Soiled

As the sun starts to wake up a little earlier and shine a bit warmer each day, keen gardeners all around New Zealand are champing at the bit to get outside and into their gardens or potting sheds to start planting. Myself included! One of the most commonly asked questions that I'm seeing at the moment on the various gardening groups I'm in is "What can I plant NOW?". As a newbie to gardening (I only started last November), this is something I too have been asking, especially as there are just so many things I very much want to be growing now... but a little restraint is still needed.

Here in the Waikato in NZ it's starting to get quite warm most days, with the occasional day that gives you an icy slap in the face to show that Lord Winter hasn't actually left the building just yet. In lower parts of the country, there's still snow and the definite need for thermals... not exactly the ideal environment for planting sun-loving tomatoes and chillies! So what can be planted right now can depend greatly on where in the country you are, but even that can be changed a bit with the help of things like cloches, glasshouses, sunrooms, and sunny windowsills. An old empty fish tank, the white wheelie storage tubs you can get at the Warehouse, or even the little plastic tubs that tomatoes or kiwifruit sometimes come in can be used as miniature hothouses to start off a few seeds.

As for me, I've taken the risk and planted a few seeds of an apparently reasonably cold tolerant variety of tomato called "Subarctic Plenty", plus a few other types, a couple of zucchinis, and even some cape gooseberries, all of which I've popped into my little portable hothouse which I picked up cheap last Summer through one of the daily deal sites. I also did up a mix of different varieties of beetroot, radish, lettuce, spring onions and carrots, with a few marigold seeds thrown in too, and then just scattered them randomly across our one small garden strip. A few of them have already sprouted, which is rather exciting, so I'm keeping a close eye on them to see just what has actually popped up to say hi. Over the next few weeks, there will be a lot more sowing of seeds as I work on filling up my hothouse, 2 fish tanks, windowsills, and whatever else I can find to help keep the seeds warm and encourage them to sprout.

When I first started looking at getting into gardening, the cost of getting started almost put me off. It just seemed so expensive... more so because of wanting to do a container garden, as our property isn't huge, plus we're renting. The idea of putting in all the hard work and money to create a garden, only to have to leave it behind if we moved house, is just not something I'm willing to consider!

One of the first things I had to sort out was my soil, and with planting in pots, that required buying many MANY bags of potting mix, compost, mulch etc. This alone had me doing hours of research, and going from garden center to garden center to stare in confusion at all these piles of different brands and varieties of potting mix. There's your "budget" brands, mixes by Tui and Daltons, organic mixes... and then you start getting down to all the "specialist" mixes, like herb mix, vege mix, strawberry mix, potatoe mix, tomato mix. Argggg! It really does get quite mind boggling! In the end, we went with Tui vege mix, considering most of what I was planting at that stage was veges and herbs, with the occasional bag of All Purpose mix for my potted flower garden, and my slowly growing potted orchard.

After a while this started getting too pricey, so we switched to the cheaper, but apparently just as good, Daltons Vege Mix for a while until my garden was getting big enough that even that was getting too expensive. It was time to start looking into other options! Talking to some of the other gardeners in the gardening groups, I was quickly pointed to a nearby sawmill that has a huge pile of well rotted sawdust with a sign telling you to help yourself (for those of you in Hamilton who are interested, go check out the sawmill on Tasman Road, next to the Pavlovich Coachlines bus depot). This has now become my main potting mix, and often comes with a few helpful worms too! Mixed in with compost (bought bags of the cheapest variety for now, but hopefully soon my own homemade stuff), and a few different types of suitable animal poo (never thought I would actually be happy to be given poo! Rabbit, chicken, sheep, cow, and horse poo are all extremely suitable), I'm hoping that I won't have to buy any more potting mixes of any type again.

It was also strongly recommended that I become a farmer... of worms! Worm farms are not only a great way for dealing with all of the food scraps (except any citrus, onions, or meat), but when you water your worm farm, you get worm "wees", which is full of great nutrients that plants love. After a while, you've also got their vermicast (worm poo) which can be used like compost and mixed in with your soil/potting mix. Having a look around online and at the ones offered at Bunnings, Mitre 10 etc, it was definitely the cheaper option to make my own. A quick trip to the Warehouse to pick up 4 good solid stacking tubs (with a lid for the top one), and a plastic tap (to go in the bottom tub to make it easier to access the worm "wees"), and a bit of drilling (put holes in the bottoms of all the tubs EXCEPT the one that will be at the bottom to catch all that wonderful liquid plant food), and I had a worm farm!

Now to find the worms. I learned that the worms you find in the garden aren't actually suitable for living in a worm farm... I needed either tiger or red worms for my farm. When I mentioned I was setting this all up, I had several lovely people offer me free worms and it wasn't long before I had a couple of ice cream container lots of the little wrigglers to plonk into the stacking bins, along with a bit of compost, shredded paper, grass clippings, and of course, the food scraps. A thick bit of cardboard (a bit of carpet works well too) to keep things nice and dark, and we were set. With the occasional watering whenever I need the worm wee food for the plants (usually once a week, which helps keep the worms nice and damp), and regular additions of food scraps etc, it doesn't take much work to set up or maintain, and in maybe about 3 months, I should have all that lovely vermicast to start mixing into my pots.

If you're in New Zealand, into gardening at all, or even thinking about starting one, feel free to come and join some of the gardening groups over on Facebook. I have already learned so much from all the wonderful people in there, and they are great sources for seed and plant swapping! Here's a few of my favourites:

NZ VEGE GARDENERS: https://www.facebook.com/groups/91183770081/
NZ FLOWER GARDENERS: https://www.facebook.com/groups/nzflowergardeners/
NEW ZEALAND PLANT TRADERS: https://www.facebook.com/groups/331049733674446/
and if you're in the WAIKATO region, there's the GARDENING GROUP HAMILTON NZ: https://www.facebook.com/groups/GardenHamilton/