Waikato
Sheryn Clothier on how to get the best out of the food you’re growing.
As a gardener, harvester and cook, I use several strategies to get maximum nutrition from my food garden.
The first of these is to eat it fresh. The longer it takes for food to go from the garden to your stomach, the more nutrients are depleted.
Browning is a visible sign of the produce losing food value. Protein, carbohydrate and energy (calories) are relatively stable but folic acid, riboflavin, thiamin and just about every vitamin in the alphabet start vapourising once the produce is picked. Depending on the exposure to air, heat and light, the nutrients in fresh food can be halved by the time it is harvested, sorted, transported, purchased, taken home, stored, cooked and served.
This means we have to consume twice as much to get the vitamins we need, which doubles our calorie intake!
I pick it ripe.
This is especially important for my apricot. Note the singular. Each year, my husband and I get one skinny, mottled, split, tiny, manky fruit from our ever-expanding collection of apricot trees. Producing apricots has become our holy grail. We are experimenting with a range of techniques and varieties but I digress.
The point is once a year we have one fully ripe apricot absolutely bursting with flavour. We share it in the orchard with juice running down our chins. We even eat around the bird peck. We suck the pip. It is so good that we succumb to the perfect golden orbs for sale at the fruit shop and are then astounded by the huge difference in taste between ripened on the tree at home, and picked to look good after inter-island transport.
A plant packs in vitamins and nutrients as it ripens. Harvest it at maximum ripeness for maximum nutrients – and taste. I believe nutrients equals flavour, and if I have to use a lot of sugar and salt in my cooking to make it taste good, I conclude that my ingredients are lacking the essential goodies.
I time my harvest.
I pick to eat when I am hungry, but after rain or irrigation the nutrients in fruit are diluted so for better storage, flavour and nourishment, reduce or withhold water for a few days before picking fruit.
Conversely, leafy greens will last longer without wilting if they have had the cool night to replenish the moisture transpired out of their leaves during the day, so water well the night before and pick them early morning. For the same reason, harvest herbs you want to dry in the evening when their moisture levels are lowest.
I feed my food.
A plant can’t magic the nutrients it provides you from the air. Well actually it does to some extent – photosynthesis is a wonderful thing – but it sources minerals from the soil. If your soil doesn’t contain the minerals you need, your fruit and vegetables won’t either.
So it makes sense that to feed ourselves, we must first feed our soil. However, it is not actually the soil we are feeding, but the soil life. This is a whole ecosystem of bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi and bugs and critters that have symbiotic relationships, and process and convert the soil’s nutrients into plant-available forms to provide the roots with the nutrients the plant needs. It is these little guys that turn your compost into plant food.
Working out all these relationships and how they all interact and convert elements from one form to another is an exciting (to me anyway) area humankind is still researching, but the basics are pretty simple. Feed your soil biology good food, don’t kill them with poisons, give them the right conditions (water, air, warmth) and they flourish.
So it all comes down to compost. Good compost feeds your soil life, which feeds your plants, which feeds you. Don’t skimp on it and make it as varied as possible, adding goodies such as seaweed for the trace minerals.
If you are lacking something, such as magnesium or selenium, add these to your vege garden via your compost.
I don’t kill the start of the food chain.
Anything with ”-cide” means kill. Pesticide, herbicides, fungicides – all kill. Yes, they kill pests and diseases, but they don’t discriminate – they kill the good guys too. It’s a genocide. Even if they are organic and you have made them yourself from homegrown garlic and rhubarb, they still kill.
And the good guys they kill are the bacteria, fungi and critters in your soil that are feeding your plant (99 per cent of your garden life is good guys).
For example, in New Zealand we have less than a dozen moths considered a pest (including codling, white butterfly, lemon tree borer, raspberry bud, guava moth and puriri).¯ But we have over 1650 species of moths – the other 1638 usefully pollinate, feed birds and spiders as well as host parasites. Broad spectrum moth controls, even organic controls, kill moths and butterflies.
One of our favourite local escapes from intense summer heat has been to take to the native bush in the nearby Tararua ranges.
We have a favourite clearing here surrounded by a tall canopy of beech and tree ferns, carpeted with deep springy moss where we can lie on our backs, lulled in a dream of shade and green. The relentless heat of the blazing sun seems a million miles away as we relax.
If you have a garden, no matter how small, it is possible to create a cool corner at home as a summer refuge – a shady nook surrounded by foliage in 50 shades of green. An arbour with a seat is ideal if you have the space, but you don’t even have to have a garden to create a green retreat. A collection of shadeloving plants in containers may be gathered in a shaded entranceway, barbecue area or courtyard. Growing these gems in containers also means you can provide for their specific cultural needs.
First select your shadiest spot in the garden or south side of the house. Then decide on your largest specimen plants to give height and shelter. Japanese maples and tree ferns do well in large containers such as wooden half barrels. Rice-paper plant (Tetrapanax), nonsuckering bamboos such as tropical
Dendrocalamus latiflorus (for frost-free areas) and many natives such as our glossy leaved Pseudopanax are ideal, the latter a much underused local treasure. Its leaves are great for flower arrangements too. It is important – particularly with large specimens – to raise their containers on bricks to assist drainage.
Use woodland plants to form the understorey to your scheme.
Concentrate on large or interesting leaf shapes, textures and colours. A few shade-loving green flowers could be added – green nicotianas perhaps. I like to include a few unusual hydrangeas such as green-bracted ‘Annabelle’ and ‘Limelight’ along with silver-slippered ’Ayesha‘ with its coral-like clusters of bloom, and its cousin Dichroa ‘Stars & Sapphires’, an incredibly free-flowering shrublet where the brilliant blue mossy centre flowers are surrounded by lime green starry bracts.
Hostas form a huge and varied group from which to choose. Favourites of mine include giant-leaved ‘Empress Wu’, in her finely pleated robe, the very best of shady ladies. ‘Thunderbolt’ adds a central gold lightning flash to its grey-green leaf and ‘Fragrant Bouquet‘ has lemon-edged lime leaves and scented lily-like blooms. My favourite trillium, the cobra lily
Arisaema candidissima is not as sinister as its name. It has exotic-looking triploid foliage to follow its pink, white and green porcelaneous striped flowers.
Many ferns can add a light and lacy touch – look for the Japanese painted fern
Athyrium nipponicum ‘Pictum’ with its silver frosted, pewter and burgundy fronds.
Unusual woodlanders add interest that extend the display beyond their usual spring floral highlights too.
Smilacina racemosa’s powdery cream plumes of spring bloom are followed by stunning grape-like clusters of cream and crimson marbled berries – always a talking point. The Asian May apple Podophyllum ‘Kaleidoscope’ has giant, cushiony starfish-shaped leaves with an incredibly velvety depth of colour. The false anemone
Anemonopsis macrophylla adds a delicate 50cm January candelabra of lilac and white waxen blooms to its fresh, fern-like leaves. Similar in shape to an aquilegia, each pendulous blossom appears as if fashioned from Lalique crystal.
All these shady characters also require humus, good drainage and uniform moisture.
This also applies to that very great treasure Paris polyphylla var. yunnanensis – if you can find it. Bright leaves to add contrast in dark places could include Brunnera ‘Jack Frost’, variegated periwinkles and the ‘Snow & Sapphires‘ form of Jacob’s ladder Polemonium with its silvered filigree foliage.
These soothing foliage effects may be enhanced by adding high-fragrance flowers such as potted auratum lilies, gardenias and tropical jasmine.
Or spice things up with those evening scented ladies of the night, the moonflowers. But that’s another story. ✤