Winter garden 2024
It’s often muddy and dangerously slippery in the garden during winter months. Do you ever check the tread on your gardening shoes? Just like with car tyres, when the tread has worn, they need replacing. My garden is full of vegetables and I’m hoping for success with some of them, if not all (experience tells me, that’s way too optimistic!). Last summer a few snow peas popped up in the pea straw I used as a mulch, so I let them hatch. But I’ve decided to give them some garden time this winter. The large covering from my Vegepod is keeping them cosy at night – you could use a frost cover. We’ll see how they go … they look very happy today. And I’ve also planted six cavolo nero plants and a row of spring onion seeds.
There is still time to get seedlings in. I’m hoping to replicate last winter’s stunning bounty of tender stemmed broccoli. The plants are off to a good start, even after supporting several families of green caterpillars. New spinach and more lettuce have gone in. No green caterpillars yet. Then there are the leftovers from summer. In frost-free areas like Waiheke and most of Auckland, you can leave chilli plants in and they will come away again when they get a bit of sun. Tarragon roots can stay buried, and they’ll pop up again in spring. Some of the chilli plants still have chillies and more flowers, but a sudden chill will stunt the growth I imagine. Lunchbox peppers are still producing fruit, though I expect this will be the last lot, and a few strawberry plants from last spring have started doing well.
I gave the sage plants a good hack as they had grown enormous in two of the vege beds, trimmed back thyme and pulled out the basil and the last of the tomatoes. In the first bed there are a few fennel plants, two mini cauliflower and one each mini red and green cabbage, the mini cabbages are an experiment. All the different thymes, rosemary and parsley are doing well, and winter mint is taking off, but three-quarters of the fabulous purple sage plant on the cooler side of the house just curled up and died. I think it got wet feet. Dang. I liked looking at it through the window. Likewise, the huge bunch of chives just stopped growing. I went out to pick some one day and there was none!
Edible flowers such as pansies are adding splashes of colour. Pineapple sage adds colour and fragrance and quickly fills an empty spot in a garden. It’s also easy to grow from a cutting, just poke it in the ground and it will most likely grow. I had a magnificent bush one day, and the next, the wind snapped off 80% of its branches; it’s not a hardy bush I surmise. Now is the time to plant nasturtiums. Look for packets of seeds that show a variety of colour – the mahogany colours, deep reds and yellows are particularly lovely in a garden and are useful to add a touch of colour to a winter salad.
