Dig for victory

Robyn and I met scores of people at the Rural Heritage day at Donovan Park, over our model ‘victory garden’ and heritage fruit tree display. Most interest came from the very young, enjoying the scale model of a backyard garden complete with glasshouse, hen run and rows of paper-cut vegetables, and from the ‘used to be young’, older gardeners who had the real thing through their family-raising years. We took a lot of pointers from these experienced gardeners and plan to make some changes to our own vegetable garden at home. Some swore by well-matured cow manure as the secret to prize winning cabbages and marrows, others said that seaweed is the answer! More than one visitor told me that they were entirely self sufficient in vegetables and I was duly impressed – it takes a very methodical approach to grow year round and not find yourself popping into the supermarket for something or other that had failed to grow (or get planted in the first place). Thanks to all those alerting us to the location of more heritage apple trees in the many corners of Southland – we will be back on that trail in the autumn.