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Kath Irvine Edible Gardener

@edible.backyard

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Supporting you on your journey to becoming a food gardener 🌻

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My fav chore in the orchard calendar has hit the top of the to-do list - blossom watching! As well as being lovely, it gives you a heads up on how good your harvest will be.

What you’re looking for is plenty of flowers, and lots of bees and bumblebees working the flowers. With a tiny 2 to 3 day window for pollination to occur, it’s a miracle fruit happens at all! So many things can go awry - big winds blow the blossom off, or heavy rain, frost, possums, or birds damage them.

If the blossom manages to evade all those things, and pollination is successful, you’ll know at petal fall, when hanging from the flower stalk is a tiny-wee, mini-me fruit. by @edible.backyard

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a month ago

If your food garden needs shelter, now’s the time to get on the job — planting season is coming to an end! 🌱

Here are 6 things that will make your shelter kickass 💪🏼

1. Choose the right plants Choose tough, hardy plants that are well suited to your soil and environment — whether that’s high rainfall or dry conditions, clay or sand etc. Your local council is often a great resource for finding out what grows well in your area.

2. Get the height right  Your shelter only needs to be as tall as what you’re protecting — a veggie garden might need 2–3m, while an orchard could need 5–6m. Choose trees that grow to the height you need and no taller. This will save you a lot of future hassle.

3. No need to fertilise  You don’t need to fuss over compost or artificial fertilisers. If you’ve chosen plants suited to your soil and environment, your existing soil will provide what they need to get established.

4. Don’t plant too deep Plant so the root crown - the bit where the trunk joins the root ball, is level with the soil. If it’s buried, trees will rot off and die.

5. Make sure they’re secure  Plant firmly and securely, then give each plant a gentle tug after planting. If it moves easily or comes out of the ground, it needs to be firmed up.

6. Mulch! Use mulch or mulch mats around young plants to suppress weeds, retain moisture and create habitat for beneficial soil life.

For this project we are planting kōhūhū, karamū, mānuka, kānuka, Phormium tenax (flax), tī kōuka (cabbage tree), and Pseudopanax arboreus (five finger) as part of our shelter 🌳 They’ll grow fast, provide bird food throughout the year, and will handle the wind, frost and high rainfall in our area.

📖 Want to learn more? Check out my article: https://ediblebackyard.co.nz/step-by-step-to-kickass-shelter/ by @edible.backyard

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2 months ago

I’ve just planted this 3 year-old apple tree 🍎 After sitting in the bag for 3 years, it’s lost its mojo! And the branches are too high and too puny.

So I’m pruning it back to encourage strong branching that starts lower down.

For a better beginning, choose 1 or 2 year old bare root trees 🪴 by @edible.backyard

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2 months ago

It’s time to get your strawberries in the ground! 🍓

A great harvest starts with the right setup, so give your plants the best start now.

The living mulch I’m using here is made up of phacelia, crimson clover, and vetch.

I’ll be writing more about strawberries in my newsletter, landing on 1st August. 🌱 by @edible.backyard

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3 months ago

The space beneath your fruit trees is begging to be planted up with herbs, perennials, leafy greens, flowers, vining vegetables - you are only limited by your imagination.

For the best soil fertility grow upwards of 6 different plants families together.

So easily done! Lets say youre planting a peach tree (rosaceae family) and you already had plantain (plantaginaceae family) and dandelion (asteraceae family) growing, because yes ‘weeds’ are included, without even trying your halfway there.

All plants are fertility creating legends ergo all plants are support plants. So the options I’m giving are not in anyway definitive, just a heads up in the right direction. And as always, the perfect support plants are ones that suit your climate and soil. by @edible.backyard

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3 months ago

We’re picking flowers!! Come see Ivan at Griffin & Pops in Waikanae and grab a bunch 🌼🌼🌼 @griffinandpopscoffee taken in Waikanae, New Zealand by @edible.backyard

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4 months ago

Take the once-a-year opportunity that mid-winter provides to suss out the where and when of the winter sun and the winter shade. This info informs what to prune back, and chop out to improve light, and most importantly where to locate the plants/trees like citrus and avos, that must have winter sun 🌞

More on my website ➡️ https://ediblebackyard.co.nz/learn-your-winter-sun/ by @edible.backyard

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4 months ago

Winter marks the end of deciduous trees growth cycle, which means its time to check your trees for vigour. An essential check-in that shows you whether or not your trees need compost in spring. Important because too much compost = excessively vigorous, hard to reach, trees, and not enough = poor cropping.

Healthy vigour is ideal. It’s the goldilocks point between too little and too much, and it looks like a goodly amount of new wood, evenly spread throughout the tree. Trees with low vigour need compost, trees with healthy vigour don’t, and trees with excessive vigour definitely don’t!

Your tree will tell you what it needs—you just need to know what to look for. Here we’re looking at a peach tree, but the same principle applies to all. 🌱

Pg 156 of Homegrown Fruit: A Practical Guide has a useful chart showing ideal measures for healthy vigour, as well as solutions for low vigour and excessive vigour. by @edible.backyard

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4 months ago

A simple tweak for growing healthy, useful-sized onions… 🧅

Plant your onion seedlings in groups of 3! This helps maximise space in the garden, encourages the perfect medium-sized onions, and gives the seedlings support while they’re still young and vulnerable.

A couple more tweaks - add some homemade compost before planting, and don’t plant them too deep which can cause thick necks. In high rainfall areas, create a small ridge along the row to prevent waterlogging - skip the ridge if you’re gardening in a dry climate 🌱 by @edible.backyard

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5 months ago

Worm-castings (worm poops) are the good-for- everything byproduct of a worm farm. It’s safe to say they have super powers 🪄

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to get started is with a simple bucket worm farm. I personally prefer setups that are on or in the ground so when (not if) things get too hot, cold, wet, dry — or the worms run out of snacks — they can make their escape into the soil.

The secret to a happy worm farm? Check in regularly. A quick daily check making sure moisture and temperature feel right, and that nothing smells funky, goes a long way.

Start slow! Don’t overload them with scraps straight away — let the worms settle in and build up gradually. 🪱

More info on setting up a worm farm at ediblebackyard.co.nz in my library under ‘Compost + Wormfarms’ https://ediblebackyard.co.nz/tag/compost-wormfarms-mulch/ by @edible.backyard

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5 months ago

Pruning is all about letting the light in. The very best cut to achieve that is a thinning cut – where you remove an entire shoot or branch at its point of origin. As opposed to heading cuts that merely shorten a shoot or branch 🌿

Make it a game to only use thinning cuts! And see how with just a few considered cuts you can sort height, width and congestion ✂️ by @edible.backyard

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5 months ago

Times as they are, I’ve been getting heaps of questions about how to get a food garden going from scratch, and quickly. Great news is veggies and herbs are fast growers - it can be done!

My latest garden project is a great example - from weeds to production in three months. California thistle, dock, grass and buttercup converted easily with my fav hack - black plastic - yes, plastic! It gets the job done – clearing the existing plants without using spray, and, as an added bonus, the weeds melt into the soil adding organic matter 🙌🏼

As soon as the weeds died off, we aerated with the mighty forksta, spread a fine layer of compost, then sowed a multi-species living mulch which we planted our crops into. Fast forward 6 weeks and we’re picking various lettuces and leafy greens, rocket, parsley, celery, daikon and spring onions, while broccoli, cabbage, leeks and carrots boost away for future harvests.

Most of you will be able to rinse and repeat this pattern, but some soils and sites are more challenging. If you need my help, a 20 minute garden coach will see you right 🌱 by @edible.backyard

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6 months ago