I have recently started reflecting on where 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 edibles in the garden which come from Europe. Because there are so many, I decided to divide them into two posts. This post focuses on our favourite brassicas we grow in our garden that are native to Europe. They are cabbage (green and red), cauliflower, broccoli and kale. Since Wombok cabbage (Chinese cabbage) originates from Asia, I will cover that later on when I write about our favourite edibles which are native to that region, of which there are many. If you enjoy gardening, it’s not a bad idea to consider growing the brassicas I mentioned above because they have become rather pricey in New Zealand over the past couple of years, even when they are in season, which for us is during the winter months. Brassicas fare best when grown during the cooler months, so I usually plant them in autumn and winter. If planting brassicas in early autumn, you may need to protect them from the white butterfly. If you want to avoid using a pesticide such as derris dust (which is also available in an organic form), you could always drape fine netting or old net curtains over the plants to protect the white butterfly from laying eggs on the plants which turn into caterpillars who then munch on them rather merrily and can do a lot of damage. I recommend using tunnel hoops to drape the netting fabric over so it doesn’t come into contact with the plants and damage them, similar to the way I cover my strawberries with bird netting. Brassicas are not difficult to grow but can take a long time to mature as growth slows down considerably as it gets cooler. However, there are mini varieties that you can grow which are more compact and mature much more quickly. Another advantage is that because the plants are so compact, they can be planted quite close together. Regular varieties can get quite large and need a wider berth when spacing seedlings. I have grown the mini green cabbages “Ranfurly Mini” and “Space Saver”, the red cabbages “Red Express” and “Ruby Red”, the cauliflower “Majestic Mini” and the broccoli varieties “Mini Italian” and “Mighty Mini”. I highly recommend all of these varieties and have had great success with them. If you are living on your own or with just one other person, or have a large family but other people don’t like eating brassicas, growing mini varieties might be a good idea as it can take a long time to get through a large cabbage or cauliflower. After awhile, they start to lose their freshness. Mini varieties are sometimes small enough to be cooked and consumed in one meal. If you wish to plant brassicas when it has gotten very cold, you can always protect tender seedlings from frosts by covering each plant with a cloche. Cut the bottom off a 2 litre milk bottle and place it over each plant. This also helps keep slugs and snails away from young plants. I don’t recommend relying on this though as they can crawl through the hole at the top, so it’s a good idea to use additional protection to deter them from munching on seedlings. One little tip for growing broccoli is to leave the plant in the ground when you have harvested the main head. After awhile, side shoots will start to form. You can cut these little broccoli florets off the plant. Keep an eye on your plants regularly, as they will continue to form until the plant eventually runs to seed as it gets warmer towards the end of spring or beginning of summer. Kale is a bit different to the other brassicas I have mentioned as it doesn’t form a head and have to harvested at once. You can pick the leaves as you need them. We like using fresh kale leaves in green smoothies. But there are so many other ways kale can be consumed and it is well worth growing in the garden. Towards spring when the plants have fully matured and the leaves are really large, we pick them for making kale chips marinated with olive oil and baked in the oven.
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I have recently started reflecting on where 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 edibles in the garden which come from Mexico. In this post, I will focus on our favourite edibles which come from Europe. I have already covered our favourite flowers in the garden which originate from Europe in my first blog post in this series. Musquee de Provence pumpkin While pumpkins are not native to France, the variety Musquee de Provence comes from Southern France. Now that I am a gardener, when I think of France, an image of the Musquee de Provence pumpkin comes to mind. After that, there are a lot of things I fondly associate with France and way too many to name here, including the beautiful language, rich history and culture, the metro, RER and TGV which enable you to travel everywhere quickly, easily and affordably, rugby, football, the Tour de France, the fabulous cuisine (including gastronomie) bread, cheese, wine and champagne, Monet’s gardens at Giverny, Versailles with its palace and fabulous grounds, Paris (especially the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and le Musée d’Orsay), province (especially the interesting WWII museum in Caen, the Loire and its famous castles, the Alps, the French Riviera and Biarritz), fashion, L’Occitane and Carré Blanc. Unfortunately, because I knew absolutely nothing about gardening when I lived in France many years ago, I didn’t look out for Musquee de Provence at farmers markets in the South of France, where it is sometimes found and sold in wedges, so I read somewhere. This variety is great for making pumpkin soup, which is a favourite of ours in winter. Strawberries According to my research, the first garden strawberry was bred in Brittany, in France. Homegrown strawberries are so much sweeter and juicier than store bought ones, which can be quite tasteless so they are well worth growing in my opinion, even if you only have room for a few plants. Last summer wasn’t a good season for strawberries as we had too much rain in Auckland, but we had an excellent crop the year before that, as you can see in the picture below. Towards the end of the season when they stop producing fruit, the plants produce runners, which are baby strawberry plants. They usually put down roots on their own, but you can peg down any you see that haven’t done so with an n-shaped staple so they form roots. Because the plants have grown much larger and there are so many runners, your patch can end up looking quite messy by the end of the season, like this. Towards the end of autumn I carefully tidied it up, removing any runners that had planted themselves in the pathways and transplanted them into extra rows I created. This made the patch easier to navigate which is essential when harvesting fruit in summer as you need to walk between rows. By transplanting runners and dividing very large plants, you can significantly increase the number of strawberry plants you have and the size of your patch for the following year. This can be time consuming depending on how many plants you have, but in my opinion it is well worth the effort. The green tunnel hoops are for draping bird netting over when fruit starts ripening (usually in mid-spring), to avoid the netting from coming into contact with the plants and fruit. Parsnips Parsnips are native to Europe. I love growing them. They do well sown in spring and autumn and I recently discovered that they can be grown in 35 litre containers, which is really handy if you don’t have much ground space. For the best germination results, I recommend purchasing fresh seeds and storing them in the fridge until you are ready to sow them. This is known as stratification and some seeds benefit from this prior to germination, in order to improve the strike rate which can be hit or miss otherwise. Swiss chard Swiss chard is commonly referred to as silverbeet in New Zealand. It is very easy to grow and is incredibly nutritious. We grow it year round so we can harvest the leaves as we need them. Lately it has become challenging to grow well and succumbs to rust due to the high rainfall we have had in Auckland in the past year. Asparagus
Something that differentiates asparagus from most other veggies is that it is a perennial, rather than an annual plant. In saying that though, in countries with a very hot climate all year round, there may well be lots of plants (both flowers and edibles) that behave as perennials which don’t in more temperate climates and come to an end as it starts getting cooler. Asparagus can be grown from seed or you can purchase one year old crowns from garden centres or mail order suppliers who stock bulbs and other edibles such as garlic and potatoes. The advantage of growing asparagus from seed is that it is much more economical, as one year old crowns can be quite expensive for what they are, which brings me to my next point. I have planted both in our asparagus patch, and I noticed that asparagus grown from seed is always much healthier and produces better, stronger spears than purchased crowns. When purchasing crowns, make sure they haven’t dried out (usually they are sold in bags covered with some dirt or sawdust like lily bulbs, which are in the same plant family) otherwise they won’t be viable. In France, you might come across white asparagus sold fresh in bunches and preserved in bottles. Even though I was not a gardener when I lived there a long time ago, I did notice that because I love asparagus and have never seen white asparagus in New Zealand. However, the heirloom white French variety Argenteuil is available in New Zealand through Italian Seeds Pronto, the NZ importer and distributor of Franchi heirloom seeds from Italy. It is currently out of stock, so keep an eye out for when it becomes available again. 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.
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. As noted in my previous post, I have 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. In this series of blog posts, I will explore some of them. In this post, I will focus on some of our favourite plants which come from South Africa, where mum is from. Although I have never been there, when I think of South Africa as a country, its fabulous and diverse flora and fauna immediately come to mind (among many other things, including rugby, the springbok, boerewors, koeksisters, melktert, De Beers, Krugerrands, the Blue Train, Table Mountain and Robben Island). It also reminds me of a very well-known South African flower farmer, Adene Nieuwoudt, who I follow on Instagram and who I deeply respect and admire. While Adene has specialized in growing flowers, she is also very knowledgeable about veggie gardening. I once read that when she first started gardening, her husband created a veggie garden for her which was the size of a rugby field. There are so many different plants that come from South Africa, but really large gerberas with long stems always come to mind first. This is probably because I’m not able to get my hands on them and we always want what we can’t have. Due to royalty issues they are only made available to commercial flower growers in New Zealand and not to home gardeners such as myself. Incidentally, a commercial grower recently told me that these gerberas have fallen victim to a virus and they are not sure if they will be able to grow them anymore. Although I try my best to keep my blog posts short so they are quick and easy to read, this post ended up getting very long as we have a lot of plants from South Africa in our garden. It is very difficult to cherry pick when they are all equally wonderful to me, so I ended up covering all of them. One of my cousins from South Africa visited us last year and we had lunch together. He is a couple of years younger than me. He doesn’t do any gardening himself, so I was amazed that he correctly named not only all of these plants as we walked around the garden, but also all of our other plants with the exception of our feijoa trees, which is fair enough as they are not found in that part of the world to my knowledge. Protea Since the King Protea is the national flower of South Africa, it makes sense to start here. I have planted a few different proteas over the years but they always ended up dying. I don’t think our conditions are ideal. I have noticed that they do very well in coastal areas in NZ, maybe because they like sandy soil. They also seem to thrive in warmer conditions. I have seen a few large plants in gardens where our bach is, which is 40 minutes north of Kerikeri and on the coast. Because I am an eternal optimist, I couldn’t help but try again and planted a King Protea in our garden last year. So far it is still alive so fingers crossed! Penhill Watermelon dahlia While dahlias are native to Mexico, breeders could technically come from any country in the world and they can name the varieties they breed anything they want. My favourite name is the dahlia known as the Zundert Mystery Fox, which was bred by a German. The dinnerplate variety Penhill Watermelon is very well-known and highly sought after. It was bred by a South African. PW (as it is abbreviated in dahlia circles) is extremely hardy and tends to produce very large clumps at the end of the growing season which divide well. Not all dahlia varieties are that robust and some are very prone to rot. I don’t want to mention any varieties I have had trouble with incase I deter other gardeners from growing them. While they might not perform well in our garden and sometimes in NZ generally according to other dahlia growers I have conversed with, that doesn’t mean that they won’t thrive elsewhere. Calla lilies We have lots of callas in our garden. I used to grow them in containers but the stems were always on the short side, so I moved them to a garden bed a few months ago to see if that helps them develop long stems which are suitable for cutting. Callas are extremely hardy and multiply prolifically. I am very grateful to Kayne from the leading NZ mail order bulbs supplier Bulbs Direct for giving me a mixture of calla bulbs as a gift one year with my order. A couple of years ago, he also kindly sent me a bunch of fresh callas which were beautifully packaged in a box, exactly as they are exported to Japan by their family’s business in Northland. Lachenalias I find these flowers rather charming. They are bulbs that can be grown in garden beds (which is how they were planted at our home in Whangarei when I was a child) or in containers (as they are planted in our Auckland garden). They multiply prolifically if left undisturbed for a few seasons. We have the traditional orange/yellow variety commonly found here. Last year, I added the Turquoise lachenalia Viridiflora to the garden which is native to the Cape Province and is nearly extinct. I hope to do my best to keep this precious species alive and share the bulbs with other gardeners as they multiply. Gladioli Gladioli makes an excellent cut flower as it has long stems and lasts well in a vase. The flowers open from the bottom. I usually pick them when the first flower or two have started opening. In addition to traditional gladioli that flower in summer, we also grow Nanus gladioli, which flower in winter and spring. Freesias Both mum and I love freesias as they are beautiful and highly fragrant. We had hardly any in our garden as they disappeared over the years, so I planted some fresh bulbs in May. Amaryllis Belladonna Amaryllis Belladonna flower in February and March in our garden, which is late summer/early autumn for us. These are extremely hardy bulbs that are usually found in a few different shades of pink and white. White Amaryllis Belladonna can be hard to find in New Zealand and I was very lucky that my cousin in Whangarei gave me a spare bulb, as a colleague gave her two for her garden. It’s a good thing she did that because when she moved house, she lost it and I was able to give her one of mine to help her get started again. They are more commonly known as Naked Ladies because the bulbs don’t have any foliage when they flower. The flowers produce seed heads containing large seeds at the end of the season, which you can collect and replant. Apparently they don’t come true to type, so this is how you could go about breeding a new variety, which is an exciting and interesting thing to do as a passionate gardener. Someone on my gardening page on Facebook advised me to replant the seeds immediately as they lose their viability rapidly. Gloriosa lily I recently added this fascinating plant to the garden last year and it flowered in December. I ordered the bulbs online through Bulbs Direct. I have kept them in large containers as I read that it can potentially become invasive in certain environments, but don’t let that put you off as there are ways around this problem, if there is one at all. Clivia I have found that clivia do best in a shady site. We have several orange varieties and a yellow one in our garden. At one stage, yellow clivia were extremely rare and plants fetched as much as $1,000 each. Years ago I posted a picture of one of our plants in flower on my personal Facebook page. One of my friends who I met through work and has settled in London commented, saying that her family back in Sydney have a lot of them in their garden. They are originally from South Africa. My friend didn’t know what they were, nor did she realise they were native to South Africa, but neither did I until I started gardening a decade ago. Gem squash
When I first started gardening, mum begged me to grow gem squash for her. Luckily a major seed supplier in New Zealand stocks it and it is very easy to grow. You can sometimes find them in the produce department at Countdown in season if you want to buy them, but they tend to be very large and hard, with thick skin. We personally prefer harvesting the fruits when they are young and the skin is tender. We think the flavour is better at this stage but that is a matter of opinion, not fact. I recently started reflecting on where plants in our garden are originally from, because people often ask me the same question about myself. It occurred to me that so many of our flowers, fruits, veggies and herbs are from other countries. I thought it might be interesting to take a tour of the world from the comfort of our home in New Zealand and explore some of them. I like to keep my blogs brief and easy to read, so it makes sense to cover this topic in a series of posts. This is not an exhaustive list by any means. The garden has grown so much over the past decade and encompasses so many different flowers and edibles that it is impossible to cover everything. I have had to cherry pick a few countries and favourites for the purpose of these posts. In this post, I will focus on some of our favourite flowers which either come from or are commonly associated with Europe. Irises I have always associated Le Muguet (Lily of the Valley) with France, which is given as a gift to loved ones on the 1st of May, a public holiday. That is what I learnt at school when I studied French (a unit was devoted to the culture). I didn’t realise that the Iris also has national significance in France, despite living there for four years in my 20s. Daffodils I have always associated daffodils with England, after studying the poem I wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth at school. Tulips While not originally from there, tulips come to mind when I think of the Netherlands (as well as windmills, gouda cheese, clogs, Van Gogh, Rembrandt and the ICJ). Ironically I visited Amsterdam while Keukenhof was open but I didn’t think of going out there as I had no interest in gardening whatsoever back then. David Austin roses
I am a huge fan of David Austin, who was English and is the best and most influential rose breeder of all time in my opinion. We have the following Austin rose varieties in our garden. All of them are 80/90cm standard roses, as with all of the roses in our garden.
I have just been advised that Wairere is finally able to supply The Lady Gardener, which I requested and has been on back order for many years due to supply issues. I am very excited that I will be adding this rose to the garden soon and hope to share a photo on social media when it flowers. One of my cousins lives in Telford, which isn’t that far away from David Austin’s gardens in Shropshire. I visited her once, but it never occurred to me to go there. I also had the opportunity to go the Chelsea Flower Show because I lived in London for eighteen months but I didn’t do that either. One year, I was actually in that area while it was on, having lunch at a friend’s house. The streets were packed with cars and she said “all that fuss over a flower show!”. We both laughed. While it might have been funny at the time, it has come back to haunt me now, especially since I steered the garden in the direction of flower farming in recent years and enjoy creating mass displays of flowers like you sometimes see in public gardens. I have been thinking a lot about Italy lately. The reason is because I started conversing with an Italian I met in an international homesteading forum. He was raised in California and has been living between the US and Italy for most of his life. He is in the process of planting himself in Italy permanently, between Rome and Naples. I couldn’t help but be envious. I am admittedly the world’s worst cherry picker and those are all wonderful places in my opinion for many reasons. Years ago when I worked in an office, I came across a skirt with cherries on it while shopping for clothes. I simply had to have it, because it summed me up perfectly. I don’t wear that skirt anymore now that I am a gardener but even now, if I had to pick fruit for a living, cherries would suit me to the ground. While New Zealand is a very long way from Italy, I have been able to bring Italy to the garden for over a decade by growing veggies and herbs in the famous Franchi Seeds range, which are made available here thanks to the New Zealand importer and distributor Italian Seeds Pronto, which is owned by the lovely Gillian Hurley-Gordon. Franchi Sementi dates back to 1783. All of the seeds in the Franchi range are heirloom, which means that you can save seeds from your plants and be assured that they will come true to type. Just be careful as cross-pollination can sometimes occur. There are ways around this such as planting different varieties far away from each other if space permits, or sticking to just one variety per family if space is tight. In true cherry picking style, I have selected my favourite varieties which I have grown over the years to share with readers. Brassicas I always grow brassicas in our garden during winter. While they take a long time to mature, they are not difficult to grow. I highly recommend Cauliflower Macerata, Cauliflower Romanesco and Broccoli Calabrese. Kale I highly recommend the Black Tuscan Kale Cavolo Nero. It has a wonderful flavour. Towards spring when the plants have grown a lot, we harvest large leaves which are perfect for making kale chips. Lettuce Lettuce is one of my favourite veggies to grow as the taste is so much fresher and succulent than what you would find at the supermarket. Italian Seeds Pronto stock a very wide range and I have enjoyed growing quite a few different varieties over the years. For a peppery flavour, you can’t beat the Rocket Coltivata. I came across Lamb’s Lettuce, which was something I hadn’t heard of until I saw it in Italian Seeds Pronto’s range. My favourite variety is called Verte de Cambrai. Mesclun is really good to have in the garden as it contains lots of different varieties and the leaves can be harvested as you need them. I have grown both Misticanza di Lattughe and Misticanza Quattro Stagioni, which each contain 14 different lettuce varieties. For a great lettuce variety which can be harvested whole or picked as required as a cut-and-come again, you can’t go past Degli Ortolani, which I have grown successfully season after season. It performs well planted both in the ground (ideal if you want it to form a head and harvest it whole) and containers. Spinach There are two fantastic spinach varieties in Italian Seeds Pronto’s range, Merlo Nero and Matador. Both perform very well in spring in our Auckland garden. Zucchini I highly recommend the three zucchini varieties Romanesco, Fiorentino (which wasn’t available last year) and Striato d’Italia. They are prolific, have great flavour and the large flowers are perfect for stuffing. Not all zucchinis produce blooms that are ideal for stuffing. The flowers on my other varieties were small by comparison. Last year, Gillian kindly gave me a round variety called Tondo Chiaro di Nizza, which I had never grown before. It performed incredibly well, despite the floods and cyclones in Auckland. They can be stuffed, baked or steamed. Tomatoes Italian Seeds Pronto offers a wonderful range of tomatoes that are meaty and full of flavour. Eggplants Every summer, I look forward to growing Prosperosa (a round deep purple variety) and Violetta Lunga (a long deep purple variety). I always grow my eggplants in containers as space is tight and I leave the ground for growing root crops as well as veggies that sprawl, such as pumpkins and melons. Pumpkins I highly recommend the variety Marina di Chioggia. Don’t be put off by the warts on the exterior! Personally, I find them charming and they help the pumpkin to store longer. This variety also has a great flavour. One of my favourite ways to consume pumpkin is in cannelloni made with fresh spinach (ideally Matador and Merlo Nero, which are covered above). Herbs Basil Basil is a staple in our summer garden. I always grow it in containers to save ground space for other crops and for ease of harvesting. For pesto, the perfect variety is Italiano Classico which has deep green glossy leaves. For something different, I have also grown the lettuce leaf basil variety Foglie di Lattughe. This variety is ideal for wrapping balls of mozzarella. Parsley Italian Seeds Pronto stock the Italian flat leaf parsley variety Gigante di Napoli, which has a fantastic flavour. Thyme The thyme Timo di Provenza is hands down the best variety I have ever come across. It has so much more flavour compared to common thyme. It did very well in 9 litre household buckets with holes poked in the bottom for drainage. Oregano
We always use fresh oregano in homemade pasta sauce. The oregano in Italian Seeds Pronto’s range has a wonderful flavour. Last summer, I grew bedding begonias (begonia semperflorens) from seed. This wasn’t my first attempt. The first year that I grew bedding begonias from seed, I scattered the seeds in a punnet and covered them with seed raising mix. The germination rate was poor, probably because the seed raising mix was too thick for covering such fine seeds and they struggled to push through the surface. The seedlings were stuck together and the roots became damaged when I tried to prise them apart later on when transplanting them into 6-cell punnets. Thanks to some advice from the extremely helpful John McCullough, the owner of Egmont Seeds, the New Zealand mail order seed supplier that I purchased my seeds from, I managed to perfect my propagation technique last year and was very happy with the results. My favourite colours are bronze leaf white and pink and green leaf white, so I stuck to varieties that fitted this description. All of these were in the Egmont Seeds Commercial Catalogue, which is available from the company upon request. They will send you a link or you can ask if you can purchase a hard copy. This is the catalogue that commercial nurseries use and is different to the catalogue on the website and which is posted to home gardeners every winter. If you order from the catalogue year after year and meet the threshold of the minimum spend, they will send you a complimentary copy by post. Last year, I grew the following varieties from seed:
It is possible to find bedding begonias at garden centres in 6-cell punnets or as potted colour. This is ideal if you only have a small garden or haven’t grown bedding begonias before and want to see if you like them or not. If you need a lot of plants then it is much more economical to raise them from seed, especially since plants have become much more expensive since the pandemic. If you require a lot of plants that are the same colour, it is definitely better to propagate plants from seed as garden centres may have limited colours and numbers of plants. Don’t forget that other people go to the garden centre too and may have already purchased some from the tray, so there might not be enough for your requirements. If this is the case, you could try asking if the garden centre can order what you need from the grower. Here are my top tips for growing bedding begonias from seed:
In the picture above, you can also see some other plants I raised from seed last summer. Behind the trough is Malabar Spinach. To the right are some Climbing Cobra runner beans. Infront of the trough are African marigolds. I have recently written a blog post about growing marigolds, which you can read here if you want.
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.
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