Advice. Ideas.
Inspiration
Anita’s Garden
Volume 2, Issue 18
Useful Links Editorial
Webpage
Welcome to the eighteenth issue of
Blog
my newsletter Anita’s Garden for
2019.
Newsletter back issues
Facebook I hope you have all had a good week.
Instagram Lately, the weather has been quite
unstable. How are the plants that
Twitter you put in over Labour Weekend far-
ing? Hopefully they’ve all managed to
Linkedin withstand the wind, cold and rain but
Pinterest if your garden is anything like mine,
you may find yourself having to re-
sow and replant seedlings. This start-
ed a couple of weeks ago for me. You
Contact me may recall me mentioning that I had
to put in Sweet Heart tomatoes from
 Feedback Egmont and Red Cherry from Franchi
to replace some of the plants which
 Newsletter input
our wwoofer Eleanor put in over La-
(tips, recipes, gar-
bour Weekend. Then I lost most of
den photos etc)
the cucumbers and zucchini I planted
a few days after that. Fortunately I
 To be added to my
have more zucchini in the nursery
mailing list
and cucumber plants in the green-
anitakundu.nz@gmail.com house as reinforcements to replace the
seedlings that I have lost. This is a
testament to always sowing a bit
more than you think you’ll need, be-
Inside this issue: cause you can never be guaranteed
that your plants will grow as planned!
Most recently, and perhaps most dev-
P ot te r ing aro u nd 2 astatingly, I lost all of the butternut
Anita’s Garden pumpkins that I planted in our gar-
den near the border with our neigh-
bour, where the large willow tree used
Top 5 gardening tasks 2 to be. These included Rugosa, a varie-
for the week ty from Franchi seeds, which I am
excited to be growing again this year.
I constantly feel like I’m running out
Tips for growing zinnias 2 of time, but it’s hopefully not too late
to re-sow more seed. I had half a
packet of Rugosa left over, which I
popped onto the heat pad along with
How to grow beans 3
four different varieties of butternuts.
I’m hoping that these will germinate
and will be able to be potted up in the
next week or so, ready to be planted
22 November 2019
out in early December. You sure can
never count your chickens before
they’ve hatched when it comes to the
garden!
Running counter to all of these mis-
haps are the successes I have had this
spring in the garden. We have had a
beautiful crop of radishes. Amethyst
from Egmont Seeds, and Gaudry and
Ravanelli from Franchi Seeds per-
formed exceptionally, and I would
highly recommend these varieties to
other gardeners. To complement our
radish, we have also had a lot of lovely
lettuce this spring from the Salanova
plants I put in that were reduced to
half price back in August.
Although they were grown back in
summer, we have still been eating our
way through our butternut pumpkins,
with plenty left for Christmas, which
is a good thing as the price is normally
astronomically high around that time
of the year as everyone anticipates
their Christmas roast with all the
trimmings. It is for precisely this rea-
son that I didn’t hesitate forking out
$16 for more seeds to replace the seed-
lings I lost due to the cold weather, as
the delicious pumpkin and butternuts
that we have been consuming every
day far outweigh the cost of seeds. To
complement our pumpkin and butter-
nuts, we have been eating silverbeet
and spinach from the garden, now
moving onto our new plants. I can’t
believe we’re already harvesting from
the seedlings our wwoofers Linnea and
Einar planted for us when they stayed
with us back in September!
I hope you enjoyed this column and
have a great weekend.
Anita Kundu
PAGE 2
Pottering around Anita’s Garden
Update on our mini orchard
Apple trees
Our dwarf apple trees are all do-
ing nicely.
Apricot tree
Looks healthy but no fruit on it
Banana tree
Our banana tree fruited in spring,
providing us with beautiful, sweet
bananas for many weeks
Peaches and nectarines
There is no leaf curl on the stone
fruit thanks to a strict spraying
regime over winter and spring.
Lots of little fruits have formed on
the trees
Top 5 gardening tasks for the week
1. Plant zucchini
Now is the perfect time to plant
more zucchini or replace any
plants that have died
2. Plant cucumbers
Now is also the perfect time to
plant more cucumbers.
3. Plant melons
Tips for growing zinnias
Zinnias are one of my favourite
summer flowers and we always
have them in the garden. They are
easy to grow, come in a variety of
different heights and are a great
butterfly attracting flower. Here
are a few tips for growing super
zinnias this year.
 Zinnias do best when sown
direct to where you
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
Figs
All our trees are healthy and have
fruit on them
Citrus
Our dwarf mandarins and orange
trees did well over winter, provid-
ing us with lots of fruit. Our lem-
on tree did exceptionally well this
year, thanks to the Kolush sea-
weed and Manuka mulch that
Palmers kindly gave me to trial in
the garden. This winter, I added a
dwarf Tahitian lime and Meyer
lemon to our citrus trees.
Raspberries and brambles
There are plenty of flowers on the
raspberries and brambles
Pear Tree
Normally I plant melons in the
third week of November, when the
weather is a bit more settled. If
you leave it any longer, you risk
fruit not maturing in time before
the end of summer
4. Sow zinnias
I also recommend sowing zinnias.
These flowers are a real butterfly
magnet and are very easy to grow
from seed.
want to grow them. I’ve never had
much luck transplanting my own
plants, but if you buy seedlings
from Awapuni you should be fine.
 Zinnias are gross feeders so
work lots of compost, sheep
pellets and fertiliser into the
ground prior to planting
 Zinnias come in a variety of
heights. You may want to
V O LU M E 2 , I S S U E 1 8
There is fruit on our Garden Belle
tree!
Strawberries and blueberries
Every other day we are harvesting
a bowlful of berries. This year is-
n’t as productive as last year,
when we were harvesting a bowl-
ful every day. Our blueberries
look healthy and there are lots of
berries on them
Feijoas
I added three more trees to our
existing five trees, which are flow-
ering
Avocado
Cleopatra looks healthy, going into
its second year.
5. Plant marigolds
Marigolds are always a favourite
in our garden. They look great as
a bedding or border plant. They
are also a terrific companion plant
and help repel insects from veggies
in the garden. As mentioned last
week, I planted my two favourite
varieties, Durango Flame and
French Vanilla, into two large
troughs near our front door.
sow taller varieties at the back of
the garden and dwarf ones along
the border
 Water well at the time of
planting and frequently
thereafter
 For best results, liquid feed
plants every week
 Save seeds from your plants
 V O LU M E 2 , I S S U E 1 8
How to grow beans
Beans are a staple in the summer
garden. They are easy to grow and
everyone love them. They’re also
very versatile and can be prepared
in many different ways.
Growing beans from seed
Beans are easy to grow from seed,
so I normally start them this way.
However, if you’re pressed for time
or don’t want to start them from
seed, you can purchase plants from
the garden centre. Awapuni is a
great place to purchase plants
from, because they deliver direct to
your door, saving you valuable
time. It’s now warm enough to sow
seeds directly where you want to
grow them, or you can raise seed-
lings in punnets for transplanting
later. John McCullough from Eg-
mont seeds cautions against this
though, as it interferes with the
plant’s roots. At this time of the
year, it’s best to sow seeds under-
cover as they’re a heat-loving plant
and if temperatures are too low,
seed won’t germinate. I recom-
mend using a heat pad. With one,
you shouldn’t have any trouble
getting seed to germinate. Accord-
ing to John, there is no need to
soak seeds beforehand, indeed do-
ing so leads to the risk of them
rotting in the ground.
Varieties
As mentioned above, there are
many different varieties of beans–
dwarf, climbing, broad beans and
exotic beans including snake
beans. This year I’m growing a
large selection of beans from Eg-
mont Seeds (Franchi unfortunately
don’t have beans as part of their
range in NZ). For dwarf beans,
I’m growing Admires, Hickok,
Cherokee Butter, French Baby,
French Commander, French Con-
tender, French Greencrop, French
Jackson, Top Crop and Green and
Gold Mix. I haven’t sown these yet
as I’m waiting for my Liseta pota-
toes to come out in early December
so they can be sown in this space.
For climbing beans, I’m growing
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
Snake beans
Snake Beans, Climbing Butter,
Climbing Cobra, Climbing Mixed,
Climbing Purple, Mangere Pole,
Scarlet Runner Guinness World
Record and Shiny Fardenlosa.
Tips for growing beans
 Beans need full sun (at least
six hours per day)
 Prepare the ground well
beforehand. I like to mix in
lots of com-
post, sheep “Beans are a staple in the
pellets and
summer garden.
fertiliser pri-
are easy to grow and
or to plant-
everyone love
ing.
They’re also very versatile
3. Sow seeds and can be prepared in
about 5 cm many different ways”
deep and cov-
er with soil. If you sow
them too shallow you run
the risk of them being
scratched up by birds.
4. Dwarf beans normally don’t
need any support but you
will find that climbing beans
do benefit from plant sup-
port. We grow ours against
our fence at the back of our
house, which has green plas-
tic trellis stapled to it. For
the first time this year, I’m
doing a little experiment to
see whether beans sown in
troughs filled with potting
mix in our patio will grow.
Unfortunately the area is
PAGE 3
concreted so I can’t sow them to
the ground as you normally would.
The fence surrounding the patio
has plastic trellis stapled to it for
support.
5. Water well after planting
and thereafter.
6. Liquid feed weekly with a
water soluble plant food
such as Thrive or a seaweed
tonic like Seasol
7. Don’t plant beans too early.
I normally wait until No-
vember. By then, night time
temperatures have in-
creased as it can still be
quite cool in the evenings in
October.
8. Beans take awhile to devel-
op. They should be ready in
about 100 days from plant-
ing, less for dwarf beans
(around 60 days)
9. Beans should keep for
around two
weeks. If you
have excess, you
They
could share them
with family,
them.
friends, col-
leagues and
neighbours.
Some ideas for
using beans
 Boiled or steamed with some
butter, salt and pepper
 Stir-fried
 Bean salad with mint and
feta (we like Eleanor Ozich’s
recipe)
 Bean salad with dry beans
such as kidney and pinto
beans
 Snake beans in thai fish
cakes with sweet chilli sauce
Have a great weekend
Happy gardening!