1 July 2024

Garden beds are full and we’re enjoying the first of the broccoli. I’ve been focusing on tidying up. The garden paths are all renewed (with a little help from friends) and the spent crops are tidied up into a hot compost.  

There were coffee grounds outside our local café today, so together with the biomass from old crops, grass clippings, egg cartons, chicken manure, Morganics and some well-rotted wood chips all layered up, we have a good heap going here.

It needs to be a bit more flat on top to create the cube shape to make the science work but it flattened down when I covered it.

With the recent report from the Chief Science Advisor, Juliet Gerrard, about Kiwis throwing away $3.2 billion in food every year, which is not only a waste but a major contribution to climate change, it’s good to pause and think about how you manage your food waste. Here’s the report if you missed it.

At our place we use our Hungry Bin for the day-to-day fruit and vege scraps, we have the free weekly roadside collection of food waste which means we can put bones, dairy and other organic things that aren’t good in a Hungry Bin in that. 

Then for the big stuff that comes out of the garden like the foliage of a broccoli or cauliflower plant or the strawberry plants I pull out every year, we make hot compost.  All food waste is thus recycled back into the earth. It’s important at home but also at our work places where often best practice isn’t observed. You can have an impact on that.

Anyway back off my soapbox… I’ve done a bit of a prune on our grape.  Grapes need a prune every year once the leaves have fallen.  It’s important to leave some of last year’s growth as that’s where the fruiting for next season takes place.

At this time of the year when lemons are plentiful, I like to squeeze the juice into an ice cube tray, then bag the cubes up for use throughout the rest of the year.  I use lemon rind and juice in so much of my cooking, and while you don’t have access to the rind with this method, you can be using your own juice or juice of local lemons at cheap prices for a much longer time if you store it.

Our parsnips are ready for eating. Beautiful in their imperfection.

I’m making Parsnip Soup and freezing it for me to enjoy for lunch since parsnips have a flavour that not everyone in our household likes!

Lastly, I’m getting my selection of tomato seeds together at the moment in preparation for sowing next month.  As I’ll be away in August, Rob is going to sow my seeds for me and they should be ready for pricking out on my return. It’s a good time to be browsing catalogues and choosing the odd new variety of tomato to try out this coming season.

A reminder again that our shop will be closed for August, so get any orders you may like in before then.

Happy winter gardening!

Jan and Rob

5 Responses

  1. Really love this blog thank you both. Have just moved and don’t have a vege garden yet but will use all your tips and from the website when I get there.

  2. You can freeze lemon zest for use throughout the year too! Whenever I need to use a lemon, I wash and dry it first then zest the peel straight into a little zip lock bag. Keep the bag of zest in the freezer until a recipe calls for it.
    So handy!!
    I do this whenever I use a lemon and now have quite a good stash of zest for curries / baking / dressings etc.
    My tip is to get the zest off before cutting or juicing the lemon as it’s so much each easier when the lemon in whole and firm.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *