Home Grown Vegetables

So what did you plant in April? I managed lettuce, spinach, rocket, cauliflower and just a few early seed potatoes.

I’m saving ground for an agria main crop. They make beautiful gnocchi. Do try it! May is the time for composting and preparing to mulch.

Confession - my composting has been bad and must improve. If you don’t feed your vegetables they won’t grow, and it is very expensive to use bought compost all the time, while you throw out food scraps and garden clippings that should be in a compost bin. Worm farms are good too, and now that I know they will survive their family being away for a week or 10 days, I intend to start one.

Mulching helps feed soil and preserve moisture. A layer of about 25cm is good for shrubs and trees, and 12cm for vegetables and flowers. Mulching also helps suppress weeds. It is almost essential to mulch around strawberries, but more of that around September when it’s time to plant strawberries.

So remove weeds, dig the veggie patch over carefully, test the soil pH if you want to, put in some compost, perhaps a layer of fertiliser, and you’re ready for winter planting. And now a word of warning about use of pesticides. I was chided for my use of Blitzem - too poisonous I was told.

A friendly correspondent suggested surrounding lettuce plants with crushed egg shells, and even sneaking out at night to remove snails crawling around the garden. That’s dedication.

However, you will see elsewhere in this issue of Ponsonby News, a sad tale about the use of poisonous pesticides on commercially grown vegetables including lettuce. Anita Hollerer-Squire lists 10 highly poisonous sprays that can be used on lettuce. Not all will be used, but according to Hollerer-Squire all should be banned. Four of these chemicals are banned in Europe, and several others are about to be banned. Why, Hollerer-Squire asks, should New Zealand have such
a lax attitude to these poisons?

Methyl bromide use should put everybody off eating imported fruit and vegetables. Containers are fumigated both for export and import. Methyl bromide is also used to fumigate rice, nuts and spices.

The advice of Hollerer-Squire and others is - grow your own, or buy organic. Our local Harvest By Huckleberry guarantees that all their produce is organic. As Brian Rudman, who lives in the next street to me, said, “I can’t grow garlic either, but I grow really good chillies.”

Sometimes it’s the soil, sometimes it’s the sun, sometimes it’s too little or too much water, but sometimes it just seems to be veggies being bloody-minded. Carrots are a case in point. Sometimes I grow beauties, sometimes almost a whole crop fails.

Good luck - winter can be a challenging time for home gardens. Just as you’re ready to go out and pull out some weeds, it buckets down with rain. I’ll keep you informed about progress with my $10 cauliflowers - so far so good. (JOHN ELLIOTT)

So do make contact with neighbours and let’s swap ideas about the vegetables we grow best. Email me: johnelliott38@outlook.com