A week ago, the garden was about the most beautiful I have ever seen! Everything was in beautiful shape. Then, we had a week of rain. We got 185 mm (7 1/2 in) of rain in 5 days, and one of the days we had gale-force winds, as well. There was hail a couple of times, too. A lot of plants, especially lettuces, got badly bruised, and the peas got knocked partially off their trellis. The runner beans got broken off at the top of their trellis. Because of the rain, the stems of a lot of plants are very brittle, so when I try to straighten them out, for example to help a runner bean up its trellis, they snap off. It could have been a lot worse, though. In Motueka, on Christmas weekend, they had about five inches of hail! I’m thankful we didn’t get that.
Here are the tomatoes. The ones in front are the South Australian Dwarfs, which don’t do well with staking but put on a prolific crop.
Zucchini is in the row closest to us; the rest are pumpkins. We spread bird netting over the greenhouse for the pumpkins to climb up. 
Inside the greenhouse. The cucumbers are nearly done. The pepper plants just to the left in the middle lived over the winter. We put a small, plastic-covered box over them so they didn’t freeze. They are loaded with chilis already, and I’ve been picking bell peppers, too.
Beside the greenhouse is this bed. I have dwarf (or bush) beans, and then runner beans on the trellis. We’ve had enough runner beans for a couple of meals already.
The other side of the trellis has cucumbers, and at the far end are some climbing zucchinis.
The peas have this trellis. The peak of it is about five feet high, and before the storm the plants stood up at least a foot over that. I’m trying to get them to stand up again, but I’m not sure it’ll work.
Corn, lettuce, beet root, leeks and onions.
I planted lettuces where the corn didn’t come up in this bed.
Lettuce, carrots, and potatoes behind them. I have dill all over the garden. We just weed out the excess, and have plenty for pickles.
We found this giant in the garden when we came home from our big trip! Stuffed zucchini on the menu, for sure.
There were a couple of large cucumbers, too.
This was my harvest one evening. Yum! We eat well this time of year.
Leave a Reply