The weather in Christchurch continues to be mild, with no frosts as yet. Climate change, climate disruption or climate chaos; take your pick for a name, but the reality becomes more apparent every year. At the gardens the immediate effect is that this lack of frost has resulted in our pumpkins not developing skins hard enough for long term storage. We will have to be careful to store them in a cool dry place with sacks under and between each pumpkin so that they don’t contact each other and start to rot.

We will be utilising the mild weather to plant more brassicas, leeks, spinach, spring onions and silver beet. The days and nights are cooler but the soil temperature is still high enough for these crops to get a good start. Our first plantings of broad beans have emerged and we will continue succession planting until August. Peas will also go in this month.

We have had good results with our peach seedlings grown from stones. These will be potted up this month. This method works well with peaches but is less successful with apricots, plums and other stone fruits.  All our fruit trees will be pruned this month.

Other seedlings under way are Kale and broad beans. These are being grown on in the glass house and will be available for sale in punnets at our next Market Day on June 23rd. Preparations for this will be going on throughout May, but produce is available at any time at Strickland St. (except for the delicious baking, which we only roll out on Market Days )

Also available at will be Dahlia bulbs. These will be dug up and potted up this month ready for sale. We are quite proud of our Dahlias; currently we raise 12 different varieties, and very lovely they are when in flower.

The war on weeds and oxalis is ongoing and there will be no letup in May.

St Mary’s Church in Addington delivered a load of leaves early in the month and these have gone into the bay reserved for leaves in our compost bins. Sheep manure and a dash of lime will be added and the result in a few months will be a lovely mulch.