I’ve been in panic mode this week. I’ve been trying to tackle all the weeds in my garden before the ladies from the Clevedon Garden Circle come to visit on Wednesday. (I’m sure I wouldn’t be worrying half as much if it was just called the Clevedon Garden Club, but somehow ‘circle’ makes it sound so much more official. I’m half expecting the ladies to turn up in floral hats with matching handbags and posh packed lunches of cucumber sandwiches and tiny squares of Louise Cake.)

Anyway, as well as weeding, I’ve been mulching. What a difference it makes! It’s like sweeping all the dust under the carpet. I’ve used a truckload (literally) of Living Earth’s More than Mulch. It’s made from recycled untreated packing pallets, chipped and coloured with a natural black dye, then mixed with 20 per cent compost. It’s very spiffy stuff! Here’s a few more pics:

I didn’t think I could grow citrus successfully in Hunua, as when I moved here, there was only one citrus tree in the garden and it was the saddest, most miserable looking ‘Meyer’ lemon you could imagine. I think we got one lemon off it that first winter. Our garden isn’t just frosty, it’s largely south-facing, making those frosts even more frosty, if you get my gist.

When we were carving the hill below our house into terraces, we ummed and ahhed over whether to keep the scungy lemon tree (and a non-fruiting feijoa) or rip them out. I felt a stab of pity for the citrus tree and figured I’d give it another year, with a bit of care, to prove its worth. (As part of the landscaping, we’d also pulled out a shelter belt that was casting quite a bit of shade over it.)

After a good feed and a stern talking to, it has had a Lazarus-like recovery. We got at least 100 lemons off it last winter and there are hundreds more developing this year. Buoyed by its change of heart, I had a change of heart too and planted a whole citrus grove last August. Four days later it snowed and killed the tops off all my trees. Ain’t that always the way? I sense potted trees that can be shifted under the wide porch across the front of our stables may be the best long term solution.

See below for my ‘How to Grow’ citrus video for The Living Channel.

I’ve never been the silent type, so if you’re wondering why I’ve gone a bit quiet on the blogging front lately, it’s because (a) I’m writing a book that’s due at the publishers next month, (b) I’m writing NZ Gardener’s special edition on roses (we’re launching it at the Ellerslie Flower Show), (c) Lucas has mastered the art of crawling and that means I can only write half a sentence before he manages to make his way from his bedroom (on one side of the house) to the cat biscuit bowl (his current fascination) or to the stairs (his other current obsession) and (d) the Clevedon Garden Circle is coming to visit next month and my garden is a shambles. There are more weeds than flowers… which means every spare minute must be spent in the garden.

On the plus side, all those weeds are fabulous free fodder for my triple-bay compost system, which you can check out in the video below. Happy composting!

And now, back to the book!

I can never quite believe how nice my vege patch looks on tv. Here’s a segment on my favourite easy summer veges from The Living Channel.

And that reminds me, it’s time to save the seeds from my red-flowered broad bean. I also harvested my red mustard seeds today. I’m going to have a crack at making my own corn chips with homegrown mustard and poppy seeds for a bit of extra flavour instead of flaxseeds.

The rain this week has made a right mess of my garden. The dahlias are bedraggled, the roses ruined. I figured my berry bushes would be sad and soggy too, but I was wrong. I just picked the first 1kg of sweet ‘Thornless Jewel’ boysenberries from our orchard. I’ll have to pick them daily from now on because my bird netting isn’t all it should be: in fact there must be a border collie sized gap at one end because our dog somehow managed to get stuck under it.

I just love this time of the year, even if I get nothing done outside (or indoors on this blog!). I always go out into the garden with the best of intentions to get stuck into all those pressing spring chores, to weed, plant and sow… only to find myself wandering around absentmindedly, sinking my nose into the first roses, admiring the rhododendrons, ooh-aah-ing over the sweet peas and poppies and lovely blue larkspurs. (Mind you I have to lean in on an angle to admire anything, as Lucas has just discovered that he can pull the petals and leaves off anything within reach.)

It has been ages since I’ve had a garden full of flowers as well as food. I’ve been giving my secateurs a workout by snipping buckets of blooms to take indoors. If you’ve got roses and perennials (the verbenas, aquilegias, carnations and lacy white Orlaya grandiflora are my favourites at the moment), you really don’t need any floristry skill either. Just take an old jug and cram it full of whatever you’ve got. Or, even better, take every jug in your house…

I just couldn’t wait any longer. I’ve been itching, and fair scratching, to dig up some of my new season’s spuds to see what, if any, action was going on underground. So when Jason wasn’t looking (he’s come over all territorial about these orderly rows of tubers), I snuck out with the spade and dug the last plant up from the first row of ‘Jersey Benne’ potatoes. The plants have only just started to flower but they’re ready to eat: I hauled eight waxy white tubers out of the soil. We boiled them with sprigs of fresh mint and ate them straight out of the pot.

The pink tubers are the self-sown sprogs of the third-generation ‘Desiree’ potatoes that keep coming up in my asparagus bed. I thought I’d defeated them last summer, but I was wrong. At least we got a free feed from them.

And the little dark purple marbles are ‘Purple Heart’. Guess they’re still a while off yet.