Spring has sprung - it's blossom season!

Whoohoo! My plum tree burst into a cloud of white blossoms overnight. Its lichen-encrusted branches are now also blossom-encrusted, which means I'll be eating my first plums in about 100 days from now. I don't know what the variety is but the plums ripen just before Christmas and have red skins and yellow flesh. They're small but they make the best damn jam on the planet! (Although perhaps I'm a little biased.)
My first spring plum blossoms offer both good news and bad news. Good, because it means spring is officially here to stay – but also bad because it means that, yet again, I’ve failed to give the tree the decent winter prune it deserved (and desperately needs). The whole tree is basically a scraggly mess of overlapping branches and scrawny shoots. It looks like the 'before' photo in a pruning guide, but I couldn't bear to snip off any of those potential plum-bearing buds now... so it looks like that job will have to wait until autumn! Other signs of spring in my garden? Helleborus 'White Magic' remains a picture under my bangalow palms; the stinking hellebore, Helleborus foetidus, is a vision of verdant prettiness; and all the clivias under my two old kanuka trees are starting to produce glowing orange flowers en-masse. The fragrant Michelia 'Mixed up Miss' trees I've planted around my deck are now shedding their snow white petals everywhere and the apple trees will be next to blossom. Which reminds me: I must check out the crab apples when they arrive in bloom at my local garden centre - for ornamental blossoms, they're unbeatable.
How's your garden looking right now - and what are your favourite spring sights? Post your thoughts and comments below or email me at mailbox@nzgardener.co.nz and you'll automatically go into the draw to win one of five deliciously-scented sets of Peony Blossom Drawer Sachets from The Aromatherapy Company. These beautifully-packaged sachets will keep your bedroom drawers or wardrobe smelling as delicious as your garden this spring.

Giant pumpkins & 'Skyscraper' sunflowers

Instead of spending billions trying to genetically modify soy beans, I reckon the world’s multinational chemical companies should try to find a way to intervene in the inevitable transition of sweet-natured kids into surly teenagers. I’ve just returned from two days in a gloriously sunny and still Wellington, hosting gardening workshops for students from primary and intermediate schools across the country. The 2007 Kids Conference was held at Victoria University and was organised by an incredibly energetic teacher called Nik Edwards from Raumati South School near Wellington. What a great event – it’s a credit to him that more than 400 kids now know the ins and outs of a whole bunch of subjects, from gardening to making their own movies and cartoon artistry.
It’s been a long time since I hung out all day with a group of kids (it’s been two decades since I was their age, after all!) and I have no idea what’s cool in youth culture. I was pretty sure they’d probably rather be chatting on cellphones and using computers than getting their hands dirty learning to sow seeds, but I was wrong. What a neat group of kids – they surprised me with their gardening knowledge, their eagerness to learn and their lovely nature. I sent them all home with ‘Atlantic Giant’ pumpkin and ‘Skyscraper’ sunflower seeds to grow, plus the promise of a $100 prize for whoever grows the biggest pumpkin and the best sunflower. Watch this space: I’ve asked them to email me over the next few months with progress reports so I can publish them online.

Blooming daffs & top hats

Read any gardening magazine at this time of the year and I bet you'll find daffodils described at least once as "cheerful harbingers of spring". It's a perennial favourite (hah, so is "perennial favourite") of garden writers and I'm guilty of using it myself, even though I'm pretty sure I could never actually drop "harbinger" into any sort of conversation without sounding like a pompous prat. It sounds like the sort of thing only fusty English gardeners or members of the Royal family could get away with saying out loud. (Harbinger, in case you're wondering, is "a person or thing that announces or indicates the approach of something".)
Anyway, those cheerful harbingers of spring were in full bloom this afternoon when I spoke at the St Heliers Bay Horticultural Society in Auckland. What a great gardening club - at least a dozen of the members had turned up to their spring meeting wearing fabulous floral hats to celebrate the new season. (Mental note to self: don't leave the office without the camera next time!). There were hats draped with daffodils and flowering fedoras and one lady appeared to be wearing an entire work of floral art. It made me wonder if I'd get funny looks if I turned up to work next week wearing my own headdress of hot pink camellias. I'd opt for daffodils but I've only got one pot of miniature 'Tete a Tete' daffs in my garden and I couldn't bear to behead my babies.
As well as all the daffodils and fragrant freesias on display today, one of the garden club members had crafted a beautiful arrangement of early spring blossoms, namely white ornamental peach blossoms and double pink cherry blossoms. I asked her the names of the varieties and she laughed: she only knew them by the names of the streets where she'd picked them from, having gone doorknocking around the suburb with a pair of secateurs. As someone who has been known to forage for blossoms from street trees (I figure I'm actually helping the council with a teeny weeny bit of judicious pruning), I couldn't help but admire her spirit.
I'm off to Wellington tomorrow for the 2007 Kids Conference at Victoria University. I doubt my gardening workshops will be as popular as the ones about karate, latin dancing or paua farming (hmm, perhaps I could try that in my pond?) but I'm going to attempt to bribe the kids to grow their own 'Skyscraper' sunflowers and 'Atlantic Giant' pumpkins - and write about it as they go. I've got 80 peat pots packed in my suitcase, along with a 5kg bag of seed-raising mix for the demonstrations. I wonder what the airport security scanners will make of that!
PS. Big thanks to Kings Seeds in Katikati for providing the seeds.

A bug-beating blanket for brassicas

I spoke to the Glen Eden Garden Club in West Auckland today about my self-sufficiency exploits and took along a bunch of homegrown veges to amuse them. When they all stopped laughing at my pitiful cauliflower crop (average diameter: about 10cm), one of the members piped up with a nifty organic tip to foil slugs and snails.
Gastropods are devious blighters when they get into your brassicas because they never have to venture out again - they can simply slither in, snuggle up and scoff away safely out of reach of all the slug bait you might care to scatter around the base of your plants. They'll loiter between the cabbage leaves, crawl up the stems of Brussels sprouts and hide happily under the heads of broccoli, only to creep out under the cover of darkness to mow the tops off all the developing florets.
Unlike aphids and other nasties, snails don't seem to mind pungent garlic and cayenne pepper sprays, which pretty much limits the organic pest control options to squashing them, salting them or drowning them in beer traps. But here's an idea I'd never thought of until it was suggested today: next time you're harvesting your rhubarb stalks, save the biggest leaves and drape one over the head of each of your developing brassicas. Rhubarb leaves are naturally toxic to bugs so the snails will keep well clear - plus the shade created by the leaf prevents those pearly white florets turning yellow as they mature.

The big cheese

Ever since I declared (on the first of January) that I was going to shun the supermarket for twelve months, in favour of growing as much of my own food as possible, cheese has been my nemesis. I can live without canned spaghetti for toasted sandwiches. I can even live without bread. I can live without ready-made pasta sauces and bags of potato chips and shortbread biscuits. But I can't live without cheese. I crave it the way most women crave chocolate. (Although I can't claim to be a cordon bleu chef, I reckon I can salvage just about anything with cheese and a splash of olive oil.)
Unfortunately, cheese is expensive. It's often more expensive than meat. And when you're trying to stick to a $10 weekly grocery budget, you can't buy much more than a block of gouda and a loaf of ciabatta; or a slab of triple-cream blue and a box of crackers; or a pyramid-shaped slice of parmesan and a dozen eggs. So I'm about to embark on my most adventurous culinary experiment yet: I'm going to make my own cheese today.
Last weekend I went to a fabulous cheesemaking course run by artisan foodie Katherine Mowbray and learnt how to make haloumi, feta, mascarpone, cheddar and ricotta. And jolly good fun it was too (in a urban hippie sort of way).
So this morning I drove out west to buy unpasteurised milk and cream fresh from a farmer (well, his cows) in Helensville. It's probably the first time I've been back on a dairy farm since my teens (my mum and dad were dairy farmers but I can't say I inherited their bovine-wrangling tendencies) and, as I drove home with a 10-litre bucket of fresh milk safely strapped into the passenger seat of my car, I couldn't help but laugh at how far removed I've become from my rural roots. Most of my mates will think I'm mad when they hear that I've progressed from growing veges to crafting cheese.
I won't give away all the details of how to make cheese (do one of Katherine's courses!) but it's a fascinating way to spend a day (it's like a school science experiment, without the rotten egg smells!
My favourite cheese is salty traditional Greek haloumi, pictured here (I borrowed the pic from Philafoodie's blog. All going to plan, I'll be eating my first batch of it tomorrow night.

Raining on my parade

Is it EVER going to stop raining? Three weeks ago I sowed a bunch of seeds in trays – and every day since I’ve had to go outside and tilt each tray carefully on its side to drain off all the water. If I had a glasshouse I could keep the trays tucked up nice and dry indoors, but as I don’t (it's still on the wishlist) a daily drain is essential to give my spring crops any chance of germinating before they drown. I'm starting to think it would be easier to investigate my hydroponic options instead: perhaps I could plant watercress and wasabi for starters.
I’ve sown eight trays of seeds in organic seed-raising mix, which does seem a tad ridiculous given that the ordinary stuff is sterile anyway. I’m pretty sure the newspaper I lined the trays with isn’t organic, but I had to use something to stop the seed-raising mix slipping through the gaps in the bottom of the black plastic trays. (Seed trays used to have a fine mesh bottom but these days they’re designed with an infuriatingly gappy grid pattern. Guess they’re cheaper to make if when you skimp on half the plastic.)
Anyway, my mustard cress, sugar snap peas, mesclun salad and radishes are all up, although there’s no sign of any action in the beetroot tray yet (I’ve sown standard red beets as well as ‘Burpee’s Golden Globe’, pale-skinned ‘Alba’ and candy-striped ‘Chioggia’). I sowed half a tray of ‘Dark Opal’ basil too – I want to make purple pesto this spring – but there’s no sign of that yet. Later on in the season I’ll sow some eggplants, tomatoes, peppers and pumpkins. I’m determined to grow at least one giant pumpkin this summer and ‘Atlantic Giant’ is the variety everyone raves about so I’m ordering some seed now from Kings Seeds.

Market gardening

Went down to the Auckland City Farmers' Market at Britomart this morning. I’m an erstwhile stallholder at the moment as my garden is barely keeping me in spinach, silverbeet and spuds, so I haven’t got anything extra to sell. I spent $21 – twice my weekly grocery budget – on some fresh bagels ($5), gluten-free chocolate cupcakes ($6), a tub of capsicum and tomato salsa ($4) and a bottle of unbelievably delicious old-fashioned mint sauce ($6) from Barbara Rotherham of Shadie Stables (I make my own mint sauce but it isn’t a patch on this stuff, which is made from spearmint.) Plus I needed the cupcakes for a photoshoot (we’re featuring the Britomart market in our October magazine), so they don’t count.

My Top Crops & Flop Crops this month

Top crops
• HORSERADISH: When you’re trying to grow all your own food, it helps to choose crops that punch above their weight in the flavour stakes. Garlic is the most obvious candidate, but my new favourite crop is horseradish. The finely grated root is hot enough to clear your sinuses in a single sniff, plus it adds a pungent kick to savoury sauces. Horseradish grows like a weed and it looks like one too (it’s the spitting image of dock). I put in four plants in autumn and dug the first large specimen up this month. Horseradish is notorious for its colonising nature (I bent my spade trying to lever its tentacle-like roots out of the soil) but it’s a fun crop to grow if you have a gap at the back of your vege plot. To prepare fresh horseradish, scrub or peel off the rough skin and grate the white flesh into a small bowl. Add a splash of cider vinegar and sugar to taste.
• ‘MEYER’ LEMONS: I sold most of my prolific crop at the farmers’ market and spent the proceeds on bread and cheese (freshly baked French baguettes, creamy Coromandel Blue and haloumi from Matatoki Farm, to be precise).
• MINER’S LETTUCE: Montia perfoliata (also sold as Claytonia perfoliata) is a hardy, winter salad green with succulent leaves. I planted a punnet of seedlings last spring and promptly forgot about them, only to discover later that they’d withered in the shade of my eggplants. But, in a happy accident, the plants must have set seed because when I dug over that bed in May, up popped a verdant shag-pile carpet of miner’s lettuce seedlings. Buy seeds from Kings Seeds, PO Box 283, Katikati 3166.

Flop crops
• BROAD BEANS: My biggest flop – literally – to date. I forgot to stake them.
• ‘VIOLET QUEEN’ BROCCOLI: British über-foodie Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall made a killing flogging purple-sprouting broccoli in blue cheese sauce at his local farmers’ market. I was hoping to profit from his example, but my plants are yet to sprout anything other than leaves.
• LEEKS: My spring onions are fatter than my leeks this winter, so I’ve resorted to stealing leeks out of my mum’s garden.

Growing garlic

Garlic has a polarising habit: you either love its flavour or loathe its less-than-fragrant reputation. But while vampires and people on first dates have good reason to avoid garlic's pungent cloves, for the rest of us it can be a satisfying and surprisingly easy-to-grow bulb.
Traditionally, garlic is planted on the shortest day of the year and harvested on the longest. At Koanga Gardens in Northland, an organic haven which boasts New Zealand's largest collection of heirloom vegetables and fruit trees, Kay Baxter and her team of gardeners cultivate about 20 different varieties of garlic.
In 1999, Baxter won a scholarship to the United States, where she attended the harvesting of the international garlic trials at Seed Savers in Iowa. "In New Zealand we have heirlooms of all the main sorts of garlic grown around the world, but we also have one that I didn't see over there. It's a Dalmatian garlic from the gumfields up north."
There are three main types of garlic: the so-called soft tops (Allium sativum), serpent-flowered Rocamboles (Allium sativum var. ophioscorodon) and giant elephant garlic (Allium ampeloprasum), which, genetically, is actually a type of leek.
"Elephant garlic doesn't have the same medicinal properties as real garlic, and the flavour's not as strong, but it does have its uses. It's quite popular because it's easy to peel and you can roast it like a root vegetable," Baxter explains.
Baxter's favourite varieties are both soft tops. She discovered 'Takahue' a few years ago, growing wild in sand dunes near Ahipara, while the attractive, pink-skinned South Island variety 'Kakanui', hails from near Oamaru.
All of the commercially-grown varieties in New Zealand are soft tops, as they're easier to harvest. The dried bulbs can also be plaited into swags, unlike the Rocamboles, which produce hard-stalked flowers that curve crazily in mid-air, like pig's tails or snakes.
To get big, fat bulbs from the Rocamboles, you must remove the flowers before they fully develop. "In Asia, they saute the young flower stalks like asparagus. They taste delicious."
Baxter reckons that garlic is one of the easiest bulbs to cultivate, provided you have fertile, free-draining soil. "Garlic hates wet feet," she warns. "The bulbs like moisture but they don't do well in heavy soils. If you have clay soil, you need to dig in lots of compost or consider planting in raised beds instead."
For the best results, buy seed garlic bulbs from a garden centre or organic vegetable supplier, rather than your local supermarket, as these can be treated to prevent them sprouting pre-sale.
When you're ready to plant, break off the fattest, healthiest, individual cloves. Generally, that means only those around the outside of the bulb - keep the thinner cloves that form in the middle of the bulb for cooking. Discard any cloves that are damaged, feel overly soft or are showing signs of mould.
Plant each clove with the pointy end facing up, and don't bury them too deep (five centimetres is more than enough).
"To get really good-sized bulbs to develop, you also need to give them lots of nutrients throughout the growing season. Commercial organic growers recommend foliar feeding with a fish-based fertiliser from June to October, as well as lots of compost and fish meal. I also tell people to mulch their garlic beds heavily as soon as they've sown the cloves. It helps retain soil moisture and means you won't have to disturb the bulbs with constant weeding."
It's crucial that the bulbs aren't over or under-watered. In cold, waterlogged soils, the cloves can start to rot before they sprout, while plants stressed by a lack of water in late spring or summer often go on to produce only one, poor quality clove, like a fat-bottomed spring onion.
The plants will be ready to harvest when their strappy green leaves start to collapse and die back. Dig the rows up and let the bulbs dry out for a day or two in the sun, then plait into swags or tie into bunches and hang in a warm, dry room out of direct sunlight until you're ready to use the cloves.
As for garlic's uses? As well as adding culinary flavour, garlic has, since ancient times, been eaten and applied externally in a bid to cure a vast range of ailments, from the common cold to baldness. (Apparently, rubbing your head with a few bulbs mashed in alcohol helps to prevent hair loss!)
The raw juice has strong antiseptic properties and ancient herbalists prescribed garlic poultices for "scrofulous sores", mixing up other garlic-based concoctions to treat rheumatism, whooping-cough, leprosy, smallpox and asthma.
Anyone who has ever watched a trashy B-grade horror film also knows that garlic reputedly wards off vampires and evil spirits. In Greece, garlic is still strung about homes and businesses to deter demons, while in nearby Albania, garlic offers protection from bad luck - or dodgy workmanship - on construction sites. Walk around the emerging tourist destinations in this former war-torn country and you'll see ropes of garlic hanging from the rooftops of all the half-built luxury hotels and bars.
Meanwhile, in Hungary, superstitious jockeys are said to tie garlic cloves to their horses' mouths to prevent their competitors getting ahead - the theory being that horses hate halitosis as much as humans.
And the cause of that distinctive aroma? A volatile sulphur-rich, oxygen-free essential oil which is present in all members of the onion family. According to Grieve's A Modern Herbal (despite its title, it was actually published in 1931) the "peculiar penetrating odour of garlic... is so diffusive that even when the bulb is applied to the soles of the feet, its odour is exhaled by the lungs". Which explains why a clove a day keeps more than just the doctor away.