we still ran out of tomatoes a couple of months ago. So this time I have planted over 70 tomato plants. Most of which are growing strongly - I spend a lot of time nipping out the laterals and re-tying the extra growth to canes for support. Many of the plants already have fruit on them, although at this stage it is still green so will be maybe a couple of weeks to a month before we start picking tomatoes for the plate.
The lettuce plants were growing well to begin with but with the heavy rain and now the near drought conditions they don't know what they're doing and are starting to bolt and make seed.
It looks like being a bumper season for zucchini though. I overdid things this year and have between 10 and twelve plants in the garden or in pots and already they are putting out a good harvest. Too many to cope with at the moment to be truthful.
It will also be a good year for peppers, capsicum and chillis. The plants already bearing green fruits which we're waiting to ripen. And we have an eggplant bearing aubergines which we'll start picking for dinner tomorrow.
My lemon cucumbers are rather small just now, but given time, hopefully will be as prolific as they were last year. I didn't put in as many plants this year as last year we just couldn't cope with picking and processing/pickling them.....and I still have several jars of pickled cucumber in the cupboard from last year. Last year we were giving them away by the supermarket sized bag full.
I didn't buy seed potatoes this year - we just threw some old potatoes into the ground that had started to sprout. I got a lovely bucket full of new potatoes for our Christmas lunch and have been digging them up ever since. There is still probably 2/3rds of the crop left to dig up so that's a big improvement on last years effort.
We always do well with runner beans. Toward the end of last years bean season we were blitzed by a plague of stink-bugs that ruined what was left of the crop. The beetle like insects stick their sharp beak-like snout into the bean and suck all the life out of it, leaving it a shriveled hull. Imagine my horror when I saw a few stink-bugs on the plants before Christmas. I made up a spray from Neem oil, washing up liquid and slightly warm water and sprayed all my bean frames. Fortunately I haven't seen any bugs since. The Neem tree is also known as Indian Lilac and is a member of the mahogany family. We don't use chemical sprays here - everything is as organic and natural as we can manage.
Speaking of trees -The citrus were good producers last time, and are growing strongly again. Our peach trees took a battering in the storms - losing a lot of fruit to the wind and heavy rain - and are behind in ripening. Eventually though we will get a few pickings although maybe not sufficient to bother making jams and chutney with.
For once, it looks like we may get some figs from our trees. Two out of four of our small trees are bearing fruit, although they are a way off being large and ripe enough to pick.
One of our two pear trees which have been too young to bear fruit in the past finally has a few pears growing on it. We will savour them. Our single apple tree again has maybe a dozen apples - again something to savour.
The Walnut, like the peach trees lost a lot of fruit during the storms, but there's still quite a lot up on the branches so maybe we'll get a good harvest all the same.
We have a small guava tree in a pot and it is in bloom which would indicate that fruit will follow.
We've also been given two passionfruit vines so are in the process of deciding on the best spots in the garden for those.
We used to have a rosemary hedge along one side of our clothes line, but it was getting too woody and too wide so I've cut it out - but I did save and dry quite a lot of rosemary leaf for cooking or making herbal teas out of.
I have had a few mistakes along the way - for example I seem to have mixed up either the seeds or the seedlings of my lemon cucumbers, melons and pumpkins - so at the moment it's a bit like Christmas waiting for flowers to turn to fruit to see what we have.
Well.....that's about it for now. Some of my plants in pots are starting to wilt in the heat so I'm going to finish this now and move them into the shade and give them a good soaking. And later in the evening I may be able to plant a few more assorted tomatoes, peppers, basil, spring onions and tobacco from my nursery table. The tobacco is a bit of an experiment to see if it will grow well here. We don't smoke but we know people who do - also the tobacco leaves can be made into a liquid tea and sprayed like an insecticide. Again - a natural spray - no chemical additives.
Until next time - life is good.
