SPRING IN THE VEGE GARDEN
While looking into into the future and grasping a feeling of how Unearthed. was shaping up, it was obvious to be that there was a distinct gap within the inspiration I have been offering you!
Where my own interests have led me winding through the possibilities of creating spaces with atmosphere and obsessing over plants and their behaviour, I can quite honestly admit, that my food growing efforts have dwindled. In fact my own knowledge of vegetables and fruiting plants is so embarrassingly minimal, I felt the need to recruit a guiding voice onto this site for me as much as for you!
Anna Hiatt and I share one other love beyond our passion for the garden - and that is Wānaka. A place that I spent three glorious years and established a firm friendship group. While there are so many valuable vegetable growing voices within our garden community in New Zealand, Wānaka-based Anna felt like an obvious choice to bring in here. Like many of the gardeners I feature, she knows what it is to grow in a relatively inhospitable climate and I believe this might strike a chord for many of you that don’t necessarily live in stable, warm and soil rich environments.
Get to know Anna below and inhale her easy going ideas on what you might consider doing in your own vegetable patch this spring. Her guidance here is also channeled into her beautiful business Hiatt & Co. which curates and supplies seeds, garden kits and custom advice for gardeners, delivered to their door across Aotearoa.
I am grateful for her time and look forward to the growth of her column - nearly as much as I look forward to getting my own vegetable garden in order!
Julia x
Words and uncredited images Anna Hiatt
@hiattandco
www.hiatt.co
Anna Hiatt of Hiatt & Co.
Photo: Jodie James
ABOUT ME
Welcome to Hiatt & Co and an insight into my garden. I hope you enjoy reading my column as much as I enjoy writing it to share with you.
A little background on me. I hail from Canterbury, originally from a sheep farm up the Waipara Gorge. Aside from a few years of travel I spent twenty or so years living predominantly in Christchurch, and for the last eleven years have been living in Wānaka, Queenstown Lakes, Otago.
Over my life I have had a variety of careers - as far as I am concerned, there are so many fabulous things to choose from, too good not to give a go. Of the variety, I have had an extensive career in event management delivering sports events and as a floral designer.
The one constant, from as long as I can remember though, is a love of gardening of which I can thank my grandmother for patiently letting me follow her around from a young age, teaching me and igniting my passion . I can vividly remember the great excitement I had for a few activities at primary school - not a lot to do with inside the classroom, but pet day and the school gardening project were highlights. Beyond school - exhibiting my pets, edible produce and my floral sand saucers in the local A & P show always made me bubble with happiness.
My long enduring love of growing sweet peas started literally with those primary school gardening projects and continues today.
Beautiful Lake Wānaka.
Anna’s sweet peas in her Wānaka property.
Wānaka, where I currently live, is situated in the South Island of New Zealand, and the town is located beside NZ’s 4th largest lake at just under 300 m above sea level. It has four very distinct wonderful seasons and is known as a cool mountain climate . The atmosphere is very dry, the summers can be incredibly dry and hot. Our winter months average daily temps from 2-7 C degrees and too, are often dry. The spring months, while it slowly starts to heat up, also bring the strong prevailing North West wind and gee does it blow. As a consequence of the climate here, we do have a very short growing season compared to other parts of New Zealand. It’s a challenging environment which, within it, I am constantly learning how to best to grow throughout each season. All I have learned to date is through trial and error.
Growing here is also made tricky by the fact the soil is less than fertile. It’s generally pretty lifeless and needs constant love and food to bring it to life.
A couple of years ago I invested in a glasshouse - it was a glasshouse or an overseas trip! Lockdown came and the glasshouse prevailed. I can safely say it has added at least two months extra to my growing season.
Aside from my passion for gardening and animals, I love food and I love sharing good fresh quality produce with friends and family. Sharing food that I have actually grown, to me, is one of life’s ultimate joys. I love it when people call in to say hello and I am able to go out to the garden to pick fresh produce to throw together to make a simple tasty meal to share.
Anna’s vegetable garden
Photo: Jodie James
WELCOME SPRING
I cannot tell you how happy I am to say goodbye to winter - for some reason it seemed extra long and cold this year, although in reality I don’t think it was.
One good thing about winter, is the breather it provides us to put the garden to bed for a few months and the chance to do other things. The chance to curl up in front of the fire, finally getting to the pile of books that stacks up patiently waiting for me do complete that ‘one last job in the garden”. It’s also a great time to think about what plans I have for the garden come spring.
I do my best earlier in the year to make sure I get as many winter veges into the garden as I can to tide us through winter. I would be lying too if I didn’t say I am now am a bit sick of looking at the last of silver beet- I swore I would never get sick of and although I do love to eat to the seasons as best as I can - #50wayswithsilverbeet is getting a bit mundane.
Anyway , I am so excited that it's officially spring!! The deciduous trees are budding up, my apricot tree is in blossom, birds are singing and the grass is starting to grow. The signs of spring are really starting to show. We are currently still harvesting broccoli, leafy winter greens, celery, the end of the leeks, rocket, coriander, thyme and parsley.
The main focus in September, for me is to prepare the garden, particularly the soil as best as I possibly can, to set ourselves up for an abundant growing season. I have been known to roar around a little chaotically at this time of year sourcing the best horse manure I possibly can and any other delightful foods I can find for the soil. If I don’t have enough compost of my own, then sourcing additional good quality mushroom compost is also a top priority.
I squirrel away the horse manure and am always living in a slight state of anxiety as to whether I have enough or enough of my homemade compost.
Being from a design background, I like things to look good, so when I had the chance to acquire some old wine barrels I had an ‘ahaa’ moment. I cut them in half and now store my horse poo in them. I cover them with lucerne and water regularly so it all continues to rot down and be ready to put on the garden.
JOBS I DO IN EARLY SPRING
It’s a tricky time of year to hold myself back from the excitement of planting every single thing I can imagine whether its edible , flowering plants or shrubs and trees. We are having very mild weather down here, as much for the country is, and it’s hard to not garden as though its late October.
September , the garden is awakening and screaming ‘feed me!’ This is a time of year when I want to get the nutrition into the soil and have it healthy as possible in order to set it up for an abundant season.
I eat and clean up any of the remaining old winter crops and remove any old rough, tough leaves/plants that are well past their best. I add this to my compost or literally chop up and drop back onto the garden. I then add to the existing soil the likes of compost, old rotted down horse manure and liquid seaweed. Instead of digging over the garden I use a wide pronged fork, pushing it into the garden and then gently, while it is in the ground, push it forward then pull it back so that all yummy goodies on top fall down into the earth.
Its also a good time to protect the garden . Once I have fed the beds, I add a layer of mulch to protect it while we wait for the ground to warm up and the good soil health to build up. It will also help with keeping the moisture in with the spring winds that have started to come and keeping the weeds suppressed, which often get away on us in spring too.
This is also the perfect time to start regularly spraying the garden with soluble seaweed extract fertiliser. Filled with delicious nutrients for your garden, this is my secret weapon for a great growing season. It’s brilliant for helping plants to maximise nutritional uptake and is fabulous as a soil conditioner that promotes microbial activities, helping improve soil fertility.
A word of warning before you spray this magic over your entire garden - please do check that the container you are using has not been used for spraying pesticides etc. I label my spray container clearly saying ‘Seaweed only’ to avoid this . Oh and maybe don’t wear white… it does wash off but it’s a dirty brown colour and could possibly stain clothes.
Feed the fruit trees as you doing with the edible gardens - a layer of compost / seaweed and then mulch is all good stuff to keep building the soil around your fruit trees.
Feed the lawn. I regularly spray my lawn from now on with soluble seaweed fertiliser. In fact that’s all I use. Make sure you spray it a day or two before you mow, to make best use of the nutrients being fully absorbed.
Keep watering all the parts of the garden you have fed to really help with getting the soil as healthy as you can. It’s incredible how dry it has got here already .
The ‘co’ of Hiatt & Co. - Dudley and Stanley are the chief tasters.
All edibles much go through their lab!
WHAT I SOW IN SEPTEMBER
As I live in a cool mountain climate, I am planting my spring crop seeds in the glass house, as we will still get some hard frosts and cool temps. This type of weather doesn’t help with growing edible green goodness, which is also inhibited by the soil still being super cold. It’s very easy to be fooled at this time of year by a false sense of promise with the warm days and tempting to plant the whole spring garden out. Trust me on this, finding an entire new garden decimated by frost is really heart-breaking so let’s avoid it as much as we can.
SOW UNDER COVER
Some of you North Island folk will be in frost-free areas and your soil temperatures will be warming up for good growing conditions. Unless you live in a warm temperate or subtropical climate, I suggest you sow seeds in trays and keep them in a protected environment for now. A greenhouse, sunroom or similar are perfect.
Remember it’s still a good six weeks until Labour weekend , our classic kiwi beacon of when most of us often plant the vegetable garden out. Living where I do, I will likely plant later than this or if I do plant I’ll cover all the planted areas with frost cloth or under cloches for 6-8 weeks as we still can get the odd frost until November.
Sow leafy greens such as spinach, coriander, mizuna, rocket and mesclun leaves. Beets, pak choy, kale, fennel and basil can all be sown as well, with the latter best in a warm sheltered environment . Peas can also be sown inside.
SOW DIRECTLY INTO THE GROUND
Broccoli, kale, cabbage, cauliflower, silver beet, spinach and bok choy. Here in Wānaka, growth will be slow, but why give not give it a go? If you live in a cooler climate too, again I suggest covering them in a cloche or similar. I find this method of covering is also super helpful for the protection from the birds. I have lost many gorgeous spinach seedlings and other leafy green to the birds at this time of year, it’s quite disheartening so protecting from them as much as the weather helps prevent this.
Broad beans can also be sown outside if you didn’t plant them before winter.If you love having new potatoes for Christmas, it’s time to get some seed potatoes sprouted and in the ground. Once you get green shoots you will need to cover them on any nights that frost is possible.
Anna in her garden.
Photo: Jodie James
Enjoy preparing your garden and giving back to the soil. I think it’s a time to be grateful for what we have grown and for what is to come, and it really is worth putting the love into it now to set up well for a plentiful season.
I look forward to sharing with you my garden adventures each month and what I am doing and growing.
Until next month.
Anna xxx
