Advice. Ideas.

Inspiration

Anita’s Garden
Volume 4, Issue 51 23 September 2022

Useful Links Editorial

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Inside this issue:
P ot te r ing aro u nd 2 I know I continue to be a little ahead
Anita’s Garden
Top 5 gardening tasks 2
for the week
Collaboration news 2 it made sense to share what I had
Tips for growing radish 3 with me, please get in touch by email.
and kohlrabi
Welcome to the fifty first issue of my
newsletter for Volume 4.
I hope you have all had a good week.
I am getting closer to finishing anoth-
er volume of Anita’s Garden! After the
fifty second issue, I will start again at
Issue 1, Volume 5. Just a little re-
minder that you can view back issues
of my newsletter on my website. The
link is in the left hand column.
I have some wonderful news. Insta-
gram helped recover my hacked ac-
count! When I first filed the claim I
don’t think I did it properly because I
never received a confirmation email.
Also I wasn’t asked to send a video of
myself. I decided to report the hack
again and this time I was asked to
send a video of myself for face recogni-
tion and Instagram sent me an email
to confirm they had received my re-
quest and were processing it. In less
than two hours, the account was back
in my possession! Needless to say, I
am very happy. The link to my ac-
count is in the left hand column.
with Anita’s Garden. Only once per-
son has given me negative feedback
Due to a lot of rain recently, I was
able to spend a lot of time indoors and
wanted to use that time productively
so I started working on my newslet-
ters. Because many of you were in
exactly the same situation, I thought
written as you also had some spare
time on your hands to do some gar-
dening reading. This is why I didn’t
simply store them on my laptop and
circulate them on the issue date. I
hope that I didn’t confuse anyone and
I can’t please everyone. All my advice
regarding when to sow and grow
plants is correct at the date of the
issue, not when it is circulated. If it
bothers anyone that I have done this
and you wish to read the newsletters
later, there are two ways you can go
about this: (i) you can do what one of
my readers told me she does and save
the PDF version of the newsletter
which I circulate by email to your com-
puter and read it on the issue’s date or
(ii) you can look up the issue in the
newsletters section of my website on
the date that you wish to read it. Don’t
forget that my newsletter is free and I
don’t receive any money for doing it. It
takes 5-6 hours to produce each issue
and it comes out every week. I also have
a mental illness and it can make doing
things very hard when I am depressed,
so I like to be on top of things when I
can be to allow for times I am unwell.
Blog
You can read my gardening blog here.
Social media
I have a Facebook page called Anita’s
Garden, which I am very active on, I
try to post photos and updates of our
garden regularly. I am also back on
Instagram, now that my hacked ac-
count has been recovered.
Collaborations
I have the following collaborations:
 Italian Seeds Pronto
 Awapuni
 Bulbs Direct
If you are interested in collaborating
Have a great weekend.
Anita Kundu
PAGE 2
Pottering around Anita’s Garden
These are our White Dynasty tu-
lips. Thank you to Bulbs Direct.
This variety was the first to flow-
er. The next day the colour deep-
ened and they became whiter.
Top 5 gardening tasks
1. Sow radish seeds
See my article on page 3 for grow-
ing tips.
2. Sow marigolds undercov-
er
They are very easy to grow from
seed and make a great companion
plant in your veggie garden.
3. Spray roses and fruit
Collaboration news
Italian Seeds Pronto stock two
great kohlrabi varieties. There is
Di Vienna Bianco and Purple Vien-
na. I am growing the latter this
spring. I have covered growing
kohlrabi in my article on page 3 in
this week’s issue but seeds can be
sown in punnets outdoors now and
transplanted into 6-cell punnets or
trays before eventually being
planted in the garden.
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
This is the hyacinth Blue Pearl. It
is from Bulbs Direct. I am very
grateful to Kayne and the team for
kindly pre-chilling my tulip and
hyacinth bulbs for me.
trees with liquid copper
This helps combat fungal diseases
such as brown spot and brown rot
in summer. If you have a passion-
fruit vine be sure to spray that too
as it is susceptible to fungal dis-
ease.
4. Sow veggie seeds in pun-
nets outdoors
Now is the perfect time to sow
Bulbs Direct still have a great
range of summer bulbs available
on their website. Choose from
dahlias, begonias, gladioli, callas,
potatoes and much more. Over the
years, I have purchased many
summer bulbs from Bulbs Direct
and they continue to flower in our
garden year after year. One of my
favourites is the well-known dahl-
ia variety Penhill Watermelon.
V O LU M E 4 , I S S U E 5 1
This is the lachenalia Pear-
sonii. I have these planted in
some terracotta pots along
the pathway to the front door
and they look so cheerful.
They are very easy to grow.
lettuce, mesclun, spinach, silver-
beet, spring onions, kohlrabi and
beetroot.
5. Sow herbs for your cat
Now is the perfect time to sow cat-
nip, catmint and catgrass. Experi-
ment to find out which, if any,
your cat is drawn to. The only one
our cat likes is catnip. It makes
some cats aggressive but not Gin-
ger. It makes her very happy.
Awapuni have recently launched a
new look website! Take a look
when you have a moment. It’s
very impressive.
Camarosa strawberries are back in
stock! There are regular bundles
and mega bundles of 50 or 100
plant. Last year Awapuni kindly
gave me a mega bundle of 50
plants which performed so well.
 V O LU M E 4 , I S S U E 5 1
Tips for growing radish and kohlrabi
Radish
Ready to harvest in around 30
days, radish is one of the fastest
maturing veggies and it is also
incredibly easy to grow. When I
started gardening, it was one of
the first things that I grew and I
also highly recommend that kids
start with it too because it is ready
to eat so soon.
When to sow
Radish is best sown in spring and
autumn.
How to sow
As a root crop, radish doesn’t
transplant well so I recommend
sowing seeds direct to where you
want to grow them.
If you are short on space, radish
can be grown in containers. I have
found that it does well in 9 litre
buckets (you can use the house-
hold type, just drill some holes in
the bottom for drainage).
I recommend sowing seeds at regu-
lar intervals so you have a contin-
uous supply.
Varieties
Italian Seeds Pronto stock four
lovely radish varieties in the Fran-
chi Seeds range: Ravanelli Colorati
(Golden Line), Zlata (a sweet yel-
low variety from Poland which is a
personal favourite), Gaudry 2 and
Dattero Rosso.
Preparing the ground
As the roots of radish are quite
short, you don’t need to dig the soil
over as deeply as you would if you
were sowing carrots or parsnips. I
don’t recommend adding compost
to the soil, as radish is a root crop
and the nitrogen may cause exces-
sive leaves at the expense of form-
ing a radish underground. If you
do add anything at all, a little
blood and bone and some super-
phosphate fertiliser will help your
radish along.
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
Homegrown radish
Care
Because radish mature so quickly,
you might not need to do much to
keep the weeds down.
I suggest harvesting your radish
soon after they become ready, oth-
erwise they may start splitting
and/or becoming bitter to eat.
Kohlrabi
Purple Vienna kohlrabi
If you’re keen to try growing some-
thing new this spring, I highly rec-
ommend kohlrabi. The shape is
very cool, we call it sputnik!
When to sow
Like radish, kohlrabi seeds can be
sown in spring and autumn.
How to sow
I recommend sowing seeds in a
punnet filled with some seed rais-
ing mix and leaving them outside
to germinate. You don’t need to
use a heat pad or put them in your
hot water cupboard. They will ger-
minate outdoors fine at this time
of the year.
PAGE 3
When the seedlings are large
enough, they can be potted into 6-
cell punnets or seedling trays, be-
fore being planted in the garden.
Varieties
Italian Seeds Pronto stock two
kohlrabi varieties in the Franchi
Seeds range, Purple Vienna and Di
Vienna Bianco. I have grown Pur-
ple Vienna in the past from anoth-
er seed supplier (pictured) but this
year, Gillian Hurley-Gordon, the
owner of Italian Seeds Pronto,
kindly gave me the seeds in her
range to try.
Preparing the ground
I usually don’t bother adding com-
post, but I do like to mix a little
veggie fertiliser into the ground
prior to planting. I tend to space
the plants about 10 cm apart.
Water well after planting. Try and
keep the weeds down. Plants ben-
efit from weekly liquid feeding
with a water soluble plant food or
seaweed tonic such as Seasol.
If you don’t want to raise kohlrabi
from seed, you can sometimes find
seedlings at the garden centre.
Awapuni also stock kohlrabi seed-
lings and deliver direct to your
door, which is super convenient in
spring when gardeners are very
busy outside. You can ask to be
notified by email when they be-
come available if they are out of
stock.
Preparation
Kohlrabi can be consumed raw or
cooked. We enjoy it raw, grated
with some salt. Before the pan-
demic, we used to host wwoofers
(travellers with working holiday
visas) who would stay with us in
exchange for some help around the
garden. Many of the German
wwoofers we hosted had eaten
kohlrabi back home and it was
consumed cooked.
Happy gardening!
Have a great weekend