To read the twenty eighth issue of my FREE weekly newsletter filled with gardening tips, please visit the newsletters section of my website. I have uploaded the latest issue here.
If you're using a smart phone, it's best viewed as a pdf document received by email. To be added to my mailing list, please email me at anitakundu.nz@gmail.com and write "subscribe" in the subject field. Have a great weekend! Anita
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I have been so busy in the garden lately. This past week, we have been hosting a wwoofer from Germany called Veronika. She has been helping me around the garden.
Here are some of the things that we have been doing:
These are tasks which are on the agenda. We have two wwoofers, Zoe and Margaux from France, arriving in ten days time, so I will work through them with the girls
In one of the more neglected patches of my garden, I have a number of amaryllis belladonna or naked lady bulbs. These bulbs may not be known to all flower gardeners. They are called “naked ladies” because the bulb stems have no leaves, hence them being naked. Every March, they spring up, reminding me of their presence. I’m very lucky that other gardeners gave them to be because they are incredibly expensive to buy. My cousin Shireen gave me a white bulb that someone from her work gave her. A lady that belongs to a garden club I used to go to gave me a number of pink bulbs, which are the more traditional variety.
This week, we have a wwoofer from Germany, Veronika, who is arriving. Once she is settled in, I’m going to get her to help me divide the bulbs. After being in the same place for around five years, the bulbs are starting to get a bit congested and are not flowering as well. The ground is very hard and often has grass growing over it, so once the bulbs are dug out, we’ll add some compost and fertiliser to the area, dig it over and then separate the bulbs and replant them, with better spacing between them. I’ve put together some facts about amaryllis belladonna or naked lady bulbs, taken from this site
Planting tips
A couple of years ago, I purchased some comfrey plants from the MIT plant nursery in Manukau. The MIT plant nursery sells work carried out by students during their horticulture course and it always amazes me how talented they are. For just $2, I got myself eight potted comfrey plants at their end of year sale. For a long time, I was scared to plant them as I had heard that comfrey is an invasive herb, so I kept them in pots in our patio, not sure what to do. Then I attended a seminar on growing fruit trees for city gardens run by Kings Plant Barn in Aotea Square. The presenter, Billy Aitkin, who I have gotten to know well over the years suggested planting comfrey around one of our fruit trees at first, to see if I liked it before doing the same around the rest of them. I planted our comfrey plants around our “Unique” feijoa tree and it has done really well. It has been there for a few years now and looks so pretty in spring, with its lavender flowers which attract the bees.
I thought I would put together some facts about comfrey for those of you interested in its medicinal and other properties
To read the twenty seventh issue of my FREE weekly newsletter filled with gardening tips, please visit the newsletters section of my website. I have uploaded the latest issue here.
If you're using a smart phone, it's best viewed as a pdf document received by email. To be added to my mailing list, please email me at anitakundu.nz@gmail.com and write "subscribe" in the subject field. Have a great weekend! Anita It has been awhile since I have done a blog post updating you with developments from Anita’s Garden. Those of you who read my weekly newsletters (found under the newsletters sub-tab of the Anita’s Garden section on my website) will no doubt be up to date, thanks to my column “pottering around Anita’s Garden” which features in the newsletter every week. For those of you who don’t and would like to know what’s going on, here is a round up of what has been happening in the garden. Cleopatra avocado tree Our dwarf Cleopatra avocado tree from Incredible Edibles has two fruit on it! The tree was planted two years ago and has moved from strength to strength. Cleopatra is a Type B avocado tree and needs a Type A tree to pollinate it. I am now searching for a dwarf Type A tree so we can increase fruit production. Tamarillo trees The two tamarillo trees that I grew from seed from Kings Seeds two years ago are about nine feet high and have lots of green fruit on them! These should ripen towards the end of autumn and we are looking forward to feasting on our first fruit. There is nothing quite like eating fruit from plants which you have grown from seed, which we have also done from our passionfruit vines. I read somewhere that fruit grown from seed is stronger than plants purchased from the garden centre, which is a good reason to start them yourself! Pineapple plants
Two of our tree pineapple plants have fruit growing on them! I’m relieved that the plants are alive as I pulled two of them apart during winter as there were two plants in one bucket, so it seemed like the sensible thing to do. I have very little experience in growing pineapples and wasn’t aware they needed dividing (you really do learn as you go along) so I’m glad that it worked out well. Sprinkler Two years ago, my cousins Shireen and Tor gave us an expensive sprinkler from Mitre 10 for our Christmas present. We have only gotten around to using it now and it has been excellent. On 3 January, our wwoofer Kensuke planted four rows of potatoes in the area where our strawberries previously were, and thanks to using the sprinkler for half an hour every morning, all of the seed potatoes have sprung up. This is no mean feat, given my past difficulties in getting plants to grow during January when it is typically very hot and dry. The sprinkler has also been excellent in assisting dwarf bean seeds also sown by Kensuke to germinate. We also use the sprinkler in that area for half an hour every day. In about 10 days after he had sowed them, they started popping up. Unfortunately, we still need to water the garden manually as it contains many pots and plants in containers which can’t be watered with a sprinkler. However I can highly recommend our sprinkler for establishing new plants and seedlings during periods of time such as now when it is particularly dry. Growing trials for Egmont Seeds As many of you will be aware, I am a brand ambassador for Egmont Seeds and thoroughly endorse their brand to home and commercial gardeners alike due to their high quality of their products and breadth of their range. Most of the tomatoes that have performed outstandingly well which I have reported on in a previous post come from Egmont Seeds. John McCullough, the owner, has given me a range of seeds to grow in the garden during autumn and winter and report back on with my results. Among them are a collection of pansies and all of the different varieties of broad beans which Egmont Seeds stock, plus a new variety which will form part of their range in the future. Keep an eye out on future blog posts for updates as I grow the seeds which John has given me. As discussed in a previous blog post, this summer I am doing a tomato growing trial in search of the best varieties to grow in our garden in future seasons. Now that it’s past mid-summer, I thought it would be a good time to report back on the progress of our tomatoes and highlight some of those which have stood out for us. To be honest, it’s quite simple. The star performers are our container and hanging basket grown tomatoes. The ones in the ground haven’t fared that well, with one or two exceptions which I will outline below. In the future, I may well only grow tomatoes in containers and hanging baskets to save precious ground space for cucumbers and zucchini, which need room to sprawl, especially now that I’m back to growing garlic for mum, which is only harvested on the longest day, making ground space less available come Labour Weekend when tomatoes are traditionally planted in the garden.
Here are some notes about some of the different tomato varieties we planted in our garden this summer. Hanging basket/container varieties
Ground varieties
I will update this post with more news from my tomato trial as our plants continue to grow and develop. To read the twenty sixth issue of my FREE weekly newsletter filled with gardening tips, please visit the newsletters section of my website. I have uploaded the latest issue here.
If you're using a smart phone, it's best viewed as a pdf document received by email. To be added to my mailing list, please email me at anitakundu.nz@gmail.com and write "subscribe" in the subject field. Have a great weekend! Anita You might be surprised to learn that my garden isn’t organic. I use sprays sparingly, but I do condition the ground prior to planting, and a lot of the products that I use aren’t organic. The garage contains an assortment of bottles and packets of non-organic fertilisers and other products. Last year, I made it a goal to start phasing non-organic products out and move towards an organic garden, but it is only now that I have actually had the impetus for change. What caused this sudden turnaround, you might wonder? Normally, I purchase all our fertilisers for the year during Kings Plant Barn’s annual Boxing Day Sale and receive a 25 percent discount. This year, I was unable to do any Boxing Day sale shopping as I had recently helped mum to purchase a new washing machine and didn’t have any money to go sales shopping like I normally do. Instead of feeling depressed about this, I have decided to turn it into an opportunity and look at things positively. I probably shouldn’t be using a lot of the products I have been in the garden and ought to be able to justify why I’m using them, rather than just out of habit. At least I could rationalise spraying our garlic, which has gotten bad rust over the past three years. The problem is that I had gotten so used to some products, become dependent on them and became convinced that the only reason things were growing in the garden was due to them. I’m now not convinced that this is true. This year I’m going to try using products more connected with mother nature, such as compost and sheep pellets, which I already use, without adding more non-organic matter on top of this.
What steps am I taking towards moving to an organic garden? I don’t want to spend a fortune on new organic products, and I already have some in the garage which can be used around the garden. Here are some ideas I have come up with so far:
Have you got any tips for gardening organically? I would love to receive them. You can either leave a message at the end of this post or email me directly at anitakundu.nz@gmail.com To read the twenty fifth issue of my FREE weekly newsletter filled with gardening tips, please visit the newsletters section of my website. I have uploaded the latest issue here.
If you're using a smart phone, it's best viewed as a pdf document received by email. To be added to my mailing list, please email me at anitakundu.nz@gmail.com and write "subscribe" in the subject field. Have a great weekend! Anita |
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