Advice. Ideas.

Inspiration

Anita’s Garden
Volume 4, Issue 20 18 February 2022

Useful Links Editorial

Webpage

Blog Welcome to the twentieth issue of hope will inspire and educate other gar-
my newsletter for Volume 4. deners. I have also been working on a
Newsletter back issues project that is completely unrelated to
I hope you have all had a good week. gardening which is very important to
Facebook Just a couple of little housekeeping me. I know that some people may find
matters. this extremely difficult to believe but I
Instagram
do actually have a life outside the gar-
Twitter  Plant nursery den!

Pinterest As many of you will be aware, I have 3. Blog

Contact me
 Feedback
 Newsletter input
(tips, recipes, gar-
den photos etc)
 To be added to my
mailing list
anitakundu.nz@gmail.com
Inside this issue:
P ot te r ing aro u nd 2 seeds a go, I highly recommend the
Anita’s Garden
Top 5 gardening tasks 2 quality plants, I strongly recommend
for the week
Collaboration news 2
Bulbs Direct: Spring 3 the moment as I simply don’t have
Bulbs Catalogue Part IV
not been able to run the plant nursery
this season because I simply don’t
have enough time. I have also had a
difficult two years, which shaped my
decision to stop running the plant
nursery. In 2020, the council imposed
watering restrictions, which meant a
downturn of sales as fewer people
wanted to do a garden knowing that
there would be a hose ban. Fair
enough. In 2021, one of the biggest
challenges was the imminent threat of
lockdowns, making it difficult to sell
plants that I had painstakingly propa-
gated from seed and cared for, not to
mention the expense of seeds, seed
raising mix and potting mix.
If you want to give sowing your own
Franchi Seeds range available at Ital-
ian Seeds Pronto.
If you are wanting to purchase high
Awapuni, who deliver direct to your
door.
2. Requests for assistance
I have been receiving quite a few re-
quests for one-on-one assistance. I’m
really sorry but I am not able to help
people out on a one-on-one basis at
time. Looking after our entire garden
by myself is extremely challenging
and I also devote a lot of time to writ-
ing my newsletter every week, which I
This year, I have a goal of resurrecting
my blog. In addition to writing my free
weekly gardening newsletter, I also try
to write blog posts about different as-
pects of gardening. Over the past year,
I was so busy taking care of our garden
that this part of my website was ne-
glected. I endeavour to set a bit of time
aside every week to post an update
about some aspect of Anita’s Garden or
include more tips to help people learn
about gardening.
Here are some of my recent posts:
 Highlights from summer 2022
 The late summer garden
4. Social media
I have a Facebook page called Anita’s
Garden and maintain an active Insta-
gram account, too.
5. Collaborations
I have the following collaborations:
 Italian Seeds Pronto
 Awapuni
 Bulbs Direct
If you are interested in collaborating
me with, please get in touch by email.
Anita Kundu
PAGE 2
Pottering around Anita’s Garden
I recently harvested all our butter-
nut pumpkins as they had started
to die off the vines. They are the
variety Chieftain and I purchased
the seeds from Kings Plant Barn
in Botany. Butternuts store really
well and can be used in many dif-
ferent ways, including soup and
baked and stuffed with feta
cheese, herbs and pine nuts. This
is one of our favourite ways to en-
joy butternuts.
Top 5 gardening tasks for the week
1. Plant rudbeckia seed-
lings
I have been removing begonias
that were past their prime in large
troughs and have been replacing
them with dwarf rudbeckia seed-
lings that I raised from seed.
2. Sow seeds for autumn
Now is the perfect time to sow
Collaboration news
Italian Seeds Pronto stock a great
range of radish, which is popular
in the autumn garden. Radish is
very easy to grow. Choose from
Zlata (my favourite, a yellow varie-
ty), Ravinelli (a mixture, golden
line), Gaudry (red and white), and
Daterro Rosso (red). Don’t add
compost to the area where you sow
your radish otherwise the plants
will be leafy and won’t form roots.
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
These are the rest of the pumpkins
that I harvested from our vines.
There is a mix of spaghetti squash,
Blue Hubbard, Queensland Blue
and Jarrahdale. I chose to grow
all of these varieties for their ex-
cellent storage qualities. With
some care, we find that our pump-
kins keep right up until Christ-
mas, which is really handy as they
are always expensive at that time
of the year.
seeds for the autumn garden. I
recommend sowing fennel, beet-
root and kohlrabi for early in the
season and things like lettuce,
spinach and kale for harvesting
later on as the weather cools.
3. Pick naked ladies
Ours are flowering now. They
make great cut flowers. I gave a
bunch of these to a friend who
Bulbs Direct still have a great
range of spring bulbs available
online but I have noticed that pop-
ular varieties have already started
selling out. It’s still too early to
plant spring bulbs but it pays to
get your pre-order in as soon as
you can to avoid missing out on
popular varieties. This week, I
have continued my series on their
spring bulb catalogue on page 3.
V O LU M E 4 , I S S U E 2 0
I have also started harvesting
okra. I sowed four different varie-
ties from seed: Gunjan, Emerald
Green, Clemson Spineless and
Burgundy. All of my plants are in
9 litre square black plastic con-
tainers (about the size of a house-
hold bucket). I have 193 plants in
total. If you would like to add okra
to your garden, you can grab some
plants from Awapuni, who is sell-
ing them for the first time.
invited me over for dinner last
weekend.
4. Keep an eye on pump-
kins
Normally, I harvest them at the
end of February, but some of ours
have started dying off the vines so
I have picked those ones now.
5. Weed and water the gar-
den!
Awapuni have some special items
available such as bitter melon,
snake beans, okra, moringa and
peanuts which have not been
stocked in previous years.
Stocks are limited so be in quick to
ensure that you grab some!
 V O LU M E 4 , I S S U E 2 0
Bulbs Direct: Spring Bulbs Catalogue Part IV
This is the fourth article in a se-
ries about Bulbs Direct’s new
spring bulb catalogue which Kayne
recently uploaded. This week, I
am going to focus on daffodils.
There is a great range available
this season. Daffodils come in a lot
of colours, not just the traditional
yellow. They also come in white,
red and orange. Sometimes they
are a mix, for example you might
have a white daffodil with a red
cup (the inside part). If you want
a display of spring flowering bulbs
that lasts all season, then daffodils
are for you. It is possible to get
early flowering, mid-season and
late flowering daffodils. You can
get single flowering, double flower-
ing, butterfly (split corona), minia-
ture (ideal for growing in contain-
ers) and jonquil (multi-headed)
daffodils. With daffodils, you can
purchase each type individually
(usually but not always sold as a
minimum of 5) or you can get dif-
ferent types of mixtures. With a
bit of care, they should reflower
the following season. Daffodils do
not like being disturbed so it’s best
not to lift them at the end of every
season. I was making this mis-
take, which is why they didn’t re-
flower. I would recommend leav-
ing them in the ground for a couple
of years before lifting and dividing
them, otherwise they will become
too crowded and not flower that
well anymore. Another thing I
would recommend doing is to feed
your daffodils with bulb fertiliser
or liquid fertiliser as the foliage is
dying down, so those nutrients go
into the bulb and it will help them
flower the following season. Once
the foliage starts dying down, you
can also remove the flower head if
you didn’t already pick the flower,
so the bulb puts all its energy into
nourishing itself for future sea-
sons.
Here are some of my top picks
from Bulbs Direct’s spring cata-
logue.
Erlicheer
PAGE 3
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
You can’t beat King Alfred for a
standard, traditional yellow daffo-
dil. They are easy to grow and
make an outstanding cut flower.
They also multiply prolifically,
making them great value.
Tete a Tetes
These are my favourite miniature
daffodil. They are perfect for
Erlicheer growing in containers. Tete a tetes
usually flower mid-season. If
You can’t beat Erlicheer when it planted in early autumn, they tend
comes to an early flowering daffo- to flower around July, at least in
dil. They are very easy to grow our garden.
and the bulbs are very hardy. If
yours are anything like mine, they
are sure to reflower year after year
and multiply prolifically, making
them excellent value for money.
Soleil d’Or
Another multi-headed jonquil type
daffodil that I highly recommend
is Soleil d’Or. Erlicheer is cream
coloured, whereas this one is yel-
low. Soleil d’Or have a lovely fra- Tete a Tetes
grance and make an excellent cut
Other recommended varieties
flower. The bulbs are very hardy
and should reflower easily the fol-  Sun disc (miniature)
lowing year with little effort.
 Minnow (miniature)
 Grand Monarch (jonquil)
 Silver Chimes (jonquil)
“Daffodils come in  Gloriosis (jonquil)
a lot of colours, not  C a r l t o n
just the traditional (traditional yellow)
yellow. They also
come in white, red  British Gamble
and orange” (white with pink cup)
Erlicheer and Soleil ‘d’Or mixed in  Kiwi Sunset (double)
a vase
King Alfred