June TOP & FLOP CROPS

Lynda Hallinan’s regular report card on the best and worst seasonal harvests from her Hunua vegetable garden.

My spotty and scabby ‘Golden Delicious’ apples were also riddled with codling moth this season. But that hasn’t bothered our newly inherited goats, Kimbra and Phoebe, who wait at the edge of our deck to be served sliced apple snacks.

These are strange days indeed. Make that strangely expensive days, especially if you haven’t planted a winter vegetable garden: as I write this, half a ‘Savoy’ cabbage costs $6.99 at my local supermarket, while pumpkins are $13. Mind you, I’ve spent more than that on derris dust this season, trying – in vain – to beat the caterpillars that have mauled most of my autumn brassicas. Only the curly kale has survived the onslaught, and I don’t really blame the caterpillars for leaving that well alone.

It’s typical, though, that as food prices rise this winter, so does the bug population in my garden. I can usually rely on a steady supply of leafy greens, from lettuces to pak choi and ‘Perpetual’ spinach, but the slugs and snails have other ideas. So many slugs, so many snails: I’m almost hoping for some more extreme weather to wipe them all out.

In happier news, our chooks have never been so well fed, though they now have to compete for garden scraps with a pair of geriatric goats. We inherited Kimbra and Phoebe from our neighbours and they’ve wasted no time weaselling their way into our hearts. My children feed them 5+ A Day snacks over the fence at the edge of our deck.

Celeriac

Every spring I plant celeriac – that knobbly bottomed cousin of celery – because it’s delicious as a winter mash with oodles of butter and garlic. Celeriac is a slow grower, taking at least eight months to swell to a decent size, and if I don’t remember to water my plants, they tend to struggle through summer and autumn. But not this year. After 1.2m of rain since November, I’ve grown my best (translation: biggest) celeriac bulbs ever.

Peas in the pod & microgreens

I buy a bag of frozen peas every month, despite sowing my own. I could never grow enough, plus we tend to eat all ours fresh out of the pod. My favourite variety is ‘Climbing Sugarsnap’, though I’m increasingly keen on sowing peas as microgreens. All the same flavour, with none of the effort of podding! Pictured is ‘Tasty Tendrils’ from Kings Seeds.

Rocket salad

At this time of the year I farewell large-leafed annual rocket salads for peppery perennial wild rocket, or arugula, salads. I’d still rather a wedge of crisp ‘Iceberg’ lettuce, though.

Horseradish is a hardy clumping pcrennial with gnarled roots that, when peeled and finely grated, release their famously pungent flavour and aroma.

Biquinho peppers

It’s always fun to try growing – and eating – unusual vegetable varieties. Last spring, during Blenheim’s annual Garden Marlborough event, I enjoyed a fairly boisterous girls’ night out at Brazilian restaurant Gramado’s, where we were served a plate of tiny pickled peppers. Known as pimenta biquinho in Portuguese, or little beak peppers, these mild mini capsicums, have pea-sized, teardrop-shaped fruit that ripens to bright red. Although they hardly register on the Scoville spiciness scale, with just 400-500 units (compared to, say, 50,000 units for cayenne peppers), they have a more complex flavour than bell peppers.

The next day, we visited Rasmussen Gardens in Old Renwick Road, a retail nursery that specialises in unusual exotics – from houseplants to gourmet edibles – and when I spied ‘Biquinho Iracema’ seedlings among their huge selection of chilli plants, I bought two plants for my vegetable patch at home.

Despite the worst possible summer weather, with far too much rain and not nearly enough sun, my seedlings soldiered on to produce a decent crop of petite peppers. I didn’t get enough to pickle (it would take hundreds to fill a small jar), so we ate them raw in salads instead.

For mail order ‘Biquinho Iracema’ seeds, try elmhurstchillies.co.nz.

‘Perlas’ potatoes

I grew enough ‘Agria’ and ‘Desiree’ spuds last summer to supply friends and neighbours with spare sackfuls, but that didn’t stop me buying some too. I love the new season’s ‘Perlas’ that are sold in supermarkets, even though a 1.5kg box costs about $10.

These baby spuds have a shorter shelf life and unsold boxes are quickly marked down if they start to sprout. I recently bought four boxes for $1.24 each – what a bargain! – as I don’t mind being eyeballed by my spuds. I simply rub the rogue sprouts off before peeling or scrubbing.

These pre-chitted tubers are also perfect for planting for a bonus winter crop in plastic tubs, provided you have a sunny frost-free spot (or a glasshouse). Although low-yielding, they don’t take up much space and are such a treat to dig out of season.

Horseradish

Growing yams ( Oxalis tuberosa) makes me nervous, given how invasive their weedy cousins are. Similarly, I fretted about planting horseradish ( Armoracia rusticana) in my herb garden, given that its garden doppelganger is dock ( Rumex obtusifolius). But, ironically, while dock produces huge, deep roots in my paddocks, my lovingly tended horseradish stays subterraneanously scrawny. Perhaps in a year or two, its roots will be ready to grace roast beef.

Mistaken identities

In the April issue of NZ Gardener,

I sang the praises of white-flowered society garlic ( Tulbaghia violacea ‘Alba’). This bulbous perennial smells and tastes like onions but is actually part of the amaryllis family (so people with allium intolerances can eat it).

Kate Ashton from Seaflowers Nursery in Tākaka got in touch to point out that while that’s true, I’d photographed Allium tuberosum, aka flat-leaf garlic chives, in error. (For clarification, both plants are pictured blooming below.) Thank goodness I wasn’t a medieval herbalist!

If Peter Piper picked a peck of Brazilian biquinho peppers to pickle, he’d be plucking these pea-sized pointy peppers for hours. Despite their diminutive size, if planted in pots these mild mini capsicums are both pretty and productive.