Gardening – Hard work bearing fruit

I must confess, aside from picking, bottling and preserving the bounty from my garden, it gets very little attention at this time of year, and with the warm, humid conditions, it is starting to look like a tropical jungle. Having said that, with the vast amounts of fruit and veggies that are produced at this time of year, there is little time for anything else! Just one grapevine provides nearly 30kg of fruit, each plum tree does the same, if not more and with peaches, apples, figs and pears and more following, plus tomatoes, greens and beans by the bucketful, it’s nearly a full-time job!

I often think back to my childhood at this time of year; the youngest son of Dutch immigrants, some of my earliest memories are of mum and my two sisters in the kitchen ladling steaming stone-fruit into Agee jars, with dad, me and as many of my brothers that could be caught in time (they’d be out the door and on their bikes pretty quick once the boxes of fruit came in) around the kitchen table cutting as fast as we could to keep up. It was a real production line! As a youngster, my job was sorting and cutting the really ripe fruit as these had to be stewed separately. The ripest fruit were also the sweetest though, so with my sweet tooth it was pretty much one for me, one for the pot. These days I bottle using Stevia instead of sugar, saving my teeth (a bit late really) and my waistline (less said about that the better).

I don’t know if mum’s prodigious garden suffered from neglect over this busy time, but as she used to get up at about 5.30 every morning to garden in summer – probably not. However, she had six kids to feed on one wage in the sixties, so it was vital that the crops kept coming in. It’s a bit different for us some 50 years later. With bountiful fresh, well-grown produce all around us at pretty reasonable prices, typically much smaller families (we’ve only got one mostly carnivorous teenager left at home) and busy parents often working long hours, there is much less need to be in the garden.

So why do we do it? For the sheer pleasure it provides. There are few things that make you feel as content, relaxed and as one with nature than gardening. The buzz you get when a fat crop of kumara are lifted, the taste sensation of a freshly picked sun-warmed strawberry, the gentle tug that your fingers must do to get the raspberries picked without damaging them, the juicy sweetness of a fully ripe plum or the thrill of the first of the season’s asparagus – unbeatable!

Even the tedious jobs can provide benefits. I find pulling weeds (big enough to see the progress you’ve made but just before they set seed) to be very therapeutic and some of my best marketing and business ideas come to me during an hour’s weeding. Pruning in winter is another task that I enjoy; the physicality gets the blood flowing when otherwise you’d be stuck inside watching TV.

So, now that I’ve procrastinated inside long enough to avoid another hot day, it’s time to take advantage of the cooler evening and start whipping my garden back into shape for the productive autumn season coming. Time to get some more salad greens and those brassicas planted!