Since climate change is a hot topic at the moment and is not going to go away, I thought it might be helpful if I share further thoughts as they come to mind. In this post, I would like to concentrate on the issue of wind. I have been gardening for a decade now, but I don’t recall it ever being this windy. So far, I have only come up with a few ways of coping as a gardener while working in windy conditions. Ideas regarding how to protect plants from wind is a different topic which I will give thought to as the season progresses and I observe how the seedlings I recently planted outside develop.
Learn to live with it Unfortunately, I think that this is something we just have to get used to. Although we can easily get used to things being a certain way, it is amazing how adaptable we are, especially when we have no choice. To me, it’s still better to brave the outdoors on a grey, blustery chilly day than staying indoors. Gardening is great therapy for depression and I always feel so much better while I’m working outside. I also find that I can think much more clearly. For some reason, I feel especially happy when tackling unglamorous tasks such as weeding and laborious jobs such as pulling out kikuyu grass by hand, which is great therapy if you’re feeling down. Work around the wind Generally (but not always), it tends to be calmer in the morning and becomes windier as the day progresses. You could try getting as much work done earlier on in the day, if possible. It depends on your schedule. If people work during the day, they may find the only time they have to spend in the garden is in the evenings, when conditions are not as ideal. I have set out some thoughts about how to cope while gardening when it’s very windy below. Survival strategies
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Earlier today, some further thoughts on climate change and gardening in summer in New Zealand came to me. As ideas come to me, I would like to continue my thread on this subject. So far, I have written the following posts on the subject of climate change and gardening in New Zealand, which you can read by following the links. If you live overseas and your summers are short with cool temperatures, you may find this information helpful, too.
Before I share some further tips, I just wanted to make the point that I don’t think that we can assume that next summer will be like this year. After all, in recent years we have had droughts that were so severe that the council imposed watering restrictions and a hose ban. The amount of rain we have had this summer in Auckland is not normal. It is usually very dry and we are lucky if it rains at all. But over the past five years or so, in our garden at least, I have noticed a trend towards summer starting later, temperatures being cooler and the summer season is shorter. It is very hard to predict the future unless you have a crystal ball. That’s why I think a middle ground approach might be prudent, which I have set out below. Taking a middle ground approach As I have mentioned before, In our garden, we had a lot of failures over summer, which included melons (which did not grow at all), cucumbers (there was perhaps too much rain), large tomatoes (they take a long time to ripen and there wasn’t a lot of sun) and exotic veggies such as snake beans, Malabar spinach, okra, chillies and eggplants (temperatures were not warm enough for them to grow and thrive). Some things did well though, including zucchini, dwarf beans and cherry tomatoes. When sowing seeds and purchasing plants in spring later this year, it is a good idea to plant a bit of everything just to be on the safe side. You never know, there might be a heat wave next year given how unpredictable the weather has been lately. That way, you won’t have wasted too much money and space in the garden. I was in this situation and so too were a lot of other gardeners, but that is only because we got used to a certain pattern in the climate and felt confident that we could grow certain things successfully as we had done in the past. Gone are those days, so perhaps we need to tentatively test the waters next summer. Grow brassicas in summer I would never normally consider growing brassicas such as cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli in summer because they tend to fare better in cooler conditions and the dreaded white butterfly is a problem when it’s warm. But if future summers are going to be anything like the one we had in Auckland this year, it may be worth considering instead of planting exotic veggies such as snake beans, okra, superhot chillies and eggplant, which need very hot temperatures in order to grow and crop successfully. There are even some brassica seed varieties that are suitable for growing in summer, such as Sprouting Summer Purple Broccoli and Summer Green Broccoli, both of which are available from Kings Seeds. There is also the Cauliflower All the Year Round, also available from Kings Seeds. To protect plants from the white butterfly, you can use a powder called derris dust. It is available as organic if you prefer to garden that way. If you don’t want to use any pesticides in your garden, you can always plant your seedlings in rows with tunnel hoops at the end and drape fine netting over. I have done this in the past with kale seedlings planted out in early autumn, when it was still warm. I used some old net curtain fabric and it was successful in preventing the white butterfly from laying eggs which turn into caterpillars which munch holes in the plants. Grow potatoes instead of kumara Kumara (sweet potato) needs a very long hot growing season in order to crop successfully. Because summer seems to start later every year, this delays when you can plant out slips (the name for kumara seedlings), meaning that they won’t have as long a time in the ground to grow and develop. You could consider growing potatoes instead of kumara as they don’t usually need as long a growing season in order to mature. They also don’t need as warm temperatures in order to crop well. I recommend planting seed potatoes in October and early November at the latest, while there is still usually rain and the soil is cool, which helps the plants to develop. If you leave it too late, it becomes too hot and dry and the plants won’t develop and form tubers. Grow rhubarb If there’s one thing that fared very successfully in the garden during our challenging summer, it is rhubarb. Last year, I planted some seedlings that I grew from seed and the plants are absolutely enormous now, despite very heavy rain and cyclones over the summer. Don’t forget that the leaves are poisonous, so don’t eat them. Rhubarb is very versatile. We enjoy having it stewed with a bit of artificial sweetener over yoghurt. You can also use rhubarb in baking. Rhubarb crumble is a favourite for many people. Below is a photo of one of our rhubarb plants. I trimmed the leaves because they were so enormous and were hanging over the area where I intend to plant some flower seedlings tomorrow. At the moment, there is a shortage of fresh veggies at the supermarket in New Zealand and prices are ridiculously, unbelievably expensive due to the difficult summer we have had, which included cyclones and floods. It is very depressing and affects pretty much everyone, as most people include fresh veggies in their diet. While I was in the produce section of the supermarket last Friday doing some shopping, I noticed that the other shoppers looked incredibly unhappy and you can’t blame them for feeling that way. For example, new seasons pumpkins are $14. At this time of the year (the beginning of autumn in NZ), they should normally be $3 as they are usually ready for harvesting now. I have included a photo above as evidence incase anyone overseas is reading my blog and thinks I am making up a story. What is even more worrying than the price is the fact that there were only half a dozen pumpkins at the biggest supermarket in my area. I don’t know whereabouts in the country they were grown but I have harvested twice as much as that from our suburban plot in Auckland (where sections are usually smaller than other parts of the country) and there are still quite a few more pumpkins on the vines which are not quite ready to be harvested. Commercial growers have a lot more space than me, not to mention knowledge (some gardening businesses have been in the family for several generations), qualifications, technology and personnel. I almost didn’t sow pumpkins in spring because mum was against the idea and said that they are cheap enough but in this instance she was wrong and she is really glad that I did grow them. I don’t do a cost-benefit analysis of the garden because it’s just a hobby, but our entire harvest outweighs the cost of the seeds many times over, even though we didn’t have what I would consider a great crop this season either. The recent blog posts I have written on the subject of climate change (you can read them here and here), (along with the topic of pests and diseases in New Zealand, which probably became worse because of climate change) have by far been the most difficult and depressing ones to date but I can’t hide from these subjects as they are very topical and affect home gardeners and commercial growers alike. Instead of complaining about a problem, I like to try and think of something to do about it, which is more constructive and positive. I thought it might be helpful to write a blog post with some thoughts I have on gardening as we move into autumn and winter in New Zealand. I hope that my blog post might even help people in other countries too, depending on the climate and what you can grow there, because gardening principles are generally universal and we can learn a lot from one another. Autumn harvest If you are lucky enough to have an autumn harvest inspite of the worst summer I can recall in Auckland, make sure you look after it! We are still picking Cobra runner beans, so I haven’t removed those plants yet as part of my annual autumn clean up. Check pumpkins regularly to see if they have died off the vine and are ready for harvesting. If you leave them in the garden, you run the risk of rats and mice nibbling at them as they tend to come out at this time of the year as it gets cooler. It’s a good idea to wipe any pumpkins that you have harvested with a damp cloth before leaving them to dry and storing them in a cool, airy place. In the off-chance that you have surplus despite these less than ideal conditions, I highly recommend freezing or bottling it if you can. People often laugh at homesteaders for doing this as it is very time consuming and decent preserving jars are quite expensive in NZ whereas tinned goods are usually plentiful and cheap, but it isn’t funny anymore and is actually a really good idea. I don’t really look at the price of tinned and frozen veggies as we try to eat out of the garden as much as possible, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the price of that increases, too. Planting a garden for autumn and winter There is no better time to have a veggie garden but the problem is that the conditions are less than ideal. While it hasn’t rained in Auckland for awhile and we haven’t had a cyclone or flooding since Cyclone Gabrielle, I have noticed that temperatures are constantly fluctuating. Yesterday was an absolutely beautifully warm sunny day, whereas today is overcast, windy and freezing except for the early afternoon when it suddenly got really hot. This makes it hard to get tender seedlings established. You can imagine how much havoc another cyclone or flood would cause to young plants should that happen again. I had to think quite creatively to come up with some tips for veggie gardening in such challenging conditions. Raising seedlings Because temperatures are generally cooler than usual at this time of the year and they keep fluctuating, it’s a good idea to germinate and raise seedlings in a greenhouse, if you want to raise your own plants from seed. While plants purchased from the garden centre give you a head start, they have become really expensive and it is more economical to raise plants from seed, especially if you have a large garden. I haven’t been to the garden centre in awhile, but the last time I was there, there weren’t actually many seedlings because of all the cyclones and floods. I’m not sure if the situation has changed or if garden centres will order less in future because of the weather we had over summer. Because it’s not as warm as it usually is in March, I recommend placing any punnets containing seeds that you have sown inside a plastic crate (I use the brand Sistema) with a lid on it, so that it functions as a mini greenhouse within the greenhouse for extra warmth and protection. I did this to germinate flowers from seed back in December and January, with great success. Here is a picture of the stock, snapdragon and statice seedlings I raised using that technique. To be honest, I am not actually raising veggie seedlings myself, at least at this point in time because these seedlings need to be planted into the garden which will take up a lot of space. I can’t purchase plants from the garden centre either, because all our dahlias are still flowering and are taking up a lot of space. The foliage probably won’t die down until the end of autumn and I will lift and store them in late May or June, so it is too early to raise plants from seed for planting out then. What you can raise from seed or plant in the veggie garden now Here is a list of veggies that can be sown or planted now in most parts of New Zealand.
Container gardening Don’t forget that some veggies and varieties are suitable for growing in containers which is ideal if you’re short on space. The other advantage is that the soil temperature is usually a bit warmer than in the garden, so plants might have a better chance of survival. We enjoy growing lettuce in containers and harvesting the leaves as we need them. Here are some of our lettuce plants in plastic round bowls from spring. Growing undercover
If you are lucky enough to have a tunnel house, greenhouse or glass house, by all means use it! If you have space and are a keen gardener, or want to become a gardener, it is something worth looking into. You need not necessarily spend a fortune either. Today someone posted a photo of a glasshouse they had made very cheaply using recycled windows. If you have DIY skills, you might be able to do the same thing without spending much money or maybe even nothing at all if you are able to pick up bits and pieces for free. I have recently written a blog post about climate change which contains some ideas for gardening in cooler, shorter summers. I have some further thoughts on this subject which I’d like to share. While growing edibles in these conditions is admittedly more challenging, it can be done. Here are some concrete examples of things I have done in our own garden that have worked successfully over the past few years. Make the most of spring Depending on where you live, there’s a lot you can grow in spring, too so don’t worry if your summers aren’t that great. I always plant potatoes in September (the start of spring for us) and they are ready by November or December, depending on which variety I plant. My favourite early variety is called Liseta and matures in around 70-80 days. Unfortunately there were supply issues last year and it wasn’t available except through one supplier called Newton Seeds who had very limited stock available quite early, in April. I’m not sure if it will be available this year as it was such a bad summer that they might not have been able to propagate all of the varieties of seed potatoes successfully but if you’re keen on growing Liseta, keep an eye on their website. My favourite main variety is called Summer Delight and is in the Tui seed potato range, which is available at Mire 10 stores (a hardware chain in New Zealand) and through the mail order supplier Awapuni. You can plant brassicas (cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower) in spring for harvesting in early summer, which is a time when you’re typically planting seedlings and there aren’t a lot of things ready for harvesting. Mum read somewhere that if you leave broccoli in the ground after harvesting the main head, it will produce lots of side shoots which you can pick as they become ready. We did this last year and had lots of broccoli florets until mid-December, which is when our plants started going to seed. Broad beans also produce in spring, but they must be planted in autumn or winter so that the plants have enough time to grow, flower and produce beans. Laying down black plastic underneath pumpkins, squash and melons I could never grow melons successfully until I started laying black plastic underneath. I made holes in it to plant the seedlings. This idea was thanks to a gardener in Motueka that I met in a gardening group on Facebook and became good friends with. We have never met each other in person but still keep in touch. Kylie used to grow all different kinds of melons successfully and that was her secret (as well as hand pollinating the melons, which she taught me how to do to increase the yield). Since then, I have never looked back and even managed to grow 38 rockmelons in part of a garden bed on our front lawn in 2017. Unfortunately it has become impossible for me to grow melons anymore due to climate change, as our summers start a lot later and have become considerably cooler and shorter. But I do also use black plastic for planting pumpkins and squash, which was recommended to me by a gardener called Cynthia who lives in Foxton. She always had an incredibly impressive harvest and that was her secret, too. I started doing the same thing and even grew a whopping 75 pumpkins and squash in 2016, including 25 enormous Big Chief Butternuts. Unfortunately this seed variety is no longer available in New Zealand. I know using black plastic isn’t good for the soil, but you can’t win in every way. If gardeners are really serious about improving their yield in such challenging conditions, it is worth at least considering. Plant compact, quick maturing varieties Cooler temperatures generally mean that things will take longer to grow. It therefore makes sense to plant compact, quick maturing varieties which will be ready for harvesting before the season ends and it starts becoming cooler in autumn. As I mentioned in my previous blog post about climate change and gardening in cooler and shorter summers, cherry tomatoes are a good choice as the fruit is smaller and they ripen more quickly than large varieties such as beefsteak. I also highly recommend growing cherry tomatoes that can be grown in containers rather than in the ground, as the plants are more compact and will produce fruit more quickly. My favourite cherry tomato varieties suitable for growing in containers are Tumbling Tom Red, Tumbling Tom Yellow and Topsy Tom, all of which are available from Egmont Seeds in New Zealand. If you live overseas, check for a local supplier. In winter and spring, I like growing mini cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage as they are more compact than their regular sized counterparts. They take up a lot less space and mature much faster. Some varieties even mature in around 60 days from the time of transplant, which is really good considering that regular sized brassicas can take twice as long as that to become ready for harvesting. Because they are so compact, you can plant the seedlings closer together so you can fit more seedlings in the area you are using to plant them. Here is an example of how closely mini brassicas can be planted next to each other. These are Ranfurly Mini cabbages, which is a variety that is available from Egmont Seeds in New Zealand. Plant dwarf varieties
Dwarf veggies generally tend to mature and produce faster than their taller counterparts. I highly recommend growing dwarf beans because they are incredibly easy to grow and extremely productive. Unlike climbing beans, they don’t require support. My favourite variety is called Golden Yellow Butter, which is available from the Egmont Seeds Commercial catalogue in New Zealand. It is also possible to get dwarf broad beans, which are shorter plants that also crop more quickly and can even be grown in containers. I have grown the variety Robin Hood in the past with great success. Climate change is a hot topic at the moment (excuse the pun), in light of the awful summer, cyclones and severe flooding in some parts of New Zealand. As I have been gardening for a decade, I thought it might be helpful to share my ideas about having a garden when the summer is considerably cooler and shorter, which has become a problem in Auckland in recent years. This might also be a problem in other countries, too. In saying that, you can’t predict what the weather will be like. In previous years we have had severe droughts in Auckland. Watering restrictions were imposed, including a hose ban. It was very hot and although the summer started later, it finished quite late too, towards the end of autumn. This year has seen cyclones and flooding. Next year there may well be a heat wave, for all I know. I always try hard to look at things positively otherwise life will be completely miserable. The uncertainty is one of the things that makes gardening so interesting and challenging. While it is undoubtedly hard work and very unglamorous, gardening is never boring! What performed well this summer despite less than ideal conditions Zucchini I had to remove our plants by February as all the rain in January proved too much for them, but up until then, we had a good crop of zucchini. I highly recommend the variety Romanesco, which is in the Franchi seeds range and is available through the NZ retailer Italian Seeds Pronto. If you live overseas, check for your local Franchi seeds retailer as it will be different in each country. Cherry tomatoes Despite less than ideal weather conditions, we also had an epic crop of cherry tomatoes. I grew the varieties Tumbling Tom Red, Tumbling Tom Yellow and Topsy Tom from seed and planted them in hanging baskets and 9 litre buckets (the type that you use around the house, but remember to poke holes at the bottom for drainage). Because they are so much smaller than large tomatoes such as Beefsteak, they ripen quickly even if there isn’t much sunshine. Our large tomatoes didn’t perform well as they require a lot of sun in order for them to change colour from green to red, and that applies even to the grafted plants I put in, which mature faster and crop more heavily than regular tomato plants in normal growing conditions. Beans
Both our climbing beans and dwarf beans cropped well. I grew Climbing Cobra, my favourite green runner bean and the dwarf bean Golden Yellow Butter, both from seed. In saying that, we didn’t get nearly as much as last year but given the poor performance of most veggies in the garden (see below), we were thrilled with our modest harvest. What isn’t worth growing in cool, short summers The following plants didn’t perform well in our garden this season and I am reluctant to grow them again in future unless our summers improve dramatically and return to what they were at least five years ago, which I think is unlikely to happen when I look at the downward trend over the years. Every year, summer starts later and later, is shorter and temperatures are cooler. I keep hoping that things will be different each year but it never is. Cucumbers After an epic season last year, our cucumbers were a complete flop. I planted all of them vertically along a 1 metre fence line in full sun as they cropped very well there last year, but we had hardly any cucumbers this year and most of them were misshapen. While cucumbers consist mainly of water, I don’t think the plants appreciated the deluge. Pumpkins Pumpkins need a long, hot growing season in order to develop and ripen. Back in 2016, I harvested 75 pumpkins in autumn, including 25 Big Chief Butternuts, a fantastic enormous variety I grew from seed which is sadly no longer available in New Zealand. Yet last year, I only harvested a dozen pumpkins and they were very small by comparison. This year, I will be lucky if I get three or four pumpkins and I devoted two large areas in the garden to them, too. Melons Melons require an even hotter and longer growing season than pumpkins in order to grow and mature. In 2017, I grew a whopping 38 rock melons in one of our garden beds. I have also grown plenty of watermelon and honeydew melon successfully in the past. But as of last year, I have been unable to grow melons at all. I used to plant my seedlings in the third week of November as it was warm enough even at night then and it gave them enough time to grow before developing fruit. Nowadays, it is way too cold to do that. Planting them in December doesn’t give them enough time to grow, develop fruit and for them to ripen in time before it starts getting cooler again in autumn. To compound to that, temperatures are not as warm as they used to be in summer, which makes it difficult for the fruit to grow and ripen. I belong to a lot of gardening groups on Facebook as it’s a good way to learn and help others, too. I noticed that some gardeners have gotten around this problem by growing melons in a tunnel house and hand pollinating them, which is a good idea even if you grow them outside because the flowers are very small compared to other cucurbits such as pumpkins, zucchini and squash, and the bees often miss them. Capsicums, eggplants and chillies I always grow these veggies in containers in order to save ground space for root crops and veggies that sprawl and require a lot of room such as pumpkins and melons. I also find that they actually crop better if grown in containers than if they’re grown in the ground as the soil temperature is a bit warmer. This year the size and number of our capsicums was pathetic. Most of our eggplants ended up dying and the chilli plants haven’t grown at all since I planted them out in December. Snake beans and okra These require even hotter weather than capsicums, eggplants and chillies in order to flourish, which explains why they performed so poorly this season. The seedlings have hardly grown since I planted them. Zinnias Native to Mexico, zinnias require very hot weather in order to grow and flower well. A mistake people often make is to sow seeds too early in spring when temperatures are still quite cool and the seedlings end up dying. I tend to sow seeds in early December on my heat pad as they require the warmth in order to germinate, even at that time of the year. Normally I plant my seedlings out in late December and early January, and they flower until the end of autumn (May for us). I was very happy with our displays last year. This year, the plants have hardly grown since I planted them out six weeks ago and we will be very lucky if they flower at all. |
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