My Garden: a look at last year's work

Kat tree already for planting

I've been back in New Zealand, living with Dave, for a bit over a year now. While I go through restless periods every so often, wishing I was travelling again, I am generally quite happy being settled.
 One reason for being content is my ability to have a garden.....and cats.
  I LOVE Dave's two kitties.  (Gardening and cats really go hand in hand anyway.)

From the moment I arrived last November, the garden was being created (well, actually, before I landed!  Grandma had been growing tomato seedlings for nearly a month before I arrived so I wouldn't be starting from scratch!).

Grape tendrils

Dave was more than happy to let me have free reign over his bare dirt - as long as I didn't mess with his grape vine! LOL (laugh out loud)  While Dave is more than happy to enjoy the fruits of the garden, he has never been one to water or weed.  Had I not taken over planting tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, peas, beans, etc he would have been quite content to occasionally spray the weeds and look at dirt while he mowed the lawn.  However, along came Mel! :)

A quick look my facebook (FB) album "Back in NZ" shows that the main garden item to get FB recognition was the tomato.  Between the photos of our work on the house and trips up the coast lies photos of our first tomato turning yellow to red to being eaten.

My next FB album "Coromandel Life" shows a bit more variety in my garden pictures, recognizing potato flowers, purple bean flowers, and cats rolling in the dirt.  I'd say the highlight of last year's garden was: .... in no particular order.....and with now attached links (just pretty colors)......

After a long wait the tomato is FINALLY ripe!

The tomato. As previously mentioned, grandma (Dave's grandma that is) grew them for me as a surprise for my welcome home party.  Dave had thought I'd be arriving too late to start a garden from scratch - little did he know what he was in for!

The radishes.  I dug in heaps of compost to the orange clay outside our kitchen window.  We grew turnips too, but the radishes are much more photogenic. I love all the different colors!!!  

The kumara!  WOW.  How could kumara not come to mind the first time I think about last years garden!

Dave lies amongst the kumara vine. The bushy bit
by his head are potato plants.

Kumara is a New Zealand icon. It's basically a sweet potato and comes in gold, orange, or purple skin colors. Grandma gave us a few shoots she didn't want from her garden.  They went mental! This picture was taken before we decided to just mow the vines.  In the center of the viny madness is a couple of potato plants too, they didn't produced much though.  The kumara, however, produced surprisingly well! I harvested a few MASSIVE roots and lots of average sized roots.  I was harvesting for months before wet winter weather set in and made the few unharvested ones turn to mush.  

Corn!

The sweet corn.  Corn was Dave's idea.  He LOVES corn, so figured why not have some of our own.  It did fairly well, we got at least 4 edible ears off of 2 plants.  The other two were transplanted a month or so after their first planting (from seedlings).  They weren't getting enough sunlight and so they were growing really slowly.  Transplanting them to more light helped them grow, but they didn't get too big before it was time for them to produce (they must be on an internal clock of when to seed - makes growing and harvesting easier I suppose!)

The Dahlia went wild once it had dirt!
Corn plants on each side.

The Dahlia.  Another one of grandma's cast offs.  She had a tuber lying about her yard, unburied yet trying to grow.  She knew how much I liked Dahlia's - as a reminder of my dad and his "dinner plate dahlias".  The hardy tuber should enjoyed it's chance to really shine!  WOW.  It went a bit nuts, taking up heaps of room in the garden.  I was able to divide it several times when I dug it up in the fall.

The purple dwarf beans.  These weren't grown in the garden, but in pots on the deck (along with some sweetpeas).  I love the deep velvety purple color they have! We enjoyed having these in our garden salads throughout summer, along with the snow peas I grew in another container on the deck.

I must not have taken a picture of the "apple cucumber" :(  We bought it from the farmer's market, because the idea of a round cucumber was so novel to me!  It didn't produce terribly well, but we got around 3 or 4 edible fruits for our salads.  Grandma told me she thought a lot of people's cucumbers hadn't done well.  True?  Who knows, but I felt better for it ;)

So, if this is last year's garden, what have I done this year???

My next post is nearly written answering that question, but I thought I'd tease you first ;)  Now, I'm off for a nap before work.....