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It was drummed into us as children: if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Which is why, in 15 years of horticultural journalism, I haven’t written a single story about kale.

It’s not that I don’t like kale. I really haven’t got a bad word to say about it. Nor a good one. Kale’s just a bit player in the brassica family, like the kid picked last for a sports team. Even the chickens left it till last when they pillaged my vege patch.

Come spring, pagans celebrate by dancing around bonfires, whereas I simply give thanks that I’ve survived another winter without having to eat too much kale. Though frosts sweeten its flavour, kale is still only tender enough to eat raw in salads at the baby leaf stage. Spirulina drinkers could also add it to their smoothies I suppose. Mash cooked kale with spuds, like the Dutch dish stamppot, or hide it between the layers of a vegetarian lasagne.

King Seeds offer Blue Ridge, a dark blue-green ruffled hybrid; the handsome Squire, which forms a shaggy Sideshow Bob-style mop top; and a new hybrid named Red Monarch, which deepens to dark purple in wintry weather. There’s also raggedy Red Russian, described in Egmont Seeds’ online catalogue as “any chef’s dream in a stir-fry”. Good try, but the only kale considered hip in culinary circles is the rustic Tuscan variety, Di Toscana or cavolo nero.

Cavolo nero looks like an inside out cabbage, with long crinkly leaves that arch like fronds, giving rise to its other common name, palm tree cabbage. It’s quite striking but in my spray-free garden it’s also a magnet for whitefly. They congregate along the wrinkly undersides of its leaves and are a devil to scrub off. I shudder to think how many I’ve eaten.

One kale I’m keen to get my hands on is the European sea kale, Crambe maritima. I first admired it a decade ago in the late British filmmaker Derek Jarman’s famous shingle garden at Dungeness. Blanched, its spring shoots are said to be similar to salty asparagus.

Our closest coastal native equivalent is Cook’s scurvy grass, Lepidium oleraceum, a scrappy perennial with a not dissimilar flavour to kale, but a much fussier temperament. According to Oratia Native Nursery, it “demands high nutrients such as guano”.  For Cook’s scurvy grass,
being crapped on from a great height by seagulls isn’t just good luck, it’s life-preserving.

Self Sufficiently Lynda is published each week in Sunday magazine, in the Sunday Star-Times.

Oh no. Just days after I wrote about our duck, patiently sitting on her nest of 14 eggs, I went down to check on her and found a trail of broken egg shells and a sad, stressed duck.

The eggs had all been eaten.

Stoat? Ferrit? Feral cat?

It’s impossible to find the culprit. Or at least I thought it was, until I took the puppy for a walk. He has a terrible case of canine diarrhoea.

Coincidence? I think not.

Spring has sprung! The daffs and freesias are flowering, the almond orchard’s a cloud of blossom, lamb racks are ripening in the paddocks and our Pekin ducks are fattening up to plan.

I bought the ducks last spring from the Mapua Country Trading Company, then stocked up the pantry with star anise, Chinese five spice powder and soy sauce. I promised crispy roast duck for Christmas dinner. But when it came to the crunch, they were too darned cute to kill.

Pekin ducks have white feathers and questionable flying abilities. Ours prefer to waddle everywhere, as fast as their stumpy feet can carry them. Yell “quackers” and up the hill they come, lurching comically through the long grass, to get their daily bread.

We started with six ducks. A couple of months ago, something ate one in the swamp. We found its beak and its feet in the rushes. Then a second duck disappeared a fortnight ago. The finger of blame was pointed squarely at the border collie puppy, and my poor parenting skills. I’d bought him a squeaky toy mallard from the pet store. When the novelty wore off, he moved on to the real thing. I’d caught him in the act once before. Having saved the drake’s neck, I gave the dog a stern lecture and sent him off to the stables for time out.

As for the missing duck? We went duck hunting. We searched the swamp, the orchard, the stream and the gully. Eventually we found her under the cypress shelter belt, sitting on a nest of 14 eggs.  Nothing says spring like a clutch of fluffy ducklings.

Naturally, I’ll be too chicken to consume any of them. But who cares: soon we’ll be snacking on new season’s asparagus – the first spears are already poking out of the pea straw like little periscopes – and globe artichoke buds in garlic butter. There are sugar snaps to top’n’tail, peas to pod and tender broad beans to flip out of their fur-lined jackets.

September also marks the start of the new sowing season. So get busy. Sow heirloom tomatoes, eggplants and capsicums in trays. Then cosset them indoors, or under a cloche of salvaged window frames, until Labour Weekend. Put in more peas, more broad beans, carrots and Cos lettuce. But don’t jump the gun with beans or basil. Spring is here, but summer’s a long way off yet.

Self Sufficiently Lynda is published each week in Sunday magazine, in the Sunday Star-Times.

I’ve been wearing rose tinted spectacles all day. Have just planted 24 bareroot roses in the stonewalled bed in front of the stables. They’re all from Tasman Bay Nurseries. I’ve gone all girly – I want bowls of fat, fragrant, full-petalled English roses to pick all summer. And, though I’m a spray-free sort of girl, I’m going to bomb the blighters with fungicide all season. Call me Bridezilla but I’m blowed if I’ll let black spot blight my big day. The aphids better watch their backs too, though it’s been such a frosty winter that I’m assuming the weather gods have well and truly sent them packing for now.

And for those of you who would like me to name names, I’ve planted: ‘Mme Isaac Pereire’, ‘Variegata di Bologna’, Rosa centifolia, ‘Chevy Chase’, ‘Gloire de Guilan’, ‘Brother Cadfael’, ‘Chianti’, ‘Falstaff’, ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, ‘Mary Rose’, ‘Prospero’, ‘Tess of the D’Ubervilles’, ‘Tradescant’, ‘William Shakespeare’, ‘Camaieux’, ‘Charles de Mills’, ‘William Lobb’, ‘Hansa’, ‘Roseraie de l’Hay’, ‘Scabrosa’, Rosa gallica versicolor, ‘English Elegance’ and ‘Heritage’.

It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread: sliced apples, peeled and cored by a Chinese-made contraption that spits out a stark-naked apple slinky every seven seconds. These nifty gadgets are all over Trade Me, though I bought mine from the Environment Centre in Riverton, Southland. Best $27.50 I’ve ever spent.

An apple a day? We’re getting through a bag, sometimes two, of ‘Pink Lady’ each week. Next season, when our orchard starts bearing fruit, we’ll be spoiled for choice. I’ve planted the heirloom ‘Winter Banana’, ‘Granny Smith’, dwarf ‘Blush Babe’, ‘Oratia Beauty’, ‘Monty’s Surprise’ (it has the highest levels of cancer-fighting polyphenols in its peel), ‘Initial’, ‘Liberty’ and ‘Baujade’.

Apples are so adaptable. Apple sauce with roast pork, apple pies, crumble, cider and my Grandma Pat’s apple shortcake at Christmas. Grandma turns 93 next month. I rang her up to get her recipe. “A fair bit of butter, flour, sugar, baking powder and an egg,” she said.

First, stew sliced apples with a little water, lemon juice and sugar. The Edmonds Cookery Book recipe calls for three apples, but I use at least four. There’s nothing worse than an apple slice with a stingy smear of fruit in the middle. Next, rub 125g butter into 2 cups of sifted flour. Add 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 beaten egg, 3 tablespoons sugar and just enough milk
to make a firm dough. Divide dough in two. Roll out half to line a sponge roll tin. Strain apples, spread over evenly, then roll out remaining dough and, defying the laws of gravity, place it on top. “It’s a cow of a thing to do without breaking it,” advises Grandma. Prod with a fork before baking at 180C for 20 minutes. When cool, sprinkle with icing sugar and cut into even squares (to avoid squabbles).

Grandma actually prefers apple turnovers. So did my grandfather, Percy, who drowned in a ditch under an upturned tractor a decade before I was born. Grandma remarried and Granddad Evan wasn’t much fond of puff pastry. No wonder, because Grandma made it with mutton fat. It was free on the farm, whereas butter had to be bought. She invented her
own apple turnover recipe, spicing the fruit with cinnamon and nutmeg in a bid to disguise the flavour of the fat. “I never quite achieved it,” she confesses, half a century later, “but the shearers didn’t seem to mind”.

Self Sufficiently Lynda is published each week in Sunday magazine, in the Sunday Star-Times.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, or a man assaulted by a rooster. The Hunk from Hunua didn’t even see the cockerel coming. He was heading out to the clothesline to hang out his washing (we’re not married yet) when our adolescent rooster cornered him between a rock wall and a hard place. He tried to fend him off with his foot. But the rooster was in the mood for a fight. He crowed. He flapped. Then he attacked. The Hunk lost his balance, tripped over the laundry basket and landed on his back. It should have ended there but roosters don’t play fair. They’ll peck a man even when he’s down.

When I arrived home, minutes later, the Hunk was huffing off towardsthe orchard with a rifle in one hand, a fish filleting knife in the other. “Rooster. Is. Going. To. Die,” he explained. (I’ve edited out the expletives.)

I argued for a stay of execution. It’s not his fault, I said. Teenage testosterone is making him territorial. And anyway, I need to buy a bottle of Burgundy before I can make coq-au-vin.
As the cunning sod made his escape, swaggering off through the fruit trees, the Hunk set his telescopic sights on our free-range hens. They’d gone off the lay. It was a clear breach of contract. We feed them mash; they feed us eggs. That’s the deal. But we hadn’t had so much as an omelette in a month, whereas they were still getting through a 25kg bag of Peck N Lay each week. And let’s not forget the 8kg bag of Puppy Chow they stole from the stables. They ate $31 worth of dog food in less than 30 minutes.

I negotiated a ceasefire. Give the chooks a few more weeks, I said. Let’s just corral them – out of sight, out of mind – on the bank below the water tank. The Hunk put down his gun and grabbed a hammer. As he rigged up a rooster-proof fence, I poked my head into the old pump shed.

Turns out our girls hadn’t gone off the lay at all. Inside the shed there were 39 eggs piled up on a plank. One was still warm. I took it indoors. The other 38 could be a bit dubious, not that the dogs care. Scrambled eggs make a nice change from Puppy Chow.

Spring has sprung a month early. The first delicate marshmallow pink blossoms have burst open on the almond trees in the orchard paddock. It’s a double cause for celebration: not only is spring on its way, but almost all of the almond trees have now made it through a summer drought, an autumn of neglect, and a soggy winter. I planted them halfway down a south-facing hill about 10m away from the furthest spot our garden hose can reach, so I really didn’t fancy their chances, but so far, so good. Here’s hoping for a marzipan summer!

 I’m as excited as a fashionista with a credit card and an empty wardrobe. The first fruit tree catalogue for the 2010 autumn/winter planting season has just landed on my desk. It’s from Sarah Frater’s Manawatu mail-order nursery The Edible Garden and it’s full of hard-to-find heritage fruit and nut trees.
Sarah’s catalogue always makes me sigh. It makes me sigh because simply reading the descriptions is enough to instantly make me want one of everything, from a dwarf ‘Kotare Honey’ peach to an ‘Umeboshi’ plum (just pick, dry, press and pickle the sour fruit in sea salt to cure hangovers).Until now, reading Sarah’s catalogue has made me sigh because I want one of everything, but have room for nothing. If my city garden was a cheap hotel, I’d have to install a flickering neon No Vacancy sign out the front.When I bought my 733sqm section it came with apples, apricots, avocados, bananas, elderberries, loquats, pears and plums. In the five years since, I’ve shoehorned in another 65 fruit trees: more apples, crabapples, feijoas, lemons, limes, mandarins, dwarf nectarines, olives, peaches, double-grafted pears, prunes and a quince.My city garden is full, but my new country garden is a comparatively blank 17-hectare canvas. Last winter we put in 95 fruit trees: 40 almonds, 20 apples, 20 pears, five ‘Jelly King’ crabapples, five ‘Damson’ plums and five ‘Griotella’ sour cherry trees. We’ve lost a few to the drought, and a few to the wind, and the dog dup up one of the cherries, but the rest are going great guns.
So when I read Sarah’s new catalogue this week, it made me sigh. It made me sigh because now that I can have one of everything, I don’t know where to start.
Perhaps a few vintage cider apples? ‘Kingston Black’ for astringency, ‘Sidero’ for aroma, ‘Bisquet’ for a bittersweet balance and ‘Sweet Alford’ for a sugary finish.
I want walnuts – ‘Wilson’s Wonder’, ‘Rex’ and ‘Meyric’ – and count me in for a grove of chestnuts and a ‘Merv De Bolwillier’ hazelnut.
I’ll take a ‘Black Pearl’ nectarine, a ‘Blackboy’ peach and a ‘Queenie’ black mulberry too. According to German folklore, the devil used mulberry roots to polish his boots, though I’ll be content to stain my fingers purple with its loganberry-like fruit every summer.

Self Sufficiently Lynda is published each week in Sunday magazine in the Sunday Star Times.

© Lynda Hallinan 2010

If you think moving house is stressful, try moving a vegetable garden. I’m doing it meal by meal. Every day I commute to the city for work. Every night, I whip back to my old garden, harvest dinner, and head home to Hunua to cook it.

If only I’d been a Boy Scout instead of a Brownie. I should have been prepared. I should have started my new vege patch months ago, because it’s slim pickings on the farm. We’ve got broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbages, cauliflower, celeriac and leeks. Or at least we will have in three months. The only things ready to harvest now are rosemary, pumpkins and Hungarian Hot Wax peppers. And, if that’s not bad enough, the chickens have gone off the lay.

Meanwhile, back in the city I’ve got ripe ‘Granny Smith’ apples, red cherry guavas, chickpeas, spring onions, ‘Canasta’ and ‘Cos’ lettuce, rocket, eight rows of heirloom beetroot, Tuscan kale, Desiree potatoes, kumara, quinces, half a bed of mint, Italian parsley, lemongrass, purple sage, onions, alien-like kohlrabi, cayenne chillies, an enormous crop of Jerusalem artichokes, silverbeet, native and red-stemmed spinach, colourful Swiss chard, six types of thyme, red cabbages, giant red mustard, ‘Fire Candle’ radishes and two rows of turnips.

I planted two types of turnips: ‘Purple Top White Globe’ (from Yates) and ‘Tokyo White Cross’ (from Kings Seeds). The purple ones are an astonishing shade of psychedelic lilac-pink, while the white variety is a marvellous miniature turnip that’s ready to harvest in as little as 30 days in summer, or 45 days in autumn. For the best flavour, pick baby turnips when they’re the size of ping pong balls, then simply wipe clean and steam. Serve whole with white sauce or glaze with orange juice and brown sugar and chuck them in with your roast.

The only problem with turnips is that they stink out your house when you cook them. They smell earthy, and not in a good way. More in a musty, leaky building sort of way. If you’re cooking them for guests, do it in advance and no one will be any the wiser.

Most people dismiss turnips as stock fodder, but I went to a dinner party last weekend where the hostess served turnip wedges poached in red wine with honey and red wine vinaigrette (the recipe’s in Mario Batali’s new book Molto Gusto). I was the only one who guessed what they were.

Self Sufficiently Lynda is published each week in Sunday magazine in the Sunday Star Times.