Tip of the week - Grow your own veges and what you can't buy local and in season

Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Its the beginning of spring so its time to start thinking about gardens again and looking forward to lots of healthy salads and other great summer food!!  This is also a good practice to improve your sustainability. 

So I am going to share some of the things I do in my garden (believe me I don't have a big garden and I am no garden expert).  I have done most of what I do by trial and error.  I am looking forward to lots of comments on this blog with your tips and ideas to improve my garden this year too!!  Together all the tips should make for some fabulous garden crops this year!!  My garden is based in Christchurch on the flat.  We get lots of frosts, it can get very dry but also has some spots which get good sun, though apart from the patio, none of the places I plant things get ALL DAY SUN.

1.  If you have never grown stuff before the easiest things I find to grow are:
Lettuces - choose the ones that you can just take outside leaves off, and plant just 2 or 3 at one time and plant some more seedlings a week or 2 later so that you aren't in undated with lettuce!  Lettuces grow spring through autumn.  Once the lettuce is finished let it go to seed and you'll get lots of lettuce seedlings sprinkled round you garden which you can let grown, transplant or give to friends!
Parsley - plant it in a few places to see where it likes best, once its finished let it seed and like lettuces you will have parsley everywhere! 
Mint - grows like wildfire all year.  Just cut it back or pull it out if it spreds to far and it will just keep oin growing. 
Silver beet - grows all year, just take the leaves as you need them, and again when its finished let it seed.

2. Pototoes - you can grow these even in small places.  Buy seed pototes and sprout them, then plant 1 sprouted seed pototes in a PB40 polythene bag (available from any gardening store) which has been half filled with potting mix/soil/compost (whatever you use).  Roll down the sides.  As the pototes gorws and noduls start forming that will be pototoes, slowly unroll the side of the PB40 bag and add more soil to keep the newly forming pototes from going green.  Keep them well watered. 

3. Cherry Tomatoes - plant when the last frosts have gone!!  Use quality potting mix (or ensure it is rich with nutirients from your ghome compost bin!!).  About 4-5 plants will feed a family of 4 for 4-8 weeks depending on how well you water and look after them.  You can either stake them up or what I found worked really well last year is letting them grow along the ground (with pea straw underneath) and draped over our box hedge (this was one of those we went on holiday and they were small and when we got back they were too big to stake errors that showed me this worked and then it was backed up by feedback from other people).

4. Citrus - Citrus grow well as long as they have good sun and are protected from frosts (on and they needs lots of water too!!  I have 2 in the garden and 2 in pots.  Especially those in pots need to be watered daily as they dry out and fertilised but they provide a good crop of lemons, mandarins, lemonade and limequat each year and as they get bigger there may be extras for making marmalade, lemon honey and other such yummy things!!

5. Deciduous Fruting trees - yes they can get big but you can buy dwarf varieities or just keep the trees you buy pruned to the saize you want.  Now is a good time to plant these.  I have an Apple and Nectairne which produce the best tasting apples and nectarines.  Honestly the taste difference between mine and those in the shops really makes you wonder about mass produced fruit!!!

6. Grapes - If you ahve a great sunny fence, run some wire a long it and plant a grape.  I do nothing to moine but prune it at the end of the season (and the extra growth mid season) and it produces so many grapes the kids can stand at the grape vine everyday after school for weeks and eat them to their hearts content and we still don't run out. 

7. Rubarb - If you like rubarb this is a great plant that you can just harvest as you need.  Take the outside stems first.  It likes lots of nutirient rich soil so I just pile horse manue around mine.  It dies back each winter then reaoppears again.  We get a few rubarb crumbles and plenty of rubarb for breakfast from ours. 

8.  Strawberries - these grow well in tubs and in raised gardens.  They spread laterally forming new plants each year.  Each plant fruits well for about 4 years.  Put pea straw between the soil and the fruit to stop the fruit rotting and cover to prevent birds getting them.  They say about 25 plants will do a family of 4.  And the strawberries are way better than most that you buy!!

Try and garden without adding too much fertliser or sprauying.  Learn about companion planting to reduce pests and also it is possible to buy ladybirds now which are apparently excellent at keep the vege garden bug free. 

And if you can't grow it  - try and buy products produced as locally as possible and buy in season to save money and the environment.  For example: remember that to grow tomoatoes in winter in New Zealand you need indoor glass houses with lots of artifical UV light and heating.

2 of my neighbours have turned there residential gardens into 100% edible gardens.  I don't think I will manage that with mine, but every time I go to redo an area of the garden I think about whether I could turn that area into something edible. 

Remember Helen's tip from last week about growing seedlings in out spouting then pouring them into a trench in the garen without having to disturb them - great tip!!  Also remember that you can grow veges and fruit in a pot, planter box or just those PB40 bags.  THe PB40 bags can be reused year after year and when not in use they are very small which is good for storage. 

 I think that is enough to get you thinking - arm youself with a great book that is about gardening in New Zealand.  I recently found these 2 New Zealand based books which look great, even for the most ungreen thumb:

• Vegetable Gardening
• Fruit Gardening

Best of luck planning you edible garden and enjoying the products!!

Have a great and sustainable weekend.

Kind Regards
Francesca Matthews
Sustainability Champion for the Otago Polytechnic School of Veterinary Nursing