Advice. Ideas.

Inspiration

Anita’s Garden
Volume 2, Issue 15 1 November 2019

Useful Links Editorial

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Welcome to the fifteenth issue of my  Oregano
Blog
newsletter Anita’s Garden for 2019.
 Sage
Newsletter back issues
I hope you have all had a good week.
 Chives
Facebook
Labour weekend has been and gone,
but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t  Rosemary
Instagram
plenty of time to get your summer
Plants that should be purchased
Twitter garden underway if you didn’t do any-
as seedlings at this stage
thing last weekend. It’s still not too
Linkedin late to raise some plants from seed  Capsicums
Pinterest and others can be purchased from
your garden centre or Awapuni, who  Chillies
deliver newspaper-wrapped bundles
of seedlings direct to your door. They  Eggplants
Contact me often have fantastic promotions so it’s
 Tomatoes
a good idea to sign up to their news-
 Feedback letter so you stay up to date with spe- It’s still not too late for these veg-
cials. gies
 Newsletter input
(tips, recipes, gar- Here are some plants that you can  Potatoes
den photos etc) still raise from seed:
It’s too late for these things
 To be added to my  Zucchini
mailing list  Strawberries—at this point, it’s
 Cucumbers probably best to wait until next
anitakundu.nz@gmail.com
season, as strawberries are well
 Pumpkins
underway and fruiting by now
 Squash The basics
Inside this issue:  Melons Don’t forget to prepare the ground well
before planting. For me, this normally
 Lettuce
means working compost, sheep pellets
P ot te r ing aro u nd 2  Spring onions and general fertiliser into the soil be-
Anita’s Garden forehand and raking it so its nice and
 Silverbeet level. The exception is for root crops
such as carrots, beetroot and parsnips,
Top 5 gardening tasks 2  Spinach which don’t do well in fertilised soil as
for the week they end up forked. I find that these
 Beetroot
do best with some superphosphate and
 Carrots blood and bone fertiliser.
Tips for growing roses 2
 Corn Now that it’s becoming drier, don’t
forget to water your garden regularly.
 Kohlrabi
How to grow melons 3 I hope you enjoyed this week’s column.
 Coriander
Anita Kundu
 Parsley
PAGE 2
Pottering around Anita’s Garden
Another early passionfruit!
We harvested another early pas-
sionfruit off our vine (pictured
below). This is the second pas-
sionfruit that we have harvested
this spring. The vines were grown
from seed two years ago
Top 5 gardening tasks for the week
1. Plant potatoes
Don’t leave it any longer! Look for
seed potatoes that have already
sprouted to speed up the process.
2. Plant silverbeet and
spinach
Now is the perfect time to plant
silverbeet and spinach seedlings in
the garden
Tips for growing roses
 Spend some time research-
ing what kind of roses you
wish to plant in your gar-
den. There are several
kinds—bush, climbing and
standard (grafted)
 Try to plant roses during
winter as that’s when
they’re dormant. Garden
centres also get their stock
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
Peony poppy
Our first peony poppy “Fire Circle”
flowered in the garden.
3. Spray garlic
Continue to spray garlic for rust
4. Spray roses and fruit
trees
Use copper sprays to help prevent
fungal diseases during summer.
At the moment, I’m alternating
between liquid copper and copper
oxychloride.
in during winter so this is when
they’ll have the best selection
 Prepare the ground well
prior to planting. I like to
mix in lots of compost, sheep
pellets and garden fertiliser
into the ground beforehand
 Make sure the hole you dig
for the plant is deep and big
enough
V O LU M E 2 , I S S U E 1 5
Another poppy!
This beautiful pink poppy also
flowered in the garden
5. Plant beetroot
Now is a good time to plant beet-
root seedlings. I’m currently trial-
ling whether beetroot can be
grown successfully in containers
and will report back on this. Make
sure you avoid using fresh compost
and fertiliser, otherwise you’ll end
up with lots of leafy growth at the
expense of nice, strong roots.
 I like to add Kings 24 Plus
fertiliser to each hole so
plants have a strong start
 Stake roses at the time of
planting to avoid damaging
the roots later on
 Water well
 Spray to prevent diseases
 V O LU M E 2 , I S S U E 1 5
How to grow melons
Nothing beats the taste of home-
grown melons. They can be a little
tricky to grow but are so wonder-
fully juicy and fresh that you’ll
never want to eat store bought
melons again.
Growing melons from seed
Melons are easy to grow from seed,
so I normally start them this way.
However, if you’re pressed for time
or don’t want to start them from
seed, you can purchase plants from
the garden centre or Awapuni, who
deliver direct to your door. At this
time of the year, it’s best to sow
seeds undercover as they’re a heat-
loving plant and if temperatures
are too low, seeds won’t germinate.
I recommend using a heat pad.
With one, you shouldn’t have any
trouble getting seeds to germinate.
I like using egg cartons to raise
seeds in rather than plastic pun-
nets. Once plants develop two
leaves, I usually pot them into in-
dividual pots.
Varieties
There are many different kinds of
melons you can grow, but the main
ones are watermelon, rockmelon
and honeydew melon. This year,
I’m excited to be doing a growing
trial of some grafted watermelon
plants that I purchased from Gel-
lert’s. Out of all melons, I find
watermelon the trickiest to grow
from standard seedlings, whether
raised myself from seed or pur-
chased from the garden centre. I
read that commercial growers all
use grafted watermelon plants,
which are grafted onto pumpkin
rootstock. The reason for this is
because they are more vigorous
and disease resistant. However
don’t let this stop you from trying
to grow watermelon from seed.
Egmont Seeds offer some great
varieties—Charleston Grey, Sugar
Baby, Sugar Belle and Crimson
Sweet. Sugar Baby is a great vari-
ety for areas where summers are
short, as it is faster maturing than
the large oval varieties sold in the
supermarket.
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
Homegrown rockmelon
For rockmelon, you can’t go past
Hale’s Best, which Egmont also
offer, as well as Western Express.
Honeydew is usually one variety,
which Egmont Seeds also sell.
Franchi (distributed by Italian
Seeds Pronto in NZ) have some
interesting and unusual Italian
varieties of melon—Inverno and
Zatta, which are well worth trying
for serious melon growers.
Tips for growing melons
 Melons need
“They can be a little
full sun (at
least six tricky to grow but are so
hours per wonderfully
day) fresh that you’ll never
want to eat store bought
 Prepare the melons again”
ground well
b e fo re ha nd.
I like to mix in lots of com-
post, sheep pellets and ferti-
liser prior to planting.
 I like to grow my melons in
black plastic, making a hole
for each plant. I find that it
warms the soil and keeps it
at a constant temperature.
3. Before planting, I like to
9.
soak each plant, whether
raised from seed or pur-
chased from the garden cen-
tre, in some Seasol diluted
in a bucket of water. This
minimizes transplant shock
and ensures that plants get
off to a strong start
PAGE 3
4. I like to add a scoop of toma-
to fertilizer to each plant’s
hole prior to planting. Did
you know that tomato ferti-
lizer can be used for so
much more than just toma-
toes? It’s suitable for any
flowering and fruiting
plant—zucchini, cucumbers,
pumpkins, squash, melons
and strawberries .
5. Water well at the time of
planting and thereafter.
Try not to get too much wa-
ter on the leaves, which can
be susceptible to powdery
mildew
6. Liquid feed weekly with a
water soluble plant food
such as Thrive or a seaweed
tonic like Seasol
7. Don’t plant your melons too
early. I normally wait until
the third week of November.
By then, night time temper-
atures have increased as it
can still be quite
cool in the eve-
nings in October
juicy and 8. Don’t har-
vest your melons
until they’re ripe.
For watermelon,
the underside
will turn yellow when it’s
ready for picking. You may
also want to give it a thump.
A hollow sound is a sign
that it’s ripe. For rockmel-
on, the best guide is the
smell. The melon should
have a strong aroma when
ripe. The same goes for hon-
eydew melon.
Melons should keep for
around two weeks. Store
them in the fridge to extend
their shelf life.
Have a great weekend
Happy gardening!