I have recently started reflecting on where the plants in our garden are originally from, because people often ask me the same question about myself. Most of our flowers, fruits, veggies and herbs in the garden are from other countries. I have started writing a series of blog posts to explore some of our favourite flowers and edibles we have grown over the years which are from overseas. In my previous blog post, I covered our favourite flowers in the garden which come from Mexico. In this post, I will focus on our favourite edibles which also come from Mexico. Avocados There are so many great edibles in our garden which are native to Mexico, but the avocado is at the top of my list. This is going back quite a few years, but I remember an economist in NZ saying that young people would never be able to buy a house if they kept spending $20 eating avocado on toast in cafes. I have never been to Mexico, so I have no idea if cafes serve avocado that way and how much it costs. Maybe a Mexican economist has said pretty much the same thing about their younger generation, even if he or she didn’t refer to eating out and avocados, which might not be as expensive over there. Back in 2017, we planted the first dwarf avocado variety made available in New Zealand, which is called Cleopatra. It is a Type B avocado. Cleopatra is supposed to be self-pollinating, but I also planted a semi-dwarf Type A variety called Esther. I’m really glad I did that because since then we have been getting much more fruit. Tomatoes Tomatoes are a staple in our summer garden. Large varieties such as Beefsteak haven’t performed well in recent years, due to shorter and cooler summers which start later every year. The plants need to be grown in the ground and take a long time to develop before fruit forms. After that they require a lot of sun in order to ripen as the fruits are large and take a long time to change from green to red. These days, I prefer growing cherry tomatoes that have been bred for container planting. The plants are short and bushy and the small fruits ripen quickly. We sometimes even harvest cherry tomatoes before Christmas, which is nice. Don’t let the compact size of the plants fool you. They are actually much more productive than tall cherry tomatoes grown in the ground, in my experience. Even despite the floods and cyclones last summer, we ended up having way too many and shared the surplus with friends. Peppers I usually grow peppers (capsicums) in 35 litre black containers in order to save ground space for root crops which require depth (such as potatoes and sweet potato) and crops which need room to sprawl (such as pumpkins and melons). I noticed that peppers actually grow much better in containers than in the ground in our garden anyway. Chillies While the Jalapeno comes to mind when thinking of Mexican cuisine, there are so many different chilli varieties that exist with varying levels of heat. I got to know a guy who lives on the North Shore that loves growing superhot chillies, because he came around to purchase some plants when I was running a nursery from home a number of years ago. He always shares weird and wonderful chilli seeds with me and I usually give him other veggie seeds to round out his garden. Some chilli growers like making sauces but we always freeze them and use them free flow as required in cooking. Potatoes Until I did some research, I didn’t realise that the potato was native to Mexico, but sometimes things are not quite where you think they’re from. I love growing potatoes. They are incredibly easy to grow and you can’t beat the flavour of homegrown spuds. Potatoes can be roughly divided into two groups, early and main varieties. As the name suggests, early varieties mature early in the season and are usually waxy in texture, making them ideal for boiling. They tend not to store that well. Main crop varieties take longer to mature and are often floury in texture, making them perfect for baking and roasting. My favourite early variety is Liseta and my favourite main variety is Summer Delight. That is the conclusion I came to after growing a lot of different varieties over the years and comparing their performance. Both Liseta and Summer Delight are high yielders and produce lots of large potatoes. They also have a fantastic flavour. But that is a matter of opinion. Other gardeners might disagree with me because they have had a different experience growing them or prefer other varieties. I’m not sure if those varieties are available overseas but I’m sure you will find something that suits local conditions, if your climate is suitable for growing potatoes. Sweet potatoes I didn’t realise sweet potatoes were native to Mexico either. We didn’t have a good harvest last summer due to cooler than usual temperatures and the floods and cyclones in Auckland. But the previous year, we had a bumper crop. I also wrote a blog post sharing my tips for growing kumara, which people can read if they are interested. If you follow the link, you can see a picture of our entire harvest at the top of the page. Corn I love the well-known Mexican dish esquites which requires corn. Unfortunately, it’s not something that I have great success growing in our garden. While cobs reached a decent size in some seasons, they were nowhere near as large as what you would find at the supermarket. Corn is pollinated by the wind. It needs to be planted in blocks rather than rows, otherwise pollination will be patchy and you might end up with lots of gaps in the cobs. Getting the spacing right can be a bit tricky. If you plant seedlings too far apart, they won’t be pollinated properly by the wind as they need to come into contact with one another. If you plant seedlings too close, the cobs will be quite small. Squash According to my research, squash is native to Central America and Mexico. Our favourite squash is the butternut, which has a wonderful flavour. Butternut squash is extremely versatile and can be prepared in so many different and tasty ways. One of our favourite dishes is stuffed butternuts. The picture below contains homegrown butternut that has been stuffed with feta cheese (a favourite) and herbs from the garden. Above that is some sweet potato, also from our garden. This was prepared by my mother. I am a terrible cook. The extent of my skills in the kitchen is limited to making avocado on toast. Although this post was dedicated to edibles that are native to Mexico, I really love marigolds which also originate from Mexico and I covered in my previous post. I wanted to finish this post by sharing a photo of one of my favourite varieties which is called French Vanilla. Marigolds are a great companion plant in the veggie garden and are thought to help keep pests away from edibles. I grew these ones in a plastic trough. You can’t see them in the photo as they are too little, but I planted climbing beans (also grown from seed) along the fence line which the trellis is attached to and they complement each other nicely.
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I have recently started reflecting on where the plants in our garden are originally from, because people often ask me the same question about myself. Most of our flowers, fruits, veggies and herbs in the garden are from other countries. I have started writing a series of blog posts to explore some of our favourite flowers and edibles we have grown over the years which are from overseas. In this post, I will focus on some of our favourite plants which come from Mexico. I have never been to Mexico, but the first thing that comes to mind is the fabulous cuisine which is simply bursting with flavour. I love international cuisine and Mexican is one of my favourites, along with Italian and Thai. The high quality of Mexican dishes no doubt relies heavily upon the abundance of fresh local produce, much of which is native to Mexico. Because I like to try and keep my blog posts short as well as quick and easy to read, I will cover our favourite veggies from Mexico that we grow in our potager in a separate post. There are so many, starting with avocados which are of course essential for making guacamole, a favourite Mexican dish of mine. I will focus on my favourite flowers from Mexico in this post, which I also love and includes dahlias and zinnias. Dahlias Since the dahlia is the national flower of Mexico, it makes sense to start here. My interest in dahlias was initially ignited by Kayne from the NZ mail order bulbs supplier Bulbs Direct, who kindly gave me a Café au Lait tuber to plant in the garden a few years ago. I have had a collaboration with Bulbs Direct for a number of years now and he has generously and thoughtfully provided me with many beautiful and interesting flowers to grow in the garden, including the 49 different tulip varieties which were part of a growing trial which I covered in previous blog posts. Kayne’s kind gesture of gifting me a single CAL (as it is abbreviated in dahlia circles) tuber which produced such beautiful flowers in delicate shades of cream, pink and apricot on the same plant prompted me to do some research into dahlias. I discovered an American flower farmer called Erin Benzakein, who lives in the Skagit Valley region of Washington, about an hour out of Seattle and has a flower farm known as Floret. They supply flowers to the upmarket organic grocery chain Whole Foods in the US. After reading her book Discovering Dahlias, I caught the dahlia bug and I’m not the only one. There is a worldwide craze in flower growing circles known as dahlia mania. While dahlias have been around for ages, they have suddenly become incredibly popular and there are so many different varieties on the market these days which were not available in the past, at least not in this country. I do enjoy growing other flowers and edibles, but I have become absolutely fascinated by dahlias and have been adding more varieties to our garden every year. If you would like to see more dahlia pictures from our garden, please have a look at my Instagram account. You might have to scroll back a bit, now that we are in winter in New Zealand. Zinnias Every summer, I look forward to growing zinnias. They are very bright and colourful. Zinnias look great planted en masse. Some gardeners can get away with scattering seeds direct to the ground. That used to work for me many years ago, but in recent years I have found that I have to propagate them from seeds and transplant the seedlings, which requires a lot of work. I start zinnia seedlings on my heat pad in egg trays filled with seed raising mix (I prefer using the lid part) in late November/early December. Once they have grown a bit, I move them to the greenhouse, where they develop leaves. Once they are large enough, I carefully transplant each seedling into an individual cell in a six-cell punnet. As the weather is still quite temperamental in December, I leave the plants in our greenhouse to grow a bit more before moving them to our patio so they can be hardened off and exposed to the outdoors before finally being planted outside in early January, so it’s not such a shock to their system. While I plant zinnias in mid-summer, they tend to start flowering in March, which is the beginning of autumn and the display lasts until May, the end of autumn for us. I have included photos of some formal beds containing zinnias from the summer before last. Unfortunately last year was not a good season for growing zinnias due to the floods and cyclones in Auckland. The best variety for cutting is Benary’s Giant, which is used by commercial flower growers in NZ. It produces high quality flowers on incredibly long stems which are perfect for arrangements. This variety also lasts a long time in a vase. The seeds are quite expensive though compared to other varieties. But as you can see below, cheaper varieties such as the Dahlia Flowered Gold Medal Mix still make a nice, cheerful display. Marigolds I love growing marigolds and have recently written a blog post with some tips for growing them from seed, so I won’t write much about them here. One of our favourite varieties is called Durango Flame, which is a traditional orange-red marigold variety. Gladioli
When I checked where gladioli originates from, I found conflicting information. According to some sources, the gladioli is native to South Africa and I covered them in my previous blog post. But when I was researching flowers native to Mexico (just to check that things were actually where I thought they were from), the gladioli was often listed so I decided to cover it here, too. The gladioli is also known as the sword lily. Last summer, I planted a lot of gladioli bulbs as we didn’t have many in the garden. I am looking forward to them flowering again this summer. Last summer, I grew quite a few different marigold varieties from seed and I thought it might be helpful to share some tips. Unfortunately, my favourite variety, a traditional red-orange marigold called Durango Flame, was unavailable last year but it was an opportunity for me to try growing some other varieties. I raised the following marigolds from seed last spring:
They are all African marigold varieties which are taller and have quite big heads compared to other marigolds. I purchased these from the Egmont Seeds Commercial catalogue, which is available upon request from Egmont Seeds if you live in New Zealand. If you live elsewhere, please check if seed suppliers in your country stock these varieties if you would like to grow them. You might not necessarily be able to find them on the shelf at your local garden centre, so try reputable mail order seed suppliers. I planted all my marigolds in troughs and some different shaped containers because I ran out of room, as the garden beds occupied all my dahlias and veggie seedlings and were very full. But marigolds do make a great bedding plant and look nice planted along borders. They are also a very good companion plant as they help keep insects off other plants. When I was a child, one of our neighbours was a rose aficionado and they comprised her entire garden. She always planted marigolds along the edges of her garden beds and explained to me that was why she did that. It also looks really nice when marigolds are planted in this way. Unfortunately the display shown in the photo was very short lived as we had a terrible summer in Auckland. I think my plants only looked like that for a week or two. There were cyclones and floods which did a lot of damage to my marigolds and they never quite bounced back afterwards. But in normal circumstances, marigolds have always provided me with a display which lasts several months until it starts getting cool in autumn. Tips for growing marigolds If you are new to gardening, you could always purchase a punnet or two from the garden centre to see if you like growing them. If you have been gardening for awhile and are comfortable with and enjoy propagating plants from seed but have never grown marigolds before, you could always purchase a small packet of seeds from either a garden centre or a mail order seed supplier, which usually costs a couple of dollars. If you wish to plant a lot of seedlings, it is always more economical to raise them from seed. You can also get bigger packets of seed if you purchase your seeds from a mail order wholesale or commercial catalogue. This also ensures that you will have enough of the same variety to complete a border. Garden centres may only have a limited number of plants and other customers might have already purchased some from the tray, so there might not be enough for your needs. But if you are time poor and money isn’t an issue, you could always ask your garden centre if you can order large quantities. They might be able to help you and it never hurts to ask nicely. Bigger packets of seed can also be helpful if you are running a plant nursery and selling plants, as I have done in the past. Growing marigolds from seed also enables you to grow varieties which are not available in garden centres. I generally find that plants propagated from seed are stronger and end up performing better when planted outside than punnets purchased from the garden centre. I think one of the reasons for this is because seedlings raised yourself are not exposed to so many different temperatures, whereas seedlings sold at garden centres started out in a nursery with artificial heating and lighting, before being transported to the garden centre and cared for on shelves. By the time you take them home, they have been exposed to so many different places and temperatures that they can end up quite shocked and not perform that well when they are eventually planted outside. I always sow marigold seeds on my heat pad in spring, as I have found that the warmth helps them to germinate at a time of the year when it is quite cold. But for the first time, I tried sowing the seeds in 198-cell seedling trays, with one seed per tiny cell. The germination rate was excellent and it helped the seedlings to form a plug, making it very easy to pluck them out and transplant them into 60 and 72 cell seedling trays to grow a bit more, before they were large enough and it was warm enough to plant them outside. After having great success using this technique, I don’t think I would ever go back to scattering the seeds in a punnet filled with seed raising mix again. It’s very fiddly separating the tender young seedlings and you risk damaging the roots in the process. Another tip I would like to share is to protect young seedlings from slugs and snails as they really love marigolds. This also applies to seedlings kept in your greenhouse and nursery, if you have one for raising seedlings. As it gets warmer, we always leave the doors of our greenhouse open. Despite the joke about snail pace, you would be surprised how far and fast slugs and snails can travel! They can be pretty determined when they have made up their mind that they really want to go somewhere. Even if your seedlings are stored on a shelf or higher surface, they can climb, too. Slugs and snails will also happily crawl into containers, so don’t forget to use some form of protection if you are using them to plant your marigolds in.
Marigolds are a flower which always features in my summer garden. They are very easy to grow and make a great companion plant for many veggies growing in the garden as they are said to repel insects. Marigolds are also known for improving the quality of the soil, especially when they have been planted as a cover crop. Marigolds are commonly used in South Asian culture for worship and rituals.
Traditionally, marigolds can be planted outside in New Zealand by Labour Weekend, which is a long weekend with a public holiday falling on the Monday after the weekend (like a Bank Holiday in England). Labour Weekend usually falls towards the end of October. This year, Labour Weekend starts on 21 October. While it’s natural to want a head start on the season, my advice is to not be in a rush to plant out seedlings. There is often a dramatic difference between day and night time temperatures at this time of the year and the weather can still be quite temperamental. Young seedlings are particularly tender. Once they’ve been hit by a sudden cold snap or exposed to consistently low temperatures, they never really recover. It’s therefore a good idea to wait until the beginning of November to plant marigold seedlings into your garden, when temperatures are warmer. This way, the seedlings you plant out will be a bit more established and strong enough to survive any setbacks along the way. In saying that, it does depend on where you live. New Zealand’s climate varies dramatically from region to region and I do have to remember that not all of my audience lives in Auckland or even New Zealand for that matter. My personal gardening experiences are limited to our urban homestead in the Auckland region, so please take this into account when considering my advice. On the same token, what grows well in my environment may not necessarily thrive in your own microclimate. So please don’t blame me if things go wrong and varieties I’ve recommended don’t grow well in your garden! Sowing marigolds from seed It’s much too early to think about planting marigolds outdoors. It’s still way too cold! However, I wanted to write a guide to growing marigolds now because you can start sowing marigolds under cover from seed. It’s really easy to grow marigolds from seed and it allows you to grow unusual varieties which aren’t found in garden centres. It takes about six to eight weeks from the time of the germination of a marigold seed to produce a plant that is large enough to transplant outside. Marigolds can be started from seed indoors in October or even earlier if you live in a more temperate zone and have a hot house to protect them from the cold. Marigold seeds need warmth in order to germinate. I germinate seeds in punnets or egg cartons filled with seed raising mix from Gardn Gro. I like Gardn Gro’s seed raising mix as it is very fine in texture, enabling seeds to push through the mixture easily as they rise to the surface. I place the punnets and egg cartons inside plastic incubators which you can purchase from garden centres. I then place the incubators on a heat pad indoors and spray plants with water once daily or twice if the seed raising mixture is very dry. If you don’t have a heat pad you can also use your hot water cupboard which will also provide seedlings with a warm environment so they can germinate successfully. Marigold varieties If you’re planning to grow marigolds from seed, you’ll find that they come in an impressive array of colours, sizes and heights. Traditionally, zucchini are red, orange and yellow. There are quite a few different varieties on the market in New Zealand. Two of my favourite varieties from previous seasons are Bonanza Deep Orange and Bonanza Bright Yellow (Egmont Seeds). The Durango series have also performed very well in the garden in past seasons (Durango Red, Outback Mix, Durango Mix and Durango Bolero, all from Egmont Seeds). This year, I’m excited to be growing some different varieties: African Ivory, French Vanilla F1 and Strawberry Blonde (all from Egmont Seeds). African Ivory is a tall bedding variety of marigold growing to a height of 90 cm. French Vanilla F1 is a fabulous white/cream African marigold with double blooms approximately 8cm across. Strawberry Blonde is described as being the “yesterday, today and tomorrow of the marigold world” on Egmont Seeds’ website. Flowers consist of multi-coloured blooms on the same plant, which is unusual for marigold plants. Each shade is beautiful, making for a beautiful display. I will post photos on my blog, in my newsletter and on my social media accounts to report on the progress of these new varieties in Anita’s Garden. How to care for marigold seedlings For new gardeners, those who don’t wish to start their marigold seedlings from seed or if you’ve simply left it too late, plants are available for sale in nurseries from September onwards. Palmers stock a great range of marigold seedlings. Awapunialso sell high quality, large grade marigold seedlings delivered direct to your door. Look out for Dwarf Red, Dwarf Mixed and Tall varieties. If you order 7 or more bundles of seedlings, delivery is free. I plan to sell a variety of different marigold seedlings in my own boutique nursery later in the season. Keep an eye out for details in my newsletter, on Neighbourly and my Facebook page as to when they become available. During October and November, I will also circulate updated lists of available stock in my plant nursery to subscribers of my free weekly gardening newsletter. To be added to my mailing list and receive these notifications, please email me at anitakundu.nz@gmail.com. I’ll probably be selling seedlings a bit later than stores because I’m merely a home gardener, germinating and caring for seedlings in our patio at home without the help of the horticultural technology that you would expect to find in a commercial operation. Without a hot house, I simply don’t have a head start on the season like large-scale nurseries. To compensate for this, I do try and offer seedling varieties which are unusual and can’t be found in garden centres or online retailers. This is a good thing as it enables me to collaborate with other businesses in the industry and promote their brands. You can achieve a lot by working with other people in the same field (no pun intended), as opposed to simply trying to compete with them. To read my further thoughts on this issue, please click here. Whoever you decide to buy plants from, take care to keep plants undercover until early October as marigolds are frost sensitive. The weather can be temperamental in spring and the nights are often still quite cool. From then on, start “hardening them off”. This is the process of exposing plants to the outdoors incrementally, for example, for two hours in the middle of the day for the first week, increasing to four hours per day for the next week. Continue to bring the plants indoors at night. By the third week of October, it should be safe to leave plants outdoors overnight. If you want to grow the bigger headed varieties, try Taishan Mix, Taishan Yellow and Taishan Orange (all from Egmont Seeds). To order seeds from the very extensive Egmont Seeds range, visit http://www.egmontseeds.co.nz/. How to care for marigold plants Marigolds need at least 6 hours of sunshine per day, so be sure to plant seedlings in the sunniest spot in your garden. Before planting marigold seedlings, take the time to prepare the bed properly so plants receive adequate nutrition. Dig the area over that you wish to plant your seedlings in. Mix plenty of compost and some sheep pellets into the ground. I highly recommend Gardn Gro’s Wonder Nuggets, which are 100% organic and function as an excellent fertiliser. Rake the ground so that it is nice and level. Be sure to water plants every day, preferably early in the morning or in the evening. Liquid feed marigolds weekly to encourage the growth of healthy leaves and the formation of flowers. Snails adore marigold plants, especially when they are young, and can completely decapitate your seedlings. Protect young seedlings from snails by placing snail pellets around the plants. Marigolds are an annual which means that they will grow, set seed and die after one growing season. If you are growing heirloom varieties, you can save seeds from your plants so you will be able to sow those varieties next season. |
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