from my garden

Because I love food I also like to grow it! Many years ago when I was a solo Mum I had a huge luxurious vegetable garden (which supplemented our meagre household income), I also had the time to spend in it! Many years later I have left a stressful corporate life behind me and can enjoy the pleasure of a vegetable garden again.  My successes are worth celebrating, my failures I find hard to handle! When I first moved to Wellington (5 years ago) I knew little about what I could grow here but the first thing I did was create a herb garden. I love vegetarian cooking so fresh herbs of all varieties are essential to have on hand. It is still flourishing, although I have to re- plant Italian parsley and coriander every year. This autumn I am going to let my parsley go to seed and see if I can grow it like a weed! The second thing I created was a compost heap, we are lucky to have 3 brick 'pits' from the old house once on the property, I can rotate the 'heaps' and can distribute the glorious stuff onto our garden when needed. I can grow silver beet (so can everyone apparently!), lettuces, broccoli, carrots, beetroot and tons of runner beans. I'm no good at zucchinis, basil, cabbages and tomatoes. In fact the tomatoes are my biggest disappointment, probably due to the lack of sun and gale force winds we have here! I have tried 3 varieties now - the latest the cherry ones. I have about 1/2 bucket of little green balls that I will need to make into pickle! Can't bear to waste them! Watch this space! We have a very old lemon tree on our property, I use a lot lemons and love to preserve 2-4 jars of lemons every year- must remember to give them a shake today, they will be ready in 6 weeks.