How to save your own seeds.

As the nights draw in and the days and nights get a little cooler the natural cycle of the plants in our garden comes to an end.  Their sole goal in their short little lives is to reproduce – so the seed cycle is the final one. They literally “go to seed”.   Each plant has their own method of scattering that seed then they die, become compost and the cycle starts over. We can collect that seed to resow ourselves next Spring in a patch of our choosing, save it or share it with others.

Over the next month or two (March and April in Southern Hemisphere) we will be tidying up our gardens and getting the beds prepared for the garden season the following spring. Before you pull everything out keep an eye out for some really good produce. Your best bean producing vine, your most delicious tomato plant, really good potatoes, herbs, lettuces, silverbeet or whatever.  Mark them so that as they die down you can harvest seed from them.

Tomatoes – this is a good way to share rare varieties and keep the old types from disappearing.  Choose a fine example of the one you want to save the seed from, make sure it has well ripened, then squash it.  Put the seeds onto some paper towels to let the flesh dry away from them. When well dried out put the seeds into an envelope marked with the name of the variety and the date.

Beans.  Let the vines dry off and some of the pods dry.  Then pick and store a cool dry spot.  I never end up eating all the broad beans I grow so save a whole heap and use as my green crop about this time of the year.  You can dry beans to eat as well – use a bean that is designed for drying such as borlotti, and let dry on the vine. Once well dried off put into an airtight jar for use in the kitchen later.

Potatoes. Even though it is recommended to get fresh certified see potatoes each year, it is possible to keep good disease free tubers for the following year. We would only have some of our old varieties if people didn’t do this. Choose the best looking disease free obviously healthy potatoes from good plants.  Keep them in a cool dry spot in your shed over winter.

Lettuces and herbs  - cut off mature heads and shake into a paper bag. Keep in a named envelope. If you think you are going to miss the seeds or it looks like rain, you can tie a paper bag over plants you really want to save the seed from. Lots of flowers will provide seed for next year as well.  Either scatter or save until spring and sow in the usual way.

Obviously if we are storing all these seeds in our shed, then we need a shed with space to do our storing!  Pumpkins, corn for the hens, apples, carrots – there are lots of things that we can store for winter use.  Having lengths of wire netting suspended above head height is a good one. Only use disease free produce and check regularly.

I have a good supply of brown wage envelopes which are a nice size for seed saving.  Send me a stamped self-addressed envelope and I will post you back a half dozen. Send to K Mackay PO Box 115 Palmerston, Otago, 9443.

Backyard vegetable Gardening for February – Summer in the NZ Garden.

For those following the crop rotation plan on the poster, February is high summer for most parts of NZ, hot and humid in the north and hot and dry in Central Otago. By the end of the month the nights usually start to cool down and Autumn will be in the air.  Should be lots of harvesting going on and keeping up the watering is vital for growing crops.  I have been re-reading the excellent book by one of the fathers of gardening in this country, Prof Walker, in which he emphasizes the point that regular watering is vital for well-grown veges.  Plants can have their growth checked at 2 points – once when transplanted as seedlings and again if they dry out.  The general rule is that if it hasn’t rained for 3 days then water well in the evening. It is better to water deeply once every few days than sprinkle a bit every day.  Mulch is essential to keep the moisture in and the weeds down.

Bed 1.

In this first year of rotation I have sweetcorn with climbing beans going up, plus climbing beans on poles, dwarf beans and peas.  Keep picking beans so they will keep producing. Corn is ready when the tassels turn brown.  If you have beans growing up them then leave the stalks.  You can pull those out later in autumn to bury and turn into valuable carbon.  Liquid feed as they will be hungry.

Bed 2:

That old standby silverbeet should be doing well. It will be an early indicator of dryness - if the leaves are looking a little sad and wilted then give the bed a drink. Young brassicas for autumn and winter eating will be growing nicely. It may be getting a bit hot for lettuces – keep planting in small batches down the rows of brassicas – that will give them a little shade from the hot sun.  Keep up the water and grow them quickly and eat them every day!  They can get bitter if too long in the garden with not enough water. Keep planting and harvesting your asian greens and spinach.   

Bed 3. Summer in bed 3 is where a lot of action is taking place.  Tomatoes should be ripening nicely, courgettes, capsicum, aubergine, cucumber, basil  etc. Keep harvesting to keep everything fruiting. Pinch out the laterals on the tomatoes and keep stake well. Once your pumpkins have set 3-4 fruit pinch out the growing tips to allow those ones to grow. This mainly applies to southern parts of the country where autumn cooling may prevent late pumpkins from ripening.

Bed 4. If you have early potatoes in this bed then you probably have harvested most of them by now. You can have new potatoes over the whole growing season of course if you have a succession of planting – and they are lovely to have with your summer salads. Main crop potatoes such as agria will be still doing their thing under the ground. Water wisely – not too much in case they rot. In the rows left bare by the harvesting of early potatoes you can sow either a green crop of mustard to sterilize the soil or get in a punnet each of celery and leeks.  Dig over, add manure and a bit of lime.  Keep well watered though. Continue to sow carrots and beetroot in soil that is friable. No manure added for these root crops though.   Your earlier planted parsnips should be coming along for winter and will appreciate liquid feeding and adequate water.   

Bed 6.

I have asparagus in this bed. We collected seaweed after a recent storm and spread over the bed along with some manure. The ferns are waving in the breeze but don’t chop back until later in the autumn.  The outer edge of my bed is edged with lavender as it leads onto a central pathway so that is providing some interest. I have an artichoke standing sentinel beside the central entry into the main garden which is ready to eat.

In the opposite bed at the top of the garden we are eating strawberries. Have harvested the blackcurrants and added them to the jams and jellies we have been making. Recipe in earlier blog. Rhubarb will need plenty of water and manure to keep nice fat stalks but will be past its best.

Enjoy your garden.

More on Sharing

 More on the blackcurrancy market. We just had a couple of rather ‘invigorating’ days away in the Catlins – visiting the same time as a southern blast of freezing weather straight from the Antarctic.  Stayed in a DOC camp in our tent listening to the howling wind and hail.  Put on all the clothes I brought with me. Being a sensible southerner that did include wool socks, merino top, windbreaker and knitted hat. Excellent summer break. We went for a great walk during a break in the weather and found this gorgeous roadside patch in Papatowhai. 

Free Veges  says the sign. Help yourself. They have also added the verse about beating swords into ploughshares - a message of peace. 

Great adventure though and thoroughly recommended. For those of you who don’t know, the Catlins are in the bottom south eastern coast of the South Island of NZ and have really been only recently discovered by the rest of the world.  The native forests are awesome – especially where they sweep down to the sea.  It’s the old stomping ground for my husband and his family as they holidayed regularly at Curio Bay. The Catlins are easy to get to. The town of Balclutha is only an hour south of Dunedin (less from Dunedin airport) and is where you turn towards the coast.

 More freezing sleeting cold summer adventures in the South…

Not far inland but further south near Wyndham, we visited a garden that has been on my radar since I started gardening as a young woman in the 1980’s and 90s.  Maple Glen. Go there. It is one of the most beautiful woodland gardens you will ever see anywhere in the world.

They have a plant nursery there too and I was able to purchase a couple of treasures for my new woodland garden. I am so thrilled that I can grow these treasures more successfully than I could in the humid north.  Maple Glen is open all year round so pick your favourite season and just go. Take a picnic. You could be some time. 

The Blackcurrancy Market

The Blackcurrancy Market.

I was quite delighted with my terrible pun about the Blackcurrancy Market in my notes about making black currant jelly and it made me think about the sharing of our produce and how that kind of currency contributes to natural balance in the world. We have just had a couple of days away and my neighbours kindly fed the hens for me – I was able to give them a jar of my jelly and the balance is maintained. A small thing I know - but important all the same.

As many of you know or are finding out, there is something deeply satisfying about preserving our produce and having enough not only to provide for our families over the winter but also to share with others.  It’s the age old cottager tradition which is making a real comeback. If you have an abundance of one thing then trade with the neighbours for their abundance.  When I was growing up you did not visit or go share a meal with someone without taking something along. A posy of flowers and herbs, a small pot of jam or preserves, some baking – what a treat.  It’s a very personal thing to bring something you have made. Let’s bring this tradition back.  

The good thing about preserving is that you can do lots of small batches so even if you are time poor, you can fit a batch of jam making in around your other work. A mix of small and medium jars means you have a small jar to give away.

Like the concept of terroir in wine or cheese making, the nuances of the season right down to the day are preserved in the flavour of that batch of jam.  Jam or jelly made at the beginning of the season may taste different to that made at the end. Soil, weather conditions during the growing season or at the time of harvest - all bring their subtle differences to the flavour of the end product.  So a succession of preserving days can mean a succession of individual tastes – some maybe never to be repeated! That’s one of the joys of the cottage gardener.

And if you are not yet able to make your own preserves then support your local farmers’ market or small scale businesses by buying their preserves.  You  can buy on line from small scale producers and so support our local Kiwi businesses.  Here are two I know who are marvelous examples of Professional Countrywomen.

Inch Valley Preserves is run by Maria Barta Hinkley and her husband on the edge of   Central Otago. Small batches of gorgeous product made with locally grown produce and available at various retail outlets or on line. Check her out at www.inchvalley.co.nz.

Totara Lowlands Cherries and Hazelnuts near Oamaru has recently been taken over by Liz Robins. She is not only growing the most marvelous cherries and hazelnuts but is preserving them in many delicious ways. Cherries preserved in Brandy. Yum. She has a range of preserves (not only cherries) and can make up gift baskets to order on line.  Check the range out www.totaralowlands.co.nz.  The site still has the names of the previous owners on it but the ordering system is still the same.

Blackcurrant Jelly (Especially for Beginners)

So the preserving has started.  A large bucket full of delicious fat shiny black currants turned up from my in-laws begging to be turned into something delicious.  They are so big they look like small grapes but are tiny bursts of vitamins and goodness. Time to make some black currant jelly.  

 

One of the reasons I am going to make jelly is that I am lucky to leave the jam making to my lovely mother in law.  She actually tops and tails her blackcurrants. They sit together at the outside table with a pair of scissors each and top and tail those tiny berries. Bless. 

Anyway I’m not going to do that so I am going to make jelly this time where you stick everything in the pot and strain it out so any stray sticks or tops and tails will be strained out. I did pop them in a colander and wash them, picking out any that were a bit squashed and starting to go rotten as you don’t want those in there. I then weighed out 2 kilos of berries and put them into my large preserving pan, just covered them with cold water and brought to the boil.  I cooked them for about 20 mins and mashed them occasionally with the potato masher to squash as much juice out as possible. You don’t have to have 2 kilos of fruit – the recipe I was using called for 1.5 kilos which is a good size too but I had so many.  It doesn’t really matter as you will just adjust the proportion of sugar to fruit when you have strained it.

Once it had cooked away for 20 mins I turned it off and let it cool slightly before transferring the whole lot to my jelly stand to strain.  This is my new prototype I am testing out. Normally I have a muslin bag hanging off a broom over a bowl in the bath but I am trying to improve. I think it’s a bit small yet so I put half the mixture in first and let some of the liquid strain through before adding the rest. I only got a little bit on my good top. (Make sure you wear an old tee shirt and apron to do this)  The other thing to be really aware of with any preserving is to be super careful when carrying heavy pots of boiling liquid. Especially once the sugar is in because the sugar will stick to you and hold its heat for a long time.  Always make sure there are no obstructions to trip over and make sure you are really well prepared so you can minimize the distance you have to move pans etc.

The important thing to remember at this stage is to not squeeze the bag tempting though it may be. This will make your jelly cloudy which is what you want to avoid.   So pour it into the bag and leave it at least over night to drain.

Sterilising Jars.

Because you are obviously going to be keeping your produce you need to sterilize your jars.  You can recycle old jars or buy some gorgeous new ones.  Smaller sizes are good as once you open your jelly you will want to put it in the fridge and eat within a few weeks of opening. Plus you will be able to give some jars away or swap with neighbours –part of the blackcurrancy market.(ha ha!)  Wash jars well and then put into a cold oven. Turn on to 110degrees C. Once the light goes out to indicate the temperature has been reached turn the oven off but leave the jars in.  Put all the lids into a saucepan of hot water and bring to boil. Simmer for a while then turn off. Do this while you are boiling your jelly and the timing should work out well.

Making the Jelly.

While the jars are sterilizing in the oven, measure the strained liquid by cup into a deep preserving pan and add the same quantity of sugar. 6 cups of liquid means 6 cups of sugar. Don’t skimp on the sugar – it is the reaction of sugar with the acid in the fruit that forms the jelly. My 2 kilos of fruit made 1.5 litres of liquid. Bring to the boil and boil rapidly for 20 mins or so. Turn the element down a bit so you don’t have juice going everywhere of course, but keep it at a rolling boil. Test by putting a bit of the liquid onto a cold saucer and into the fridge. After a few minutes it should show signs of setting by wrinkling when you prod it with your finger.  If you have a sugar thermometer the optimum temperature is 105 degrees C.  The longer you boil the more it is likely to set but you don’t want to overdo it as it can become solid.  For this batch I did add the juice of half a large lemon which can aid the setting process.  Later in the season if you are making jam or jelly using frozen fruit some good cooking apples added to the mix will also improve the pectin.

 

Turn off your element and let the mixture cool down to a safe temperature. Put down some newspaper on your bench and a good wooden chopping board on top of that.  Carefully get your hot jars out of the oven. The jars and the liquid both need to be hot otherwise you will get cracked jars. Pour your mixture into the jars and get the lids on. Don’t move until cool, then wash and label jars.  

Now you have some delicious black gold on your shelf to savour over winter.

Welcome to New Gardeners and Readers for 2014

Welcome to new readers who may have got one of my Crop Rotation Posters for Christmas.  I hope you find it really useful and practical and if it helps more of you get growing and providing your healthy food for yourself and your family then I am happy! I have tried to simplify the process so you can plan ahead and get some sort of system going in the backyard vegetable garden. This type of gardening is really a form of traditional cottage gardening where householders mixed flowers, fruit trees, herbs and vegetables along with hens and often a pig around the house. You really are creating a miniature environment that will have benefit not just to you but to all of the other forms of life (birds, bees, bugs etc) who will take up residence and thank you for making it all possible.

If this is new for you then be prepared to become a tiny bit obsessed. It gives many of us enormous pleasure to cultivate the land, sow seed, plant plants and eat what we grow. I used to wonder if it was a female thing – to nurture and care for  - but men seems to be equally smitten. It must really be something deeply embedded in the human psyche and we experience a form of joy as we get in tune with it.  Mind you I wouldn’t have said that last week as I was digging heavy damp soil in what was bare paddock last week. Thank goodness I was out of earshot of any passersby who might have been alarmed at my loud groans and moans. I am creating a new garden in a paddock as well as working in a garden on another property that has been worked for years. The difference between the two just shows  how you can build up and improve soil by the regular application of compost, manure and mulch until it is lovely, friable and fertile.  The paddock bed at this stage lacks all of that but it won’t be long and it will be gorgeous!

So if you are just starting off, the first thing to keep in mind is to not bite off more than you can chew.  Gardening should be a joy not a burden.  Think about your resources first.  You can create a garden by evolution or by revolution. That is – you can either start with what you have now and work your way to your goal or you can clear a space and build a new garden including raised beds, walls, drains and irrigation all in one go.  

For the evolutioners,  if there is already the remnants of a previous patch out in the back yard, well sheltered and sited for sun then mark out your beds according to the plan and make a start.  Use what you have available – if there are some old bricks around or railway sleepers (lucky) then use those to edge the bed. It is really important whatever you do to be able to get access to mulch. This will make all the difference to the amount of ongoing work needed. There is an old saying that “Nature abhors a vacuum” which for the gardener means that nature will always cover bare dirt with what is available – which, without intervention, will probably be weeds.  If you dig over a new bed and sow seeds or plant seedlings, it won’t be long before the weeds start to germinate and pop through. If you are onto it you can hand weed and hoe them out. But if not the danger is within a few weeks your bed will be overwhelmed by weeds and the fun will be over.  Even grass clippings will suffice as mulch and do a good job.  Keep green mulch away from touching any seedlings though as they can rot if too close. I use old straw and love seeing my garden all tucked up against the elements. The good thing is that it will break down and contribute to the soil so “all things work together for good” in this instance.

Again if new to this, make sure you plant things you like to eat. Get the kids out helping you and train them up as well.  Get a garden notebook and note down when you plant and when you harvest so you build up a picture of your particular patch.  We all garden in microclimates that can be peculiar to our locality and you will learn what yours is soon enough. Garden calendars such as the Crop Rotation Poster  offer guidelines for planting as will the backs of seed packets, newspaper columns, magazines and books but it really comes down to what your particular conditions are like. If you notice a well tended garden in the neighbourhood,  see if you can befriend the owner – gardeners are usually wonderfully generous people who enjoy sharing knowledge.  That way you can learn about what grows and when in your area.

If you are keen and have the resources available then go for revolution!  If you have the right spot for a garden (see some of my earlier posts about starting out in the vege garden) then why not go the whole hog and end up with a beautiful raised bed system. If this entails hard landscaping, drainage and irrigation then it might pay to get a bit of expert help in but if you know what you are doing you can do it yourself. Do it right and you will not only create a gorgeous space but it will add value to your property.  There are plenty of plants you can still plant at this time of the year or you can load up the beds with compost, manure and mulch or green crop and leave for a bit longer. My feeling is once you have beds ready it’s hard not to resist planting straight away.

Whatever your garden style is get out there and do it – there are no end to the benefits to you, your family, your community, the earth and so on.   And you will be joining a growing network of people in making the world a better place.  

The Summer Palace - Michael Leunig

Here is a poignant and suitably garden-wise poem to mark the passing of one year and the beginning of the New.  I love Leunig's work and this one is my favourite.  None of us are exempt from difficult events and experiences but what a great lesson in resilience and hope from the garden - allow those things to die and turn them into something that is productive and hopeful. Here's to a great Summer Palace.    

THE SUMMER PALACE

Make a little garden in your pocket,


Fill your cuffs with radishes and rocket,


Let a passionfruit crawl up your thigh,


Grow some oregano in your fly.


Make a steamy compost of your fears,


Trickle irrigate your life with tears,


Let your troubled mind become a trellis,


Turn your heart into a summer palace

(Used with permission: For his other work go to  http://www.leunig.com.au/)