Know your cardoons from your artichokes

HARVEST GLOBE ARTICHOKES

Or at least that was my plan. I love the big space fillers with their striking flower and foliage and l sprinkled the seed along a bank. However, after watching them grow with delight, last year I missed them and the heads were hard and inedible. This year I judiciously went around my crop to find that anything larger than palm-size had a woody stem. I cooked the smaller ones, but found, upon cutting them open, that the heads were mainly flower – where is the tender heart of culinary legend?

Last weekend the Hamilton Organic Gardeners came to visit. Their combined opinion was that the spiky flowers and ‘rangy’ growth habit indicated I wasn’t growing the heritage artichoke I thought

I was, but instead a large crop of cardoon – a closely related plant with a completely different culinary experience. Cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) is edible and quite healthy for you. I did try it once and I hope I will never get hungry enough to want to eat it again. I will start again with new artichoke seed next year.

PULL GARLIC

After a disaster crop last year I am looking forward to feasting on garlic again. Unfortunately, my main bed has developed rust on the leaves. Luckily this was at the end of the season so the bulbs have already grown.

They say to harvest your garlic when the first pair of leaves has died off. The leaves relate to the outer layers of skin around the bulb. I prefer to leave my garlic in the ground a bit longer until 80% of the leaves are dead but the rustaffected garlic leaves are now all brown, and though the stalk is still green, I doubt I amgoing to get any more bulb growth so I am pulling them now.

If you want to do a fancy plait, do that as soon as you harvest them while the stalks are green and flexible. Plait it just like a French plait in your hair, adding a bulb in with each crossover. A big plait of home-grown garlic is something to be proud of.

Plaited or loose, leave them out in airy sun to dry. This can take two or three days depending on the weather, so bring them in at night so the dew doesn’t settle on them. Then rub the dirty outer layer off and trim the roots and stalk back with a pair of scissors and secateurs.

Sort out the biggest and best bulbs to put to one side for seed next year and store all in a cool, dark place. Check them in six months. If any are starting to shoot or rot, peel and freeze the cloves so they the last until the next season’s crop is ready.

FEED ANDWATER

At this time of year, plants are putting all their energy into producing my food. Vegetables are enlarging, fruit is plumping up and roots are bulbing out underground – but they can’t do that without resources. It takes energy for a plant to do this and if it puts too much into production, it can overstress and get sick later on. A plant not only needs constant water (think of water to a plant like blood to a human) but nutrients for both its own health and to put into production. And the more nutrients it has, the more nutrients its produce will contain when you consume it.

Compost and seaweed are my two favourites. Both contain a wide range of goodies in a complex mix that the soil life and thus the plant can utilise at their leisure. Whether mulched around the base or applied in compost tea, make sure your food plants are getting plenty of food – little and often.

While a large dose of fertiliser may seem like a good idea at the time, it can actually be detrimental. Known as fertiliser burn, too much fertiliser literally clogs the cells of your plant. Fertiliser is an instant kick – a bit like drinking a caffeine energy drink.

I prefer to give my plants a constant supply of compost and a regular watering of seaweed compost tea. It’s a long-term strategy that feeds the soil life, which feeds the plant, which feeds me.

SNIP UNWANTED GROWTH

Now that the flush of spring growth is over and the sap has stopped running, you can prune unwanted tree growth. Full pruning should be done after

GET GROWING

This column is adapted from the weekly e-zine, get growing, from New Zealand Gardener magazine. For gardening advice delivered to your inbox every Friday, sign up for Get Growing at: getgrowing.co.nz fruiting, but the sooner unwanted growth is removed the more energy is diverted into wanted growth and production, so low offshoots should be nipped off now. The same goes for unwanted water shoots, which are usually a sign of bad pruning last year. Decide if you are going to keep any and remove the rest. Anything below the graft line is the rootstock growing and should be removed ASAP. Any small low branches that I definitely don’t want are snipped off – turn your secateurs so the flat blade is next to the trunk and cut neat and close without damaging the trunk bark.