Ruud Kleinpaste: It's time to start gardening again

It’s been a weird winter – cool and often wet. Indeed, I grew a few edibles in my tunnel house after most of the tomatoes had been removed.   

With rubbish weather I tend to divert to bird hobbies, rather than vegie-garden maintenance. But in early August things become a bit more positive, and today that was highlighted when I visited my old mate Mike (a Scottish builder with heaps of Scottish humour). 

He had already planted small strawberry plants under a cover of dense pea-straw – yes, next summer’s fruit extravaganza: STRAWBERRIES! New Zealand Gardener usually gives you the latest varieties available. 

I had totally forgotten that I could have planted them a month or so ago, here on the port hills! Time to become a lot less lazy! 

Friable, well-draining soil with heaps of organic material in the top layers. Some granular, general fertiliser (not too much – just a bit) so that the roots will lick their food on the warmer, early-Spring days. The pea-straw (and mulch) protects plants from heavy frosts (and later on as a medium on which the developing fruit will stay in dryer conditions – not on wet soil). 

Go to your local garden centre and ask the local experts what kind of strawberry varieties work well in your neighbourhood –  I bet they’ll have Cama Rosa and Camino Real as their “short day” varieties (they can be planted in May-June). 

Other varieties, such as Aromas, Seascape, and San Andreas are day-neutral and can be planted in spring.  

While the strawberries are slowly getting in their winter development, it may be useful to take a look at your rhubarb. This plant tends to be reasonably tolerant of a bit of frost – if the frosts are heavy and mean, you might find that patience will be a good virtue. I saw it growing in Mongolia in the wild (permafrost), in the deserts (dry as a bone), with big weta-like critters hiding underneath! 

It’s a great crop if you’re into crumbles and fruity bits for breakfast (with muesli and yoghurt and soaked sultanas) and stuff like rhubarb pies. 

In good hot summers it might take a break in the hottest period of the year. In the North/hot areas, it may pay to allocate a cooler spot and some shade for the warmest period of the day to stop it “bolting” – the flower stalks can be broken off, the edges of the leaves can become beautifully red, but it’s a sign of the breakdown of chlorophyll and hence the beginning of summer die-back.  

Rhubarb requires a nice, fertile free-draining soil, so if you’ve got heavy clay soil break it up and add heaps of compost to make it friable. 

Alternatively: plant it above the soil level (in a raised bed). I reckon you can even grow it in a big container with good mix, but keep it watered, so it doesn’t dry out too much. 

Fertiliser: rhubarb loves compost and manure (yes, some rotted cow poo/sheep/pig or horse –  preferably gone through a composting cycle). 

Keep the plant base free of weeds. Pests and diseases are usually of no great concern – slugs and snails are your main problem and they will only go on the leaves. Copper sprays may prevent leaf-spots, but they’re not a big deal usually. 

Harvest: cut the stems for consumption and use leaves in compost bins (all good – the oxalic acid is not going to harm anything in that bin!). 

Alternatively, the large leaves are great on the ground as “weed mat”. 

Look around for various cultivars – if you are lucky you might find some of the old-fashioned bright red varieties that look fantastic: Moulin Rouge, Crimson Crumble, Cherry Red, Ruby Red, Glaskin’s Perpetual… 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
A'd be hey, minusesoul living on News Talks, it'd be
you were Jack Tame. Root climb passes our men in
the garden, God the.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Root Cura Jack. I love the little comment you got
from one of the listeners about the railway stations.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh yeah, I'm a I'm a big fan. I love
a bit of infrastructure, but a bit of mass transit
subterranean infrastructure is certainly my cup of tea. And you've
you've put me in a note this morning to say that, actually,
if we want to get a good sense of how
to complete a rail netwhere we shouldn't be looking to infrastructure.
We should be looking to a slime mold.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
That's right. I just thought that is such a good story.
Slide molds. If you like cellular creatures that live in
in companies, they for like in large machine things. Whatever
they live there they themselves anyway. But what they do
do is they eat. They eat oat flakes, for instance.

(01:06):
And what some people have done in Tokyo was they
put a met of tokyo in on the table and
on every place where they wanted a station, they put
an oat flake. They put a colony of slime molds
in the middle in the main station, if you like,
and see what would happen. And these blinking things without

(01:27):
a brain literally copied the Tokyo railway system with including
very much improved systems of getting there better, quicker and shorter.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. It's incredible, right like that they've
worked out the most efficient way between those different stations,
or you know, the most efficient way to build a network. Yeah,
it's incredible, incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
That's there. You go anyway. I just want to tell
you because this is good fun. Ended you can check
it on the website again.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
So when was it not usually thinking about like doing
a whole lot in the garden, except for crossing wilds
and hoping for things to get warmer and drier. But
there are actually a couple of bits and pieces we
should be getting onto.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah, And I was getting sick of it, you know, Gosh,
it was cold again last night, blah blah blah. And
then I thought, hell's bells. Strawberries. I usually plant them
a bit earlier than this, And I thought this was
something that because you get a very negative way of
looking at on and I thought totally forgotten about it.
So here you go strawberries. You can plant them now, honestly,

(02:31):
and they actually they actually would like a bit of
a frostry area, so that's quite important. But we have
many cool varieties and if you want some of those,
usually the Zealand Gardener will give you the latest varieties
and so on and support. You can read it all
in there. But kamar Rosa is my favorite here in Canterbury.

(02:51):
It does really well on the hills but also on
the on the on the flats, and it grows quite quickly,
coming o real, coming, oh real, some Spanish it is
Spanish actually, and then the short day varieties as well,
like Aromas, Seascape and Sandri Andreos. All these things are

(03:14):
now available at your guard center. And I just wanted
to say, please don't forget because I don't know about you,
but I love the strawberries there thinking brilliant.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
So I just this is a bit cheeky. I just
left mine in and they still seem to be alive.
They still they're still doing. I've got some straw but
the straw is kind of critical. I probably should have
had straw down lotarlier. To be perfectly honest, but the
straws quite quite critical for the frosty areas right.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
There are The straw is important to actually keep them
developing fruit often soil. That's number one, of course. Yeah, no,
that's absolutely that's correct. You've got it right. But the
other thing you could could have could have done is
leave them in the ground, but take the runners off,
and those runners, if you plant those further up, will
become new plants.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah right, yeah, that's great.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
So that's another way of doing it. Yeah, actual, next
year we're extually and I must really put a note
in my diary. And then there is this thing called rubib.
Now I don't mind rubab. I like it with my
with all my stuff, the crumbles and the fruity bits
for breakfast and all that sort of stuff. And but
here you go. These things are actually very tolerant off

(04:23):
a bit of frost. They don't mind a bit of frost.
In fact, I saw them in Mongolia in the desert
where inter time it's when it's twenty Oh yeah, it's cool.
Actually I also find weather there. Why you made you there? Yep?
The after nothern New Zealand variety. But the Gondwana variety,
the Gondwana variety, Edwin yesix no NPI no please, no, no,

(04:48):
no anyway, but that's the other thing. So good ever,
look at that. This is a good time to look
after you, Rubab and you'll get them going, make no mistake.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
All right, sir, You have a goat weekend. We will
catch again soon. Rude climb past in the garden for us.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks B from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.