How our Vege Garden Grew - Part 1

This last summer of 2011/12 was not a good one for growing - complaints abounded all over the country about poor results.  Literally, summer as we know it in New Zealand just didn't arrive.  Here in the Wairarapa, we had plenty of cloudy days, little sunshine and unseasonal cold weather.  Some vegetable prices in the supermarkets were ridiculous - for example, pumpkins which normally abound and run amok in everyone's garden, reached an unprecedented $19 each in the supermarket - a small portion cut for 2-3 servings calculated out at around $6-7.

A renegade pumpkin plant in the compost bin ran riot but alas, too late.  By the time the weather had made up its mind it was, indeed, summer - our days were already waning.  Resulting pumpkins from this growth failed to fully ripen before being cut down by early frosts

Over summer, we had 9 raised vege beds up and running at Fossils Retreat, varying in size from 1x1 to 2x1 and 3x1 sq. metres.   Two beds were set up for early and main potato crops, with Ilam Hardy and redskinned Heather selected for the early crops, and Rua and Agria for the main crops.  We were extremely pleased with the redskinned Heather which grew prolifically.  The Ilam Hardy reached a decent size when dug but weren't all that abundant.  Of the main crops, Rua performed poorly and developed heaps of nasty little inedible 'flowers' which resembled small, unripe green tomatoes which turned out to be a real pain after the haulms were cut before harvesting, as they fell off the foliage and then had to be removed one by one from the bed.  We harvested a superb crop from the Agrias and it looks at this stage as if we have easily enough potatoes to last us the full year.  Green skinned spuds which were accidentally exposed to sunshine were boiled up nightly in the stock pot on the fire with feed peas and fed to the pigs.  We'll go with the same two earlies this year and just stick with Agria for the main crop

Rua potatoes a few weeks before harvesting.  The tall 'bush' in the background is actually a bed of Jerusalem Artichokes - another abundant crop

We had a couple of unseasonal, doozy storms over summer which wreaked some havoc not only in our garden, but over the whole district.

Gale force winds snapped the supports of the tomatoes causing the plants to collapse and sprawl untidily.  If truth be known, too many plants were planted, too close together.  We're not huge tomato eaters, so maybe we'll just stick to two plants this summer

Late tomatoes from here to China.  These did not amount to any great size, and huge batches of tomato sauce were made and frozen.  Because of the lack of warmth, tomatoes were still trying to ripen on the vines when we got hit with early frosts

We had good crops of beans, with a few Broad Beans sown and the remainder Kings Seeds Purple Tee Pee Dwarf Beans, which remained nice and compact and we got two picks from each plant.  Surpluses were french sliced and frozen

Some plantings just didn't get there.  Golden Eggplant seedlings (Kings Seeds) were transplanted, initially grew well, then remained in a permanent state of blue-flowered limbo with no fruit developing.

Not all bad news!  Look - we got two Rock Melons!  Lovely bite sized morsels they were too!  Lovely lush Eggplant bushes in the background which gave a splendid display of blue flowers and nothing else

Yams were very prolific and coloured up nicely, growing to a decent size and very tasty.  Our first frost cut back all the foliage

We grew garlic and onions - very well as it happens.  This winter we have devoted a whole bed for garlic and have planted 81 Kakanui Garlic cloves (our own saved cloves) and 16 Elephant Garlic cloves which we will mainly use for roasting with veges with a roast dinner.  Greens grew very well.  Spasmodic luck with carrots - those that did germinate grew well;  same with peas.