Garden time
Garden time
Up here in Northland, I try to have my vegetable garden well underway before the weather dries up. When I lived further down country, Labour weekend, usually around October 20th, was the time for planting but up here that is too late, except for peas and beans that need the warmer soil.
Once Christmas comes, gardening becomes too difficult, both with the pests such as white butterfly and green beetle but also because of the difficulty in hydrating the soil. So, I like to get my planting done in August or September so that most of the produce is ready before Christmas. After this, I buy from local market gardeners, finding produce is abundant and reasonably priced at this time, before planting a winter garden, generally about March. Of course, when one buys their food, one doesn’t know what chemicals or sprays have been used to grow it but often there is a supply of organic produce if necessary.
Yesterday, I staked the tomatoes, now about 20cm high. The other veges that I planted earlier are all doing well, except for the basil plants, that were totally destroyed by the slugs and snails. I prefer two methods for dealing with these. One is to go out at night, where they are often in the process of feeding. They are easy to detect and kill, or secondly, to find their hiding places. In the vege garden, which is surrounded by corrugated iron, they usually hide in the stones around the supporting posts.
What I found interesting yesterday, was how dry the soil was, already. It was actually dusty. Now this season, we have had a lot of rain and I haven’t thought it necessary to start watering yet. When I checked other areas of the garden, I found them to be equally dry. We have sandy soil here anyway, so any moisture doesn’t stay long. There were foreboding clouds overhead and I suspected it might rain but as is often the case at this time of year, that didn’t happen. We generally spend about 30 minutes watering the garden, each, or at least, every second night, but at the peak of summer, that does little good. We are lucky in that we have two tanks, one we use for household requirements, and the other for watering. Our tanks have often gotten pretty low, but to this point, we have not had to buy water as many other people do.
However, we do have another problem when the tanks get low and that is of bacteria contamination. We tested our water last year and found the e-coli levels were higher than they should have been. Adding concentrated hydrogen peroxide took care of that problem and is something we will probably need to keep doing in the future, but at least that is not an issue with the water we use on the garden.
Another job Stephen did yesterday was to board up the bottom of the compost bin. We had used some of the lower material earlier, when the top hadn’t finished decomposing. However, that is now all broken down and ready for use.
I also replanted more basil yesterday and some coriander. I have yet to check their status this morning. Hopefully I got the offending snails in my last hunt.
The soil will be plenty warm enough for the peas and beans too, so that is another job waiting for me.
I have shifted a lot in my life and it is interesting discovering the plants that grow more easily or less so in the different areas and the methods one has to use to get the same outcome. One of my favourite plants, the Daphne, died, as did the Winter Sweet. Both of these are suited to colder climates, I discovered. And for the life of me, I have had very little success with peppers. I may get one or two, but they don’t fruit for me until very late in season, yet I know others around who have bumper crops. The same with garlic. I have planted both again this year. I think it may be something to do with not enough water and each time I say to myself that I will give them heaps more, but obviously. I still don’t give them enough.
Perhaps this year I will spend more time watering.