Stuff Digital Edition

What to do in the garden this week

COMPILED BY BARBARA SMITH

Weekend gardener

Scary headlines about the cost of buying fresh veges are all too common. As gardeners, we’re in a privileged position. Many of us grow a few veges and know we could grow more if it became a necessity.

Food waste is another hot topic. Shameful amounts of edible crops are wasted at all stages of commercial production from farm to supermarket to kitchen. There’s waste in our own gardens too – veges gone to seed before they’re harvested and fruit left lying on the ground.

The least we can do is eat what we’ve grown and find good uses for the surplus.

Five ways gardeners can avoid food waste

Eat it all leaf to root: Just as chefs plan snout to tail recipes so no part of a butchered carcass is wasted, you can do the same by eating all of your veges – leaves, stalks, flowers, pods, fruit, peels, seeds and roots.

Do your research first. Some parts of some veges are toxic if eaten in large amounts, for example the leaves of rhubarb, tomatoes and potatoes.

But sometimes the bits we routinely throw away are not only edible, they’re delicious. Just ask my sons who loved eating crisp raw cabbage cores and gobbled up fritters made of silverbeet stalks when they were toddlers.

Explore new recipes and cooking techniques: Cuisines from around the world teach us how to use parts of veges in ways that we may not have considered. Kū mara and broad bean leaves are useful additions to stir-fries and so are the growing tips and tendrils of pea plants.

Presenting food in different ways can trick fussy eaters into trying a once spurned vegetable again. If Grandma’s slimy, boiled silverbeet stalks in white sauce once filled you with horror, try them Italian-style and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Pop veges in a pie, wrap or taco; simmer in a curry, hotpot or stew; grate into fritters or whizz them raw in smoothies – the possibilities are endless. Grow what you (and your family) like to eat in manageable quantities: There’s no point in growing rows of perfect broad beans or kohlrabi if no-one eats them. By all means try new things each season, but if they all end up in the compost try something else instead.

Plant in succession, a few of each crop every couple of weeks, so there is something to harvest every day without an oversupply going to waste.

Pick and preserve: Harvest crops when they’re at their best to save for later. Learn about freezing, bottling, dehydrating, pickling and fermenting and which methods are suitable for each crop.

Share your surplus: Chances are there is somebody near you who would appreciate the extra crops you can’t cope with. Share with friends, family and neighbours and reach out to community groups organising food banks. You may be able to arrange a swap for crops you don’t grow yourself.

How do you make the most of your harvests and reduce food waste? Share your tips by emailing inbox@getgrowing.co. nz.

Sow and plant cabbages

These hardy veges take up a fair bit of space, but can feed you for up to a week per plant – and you can harvest a second crop of mini cabbages after the first head has been picked (more about that later).

Cabbages take between 90-120 days to produce a compact head, so pop in a punnet or a couple of seedlings every fortnight. Or sow seeds in trays; they’ll be ready to transplant outdoors by the first week of July, which means they’ll be ready to harvest in midspring.

That might seem like a long time to wait, but aside from laying a little slug bait and in warmer areas covering with mesh to keep off the white butterflies, you can ignore them until then.

Purple, green, savoy and small space-saving cabbages plus mixed brassica seedlings (including various combinations of cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli and kale) are available now in punnets.

So, how do you get six or more cabbages from one plant? When harvesting, just cut off the edible portion of the head. Cut a cross into the top of the remaining stem and leave it (and the lower leaves) still in the soil. Within a couple of months, you’ll have small sidesprouting cabbages!

Another harvesting tip for small families or if you’re cooking for one, is to just cut a wedge the size you need for a single meal and leave the rest. The remaining cabbage will stay fresher in the garden than in your fridge.

Avoid root and collar rot

Outdoor plants can easily succumb to root and collar rot over winter. This is because they neither grow nor transpire well at low temperatures. This means that wet, airless soil stays that way until sun and wind can dry it out again. A touch of companion planting can work wonders.

Nasturtiums work well as they have large leaves for rapid transpiration, meaning they quickly and steadily pull water from the soil. Simply press a few seeds around vulnerable plants (or buy seedlings) then pull them out in mid-spring. Did you know the leaves and flowers are delicious in pesto, smoothies and salads?

Choose the compact topflowering nasturtium varieties to avoid smothering the plants you’re trying to protect. This trick works especially well for overwintering summer bulbs.

Pest patrol

Down south where there’s been a nip or two of frost, take some comfort in the knowledge that many a garden pest will by now have kicked the bucket, so to speak.

The upper North Island’s warm, sunny autumn seems to have slid towards cooler, wetter weather, but there are still troublemakers, including cabbage white butterflies sniffing around my brassicas.

Whitefly, which are usually thin on the ground by now, and aphids still proliferate, due perhaps not just to warmer than usual temperatures, but the resulting glut of tender plant growth too. Aphids can be very destructive but are easily and (most importantly) effectively controlled by way of largely non-toxic means. Blast them loose with the garden hose and follow up a few days later with a targeted spray with soapy water.

A couple of rainy days has got the snails out in force too. Go on an evening snail hunt before the marauding molluscs chew all your pea and broad bean seedlings down to stumps.

Passionfruit growers should keep an eye out for snails over autumn and winter. While these slimy plunderers clearly enjoy carving their initials into passionfruit leaves, their fondness for the bark is of greater concern. Snails can and do completely ringbark longestablished runners, or worse, the entire plant at ground level.

Weekend Leisure

en-nz

2022-05-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/282398403040249

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