Gardening – April garden bursts with veggies

Are you one of the gardeners rethinking your lifestyle during the ‘cost of fresh vegetables crisis’?  

Perhaps now is the perfect time to consider your garden as the number one source of fresh vegetables!

In my Whangaparāoa garden the persimmons are ripening under cover of netting and the seedling grown Queen peach has provided a good crop for the past month, with enough to freeze for later use in crumbles. The bananas are ripening slowly, while the figs provide bumper crops for us – as well as the white eyes.

Beds of lettuce are netted to keep greedy sparrows at bay while the remaining fruiting egg plants have cloches over them to extend their productive season. Zucchini, silverbeet, beetroot, Malabar spinach, rocket and Bok choi are providing ample greens.

Beans have been given a new lease of life after the rain and are already podding up. And the pea seedlings are flourishing in my shade house – I will plant them out this week, now they are well past the stage when newly hatching snails and slugs will be interested.

Cutting back the flourishing asparagus has allowed me to pick some spears all summer long. This month I will cut it back one more time before allowing it to go to seed.

At the beginning of March, I bought cabbage, kohlrabi, cauliflower, and broccoli seedlings, trenched in manure and seaweed before planting, kept them well mulched and covered with curtain netting to keep off the white butterfly. The drought breaking rain gave them the moisture needed to flourish, even with daytime temperatures above 20°C Heavy mulching with seaweed and grass clippings has helped with the wilting that occurs during the hottest part of the day.

A bumper crop of seaweed came with the storm that brought the rain, providing material for mulch and liquid manure barrels. 

Each year I collect some parsnip seed as it needs to be fresh for quick germination. While the soil is still warm a bed of parsnips as well as carrots have been sown and covered with old wet coffee sacks, to keep the soil damp while the seeds germinate. After about 10 days I check to see if the seedlings have popped up, and once they do I remove the sacks and cover them with green shade cloth until they get established.

I have been given some old window blinds and find the single slats bend easily and make the frames necessary for keeping the netting or curtain material off the plants. I also use old fridge and freezer baskets.