What am I growing this season. Part Three.
Deciding to grow less after a lifetime of growing more can be a little challenging. But if I continue to do what I’ve always done, I’ll always get what I’ve always got and in our new position in life as empty nesters is too much. So, I have made a series of hard decisions to create a slimmer garden that still has all of the excitement I’ve come to expect from my sowing from seed edible garden without creating unnecessary gluts and hopefully requiring just a little less effort to manage my still enormous garden.
Sector Three has the remaining bulk of our vegetable patch but it will also be operating in a reduced capacity. What was the bean bed last year has been dispersed into a new and reduced legume bed in Sector One so this is the last of our empty beds that are supposed to lay fallow and rest up for a season. This should be good in theory, so long as I can hold steady with the plan and leave it empty.
The first bed in this row is the root crops. The most obvious root crop are the carrots. They are affordable and abundant in the stores so it seems counter intuitive to grow them in the garden, especially as they can be a little fickle and in previous seasons I have actually struggled a little, through no fault of my own, but fresh is delish and you can’t buy that kind of flavour. I give them loose fluffy soil with limited nutrients, and they start out well enough, but some unknow creature has developed a passion for carrot tops and keeps stunting the growth as they stop pushing out roots while they regrow their tops. I haven’t given up yet and will increase my protective techniques to keep the Manchester Table and Egmont Gold carrots safe.
Beside the carrots is always a row of parsnips that are delish roasted or mashed. The kids didn’t really like them, so it is now about remembering to use them in the kitchen. The variety this year is Yatesnip! Alongside this has been far too many beetroot so this time I’m growing the Golden Beetroot that can give all the beetrooty goodness without staining everything with that deep purple. But it would be weird not to have the purple ones, so I’m putting in a row or two of Cylindra because it never gets too big that it won’t fit in a jar!
Although it would happily stay in one spot and regenerate itself and would probably make my life easier if that was the case, I like to have my Florence Fennel on the end of the bed and rotate them in crop rotation cycle. Maybe one day I’ll give them their own space to set up home, but not just yet because I’m not ready for that kind of commitment to change.
Next up are the spuds. I need to get onto these sooner rather than later, so they beat the Tomato Potato Psyllid. I have saved some Purple Heart and Illam Hardy from last year and last time I looked they were perfect to plant again. But I haven’t checked recently so there is a chance they may have gone too far. So, I’ll probably need to buy more. I like to grow my early waxy Christmas potatoes (variety still undecided) in containers, just in case we’re not home for Christmas day so I can take them with us for fresh eating. And I need some main crop spuds for long term storage that I’ll probably decide on variety while standing in the garden centre. I could grow spuds all year round, but last year I was a little slack with my organisation. Maybe this season I’ll be more intentional with my potatoes.
The following bed is my garlic. I genuinely try to fill the whole 1x4m with garlic as it is another one of those staples in the kitchen, however this year it didn’t do so well so instead of the expected and there were a lot of casualties. Not wanting gaps in the garden reminding me of the failure, I took my trowel and relocated the young shoots to fill out the rows and give an even look to garlic patch. The surviving plants seem to be the strong ones and are doing well. The gap that appeared at the end has been filled with elephant garlic to keep it in the family. Once the garlic comes out the bed will be filled with popcorn, which we eat a lot of as a healthy snack in our ingredient based kitchen lifestyle.
Last season I had too many cucumbers however I only had one Continental Cucumber plant. So, this time I’m growing smaller, more manageable Lebanese Cucumbers so hopefully the glut will be better suited to our reduced household. I also grow gherkins because we love them so much. I’ve decided to grow less of these as well, but not that much less. But the upside of this is there is a bit of a gap at the end of the bed that I could pop the lettuce in there, however it doesn’t fit well with the crop rotation because the next bed is the leafy greens.
The leafy greens bed are leafy things like Bok Choi, Wong Bok, spinach and silverbeet. I like to grow the Bright Lights Silverbeet with its cool rainbow colours and try to grow all of the colours and the chickens love the glut that comes from having too many silverbeet plants for two people. Although not technically a leafy crop the celeriac has be lumped into this group as its needs are similar.
The last garden in this bed is the asparagus and there is no change there. You can never have too many asparagus fresh from the garden and as a 20 year plus crop I’m not really in a position to change it.
Beyond Sector 1, 2 and 3 are fruit and berry crops, flowers and The Palace and no changes have been made there, except maybe to expand things in a different direction. I’m looking forward to embracing an ornamental expansion and a reduced veggie patch that doesn’t demand more of my time and effort than I have to give and shouldn’t steal my joy and replace it with guilt.
Come again soon – spring is really close.
Sarah the Gardener : o)
Good choices to grow. We’ll be doing the same. I wonder if popcorn would grow in Dunedin?
If you can grow sweetcorn you are in with a chance. Ideally you need to let it dry on the plant, but if you are running out of nice weather then you can harvest it and let it dry indoors. To prevent cross pollination with normal sweetcorn, put a gap of about 3 – 4 weeks between the plants. I hope this helps. : o)
We ate our first asparagus spears tonight. The whole two spears. 😂Tasted sooo good so can’t wait until next year when all three recycling bins are cropping. Whatever, if we shift those bins are coming with us. Currently brocolli is all going to fill out at once. Love your posts Sarah as you are inspirational as well as very informative. Have learned heaps. Don’t the boys want food bags?. We used to send them to Otago when family were at Uni.
You can’t beat fresh asparagus! One of the boys in dorms and the other is getting set to go overseas so in this season there isn’t much need beyond us. But things to change and maybe one day I’ll be increasing the garden again. : o)
Gak! I loathe carrots! Yet, I must grow them for those who like them. ICK! Is ‘Detroit’ beet popular there? I think of it as the most common or ‘traditional’. I probably asked about fennel before. It used to grow wild around the orchards that formerly inhabited the Santa Clara Valley. It was not so good from the orchards though. It was better from irrigated gardens. Does it prefer generous irrigation? I have not grown it in cultivation yet, but will do so eventually, particularly since I believe that it is better that way.
You can get Detroit beetroot here, but it isn’t one of the common ones. Fennel does like a lot of moisture to be plump and delish. : o)
Well, that makes sense. Only a small bit of the center of fennel that grew in dry (seasonal) creeks was edible, while those that grew on the edges of ponds were not so bad. Of course, those that grew in gardens were best.