A d v i ce . Id e a s .
I n sp i ra t i on
Volume 2, Issue 44
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Inside this issue:
Po t t e r i n g ar o u n d
Anita’s Garden
Top 5 gardening tasks
for the week
More on growing endive
How to grow chicory
Anita’s Garden
Editorial
Welcome to the forty fourth issue of
my newsletter Anita’s Garden for
2020.
I hope you have all had a good week.
Contactless plant nursery
We are now at level 2, but as this is
all unchartered territory I am keeping
the service contactless for the time
being. This means you must order
and collect outside our home in Papa-
toetoe, Manukau in Auckland.
Punnets are $3.50 each or 3 for $10.
Punnets contain at least 6 seedlings
I have the following in stock.
 Silverbeet/spinach (I’m sorry I
can’t say with certainty which
it is as the writing on the plant
labels faded and I can’t tell
them apart)
 Lettuce (cut and come again)
 Mixed brassicas (they are a mix
of cabbage, broccoli and cauli-
flower. I can’t sell these indi-
vidually as the writing on all of
these labels faded and I can’t
tell the plants apart)
2 difficult as there are so many different
The steps for ordering are as follows:
 Place order
2
 Receive confirmation
 Make payment via internet
banking
2
 Receive a message when plants
are available for collection
3 If you wish to place an order, please
contact me via my Facebook page or
email me at anitakun-
du.nz@gmail.com.
22 May 2020
Correction
I do make mistakes! It happens occa-
sionally and I apologise for them.
In the “Potting around Anita’s garden”
column of page 2 of last week’s news-
letter, I incorrectly stated that
Franchi’s brassicas (the cauliflower
Macerata, the broccoli Romanesco,
Calabrese and Broccoletti and the cab-
bage San Michele) were hybrids. I
made an error. These are all heirloom
varieties. I just wanted to put this
right and am sorry for any confusion
this has caused.
Infact none of the seeds in Italian
Seeds Pronto’s range (and Franchi
seeds for that matter) are hybrids
which is what makes them so special.
Any seed saved will come true to type,
but if you are growing the zucchinis
and pumpkins and want to save seeds,
you might want to stick to growing just
one of these as they have been known
to cross-pollinate.
I haven’t written about seed saving
much in previous newsletters but it
might make a good topic to cover over
the coming months, even if the timing
doesn’t exactly coincide with seed sav-
ing activity in the garden. It’s always
veggies to cover as we move through
the seasons. If you want to make sure
the information in my newsletters is at
your fingertips, I suggest you do what
one of my readers told me she does and
save the PDFs in a folder on your com-
puter. The only way to receive a PDF
version of my newsletters is to sub-
scribe, which you can do by emailing
me at anitakundu.nz@gmail.com and
writing “subscribe” in the subject field.
Have a great weekend.
Anita Kundu
PAGE 2
Pottering around Anita’s Garden
Here is a selection of photos from
our garden for you to enjoy
We have been harvesting the most
wonderful red cabbages this sea-
son. There are still many more in
the garden which are coming
along nicely. We usually have
them raw and make a salad with
some fresh parsley and lemons
from the garden. It’s really deli-
cious and is a welcome change
from having coleslaw with green
cabbage all the time.
Top 5 gardening tasks for the week
1. Plant spring bulbs
This is absolutely your last chance
to plant spring bulbs. Bulbs Direct
have a great range of bulbs which
are very reasonably priced. Their
service is very efficient and friend-
ly.
2. Plant more veggies
It’s not too late to pop in all your
favourite winter veggie seedlings -
More on growing endive
In page 3 of last week’s newsletter,
I mentioned that we enjoy endive
mixed with other salad greens so
that the taste (which is bitter)
blends in better.
I wanted to go on to mention that
an ideal way of growing and con-
suming endive is the Mesclun mix
Quattro Stagioni from Franchi
seeds, distributed by Italian Seeds
AN IT A’S G AR D E N
This part of our garden is looking
very lush despite the lack of rain.
It contains several varieties of
spinach (I am growing the varie-
ties Merlo Nero and Matador from
Franchi Seeds, which is distribut-
ed by Italian Seeds Pronto in NZ),
Black Tuscan Kale from Franchi
Seeds, leeks and fennel. We use
the spinach and kale raw in our
daily green smoothies, which we
simply cannot live without. We
use fennel to make slaw, which is
delicious.
spinach, silverbeet, cabbage, cauli-
flower, broccoli, leeks, onions, let-
tuce, kale and broad beans. It’s
gotten a bit cold to raise seedlings
from seed. Awapuni offers a fan-
tastic selection of veggie seedlings
and deliver direct to your door.
3. Order pea straw
If you like mulching your garden
with pea straw, it might be a good
idea to order some now as stock
Pronto in New Zealand. This Mes-
clun in fact consists of 14 different
salad varieties, including endive,
radicchio, chicory, romaine, 4 sea-
sons and Verona lettuce. We enjoy
it as a base for salads. Here are
some serving suggestions for Quat-
tro Stagioni as a salad base:
 Lamb and haloumi
 Salad Nicoise (tuna and a
V O LU M E 2 , ISSU E 4 4
During lockdown, I gave this gar-
den a makeover. I pulled out what
was previously in it (swan plants,
dahlias, lilies and spring bulbs)
and for now have planted some
brassicas, including Cauliflower
Macerata and Broccoli Romanesco
from Franchi Seeds, distributed by
Italian Seeds Pronto in NZ. But I
have plans to turn this into a gar-
den for flowering annuals, starting
with sunflowers in spring, followed
by Iceland poppies next autumn.
was very limited last season. I get
mine from Zoodoo.
4. Do a stocktake of your
gardening supplies
Write a list of what you have so
you don’t double up.
5. Plant garlic
You can plant garlic now until Ju-
ly.
boiled egg)
 Beetroot, feta and walnut
 Pear, blue cheese and wal-
nut
 Chicken and avocado
 Thai beef
 Cottage cheese
 V O LU M E 2 , ISSU E 4 4
How to grow chicory
As mentioned in last week’s edito-
rial, over the coming weeks, I will
be taking you through a range of
unusual veggies that you might
not have previously grown in the
garden. Please bear with me. I
hope you learn something new and
give some thought to trying some
of them in the future. You never
know, you could discover some-
thing you really like to eat!
Chicory is not a new veggie to me.
A few years ago, the lovely Gillian
Hurley-Gordon who owns and op-
erates Italian Seeds Pronto, the
NZ retailer of Franchi Italian heir-
loom seeds, gave me a complimen-
tary packet of Variegata Es-
posizione Di Castefranco with my
seed order. I must admit that I
was a little apprehensive about
trying it, because I had never
grown it before. I needn't have
worried. Chicory is very easy to
grow and incredibly nutritious. It
contains Vitamins A, C, E and K.
It also contains Thiamin, Ribofla-
vin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folate
and Pantothenic Acid. Along with
radicchio and endive, chicory
makes an interesting addition to
salads.
How to grow chicory
I recommend sowing chicory in
late summer (for planting in au-
tumn) and spring. Simply sprinkle
some seeds in a punnet filled with
seed raising mix and cover lightly.
Make sure you keep them moist to
aid germination, as seeds tend to
dry out quickly in warm weather.
When your seedlings are large
enough to be pricked out, trans-
plant them into punnets or seed
raising trays so they can grow a bit
bigger. From here, you have two
options—either you can plant your
chicory in the ground or grow it in
containers. If you opt for the lat-
ter, your chicory can be kept baby
leaf, sort of like Mesclun. This
makes it easy to harvest for sal-
ads.
It may be best to sow chicory from
AN IT A’S G AR D E N
seed than rely on finding it in gar-
den centres, given that it is an un-
usual vegetable and may not be
readily stocked. It is not difficult
to grow from seed. If you can grow
lettuce, you’ll have no trouble
growing chicory.
Varieties
Italian Seeds Pronto has a bril-
liant range of chicory. There is Da
Taglio Bionda a Foglie Larghe,
Catalogna Pugliese, Catalogna
Punterelle Brindisina and Varie-
gata Esposizione Di Castefranco.
The Mesclun variety Quattro Sta-
gioni, which I have discussed in
page 2 of this newsletter, also con-
tains chicory and is a nice way of
having it if you prefer it mixed
with other salad greens so it
doesn’t taste too bitter. Egmont
Seeds’ Mesclun Mix also contains
chicory.
Tips for growing chicory
1. If you’re short on garden  Try having chicory gently
space, consider growing
chicory in containers. You
can simply
harvest what
you need, “Chicory is very easy to
leaving the grow and incredibly
rest of the nutritious”
plant to con-
tinue to grow.  For the chicory Catalogna
2. When choosing a seed rais-
ing mix for raising seed-
lings, look for one that is
fine in texture and doesn’t
contain stones and pieces of
bark
3. For autumn plantings, don’t
leave sowing seeds too
late—February and March
is perfect. It gives your
plants enough time to devel-
op before they are trans-
planted into the garden or
containers before cooler
temperatures set in.
4. Water seedlings well after
planting.
PAGE 3
5. To keep your plants looking
healthy, you might want to
liquid feed them weekly
with a water soluble plant
food or seaweed tonic if
you’re gardening organical-
ly.
6. When temperatures in-
crease in spring, you may
find your plants start going
to seed. To save seeds from
your crop, simply allow one
plant to go to seed and col-
lect seeds once they’re dry.
Label and put them away
for safe keeping until you
are ready to sow them the
following season.
Serving suggestions (some ideas
taken from Italian Seeds Pronto’s
website)
 If you find your chicory too
bitter, soak it in salty water
for 30 minutes
boiled in salted water
served on top of broad
bean pu r ee,
sprinkled with
br ead cu bes
fried in olive oil
and garlic
Punterelle Brin disina
which is grown for its
stems and buds, slice the
inner-core thinly and im-
merse in cold water until
they curl up. Drizzle with
lemon anchovy dressing
 Gratin
 Tart
 Risotto
 Salads
 Sauteed, roasted and cara-
melised
Have a great weekend
Happy gardening!