Advice. Ideas.

Inspiration

Anita’s Garden
Volume 3, Issue 24 1 January 2021

Useful Links Editorial

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Blog Welcome to the twenty fourth issue
of my newsletter for Volume 3.
Newsletter back issues
I hope you have all had a wonderful
Facebook Christmas.
Instagram This is the first issue for 2021 and I
Twitter thought I would take the opportunity
to write a special edition with a bit
Linkedin of information about myself, the au-
thor of Anita’s Garden, and our gar-
Pinterest den, a sprawling urban homestead
located in Auckland, New Zealand.
A bit about me
Contact me
I’m 40. I have no formal horticultural
 Feedback
training. My background is actually
in Law. After graduating from the
 Newsletter input
University of Auckland with a con-
(tips, recipes, gar-
joint BA/LLB(hons), I moved to Eu-
den photos etc)
rope and spent five years working at a
 To be added to my large commercial law firm in London
mailing list and Paris, where I specialised in In-
ternational Arbitration (the resolution
anitakundu.nz@gmail.com of international disputes) I started
gardening eight years ago after my
father passed away. I had also been
diagnosed with schizophrenia after
Inside this issue: experiencing a number of psychotic
episodes and was suffering from very
bad depression at the time. I found
gardening to be very therapeutic.
P ot te r ing aro u nd 2 Anita’s Garden started with the sim-
Anita’s Garden ple act of planting an oriental lily
called Hot Spot in my father’s
memory.
Top 5 gardening tasks 2
for the week
As my interest in gardening grew, more
of our lawn was dug up to expand the
garden. Although I started out as a
flower gardener, I soon became interest-
ed in veggie gardening. A few years
ago, I added standard roses and fruit
trees, too. As the garden grew, so did
the demands of working in it so we
started hosting wwoofers (travellers
with working holiday visas) who stayed
with us in exchange for some help
around the garden.
In 2017, I launched Anita’s Garden. I
started writing a gardening blog and a
free weekly newsletter filled with lots of
gardening advice, ideas and inspiration.
I set up a Facebook page and created an
Instagram account. I also ran a bou-
tique plant nursery from home, selling
a range of veggie seedlings.
Personal achievements include our gar-
den being featured in the April 2017
edition of the New Zealand Gardener
Magazine (you can read the article
here) and being placed Runner Up in
the Yates Spring Veggie Growing Chal-
lenge in 2018.
These days, I am the admin for two lo-
cal gardening groups on Facebook. I
am also a brand ambassador for the
following New Zealand gardening busi-
nesses:
 Italian Seeds Pronto
 Awapuni

 Bulbs Direct
Anita’s Garden: Our 2
oasis
I want to thank you for your continued
support and wish you a very happy New
Year.
Anita’s Garden: the year 3
Kind regards,
ahead
Anita Kundu
Hot Spot oriental lily
PAGE 2
Pottering around Anita’s Garden
In this week’s column, I thought
I’d share our successes and fail-
ures from 2020.
Successes
Potatoes
I planted three varieties—1 kg of
Swift (early), 6 kg of Liseta (early)
and 18 kg of Summer Delight
(main crop). In all, I estimate we
harvested 200 kg of potatoes.
Swift potatoes
Top 5 gardening tasks for the week
1. Plant more cucumbers
It’s not too late to plant more cu-
cumbers for cropping in late sum-
mer and autumn.
2. Keep liquid feeding
Continue to liquid feed your plants
every week. By showing them
some love, you will reap the re-
wards with magnificent displays of
flowers and abundant crops.
Anita’s Garden: Our oasis
Both mum and I work very hard in
the garden and also in the kitchen,
transforming our homegrown pro-
duce into delicious dishes. Howev-
er, we make a point of making
time to relax and enjoy our garden,
too. A couple of years ago, we cre-
ated a sanctuary on a piece of con-
crete outside our living room (see
picture on the right). We put some
outdoor furniture to relax on.
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
Hippeastrums
After years of trying unsuccessful-
ly, I have finally managed to grow
hippeastrums. I’ve discovered that
it helps to keep them in a shel-
tered area, such as a patio.
Failures
Garlic
All of my crop got rust and the
bulbs were like spring onions.
3. Tidy up your seed collec-
tion
If you’re like me, your seeds for the
summer garden are everywhere in
the house. It’s too late to sow
them, so put them away safely for
next year.
4. Plan the autumn
winter garden
While it’s a bit quieter, now is a
To the left, there is passionfruit
vine, which is bordered by fruit
trees in containers.
We also have another relaxation
spot in our garden underneath our
banana tree. We placed a couple of
plastic chairs underneath the can-
opy for enjoying a cold drink. If I
have time, I place a picnic rug un-
derneath the canopy and have a
little lie down.
V O LU M E 3 , I S S U E 2 4
Okra
After a very successful season last
summer, my attempt at growing
okra has been a complete failure.
My seedlings look very week and
unhealthy. Most died in our
greenhouse. I don’t think I’ll be
planting them out in the garden.
Dwarf snake beans
I think I got overexcited by the
prospect of growing these for the
first time and planted them out
early, in mid-November. I ought
to have waited until at least a
month later. Most of the seedlings
died, I think from the cold.
Eggplants
I’ve lost many eggplants in the
transplanting process.
good time to start thinking about
what you intend to plant in au-
tumn and winter. Leave ordering
seeds for another week or so, to
allow seed companies to reopen.
5. Keep spraying your roses
In summer, I alternate between
Yates Super Shield and Mavrick.
and
If you followed a regular spraying
regime in winter you may find it’s
not necessary to spray as much.
Our cat Ginger lounging in
our sanctuary
 V O LU M E 3 , I S S U E 2 4
Anita’s Garden: the year ahead
Normally my article on page 3 of
my newsletter includes lots of gar-
dening tips. As this week’s issue is
a special edition to help you get to
know me a bit better, I thought I
would share some of my plans for
the garden for the coming year.
Extending our level of self-
sufficiency
I’m still working towards the
dream of being completely self-
sufficient. To increase our supply
of fruit and veggies, I am going to:
 Plant more seed potatoes. I
will buy a 25 kg sack of
Summer Delight, our fa-
vourite variety, from Mitre
10. Summer Delight stores
very well, so I hope our crop
will see us through winter.
I also intend to plant 6 kg of
our favourite early variety,
Liseta.
 Plant more pumpkins and
squash. They store well,
giving us food for winter.
This summer, the spaghetti
squash variety Vermicelli is
doing very well. It is a com-
pact variety and the plant
looks more like a zucchini
than a sprawling squash.
This is perfect for our pota-
ger.
 Grow lots of mini brassicas!
I planted the cabbage Ran-
furly Mini from Egmont
Seeds last autumn, with
excellent results. This year,
I’m expanding the selection
to include mini red cabbage,
broccoli and cauliflower.
They take up less space and
can be planted much closer
together, yielding higher
crops. They’re also perfect
for small families, such as
ours.
 I want to track down the
avocado variety Pinkerton,
so we have another pollina-
tor for our Cleopatra tree.
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
Expanding the cut flower gar-
den
Every week, I like to give my
Aunty Joan (who lives across the
road from us) a bouquet of flowers
from the garden. Recently, I have
started giving some to her sister,
my Aunty Betty and her daughters
Jonelle and Sharee, I would like to
continue to do this in 2021. Both
Aunty Joan and Aunty Betty have
supported me tremendously with
the garden and I am very grateful
to them. At some times of the
year, there is nothing for picking
and I’d like to fill the lacuna. One
of the ways of achieving this is to
expand the variety of flowers I
grow (the other way is to stagger
sowing and planting times). Last
September, I sowed an extra-early
sunflower variety called Vincent’s
Choice, which I obtained from the
Egmont Seeds Commercial Cata-
logue. It was flowering by mid-
November. I have never had sun-
flowers this early. This year, I’m
growing giant asters for the first
time. I sowed seeds on my heat
pad in mid-
December and will
transplant them in “At some stage, I’d like to
the garden later take a holiday as my last
this summer. Their one was in February last
long stems make year!”
them perfect for
picking. If this goes
well, I hope to include stock and
snapdragons in the garden in the
future. For winter, I intend to
plant peony tulips after a success-
ful trial last season.
Vincent’s Choice Sunflower (DMR)
PAGE 3
Next summer, I hope to expand my
selection of dahlias. I am very
fond of dinner plate varieties, so I
want to add to the existing ones we
have. I’d also like to add some ball
and pom pom varieties to the gar-
den, too. Dahlias make great cut
flowers and have the potential to
produce many, many flowers.
The rose garden
I lost a few roses last year, so I’m
gradually replacing them with va-
rieties I really like. On my shop-
ping list for this winter is the Da-
vid Austin variety the Lady Gar-
dener which I have on back order.
Bedding begonias
I’d like to try growing bedding be-
gonias from seed. Previously I
dismissed propagating them from
seed as they’re a little tricky.
However recently I’ve been finding
them difficult to obtain in garden
centres. My favourite one is the
bronze leaf, in pink and white.
Activities
In 2021, I want to
continue writing
my blog and free
weekly gardening
newsletter, which
I hope will help
inspire and in-
form other gardeners. I also in
intend to continue to be active on
Facebook and Instagram, to show-
case the progress of the garden.
Subject to their agreement, I’d love
to continue with the existing col-
laborations I have with the gar-
dening businesses I have built re-
lationships with over the years,
and promote their products via my
blog, newsletter and social media
channels.
Have a break from the garden
At some stage, I’d like to take a
holiday as my last one was in Feb-
ruary last year!
Happy New Year!
Happy gardening!