Advice. Ideas.

Inspiration

Anita’s Garden
Volume 3, Issue 34 12 March 2021

Useful Links Editorial

Webpage

Blog Welcome to the thirty-fourth issue transplanting later on

of my newsletter for Volume 3.  Sow coriander direct—either in
Newsletter back issues
I hope you are all well. I’d like to take the ground or in containers
Facebook this opportunity to warmly welcome
 Plant herbs—thyme, oregano,
Instagram new subscribers to my newsletter.
chives and parsley. All of these
This week’s article on page 3 is one can be grown in the ground or in
Twitter
which is very close to my heart. I dis- containers.
Linkedin cuss the concept of taking “gardening
 Add neem granules to the soil
leave”, that is, a sabbatical from gar-
Pinterest around plants that attract the
dening. The idea was shared with me
guava moth, to prevent them
pre-emptively from a wiser, much
from breeding in the ground over
more experienced gardener during my
the cooler months. Plants affect-
Contact me early gardening days. After this sum-
ed include guavas, feijoas, citrus,
mer, I felt it was high time that I
plums, peaches, apples and
 Feedback drew on her advice. Whatever stage
pears.
of gardening you are currently at, I
 Newsletter input hope you find the article useful.  Keep harvesting summer crops
(tips, recipes, gar-
In the meantime, there is plenty to be which are still producing—dwarf
den photos etc)
getting on with around the garden! beans, chillies, eggplants and
 To be added to my Now that we have entered autumn, capsicums.
mailing list it’s a good time to do the following:  Preserve, make recipes or freeze
anitakundu.nz@gmail.com  Remove summer crops which any excess autumn fruit so it
have finished and replenish doesn’t go to waste.
your garden beds by adding  Liquid feed new seedlings every
compost, sheep pellets and fer-
week with a water soluble plant
Inside this issue: tiliser before digging them over. food or seaweed tonic
 Sow a cover crop (a great idea if
 Start planting spring bulbs
you’re taking a gardening sab-
P ot te r ing aro u nd 2 batical)  Save cloves from your best seed
Anita’s Garden garlic for replanting later in au-
 Plant seedlings for autumn and
tumn
winter. These include broad
Top 5 gardening tasks 2 beans, beetroot, fennel, kohlra- Useful links
for the week bi, kale, lettuce, silverbeet,
spinach, broccoli, cabbage and  Italian Seeds Pronto
cauliflower.
News 2  Awapuni
 Sow carrots and radish direct
 Bulbs Direct
 Sow rocket direct
Kind regards,
Going on gardening leave 3
 Plant new tamarillo and pas-
Anita Kundu
sionfruit plants

 Sow peas in punnets for

PAGE 2
Pottering around Anita’s Garden
I recently harvested this water-
melon. It is the variety Charles-
ton Grey, which I grew from seeds
purchased from Egmont Seeds.
Last summer, I sowed many dif-
ferent watermelon varieties. The
ones which grew successfully were
Sugar Baby, Georgia Rattlesnake
and Charleston Grey. I picked
them when they died off the vine.
Top 5 gardening tasks for the week
1. Plant seedlings for au-
tumn and winter
Now that it’s a bit cooler, it’s the
perfect time to get your plants in
for the cooler months.
2. Label your dahlias
While you might remember all the
different varieties you planted
while they’re in flower in the gar-
den, when you lift them in the
News
Italian Seeds Pronto stock two
wonderful varieties of Lamb’s Let-
tuce—D' Olanda A Seme Grosso
and Verte de Cambrai. I have
grown both in the past and highly
recommend them. I like sowing
them in seed raising trays, which
keeps them compact. We pick the
leaves as we need them. Both va-
rieties are ideal for sowing going
into the cooler seasons.
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
I’m really surprised that so many
of my dahlias are still in flower!
Normally they’ve absolutely had it
by this time of the year, but I’ve
been lucky enough to be able to
put them in autumn bouquets.
Dahlias don’t last very long in a
vase but they do look beautiful.
coming months, you won’t be able
to tell them apart. I use flagging
tape tied around the base with a
permanent marker to label mine.
3. Refresh your
baskets
If your hanging baskets look any-
thing like mine, they’ll need re-
freshing with new plants for au-
tumn. Awapuni have a great
Bulbs Direct have a lovely selec-
tion of ranunculus this season.
Choose from Mahogany, Gold,
Pink, Red, Orange, White and
Salmon. If choosing is too hard,
get the ranunculus Mix. At just
$22 for 100 corms, it is excellent
value. Staggering your planting
times will ensure that you have a
continuous display of beautiful
flowers all season.
V O LU M E 3 , I S S U E 3 4
A trio of produce harvested from
our garden—dwarf butter beans,
long eggplants and feijoas. De-
spite cooler temperatures now that
we are into autumn, we have still
been harvesting a lot from the gar-
den. The dwarf beans were sowed
in early January as I was aiming
for a March and April crop, when
our summer veggies have come to
an end.
range of pansies and viola.
4. Sow peas in punnets
If you struggle to grow them when
sown direct, you can sow peas in
hanging punnets for transplanting later on.
5. Harvest feijoas
Keep on top of your crop by har-
vesting them every day. We’ve
been freezing the pulp, too.
Awapuni has a special on at the
moment. Purchase a 50 mixed
Native combo and get 4 estab-
lished red kakabeak plants FREE!
Purchase a 100 mixed Native com-
bo and get 8 established red kaka-
beak plants FREE! This offer is
available until 9 am Monday 15
March 2021 or while stocks last.
 V O LU M E 3 , I S S U E 3 4
Going on gardening leave
Do you love gardening, but feel
like you simply can’t continue to
keep up with it? If you’re a sea-
soned gardener like me, you may
reach a point of exhaustion at
some stage. This happened to me
after summer was over. I had al-
ready propagated seedlings for
autumn but had no idea how I
would find the energy to plant our
autumn and winter garden. One
solution to this problem is to take
a break from gardening for a sea-
son and return to it refreshed.
This was actually the advice given
to me by a fellow gardener from
Fielding who visited my garden in
its early days. Louise is a much
more experienced gardener than
me and has a 10 acre block. She
told me that she and her husband
were taking a much-needed gar-
dening holiday and limiting them-
selves to planting simple things
like spinach. At the time, I was
fairly new to gardening and could-
n’t conceive of the idea that anyone
could tire of it. But nine years
down the track, I completely un-
derstand. Gardening can be all-
consuming. In those 9 years, I
established an urban homestead at
home, making us largely self-
sufficient. Our garden featured in
the New Zealand Gardener maga-
zine. I also entered (and came sec-
ond) in a national gardening com-
petition run by Yates. This all
took a lot of dedication and hard
work.
Knowing when to take a break
The best advice I have to offer is to
take a break before you reach
breaking point. This is the mis-
take I made. Sometimes you don’t
always realise that you’re in way
over your head until it’s too late,
like me.
Sometimes you’ll need to take a
break from your garden due to a
major life event, such as a sched-
uled surgery, moving house or an
overseas trip. These intervening
events make it easier to schedule a
break from your garden.
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
Dealing with guilt
Things are often a double-edged
sword. Gardening is one example.
Recognise the nature of a love-hate
relationship with something you
feel so deeply passionate about.
Don’t feel bad for taking a break.
Taking a complete break
If you’re really exhausted or una-
ble to do any gardening due to re-
covering from surgery or an ill-
ness, you may want to take a com-
plete break from the garden.
In this case, it’s a good idea to
plant a cover crop in your garden
beds, as a way of replenishing the
soil with nutrients and keeping the
weeds down. This is particularly
useful if you farm your land very
intensively (as we do) or are in the
habit of planting the same crops in
the same area, season after sea-
son.
Taking a partial break
If you’re in need of a break from
gardening but simply can’t part
with it entirely, tak-
ing a partial break
“If you’re a seasoned
may be the solution
gardener like me, you may
for you. As my
reach a point of exhaustion
cousin Daniel told
at some stage”
me over the week-
end, “why does it
have to be all or nothing?”. His
advice was to simply scale back
the size of my project. As men-
tioned earlier in the article, my
friend Louise stuck to planting
really simple things during her
gardening sabbatical. I have put
together a list of tips for people
who want to downsize for a season.
 Consider focussing on grow-
ing flowers rather than veg-
gies for a season. While ex-
tremely rewarding, veggie
gardening is also much more
labour intensive. Flower
gardening is less work. You
could sow a patch of wild-
flowers in spring, for a beau-
tiful display during the
PAGE 3
warmer months.
 If you’re keen on growing
flowers, try and stick to va-
rieties that can be sown di-
rect, which is less work than
raising seedlings in trays for
transplanting later. Exam-
ples of flowers that can be
sown direct include wild-
flowers, poppies, cosmos,
sunflowers and zinnias.
 If you simply cannot part
with growing veggies, pop in
some punnets rather than
propagating plants from
seed. Seed raising requires
a lot of work and you almost
always end up sowing more
than you need (and have
room for!) because it’s so
much more economical. If
you have to fork out for your
plants, you’ll end up plant-
ing less as the cost of buying
punnets quickly adds up.
 If you want to grow veggies
during your gardening sab-
batical, stick to easy things
as Louise sug-
gested. She gave
the example of
spinach. This is
a good option as
some varieties
can be harvested
as you need it. Tomatoes,
capsicums, chillies and egg-
plants are more work as
they constantly produce
fruit, which need harvesting
as soon as they mature.
Other veggies which are
easy to grow include carrots,
parsnips, silverbeet, kale,
lettuce, rocket, mesclun,
microgreens, endive, radic-
chio, kohlrabi, fennel, rad-
ish, beetroot and dwarf
beans.
Have a good weekend
Happy gardening!