The Good Life: gardening & eating @ Hurahura Road

One of the first things I did at our house on Hurahura Road was to plant a vegetable garden and stock the greenhouse. My parents have always had vege gardens and my grandfather was a legendary gardener, producing gargantuan kumara (New Zealand sweet potato) and beefsteak tomatoes.

Let the gardening commence

Weeded and ready for compost

Grandad had a massive section in Auckland's North Shore which ran from Hurstmere Road to the lake's edge with fruit trees (including bananas, plums and ugly fruit), orderly vege patches (potatoes, onions, beans, leaks, carrots, tomatoes and kumaras), two large compost bins, a garden shed and chickens. When he was a boy, in the early 1900s, the harbour bridge linking Takapuna to Auckland didn't exist so a fairly bucolic existence could be had on the Shore.

In his lifetime the bridge was constructed and Takapuna was transformed from the place he'd hunted for rabbits and fished for eels in the lake and snapper in the sea into a haven for the wealthy filled with large gated homes.

Despite the change in his wider environment, life went on for Grandad in much the same way. He tended his garden and chickens, occasionally leaving a box of "windfalls" at the gate for passers by who might fancy a free apple or two, filling his wooden trolley with fishing gear and crossing Hurstmere Road to the beach where he rowed his wooden dinghy out to "halfway spot" (between the shore and Rangitoto Island) and landed snapper, each evening getting out of his gardening gear and into a shirt and slacks, donning his beret, gripping his walking stick and walking between Takapuna beach and Thorns, warmly greeting each person he passed. Oh how I miss him.

So, inspiration and genetic predisposition explained, you understand why my idea of living in New Zealand could not be complete without a garden, specifically, a vege garden.

The first planting

Greenhouse: weeded, washed and planted

That said, I am virtually clueless as to the finer points of the art. Undeterred, I attacked the garden with gusto, preparing the soil, digging in compost and consulting the Internet for appropriate early summer plantings.

Potatoes went in first, I chose Maori potatoes. When Maori first arrived in New Zealand in their massive canoes they brought with them potatoes and kumara, which were planted in settlements across the country. I knew nothing about how to plant potatoes but had seen them in many gardens growing in mounded rows. Little did I know that the mounds came later. The potatoes should be planted directly into prepared soil and then once they start growing, the soil is mounded up from each side to "force" the crop. This means that by covering some of the growth above ground, growth below ground, ie, where the potatoes are born, is encouraged. So, I planted mine directly into neat little mounded rows and then buggered off to Auckland for a month, missing my window for "earthing up".

First planting, after some serious salad consumption

I also planted tomatoes (cherry, beefsteak and Italian plum), coriander, flat leaf parsley (Matt has an irrational and morbid fear of curly leaf parsley), basil (Thai, Greek and Italian), dill, oregano, bay, rosemary, marjoram, tarragon, thyme, sage, romanesco, bok choy, beans, chili, corn, rucola, spinach, tatsoi, mesclun, carrots, peas, rhubarb, New Zealand native spinach and squash (kamokamo), capsicum, cucumber, courgettes, beets, red onions, lemongrass, radishes. Chard and squash self seeded and and sprouted throughout my plantings.

Greens: ready to eat

By the time Mum, Joel, Joey and Elsie came to visit in early November, the salad greens were ready for harvest so we ate salads of rucola, spinach, mesclun and tatsoi.

Mesclun

Rucola

Radishes

Salad

By Christmas, the beans were in full production, as was the raspberry patch, so we feasted on steamed beans and bean salads and raspberry shortcake with whipped cream.

A ruby red Phoenix rises

Harvest happened twice a day

Raspberry shortcake

We spent most of January in Auckland and when we returned last week the garden and greenhouse evoked scenes from Little Shop of Horrors. Kamokamo was choking everything, much had gone to seed and a big clean-up was required. Tomatoes have filled the greenhouse so I've been making consommé and salads.

Tomatoes: beefsteak, cherry & Italian plum

I used much of the clean-up harvest to make a Thai curry. From the garden and into the pan came beans, baby kamokamo, new potatoes (they grew despite my failure to earth up!), cherry tomatoes, red onion, Thai basil, kaffir lime leaves, chili, lime, red capsicum, sugarsnap peas, purple carrots and courgettes.

Bounty from Hurahura awaiting "curryfication"

Hurahura curry: ready to eat

The demands of maintaining a garden and greenhouse are endless and I am still a complete novice, often overwhelmed by weeds and stumped as to what to plant next - and once grown, what to cook. In London we tended to eat seasonally as I bought most of my veges from the local farmers market, but having your own garden is seasonal eating at an extreme, and my particular form of naiveté means eating from glut to famine.