SOW & GROW

Jo McCarroll suggests jobs to do in the edible garden.

Keep sowing and planting suitable crops

Everything in the garden is in full production this month and with so much fresh produce to pickle, process or preserve it’s easy to get distracted and stop planting. But keep sowing and planting, little and often, so you have new plants coming on to extend your summer harvest and your autumn and winter crops get the benefit of the summer warmth to get established. Sow more basil, dwarf beans, carrots, Asian greens, fennel, beetroot, coriander, rocket, radishes, silverbeet, spring onions, lettuces, cucumbers and zucchini this month, and you can plant seedlings of cherry tomatoes, corn and cucumbers in all but the coldest regions in January while seedlings of zucchini, basil, dwarf beans, lettuce, kale, silverbeet and leeks (for winter) can go in pretty much everywhere. You can plant seedlings of brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower for winter now too although protect them from the moment of planting from the rapacious cabbage whites. In warmer areas, sow your winter brassicas in trays now to plant out next month, trays are much easier to protect with nets.

Find smarter ways to conserve water

January is hot, hot, hot and usually dry so start to think seriously about ways to be smarter about the water you use in the garden. The most basic way to conserve water is to water less often but more deeply and to lay mulch and plant closer together so plants form a living mulch, both to keep water in the soil and inhibit the germination and growth of weeds (which in turn use up some of that available water resource). But once you start looking you’ll be surprised at how much water you can conserve day to day – from having a bucket in your shower to catch the water as the shower water warms up or having a basin in the sink to catch the water as you wash your hands or rinse dishes, to cooling and using your vegetable cooking water (don’t do that if you added salt though). And if it does rain, you can set up buckets or a plastic drum to catch the water that comes off the roof of your home – or the garage, shed or even the kids’ playhouse – or go low tech and leave buckets and basins on the lawn to fill up. How else do you conserve water at your place? Let me know at mailbox@nzgardener.co.nz.

Plums ripen off the tree and can go quickly from unripe to overripe at room temperature. A reader told me she picks a few at once and puts the most unripe in the fridge to slow their ripening down, leaving the ripest ones in the fruit bowl to eat. Every few days she takes the ripest from the fridge and starts the cycle again. It spreads one harvest out over a longer period.

DIY buzz pollination

Late last year I was leading a gardening tour in South Australia and we visited the home of Gardening Australia presenter Sophie Thomson. We were wandering around her vegetable garden and I saw an insect I didn’t recognise. Sophie told me it was an Australian native blue-banded bee, which shakes the pollen out of a flower by basically banging its head on the flower’s anthers hundreds of times a second – a true Aussie head banger. Now with most plants, the pollen is held on the outside of the flower’s anthers so it’s easily collected by the likes of a honeybee as it brushes past. But with many Australian native plants – and with some common edible crops including blueberries, potatoes, tomatoes, chillies, peppers and aubergines – the pollen is held inside tubes and only able to be released when the flower is vibrated at a specific frequency. So these plants are pollinated most effectively by what is called a buzz pollinator, like a blue-banded bee. We don’t have blue-banded bees here in Aotearoa New Zealand, and although bumblebees are buzz pollinators, it’s hard to ensure these are the exclusive pollinators of the crops that benefit from buzz pollination for maximum yield. But you can try a bit of DIY buzz pollination to help suitable crops set more fruit. Tomatoes, for instance, should be flowering profusely now, so tap or shake the branches gently as you walk by to help release the pollen. Or if you want to go a bit more high tech, I read about a study by scientists at an American university who removed the brush head of an electric toothbrush and touched the metal part to the open centre of each tomato flower, allowing it to vibrate against the bloom for five seconds or so, released enough pollen for the plant to self-pollinate. I have an old electric toothbrush put aside and will try this myself this year and let you know the impact in terms of yield.

How did your garlic grow?

If you have harvested an abundance of fat bulbs, try making the classic Digby Laws’ garlic sauce, which is like an extremely potent Worcestershire sauce. Take 1 large onion, 150g garlic, 2 tablespoons whole cloves, 1½ teaspoons ground ginger, 1 tablespoon salt, 250g brown sugar, 1kg treacle and 5 cups malt vinegar. Mince the (peeled) onion and (unpeeled) garlic in a food processor and add to the other ingredients. Mix and let it stand overnight. The next day, bring slowly to the boil and simmer gently, uncovered, for about an hour, stirring frequently. Rub the mix through a sieve or strain through muslin, then stir through ½ cup Worcester sauce, pour into hot clean bottles and seal. I have swapped out the treacle with golden syrup (fine) and pomegranate molasses (delicious). It needs to sit for a few weeks before you eat it but it’s great in mince patties or with mashed potatoes, or use in marinades or to brush onto the meat when you are making a roast.