Tricks to keep winter gardens tidy
Adrianne Barrie has a simple trick when it comes to keeping the vast vege patch looking tidy at the Good from Scratch Cookery School farm garden.
Organised and tidy is a key ingredient when your gardens are constantly visited by some of the country’s leading chefs and gardeners − and your bosses are renowned chef and restaurateurs Mike and Belinda (Bee) Van de Elzen.
The 6ha farm has 180 fruit trees − mainly limes, lemons and oranges − which are really starting to come on now, as well as apples, plums and pears.
While the Van de Elzens tend to the fruit, Barrie is focused on the 10 raised garden beds (six high and four low). So keeping the garden looking tidy, especially in winter – when Barrie is required to do fewer hours – can get tricky.
“I do what Charles Dowding does,” Barrie says. Dowding is an English horticulturalist and author who pioneered modern no-dig and organic soil management in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s.
“I tend to take off a lot of leaves on the old brassicas and kale and even once the cauli and broccoli come away, I’ll cut the leaves so they’re not near the ground, and it just keeps it looking clean and tidy,” she says.
Another trick is to not leave any bare soil (which encourages weeds).
“So I try to compact the plants as much as possible, even though they say
that brassicas are big feeders and you should give them a bit more space.”
The weeds will always come through, Barrie says. “But often what I do is have aged mulch between the rows so that suppresses weeds and I try to do as little weeding as possible between the beds.
“I try to make it as easy as possible and be smart about what I plant and how I plant it and use a lot of aged mulch as well.
“And if I’ve got pea straw or barley straw left over, I use that.”
The purpose of the garden is to feed the kitchen and provide the Van de Elzens with produce for the cookery school and functions. There’s a monthly supper club for locals and a farm shop where homemade pickles and relishes are sold.
“Mike and Bee and I have a bit of a discussion about what they want to grow, but they’re big on growing with the seasons.
“The garden opened in 2020 so we’re kind of getting into a good space where we know what grows pretty well and what doesn’t.”
Barrie worked as a chef for 15 years before retraining as an organic horticulturist in 2015. Being a chef helps her keep in tune with what Mike and Bee are trying to do − a synergy between garden and kitchen.
While the main summer harvest has finished, tomatoes are still coming out of the glasshouse.
“Right now we’re big into the brassica planting season, planting caulis and cabbages and sprouting broccoli tasty stems, beetroot, lots of rocket, coriander and carrots.”
The predominance of winter brassicas is where things can get a bit tricky for Barrie, not only around that issue of tidiness, but also pests, which includes rabbits, pūkeko and quail.
“Because we grew everything from seed in our first year here, the pūkeko and rabbits ate everything I planted or pulled them out.”