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Summer in the garden. . . The winter squash are swelling on the vines, sunflowers are blooming, peppers and tomatillos are setting fruit, bees are buzzing on the flowers. We have harvested the Dalmatian Peas — purple podded peas to be dried and used for soup. Dalmatian Peas are a New Zealand heirloom variety that we’ve never tried before. We only grew enough this year to fill a single jar, but if they prove to be tasty, then we’ll aim to grow more of them in the future. We have also been enjoying the first of the globe artichoke crop, and amaranth greens from the Tampala, or “coleus-leafed amaranth” — a very decorative green vegetable.

Coleus-leafed amaranth

Russian giant sunflower

Artichoke

Good news on the tomato front: Our tomato plants seem to have survived the late blight that attacked them. We may yet get a decent crop of tomatoes. We recently read with interest and sympathy about another gardener’s battle with the blight. Based on evidence from his own garden, he speculates that tomatoes grown in mature garden soil that has been properly amended may have greater immunity to blight. His observations give us great hope! At the moment, our whole vegetable garden is newly developed and still full of clay clods. We hope that as we continue to add compost and amend the soil, problems like blight will become fewer.

Even as we pick our summer vegetables, I’ve been looking ahead, and have just put in our Autumn seed order. Soon it will be time to turn the living room into a seed nursery once again.

Happy New Year! We are happy to say that 2007 is off to a good start here on the Farmlet. We have just been enjoying a much-needed spell of warm summer rain. The garden is producing more beans and zucchinis than we can eat, and the animals all look plump and happy.

Still, there is one piece of bad news on the garden front: Many of our tomatoes have succumbed to a bad case of blight over the Christmas period. I’d noticed the beginnings of it before Christmas, and decided we should probably apply a copper spray. Well, Christmas came and went with no action taken, and the result is rather a sad sight to behold.

Tomato plants covered with blight

Northland’s very humid climate is far from ideal for growing tomatoes, even at the best of times. We should have stayed on high blight alert and acted quickly to take care of our tomatoes — especially knowing that we have copper deficient soil conditions! (The previous owner of our property discovered this when she had the soil tested.) Plants grown on copper deficient soils are known to be more vulnerable to blight.

We have pulled out and disposed of the tomato plants that were too diseased to save. The rest have had infected leaves removed, and will be sprayed with bordeaux mix to slow further spread of the blight. Bordeaux mix is copper suphate and hydrated lime mixed with water. It is an “organically approved” treatment, but needs to be used with caution. Copper can build up to toxic levels in the soil if the preparation is over-used. Since our soil is copper deficient in any case, this will not be an immediate problem. I believe that applying dolomite at the same time helps to mitigate any ill effects of the copper.

The blue-green copper residue from the bordeaux mix can be seen on the plants that survived the outbreak

We hope that in due course our soil will be healthy enough that we will not have to resort to using bordeaux mix to stem the spread of blight. Also, foliar applications of compost tea throughout the growing season are supposed to help prevent the problem arising in the first place. We’d like to give this a go. Good garden hygiene, and careful removal of infected leaves can also help avoid the problem, but it obviously wasn’t enough this year.

The tomato news is not all bad! We succession-planted our tomatoes, and made sure to put them in a couple of different areas. One bed that was planted later is still a lot cleaner than the rest, and looks likely to survive with the right care. We have also just planted out another late set of tomato seedlings. We are hoping to do better with these ones!

Our vegetable garden seems to be growing before our eyes! Every day there is something new to see or taste.

For a while now, we have been snacking on plump pods full of sweet green peas, and little woodland strawberries. At mealtimes we are enjoying lots of tasty vegetables from the garden. These are the tastes we dreamed of as we saved our pennies for the purchase of some land, and as we dug garden beds and hauled mulch and manure. The fruits of our first year’s harvest on the Farmlet bear the sweet taste of dreams realised. This food is fuelling us for more work in the garden, and firing us up to embark on further projects.

Squash down low, beans climb high

About a week ago, I dug our first potatoes of the season — a New Zealand heirloom variety called kowiniwini. After putting some of the potatoes aside to take to my parents, we used the rest to cook a special meal, made almost entirely from ingredients grown here on the Farmlet: Potatoes, zucchini, sugarsnap peas, green beans, green onions, and dill. We sauteed the vegetables in butter made here on the Farmlet using fresh cream from a nearby farm. The salt and pepper came from the shops! As time goes on, we hope to be eating many more meals comprised almost entirely of food grown on the Farmlet.

Harvest meal

We were delighted to be able to supply new potatoes for the family Christmas dinner yesterday, as well as green beans and zucchini. Being able to share good things from the garden with family and friends made this Christmas extra special and joyful for us. We wish you all the very best this festive season.

Happy Solstice (Summer or Winter, wherever you may be)!

We planted our garlic six months ago atop rows full of semi-fresh fish guts. If you doubt the power of fish guts, the garlic we harvested is two to three times the size of the seed garlic we started out with! (And no, this is not elephant garlic/leek.) Some of them look like medium sized onions!

I knew, in theory, that growing garlic should be easy, but neither Becky nor I had ever tried to grow it. There’s nothing quite like making it happen for real! We both had a sense of great accomplishment as we pulled these precious bulbs out of the soil.

Becky and I stood there, looking at our bounty. I couldn’t believe it, actually. This is the best garlic I’ve ever seen and this was just our first try! Our cows were looking back at us from up in the paddock—probably wondering what all the excitement was about—and I could hear our goatlings bleating happily away nearby. I had a sense of well being that was so deep and profound that I don’t ever recall having such an experience in the past.

Garlic as religious experience? Hmm… 😉

Well, enough yammering about it. Here’s an extra big picture to make your mouth water:

Harvesting heirloom garlic

We’ve read several theories about drying and preserving methods for freshly harvested garlic. What do you guys think: Take the roots off, or leave them on? If you take them off, when?

I planted lots of chamomile around our vegetable garden this spring, on the assumption that it would make a good companion plant. It does seem to be doing well at attracting bees and other beneficial insects. We think the chamomile is a very pretty addition to the garden.

Harvesting chamomile flowers

The main reason why we planted chamomile is so that we can make our own chamomile tea. I have begun to harvest the flowers and dry them. Harvesting the flowers takes a bit of patience, but it’s a beautiful job. The scent of the chamomile is wonderfully calming. I hope that even in the middle of winter we will be able to enjoy cups of tea flavoured with these lovely spring flowers.