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For most of the country we have been enduring some extreme weather over the past couple of months.
I saw thunder and lightning followed by heavy hale in New Plymouth, and torrential rain pretty much across the whole of the north island.
In the garden, the tomatoes are safely in, but with buffeting winds and definitely cooler temperatures, I’m wondering what the results might be?
For those fellow Aucklander’s who received their new CV’s, there maybe some joy with some big rises, but that will be tempered when next years rates hit the doormat to be sure!
On a positive front, the Roses seem to be doing really well… and it is not unusual for people to knock on my door and ask what type they are. The pink variety smells gorgeous, and I wish I knew it’s name…but don’t.
So all in all, life is good and smelling of roses…can’t complain about much else!
I am pleased to report that in just under two weeks, around 80% of my tomato seeds have popped their heads up, which I will chalk up to the now trusted window sill method.
Keeping them tucked up on the widow sill at a constant temperatures means they get the best chance of germinating.
So folks, thats my recommendation if you are starting the growing season. If you are lucky I may have a few to share and swap too!
It was a pretty rainy and wet weekend here in Auckland, however I have taken the plunge and have both selected the varieties I’ll be planting and also planted my tomato seeds, installing them safely on the kitchen window sill.
2014 Varieties:
Yates Roma: These were very strong croppers last year, they also started early and were the last to finish! I have planted 20 seeds, so will see how they go!
Small Fry Cherry: These are sweet and small and ideal for salads and just eating like grapes on their own. 8 of these should see me through.
Purple Calabash:: These are an heirloom variety and great to add flavour to sauces or chopped to colour a BBQ meal…they have a purple hue, hence the name. Again 8 of these in the mix.
Bush Cherry: These are slightly larger than Cheeries and great for Bruchetta. 10 of these will be handy.
Oxheart: Another heirloom and a reddish green fruit, great for suaces and high in nutrition. Another 8 for this season to keep the troops happy.
Mortgage Lifter: These were fantastic to add into the sauces last year and produce huge fruit. I only had 7 seeds left!
Hertitage Mix: The luck dip that could be anything from cheery or yellow skinned…pot luck with these late bloomers. I’ve chucked in 8 as a bit of a tomato Russian Roulette!
Pomodoro Cherry: These are Italian imports and although the best before is 3 years past, these are still producing seedlings…hopefully! Great for Bruschetta, dehydrating and ready to eat! Fingers crossed with 12 and see what comes up…literally!
So these are my picks safe and sound on the window sill!
This one is a gardening post folks…
At this time of the year, the gardening calendar is firmly focused on harvesting and processing fruit and vegetables.
It actually feels a bit medieval with hours spent prepping and processing in the kitchen, converting the crop into different types of food and loading up the seed stores for bread making and the freezers, yes we have three, for the storage of base products and ready meals.
This year, we were more generous with the pumpkins feeding regime, so our pumpkin patch performed very well with a total yield of 16 pumpkins of good size and quality.
Our method is to process them one or two at a time, so pumpkin replaces potatoes in our meals right now!
I chop the pumpkins into 2-3 inch chunks, leaving the skin on.
These are then roasted down, either for immediate consumption or to go into soups.
The seeds are removed and then dehydrated, these go well in our home made bread and also in soups as croutons… enjoy
So I’m half way through this years bumper tomato crop and the kitchen window sill is back in action.
The trick is to leave the fruit on the vine as long as possible, but this is a balancing act as the birds will dive it and munch on the reddening bounty.
I lay the picked slightly immature fruit on my trusty window sill, usually ripest to the left.
From here, they are processed into ready to eat or sauces to go into the freezer…
Check out the window…a common site right now!
Ok so NZ is into the real summertime, and the green fruit have started to follow one another to ripen to various shades of red.
I have the daily pleasure of harvesting my crop of ripening tomatoes, which involves a bit of foraging in amongst the Roma bush plants as they like to hide their blushes, plus a good scan of the more upstanding varieties.
There are a few critical challenges, firstly you want to ripen on the vine as long as possible, but also avoid those pesky birds that skewer the fruit in search of a tasty meal. This is a bit of a gamble to be honest, but I’m usually on the winning side of the battle.
I know that I’m currently in the main harvest as I am filling a ten litre bucket each day!
I complete the ripening on the trusty kitchen window sill, until I’m ready to process them into tomato based food.
There is a sense of achievement when you return to the kitchen with a full bucket, and the various shapes, sizes and colours, paint a pretty picture too.
Sunflowers are fascinating things to watch as they grow from tiny seedlings in to the garden sky-scrapers of our summer planting.
They are loved by the bees, ants and lacewinged moths, and even last year we found a NZ Weta living inside the stem and calling it home.
There are however, some two winged thieves that are looking to cash in on an easy feed as their seeds ripen, so we recommend some defensive measures to protect your stash so that you, not the avian hordes can enjoy the harvest.
During our first growing year, we wondered when the sunflowers we ready to be de-seeded and on reading on Google, it suggested to net the heads otherwise the birds will have a feast. True to those words, even though we checked everyday, the whole lot went in an afternoon, when the birds must have used facebook to get the whole neighbourhood round to dine in style in our back yard.
So here’s my tried and tested method to ensure your seed supply.
In short the lifecycle of a sunflower head is a pleasure to watch. Initially the heads unfurl and the face is somewhat concave. as soon as they show face, they are packed with pollen and the local bee tribes do their stuff and as the head matures, the seeds begin to develop from behind the face and as the swell, the face flattens and then becomes convex.
After the pollen dries up, the bees stop visiting, this is the time to be on your toes. As soon as the yellow petals start to shrivel up, wither and turn brown, it’s time to cover up.
We have used a large old net curtain and cut them up into tea towel sized squares. These squares are then wrapped completely around the face of the sunflower and using a garden tie fix them tightly to avoid the feathery invaders. The crop is now secure!
As you can see the result looks something like tudor England with heads on Highgate Hill 🙂
Now it’s time to sit and wait until the main plant starts to die back and the harvest begins!
Several birds have taken a close inspection of the netted seed supermarkets, only to be thwarted by some cleaver re use of net cutains. It brings a whole new meaning to the concept of “Angry Birds!”
So it’s looking like shaping up for a bumper crop of tomatoes as the Auckland weather has been a good combination of hot sunny days interspersed with refreshing rain.
Some of my early planted varietyies, particularly the Bush varietals have started to ripen, and Purple Calabash, a larged strawberry shaped heritage.
However the main invasion force is still “code green” and it looks like it’s going to be a good year!
New this year, the “Mortgage Lifter” this variety has fruit up to 1.5kg in size!
These are a new variety of Roma, the great Italian sauce maker, they have grown like wildfire this year!
Another dimension to the Steel planting plans is the production of sunflowers, these look awesome as they tower above you and create a beautiful arrangement that Vincent would be proud to paint.
After a few mistakes of earlier years we now have a system whereby we grow from seed (Skyscraper variety) then we net at the appropriate time, to protect from birds and then harvest for their seeds after dehydration.
More on that later.
In this picture you can just see a bee going about his work. One thing for sure, is Bees love sunflowers!
It’s mesmerising to see them toil at the face of the Sunflower…and they always seem to work in an anticlockwise rotation…I have no idea why, if anyone can tell me that would be awesome.
With my total tomato count resting at 56 plants, all are now safely planted out into the garden.
I have 44 plants in the main garden, and for the first year, I have chosen to concentrate all the plants in one area.This is a bit of an idea to save time when watering and also harvesting as over the past few seasons I’ve had to walk miles carrying the watering cans!
Let’s call this a bit of 5S for my tomatoes!
The remainder are in an assortment of pots, as I like tio have some smaller, bushy varieties close to the kitchen, for those summer lunches when they’re easy to access.
So with the weekly fertilising and warm conditions with plenty of sunshine, the plants are growing rapidly, and bursting out in pretty much every direction!
So let’s check the standard process for “pinching out” the laterals…
Basically, you don’t want too much greenery and less energy for fruit, so as the lateral stems appear at each branch node, you remove them gently.
This is where the pinching out bit comes into play…using finger and thumbs, you pinch them and break them off!
Before…lateral starting to Grow:
After…pinched out!It didn’t feel a thing!
Richard Steel
Lean Tomatoes 