In My Garden - Frank and Laura June 2020

In My Garden - Frank and Laura June 2020

Frank and Laura have been living on their 2 ½ acre property in Otago for just over 3 years and Frank has spent many hours working to make their garden beautiful and productive. A lot has changed since The Group visited them in October of 2018. Frank takes us on a walk around his garden to show us what’s happening there now.

As winter sets in, it's a good time to do some of the bigger landscaping jobs around the property. The slope leading up to the chicken run is now 3 simple steps up making it safer, easier and cleaner for us to visit our girls every day. The base of the steps is made of fruit from trees on our property: bushy yates and sheoak. We prefer this to gravel or other materials that might make their way into one of the veggie patches or under the lawn mower.

Another project that’s almost complete is a new bed. The first planting will be the winter brassicas (kohlrabi, broccoli, cauliflower) but it will enter the normal rotation of food that all of our beds enjoy. In the background you can see a few of the beds at the top of the orchard, even at this time of year they’re providing: spring onions, potatoes stored in ground, carrots, lettuce aplenty and the ever-present volunteer silver beet.

The brassicas that are destined for that new bed have been sprouting in our glass house over the past few weeks. The glass house is a pretty open affair and I’ve found that covering them at night helps with germination.

Those brassicas will join the other produce growing happily in various beds including broad beans and peas which are both well established even after a bit of nibbling by a passing possum or rabbit.

As our berries and fruit trees are going into their dormant phase, there’s one tasty productive plant that we just can’t get enough of: Cape gooseberries. We got our first plant from the produce table at a garden visit with the group. I’ve propagated that and grabbed another freebie so we now have three. There will be more to come. They produce all year long and it’s a rare day that we don’t walk through the orchard snacking on a Cape gooseberry.

As the seasons change it takes a bit of planning and creativity to decide what to plant where. We have a lot of space so I don’t have to be overly ruthless in pulling out plants that are less-than-impressive. The celery never did amazingly well but the leaves and stems are full of flavour and enhance a stir fry or soup. And our poor fennel that never managed to produce a bulb has provided lots of leaves to spice up salads and cooked meals.

We realise how lucky we are to have a northern aspect right on the river. Where friends have already been hit by heavy frosts, we’ve avoided any so far and only expect mild frosts to stunt some of the more vulnerable plants in our garden. Our oca is powering on, it will still be a few weeks before we harvest and I’ve just planted a new potato bed with potatoes that have sprouted in our root cellar. I am sure there will be years when a hard frost will impact our plants but I’ll keep planting and hoping that this won’t be that year.

There are always plenty of projects to tackle in the garden and winter is no exception. On my to-do list for June is to plant out some strawberry runners. I have 2 beds on the go now but I want 3 so I can always have 3 years’ worth of plants and, hopefully enough berries to freeze. I’ll also finish getting our new hazelnut trees into the ground. They were offered up on Facebook by fellow club member Alicia. Many thanks!! This is one of the great things about the Food Garden Group – the sharing of ideas, produce and plants enriches all our gardens.