GREENHOUSE October in the Greenhouse There's a gradual take over happening in the October greenhouse as new crops of tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, courgette, cucumber, dwarf beans + basil are planted out amongst finishing winter salads, bok choy, spinach, + celery.
VEGIES + HERBS Year-round Leafy Greens Leafy greens are the best! They win 'Most Resilient Crop of All' for being the easiest to grow, hands down the most nutritious and so very generous - they give and give. Try a few new ones each season and steadily build a diverse collection that’ll take you
FRUIT TREES + BERRIES My Healthy Fruit Tree Game Plan Healthy fruit trees come from you taking care of all the following nuts and bolts. Not just one or two, but all of them! An environment such as this isn't built in a day. Mostly we've inherited monocultures with no spine - weakened via over fertilisation and
PRUNING My Favourite Pruning Tools The right tools for the job, make all the difference. Loppers This is where you spend the money, if you can. These are industry standard loppers, made right here in Levin. I've had these for about 15 years and quite frankly - I expect to be buried with them.
HARVEST + STORE Harvest Smarts - Squash, Pumpkin + Kumara Please be patient my gardening friends! Don't rush to harvest your squash and pumpkins. For sure, they look ready on the outside - but until the stalk dries off, there's still work to be done on the inside. Let it finish, and be rewarded with deeper, richer
HOMEMADE How To Make Echinacea Tincture This is me and my dear friend - medical herbalist, Ali Sutherland - making our annual supply of Echinacea tincture. An essential in both our homes first aid kit for preventing colds, hay fever and infections. A tincture - for those who are unsure, is a herb steeped in alcohol to extract the
COMPOST + WORMFARMS Can I Compost Diseased Plant Matter? Yes! Yes, you can. Nature specialises in detoxifying and outcompeting pathogens. A compost heap is full of life, more than equipped for this job. Visualise a bunch of pac-men zooming about gobbling up the bad guys and you're not far off it. Further biology enters the fray
MULCH + LIVING MULCH 3 Ways To A Living Mulch Living mulch (covering the soil with plants), is the most nourishing mulch of all. A soil covered with plants is alive! Living on and in and around plant roots is a diversity of soil life forms - fungi, nematodes, protozoa, bacteria, arthropods and of course worms, these team up with plants
PESTS + DISEASES Coping with Green Vegetable Bugs The Importance of the Right Name When learning about a pest, begin your journey by finding out it's scientific name. The bug I'm ruminating on today is the Green Vegetable Bug Nezara Viridula, also called green vegetable beetle, stink bug or shield bug. These other names
PRUNING Back to Basics: Fruit Tree Pruning Videos Here are a couple of videos that I hope will give beginners a bit of pruning confidence. Thanks to my buddy Ray at Soulhaven Productions for making them and thanks to Barry for letting us film his trees! These fruit tree pruning videos won't answer all your questions,
COMPOST + WORMFARMS Cheat's Compost I don't always keep up with compost making. There's many a moment when I have crops ready to plant but no compost to hand. In which case, I whip around the garden and creatively rustle up some soil food, or cheats compost as I affectionately call
HARVEST + STORE How to Pick and Store Plums There's a small window, a perfect moment when fruit is ripe for picking. The only way you catch it is by keeping an eye on your crops. With a plum harvest, I reckon it's just before it hits the ground. Pick your plums when the skin
FRUIT TREES + BERRIES How To Bird Net Your Fruit Trees There is only one sure way to keep the birds off your fruit - and that's to bird net. I write this today because this is the question on your lips, and you're all so disgruntled when I answer bird net! Why do you all hate bird
PESTS + DISEASES How To Prevent + Deal with Garlic Rust Rust is an airborne, parasitic fungi that makes your plants look, well - rusty! The raised, orangey spots cover the foliage quickly when conditions are ideal and in a severe case, the leaves yellow, shrivel and die. With the foliage unable to convert energy in its usual efficient style, bulbs are
PESTS + DISEASES Preventing + Managing Fungal Disease By far and away the most common cause of garden disease is airborne fungi. The mild moist conditions of spring set the scene for primary infections of rust, black spot, leaf curl, shot hole, brown rot and other fungal delights. Great news is fungal disease can on the whole be
HOMEMADE Kawakawa + Ginger Tea Kawakawa has a special place in my heart - it was the first 'real' (ie not from a bag) herb tea I ever made many moons ago. Such a powerful healer - 72 medicinal uses according to Murdoch Reilly's "Maori Healing and Herbal" - and I was
