Vegies + Herbs

A collection of 51 posts

Month by Month

June in the vegie patch + greenhouse

I love winter! And I'm not the only one - garlic, onions, all the brassica's, chard, endive, parsley and all manner of leafy greens love it too.

Vegies + Herbs

May In The Vegie Patch + Greenhouse

Harvest kumara, warm-up worm farms, prep asparagus for winter, plan new plantings, and lets not forget the heart of the operation – tis the perfect season for compost making.

Month by Month

April in the veggie patch

Out with the old unproductive plants, and in with the new – now! today! to make the most of the last of the warm days. Start with a whip around, chopping-and-dropping, or chopping-and-compost making, to create space.

Month by Month

March In The Vegie Patch + Greenhouse

As the mornings and nights start to cool off, the soil temperature soon follows. As soil cools, microbes, worms and plant growth slows. Grab the planting window! Focus on planting autumn and winter crops while a little warmth lingers to keep the flow of good food coming into your kitchen.

Vegies + Herbs

January in the Vegie Patch and Greenhouse

Keep planting! In a little and often way to keep the food rolling in.

Month by Month

December in the Vegie Patch

If there's one thing on your mind as you head into summer - let it be soil care. When the soil is well the crops are well. Here are your 3 soil health essentials: * Keep your soil covered in plants at all times. * Plant new crops amongst greencrops,

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Vegies + Herbs

How to Prune + Train Tomatoes, Peppers + Aubergines

Vegies + Herbs

How to Grow Awesome, Organic Tomatoes!

It's entirely possible to grow abundant tomatoes without artificial tomato food, or tricky fertiliser brews. Here are my very simple, tomato growing strategies - each one is a key thread, and success comes when they are all in action, together. Set your tomatoes on the road to glory

Month by Month

November in the Vegie Patch + Greenhouse

The most important mission this month is planting out long term crops like kumara, yams, pumpkins and peppers - drop everything else and get them in the ground! Yams need about 6 months to fatten up, kumara and sweet peppers need 4 - 5 warm months and pumpkins 4 -

Vegies + Herbs

October in the Vegie Patch + Greenhouse

The October vegie patch is pretty dam exciting with seedling raising in full swing and crops boosting away in the warming soil and air. Do your best to keep your head and don't rush into planting summer loving crops on the first fine day! Its hard, I know,

Vegies + Herbs

Speed Spring Crops Along

Heat loving crops like pumpkin, zuchinni or tomato need warmth, its the trick to strong steady growth, and strong steady growth from the outset, makes for awesome crops later on down the track. In an ideal world, we plant our crops out when soil temperatures align with their happy place,

Vegies + Herbs

September in the Vegie Patch + Greenhouse

Septembers plate is refreshingly green: saladings, celery, parsley, leeks, cress, silverbeet, kale, nettle, broccoli shoots for Africa, the last of the cabbage and - joy oh joy the first of the peas and asparagus. There's so much cool stuff to do in the garden right now, so much

Seeds + Seedlings

Spring Seed Raising with Setha

NZ heritage, open pollinated, organically raised seed is the best of the best! We’re so lucky in New Zealand, to have Setha and Roddy at Setha’s Seeds, doing the hard yards to provide us with high quality veggie, herb and companion flower seed for our gardens. Growing from

Vegies + Herbs

August in the Vegie Patch + Greenhouse

The trick to a healthy, productive vegie patch is to keep momentum up - little and often is the way, even when its cold out! Get out there at least once a week to * remove spent crops. Chop them off at ground level then crunch or chop them up for

Vegies + Herbs

Preparing New Vegie Beds

There are two parts to this: first up I'll show you how to work out the most efficient shape for your bed (fyi not necessarily a rectangle and defo not a square!), and then we get down to the business of getting it ready for cropping. In my

Vegies + Herbs

July in the Vegie Patch + Chooks in the Greenhouse

Even when its cold and frosty there's plenty of food to be had from the garden. Here's a quick round up of what we're harvesting to inspire you to a four seasons vegie patch. Leafy greens abound - chard, spinach, parsley, kale, chickweed, cress,

Vegies + Herbs

How to Finish Asparagus + Prep it for Spring

Asparagus ferns will likely be tall and green and ferny, and getting in the way of everything - corral them behind a string-line so as they can finish in peace. Letting the stalks wither and go full cycle is a nourishing and important step in the process towards an abundant

Pests + diseases

Dear Kath, my tomatoes have blight...

Dear Kath, the tomatoes in my greenhouse are suffering from blight. What can you advise to treat them? Is it a deficiency in the soil or a pest? thanks A deficiency, in this case, of soil microbes, and the solution is simple as. Read through my very simple, tomato growing

Vegies + Herbs

How to Grow Basil

Basil is a queen, and needs to be treated just so - her tolerance for anything other than perfect is low and if you dish it out she'll let you know with fungus-y foliage, black streaks, pale leaves, tough leaves, poor growth or by rushing off to seed.

Start a garden

My 3 Fav Ways to Start a Vegie Patch

Here are my three favourite ways to begin a vegie patch. All are variations of no-dig, and all grow brilliant vegies with no bought fertiliser. The only buy ins are greencrop seeds and perhaps compost, if need be. The first method, and my all time favourite is - "No

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Seeds + Seedlings

The Perfect Soil Temperature for Seeds + Seedlings

Vegies + Herbs

How to Grow Celery

Homegrown celery is so efficient (and delicious!), gifting a lot of crop, in a small space. By regularly harvesting the big, outside stalks you inspire fresh, new ones to come. In this way, a happy celery plant can perpetuate for years, and that's the trick - to keep

Fruit Trees + Berries

My Three Fave Nurseries

Buy your fruit trees and companion plants from one of our small, owner operated, NZ nurseries. Tap into their experience, their range of unusual and heritage varieties, and score yourself tasty, trusty, reliable trees and plants. These passionate nursery women and men are doing important work keeping older varieties going

Vegies + Herbs

How to Feed Your Veggie Patch

Overfeeding is easily done. Surrounded as we are, by seductive marketing and miracle soil food, home gardeners fertilise wildly. Less really is more. All you need provide is just enough. But first you need to know this: The main player in fertility isn't the things you add to

Soil health

Soil Preps for Heavy Feeder Crops

Heavy feeders are called heavy feeders because they are hungrier than light feeders. It's not that they need piles of fertiliser, what they need, is just enough... steady, not boom and bust. Overfeeding is, long term, perhaps worse than under feeding. Today is all about how much is