The heat and the rain

Hello! I am writing to you from Picton. We are here for my daughter’s birthday. The weather is, er, definitely weathering but it hasn’t stopped us. I was a bit bummed to see so many pine trees on our boat trip around the Sounds today, I was hoping for the beauty of Doubtful Sound, but we helped deliver mail by boat so I would never complain- it’s been a blast.

I am on my laptop, which I have discovered has a bung charging port (it keeps turning off) and doesn’t want to give me access to my phone’s photos (for reasons that will forever be a mystery), so I am going to include photos but they may be a bit…less relevant. Sorry.

This is the key weekend for gardening

This is it, this Sunday, the last day to plant Summer veg. I know this all sounds a bit depressing, but try to think of your vege garden as a year round thing that is bountiful when you have the time, and chilling out when you do not. I plant year round and enjoy my garden year round, I hope you do too :)

I would still bother to plant-

• Beans

• Herbs

• Root veg

Plants that will not produce food before the weather gets too cold, if they are not well on their way already (ie don’t bother planting)-

• Zucchini (I am hopefully planting one more when I am back, but it’s always a faff)

• Tomatoes

• Any sort of pumpkin or cucumber

• Any sort of eggplant, capsicum, chilli

Some fun plants to buy and pot up, to keep indoors in Winter and get a head start in Spring-

Grab a bargain at the garden centre!

• Capsicums and chillis

• Eggplant

Plants I would not bother with for a month or so-

• Leafy greens (unless in a cooler spot, they will just go to seed)

• Broad beans (they tend to get rust)

• Brassicas like broccoli or cauliflower (they need a consistent temperature their whole growing season or they will bolt and not amount to much)

One extremely munted romanesco broccoli for you- see how bits are starting to grow upwards? It is bolting and trying to flower. I picked this on the absolute last day I could, to eat- the taste is diminishing and it would soon be a big stem of yellow flowers.

Consider letting these plants go to seed and drop seeds everywhere-

• Coriander, it’s happiest when it has grown from seed in your garden

• Lettuce, because how easy would that be to always have lettuce in your garden

• Silverbeet/spinach, see above

• All of your flowers! See what happens!

• I am also doing this with my roses, just for fun.

Some self seeding beetroot. The beetroot itself is now too big and getting a bit bitter, but I decided to leave this to flower and then set seed all over the garden because the chickens will enjoy eating all of the baby seedlings.

Other important things to start doing

The ol’ chop and drop season is upon us. When you chop something off a plant, unless it is particularly large, try to let it stay where the cuttings fall. This provides vital mulch for the ground, keeping it cooler and retaining moisture; most garden beds are also so full right now that you generally don’t notice the mess.

I would also like to advocate hard for you to begin cutting things back as needed- the plants, when cut, will bush out (so this is a good idea for bushes and hedges and trees that you want to stay smaller), and if you leave it all until Autumn then your garden will look very untidy. Try to coast into Autumn with a slowly thinning garden.

Keep an eye on all of your potted plants, and indoor plants- it is so warm, and many potted plants don’t get direct rainfall, so they need watering up to 3 times a week. Don’t water your indoor plants until a finger jammed in the soil comes out dry- or you will end up with fungus gnats, tiny wee flies that live in your soil.

Bonus extra thing

Here is Blair’s felafel recipe (as you can see, a well-used recipe). I use it to use up all of my broad beans- it is in fact the only thing I do with my broad beans! Fry it up with a lot of oil and put it in a wrap.

The only reason I am posting it up, aside from the fact that I am harvesting the last of my broad beans, is because I accidentally uploaded it when trying to find the buxus spray photo for the paid blog! But I do hope you try it, if/when you are lumped with a huge load of broad beans. I simply shuck all of my broad beans, weigh them and then upscale the recipe to fit with the amount of beans I have.

That’s it from me folks, have a great week!