Your Garden Coach NZ
Guiding keen new gardeners to become confident vegetable growers no matter the size of your garden or your skill level.
We aim to share tips and tricks to help you grow healthy, nutrient-rich vegetables.
Based in the Central Otago region of New Zealand.
Happy gardening
Your Garden Coach NZ
Summer Episode 22
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Robert Owen is a delight to listen to, a gentleman beekeeper. With a PhD in Varroa, and having been a beekeeper for 25 years, Robert is a mine of common sense beekeeping advice.
Roberts publishers, Exile Publishing, have kindly donated a copy of ‘Honey Bee Pests and Diseases’ - A Complete Guide to Prevention and Management. Detailed chapters, illustrated with numerous photographs and diagrams, as well as other health-related problems a bee colony might face. An easy-to-comprehend, ‘must-have’ book for both the home and professional bee-keeper.
We catch up on the Moon Calendar tasks for this week. Root Crops sowing on 28th February, the last chance to sow before winter.
What to do with the dribble of milk left in your carton? A great source of calcium for your plants.
Veg of the Week is Pak Choi Green Ace F1 from @kingsseeds
Book of the Week ‘Soil’, by Matthew Evans ‘A love letter to Mother Earth’
We answer Berit’s garden questions - what do we do with volunteer plants?
Instagram Account of the Week @saintclairflowers beautiful arrangements with prints available. Do take a look.
‘Oley’ tomatoes from Heritage Food Crops Research Centre feature once again - they are delicious.
Happy Gardening
You can contact us at coach@yourgardencoach.nz and follow us on socials @yourgardencoachnz
Welcome to Your Garden Coach Podcast. Our aim is to guide and support your vegetable growing journey. Whether you're a complete beginner or a competent grower, and no matter the size of your kitchen garden, there will be something for everyone. Your Garden Coach hosts Alex Soper and myself, Jen Anderson, aim to share tips and tricks required to successfully grow your own produce and feed healthy, nutrient-rich vegetables to your family. In each episode, we'll take a look at some of the main tasks for the coming week, so be sure to listen to the most current episode before you catch up on previous episodes. If you're wanting to start a kitchen garden at your home, we're here to help. Happy gardening. And one day left of uh summer, Allie.
SPEAKER_01Thank goodness though. Thank goodness it's a leap year. I know I've just realised, as I've said, the 29th. That means a leap year. So we've got an extra day of summer.
unknownWoo!
SPEAKER_02And for any ladies out there who have not been uh asked to be married yet, don't worry about waiting for him to ask. This is the year to do it. Tomorrow. There you go. Please let us know if anyone uh pops a proposal. Yeah. We'd love to hear it. So, Allie, we've got today's episode, uh, we've got an interview, very interesting interview with Robert, all about the bees. The birds and the bees, not that part. Uh, but uh yeah, it's given me inspiration to get bees into my backyard. And of course, we uh will be gardening by the moon. We're looking at what tasks are on for this week.
SPEAKER_01So, Allie, what's been happening in your garden? Well, just the usual uh for this time of year, lots of harvest, lots of things coming out. Um, what I have been looking at is my pumpkins and making sure now that they're getting bigger that they're not actually sitting in soil. So I've lifted them up, I've put a little bit of pea straw underneath them just to save them rotting. Uh we don't get that much here, but it always pays just to be careful. And the other important thing, my grapes are almost almost ready.
SPEAKER_02Really?
SPEAKER_01Yep. The um the red table grapes um are going through their varasion. They've turned red. They're varation.
SPEAKER_02I say a variation of colour. Actually, this is the time of year that farmers want rain, but you wine growers, you grape growers, do not.
SPEAKER_01No. The last thing wanted. Exactly. So it's absolutely perfect conditions out there right now. Beautiful. So I've covered them, I've covered the grapes with netting just so that we get a nice crop. And this year has been a really lovely year. So whether that's the age of the vine, I'm s I'm guessing that's probably what it is. It's now in its fourth year. Um, but the we've got so many bunches of edible grapes. Yum, yum, yum, and they're all spray-free.
SPEAKER_02Actually, Allie, back in another life, well, not really another life, but another place she lived, you actually bottled wine. You made one.
SPEAKER_01We did, we did. We worked with Alan Brady and he made um Wild Irishman three collines, a very, very special drop of pen and wine.
SPEAKER_02And I was lucky enough to get a few bottles of that and top-notch. Very, very nice. So, uh Ellie, in my garden, my carrots are still flourishing.
SPEAKER_01Good girl.
SPEAKER_02I've redone my watering, well, Stacy's helped me, to I'm still trying with my watermelon, but it's not doing much. But my melon plant seems to be coming ahead a little bit. Uh would it be too late for that to do anything?
SPEAKER_01For the plant to produce anything? As I'm saying, I think that we've got a later summer. And so let's keep our fingers crossed.
SPEAKER_02So I will keep you updated on whether my melons come of anything. I've got peas in the garden bed where my potatoes didn't do so well. So that was actually a really good growth on those. So hopefully that shall come to something. I have planted uh I'm sorry, but I didn't go from seeds, I went from seedlings. Uh, I've got beetroot in and I've redone some basil because my basil plant's not looking terribly good. I've just I'm an epic failure of growing good lush basil. I do not know where I go wrong.
SPEAKER_01Basil needs to be at your back door or your front door, whichever door you go out that's in the morning sun, and you need to be watering it every day.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I had it in my kitchen window, but it just it had those wee fly like tiny little bug things that kept.
SPEAKER_01Soil's not as good as it could be. So take a good look at where you're planting your basil. And as we said before, nice sunny spot on the morning side. Keep it watered. Good soil.
SPEAKER_02All right. You should be good. Well, I put my radishes in too last week. Oh, good. So hopefully things should be flourishing a little bit and getting ready to come out for my hunting season uh and in into the winter.
SPEAKER_01That's what we're looking for.
SPEAKER_02Well done. And you know what I've done really heaps of, and it's so good. Corget relish.
SPEAKER_01Oh, look, zucchini relish. I wish, I wish you could taste Jen's zucchini relish. It's delicious. Smells amazing and it tastes yummy.
SPEAKER_02Quite stoked.
SPEAKER_01Is that going into the AMP show?
SPEAKER_02It sure is. Hey, and we'll talk more about that in a minute uh or later on in the episode of our scarecrows. But Ali, this this tea that is in my cup, my cup is um, it's so funny. It's my favourite little Maxwell and Williams. It's pink with some violas and something or other or on it. But it the shade of our tea today works perfectly with my cup.
SPEAKER_01What's in it? It's delicious. Synchronicity, isn't it? We're we're going back to rose petal tea, but this this time we've added a splash of lemon just for a little bit of a zing. I like it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. It's good.
SPEAKER_01Rose tea is traditionally given as an infusion to calm the soul in times of grief. And sadly, a very dear friend of mine lost her father last night. So this I can't have a cup of tea with her because she lives in France. Um, but this is for her. Nice rose tea. The Chinese medicine suggests it helps to balance the body's energy and relieve emotional stress. So there you go. We've got lots and lots of centuries of trial and error on this one. Other benefits for rose tea, it soothes the tummy issues, it can ease menstrual cycle symptoms, it can regulate mood swings and of course improve sleep. So it's best to drink it in the evening, although this isn't the evening, this is middle of the afternoon, Jen. So could you stay awake for the rest of the day?
SPEAKER_02And who needs all the drugs if you're going through menopause when you could have rose tea?
SPEAKER_01I know, I know. It go back to nature. And as we were talking off-air, teabags.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh, I was just googling what is in tea bags and just the carcinogenics in it. The it's not not you can still go for the better option, but that polypropylene is still the what's going to be the sealant. And but with it's they talk about the say that polypropylene, which is the same in your plastic bottles and all that sort of thing, but when it comes to tea bags, what did I say?
SPEAKER_01It's like thousands of times because you're heating, you're putting boiling water over it, releasing all the look at us go.
SPEAKER_02Look at us, no plastics in this body.
SPEAKER_01So for this tea, I've put half a cup of rose petals, two cups of boiling water. You can use dried petals, so you know those that last flush of roses. Oh, and when I went to pick these roses today, there must be more humidity in the air today, James.
SPEAKER_02Yes, there is.
SPEAKER_01And I walked into the rose garden at about probably in one o'clock, I suppose, in the afternoon. Oh, the fragrance was just beautiful.
SPEAKER_02But my only issue is I love this tea, but I do not have one rose bush on my lawn in my where I live.
SPEAKER_01So it's a good job, I have 50.
SPEAKER_02Perfect.
SPEAKER_01So, and and again, another benefit is that I don't spray my roses. I let the ladybirds do all the aphid protection. So they get they get fed, but they don't get sprayed, which is good. Is there anything we need to be wary of drinking the this one? Um, yeah, um, as always, we look for side effects, but the only one that I could find when I was doing my research is that if you've had an issue with rose hip tea, if you've had an allergy to that, then steer clear of it. But otherwise, good to go. So in this teapot, I added um a little bit of lemon. I told you that, didn't I? But you could also switch it out for vanilla. Uh the pods are best, of course, but a good quality vanilla extract would be lovely. What did we have last time with it? Just rose. Oh, we just had the rose on their own. And you could put honey in if you've got a particularly sweet tooth, but I don't think it needs it.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_01And then another thing you can actually add, another member of the Rosaceae family is hawthorn berries.
SPEAKER_02Oh. Hawthorne always reminds me of when I used to bike to school and the hawthorn would get caught, would get pushed into my and give me a flat tyre. Oh. That's a sad story. The berry's probably better to put through the tea than the hawthorn and my tyre.
SPEAKER_01I hope so. So the hawthorn um is considered to be a cardio tonic, so it helps to support the overall function of the heart. So there you go.
SPEAKER_02Everyone needs a healthy heart.
SPEAKER_01And it's red berries. The red berries, obviously, are high in vitamin C. And just like the rose, it's been shown to help calm the nervous system. And that one you would steep for about half an hour. It would cool down, so gently warm it in the saucepan before you actually.
SPEAKER_02But you've got to do it to the temperature to draw the benefits of it out.
SPEAKER_01So the boiling water to start with, let it steep for half an hour, and then when you want to drink it, I mean, I'm used to drinking tea nearly cold anyway, aren't all mums?
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_01So the rose actually symbolises gentility, femininity, elegance, and refinement.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's us, Allie. All of those things. I know. Gentile and elegant.
SPEAKER_01There we are. The pink rose also carries an additional meaning depending on its hue. So a deep pink conveys gratitude and appreciation, while a pale one.
SPEAKER_02What did we have? Pale?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we had pale. So that's grace and gentleness, admiration and happiness.
SPEAKER_02I am so full of grace.
SPEAKER_01And uh don't I feel like that? If you could see me now, I'm in my work gear. I'm looking extremely elegant, not She's stunning.
SPEAKER_02Hey, talking about berries, do you know what I've noticed that's out on the trees at the moment? The elderflower berry. Yes. I need to get you to help me to do something with those. But um, shall we move on to what's happening in our garden this week, Ellen?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this week I think we are in the waning period. So this is obviously best for root crops. So that was yesterday and today, so we can't go back. If you're quick today, you can get them in. That's the 28th of February. But don't forget, we've got that rotor coming back again on the 6th and 7th of March, is another good time. So if you've missed this opportunity this week, just get planning for next time. And what you will be planting is beetroot. That will be your last chance to direct sow until about September down here in the south. You can start again in August if you're in the North Island, but the South Island we wait until September. This will be our last chance to sow carrots in the south. Of course, in the north you can plant them all year round. And leeks, if we're planting those, we can plant those up until April, so we've got a bit more of a window in the south, uh, probably through until May in the North Island. So that's just to give you some guidelines. If you wanted to put some shallots in March through to August, both the North and the South Island, ideal times. And spring onions, sew them now, your last chance is in March.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic. That's it that's the kind of information I think is great to know as well. It's like, okay, this is your D-Day call. Yes. You don't get it in now, you don't get it until next year.
SPEAKER_01And that's the whole premise of the podcast. We just wanted to give people the ideas.
SPEAKER_02Um What should you be doing now?
SPEAKER_01Simply step by step.
SPEAKER_02Let's spoon feed them. Spoon feed me, Ellie.
SPEAKER_01So you know, we're not just about the vegetable world, we're into flowers as well. So it's um the catalogues are coming out now with all the bulbs that we can be planting.
SPEAKER_02I love spring bulbs.
SPEAKER_01So do I. And now's the time to actually start thinking about it. Um, we are going to be looking at some new daffodils, some extra hyacinths, because they're growing. That always reminds me of Mrs. Bouquet. Hyacinth!
SPEAKER_02Sorry.
SPEAKER_01Hyacinths. I have some a lovely little area of Hyacinth, but I think I'll be extending that area because they're so special.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Irises, Renunculus. Now, Renunculus I tried, I've never been successful with them, but this year I had a bit more success than I normally do. I put them in that barrel right outside my front door. And so I was checking on them every day, and they did actually perform beautifully. And that soil in those pots was designed for my um more xerascaping plants, so it's not as nutrit nutritious as it could be. Perfect for the xer escaping, but it seemed to work for the renunks, but I think I would put them in a little bit more of a rich soil next to bluebells and muscari, and of course the tulips.
SPEAKER_02Love tulips. I would like to go to the Netherlands and see all their fields. But they're somewhere up in the Canterbury Way, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Or is it no Southland? Southland, yeah. Have the tulip farmers.
SPEAKER_02If you ever get a chance to to go, when would be the best time of the year to when tulips are out? Springtime. So all through September, October, November. That is, it's beautiful. It's like the sunflower sunflowers at the moment. You see the big fields of those are beautiful.
SPEAKER_01And Nadia Limbs, I I drove past Nadia's farm and Carlos. Nadia and Carlos, yeah. Their farm um a couple of days ago. It looks amazing. There are just yellow sunflowers.
SPEAKER_02And but look, you know, you don't have to go all the way that way to see them because the turners have it as well. Here there's a farm um on your way out to the Wanaker Airport, and and they were cutting them to um make money to save because their son got helped by the uh rescue helicopter, so all funds raised from those cut flowers were going straight to the rescue helicopter.
SPEAKER_01So actually we we met him when we were shopping at the supermarket, and I think he was really enjoying selling his flowers at the supermarket.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01So when it comes, we'll go back to bulbs, Jen. Focus.
SPEAKER_02We don't crest so quickly, don't we?
SPEAKER_01We do. Tulip bulbs and other bulbs should be planted six to eight weeks before your first frost. So this is an important date to keep in your diary. All bulbs should be in the ground by mid-May. It doesn't matter how soon before May, it won't make any difference to the flowering. But it does make a difference to planting them. It's much easier to put them in the when the ground's about twelve degrees rather than when it's frozen.
SPEAKER_02Yes, true that.
SPEAKER_01Bulbs do need a good period of cold weather. If you think about it, bulbs are native, especially the tulips, are native to areas that have long cold winters, and that enables the development of the flower bud deep inside the bulb. So without a period of deep cold, they will either have really short stems, which happened to me one year, or no flowers at all.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow.
SPEAKER_01So they're the things to sort of give some thought to. If you live in a warmer area, of course, up in the North Island and you still want to grow your tulips, good luck. But what do you do if you don't get a frost? Yeah, well, the best thing you can do is actually put them into that cold state. So put them in a paper bag, not a plastic bag. We don't want any condensation. Put them in a paper bag and put them in the fridge for about eight weeks from about the end of March, and then be really careful. Um, you don't want to put them at the back of your fridge that might freeze.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that happens in my fridge with my lettuce all the time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you've got to be so careful. So put them to the side towards the front if you can. Um make sure nobody eats them inadvertently.
SPEAKER_02Thinking it's a shallot or something.
SPEAKER_01Um so if your fridge is about four degrees, which is perfect, the tulips are gonna love it.
SPEAKER_02Great.
SPEAKER_01The other thing to remember if you're storing them in the fr in the fridge is that any fruits that you've got in the fridge are gonna release a gas called ethylene, and that can actually affect the bulb too. So it can even stop the bulb from flowering. So, you know, you've got to weigh up. Maybe you just get a fruit bulbs. Maybe you just get a special fridge just for your tulips.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, people have beer fridges. They do too. There you go. You've got a tulip fridge.
SPEAKER_01All right, that's about as much as I can tell you about bulbs at this point in time, but uh yeah, take a good look at those catalogues, they are stunning. In your garden, looking out for pests and diseases. Remember, everything is still getting uh here, it's just so dry. I've noticed a tiny bit of powdery mildew. I'm not gonna worry too much, it's only tiny on the roses. Um, so but just yeah, you can you can deal with it in whichever way you choose. Again, it's uh lawn sewing time, any month with an R in it. Yes, yes. Um, you've just got to make sure that that's well watered to assist the germination. Now we've talked about um the Friday, the 29th of February, being a leap year. So from Friday the 29th to the 5th of March, we've got a barren period, and that's ideal for summer pruning of fruit trees. So I did miss my window of opportunity last month, but I will be I will be remembering this.
SPEAKER_02Would you like me to put a little a reminder in my phone so I can remind you?
SPEAKER_01Yes, please, that would be wonderful. Um, if you've got some compost ready to go, you can be putting some compost on. Um I tend to not do it at this time of year. I like to build my compost supplies up so that it goes on um towards the end of winter.
SPEAKER_02So does your garden need to be empty of produce to be putting more compost on?
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_02No, you just put it on top of what you've got. Just sprinkle it on the colour. Whatever is there. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yep, yep. If it's homemade compost, you know what's in it. You've done your equal ratios of nitrogen to carbon, and it's you've given it plenty of time to cook down, you've kept it nice and moist, and once it starts to look just like soil, really, then it's good to go. You can just sprinkle sprinkle that on. Another good idea, your milk cartons. Yes. You know how people rinse them out when they've used up all the milk, they rinse it out and they uh just tip it down to the start. Put it on recycling. Yep, we've talked about this before. It's got um a really good macronutrient in there, calcium. Um, and that will actually feed your tomatoes and your peppers and and actually your house plants. So when you've got just maybe a little dribble in the bottom of your bottle, yeah, add water, top it up to the two litres or three litres, whatever it is, and then just go out and feed your tomatoes pepper. And my houseplants this year have been fabulous. Oh my gosh! Been doing it diligently.
SPEAKER_02Well done, you. That's the last thing I would have expected to come out of your mouth. I thought you were talking about recycling or you're going to do something with the container. No, it's the stuff with the little dribbles in the container, the left in the milk container.
SPEAKER_01Apparently, it acts as a fungicide. So, yeah, give it a go. Um, another thing to be feeding your plants, of course, with is your compost tea and your comfrey tea. Any other liquid organic fertilizers that will help your tomatoes and peppers just to stay healthy? Um, they're still drying out really, really quickly. So we want to boost that yield, get in as much as we can. We've worked so hard on these tomatoes over the last three and a half months. Have we what? But aren't they yummy?
SPEAKER_02Yes. And then I was looking, comparing uh tomatoes with tomatoes with my father-in-law's tomatoes in mine. I said to Ali, what's wrong with this? She goes, Oh, is it another one I gave you? I said, yes. And what was it called? Olay. Olay! And it's more of a yellow tomato.
SPEAKER_01And it's beautiful.
SPEAKER_02It's like they are coming thick and fast, and my Airbnb guests are loving me because I give them fresh eggs and fresh tomatoes. They'll be staying longer. I get a really good um Airbnb review with that.
unknownBoom!
SPEAKER_02That's what we want.
SPEAKER_01Hey Ellie, what are we currently harvesting? Well, um, the corn, zucchini, my apples and pears are just I've got so many. What is everybody else harvesting? Let us know.
SPEAKER_02So, what is our veggie or our herb of the week this week, Ellie?
SPEAKER_01This week I'm going to be telling you about pack choy because it's a really good time to be sowing again right now. So I'm looking at King's Seeds at the moment, and their pack choy green ace, which is an F1 hybrid, which means you don't save the seed. Okay, right. Um so their blurb is really comprehensive. It says it's uh a high quality pack choy with dark green leaves and light green stems. The compact, upright plant has a vigorous growth and a profusion of bunched tasty leaves, which sounds perfect to me. Tolerant to heat and cold. It's also good all rounder. Yeah, and you're getting about 300 seeds in each packet. So one packet, $4, is gonna actually last you quite a long time.
SPEAKER_02What's a bunch of pack choy cost at the supermarket? I don't even know.
SPEAKER_01No, I don't even bother looking, grow my own.
SPEAKER_02There you go. My sister uses pack choy and everything, so like like a coriander.
SPEAKER_01Well it's so versatile, isn't it? Really, really good. And this particular type, the the pack choy green ace F1, is good for mildew resistance and it's also slow to bolt, which is great. Yep. So as I said, you've got about 300 seeds in that packet. Um and again, you can sow early spring, late spring, early summer, late summer, and early autumn. And direct sowing they recommend is the best. However, I still put mine in seed trays. So the optimum soil temperature I'm reading here is about ten between ten and twenty-five degrees. So that's a good variable there.
SPEAKER_02How many of you out there have got thermometers in your soil? Me Of course you do, I don't.
SPEAKER_01Um we're talking about 50 days from direct sowing to maturity. So that's not very long, really. Um you're getting as again if you can succession sow, ideal, you've got it all year round. And you're only sowing those seeds to a depth of about three millimetres. Um when you're actually planting them in, you want about 20 centimetres between each plant.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, because I suppose they grow quite bushy, don't they? Sort of out wide. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 20 centimetres is you know a reasonable amount of space for them. So there you go. That's our that's our vegetable of the week. Pack choi. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02Packed with joy. This week we welcome Robert Owen, married to a Kiwi, hails from Wales, based in Thailand. So try and work this accent out. Robert is a qualified beekeeper, and his publishing company, Exile, has kindly donated us a book, one of his latest to give away. Robert is going to share his infinite wisdom about beekeeping. Um, the book itself is The Honey Bee Pests and Diseases, and it's available probably any bookstore. Ask kindly if it's not there, and I'm sure they could get it on for you or even online. And we'd like to welcome Robert.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Alien Jens. My pleasure to be here with you on your excellent set of podcasts. It's my privilege. Before I go on to pests and diseases on my book, I want to give a brief overview of bees in general and how they affect the environment. There are many, many species of bees in the world, but the one we're talking about, which is important globally and is and is also the main one in New Zealand, is called the European honey bee. It originated from northern Italy, Yugoslavia, Serbia, around there. And because of their excellent ability to produce lots of lots of excess honey, they're fairly gentle. They have been moved worldwide to pollinate crops and to produce honey. So when we talk about bees, there are thousands of types of bees species, but there's only one that that's really important globally. Called the European honeybee. Okay, and that's what we'll talk about. Honey bees are an important part of nature. Without honey bees, we lose about 60% of our food supply. Einstein is supposed to have said without honey bees, humanity would have about four years to live. There's no actual evidence he said that, in fact, I don't believe he did, but that's also incorrect. We lose a lot of things like strawberries and lemons. A lot of what I say makes our meals really interesting, but we still have enough food to survive on a very limited diet. Beekeeping is a very popular hobby, as well as being commercially important, and a lot of people, both in New Zealand and around the world, gain a lot of pleasure from keeping bees there. And unfortunately, since about the 1950s, there's been a range of pathogens that have infected bees globally. When I was young, and I'm sort of pretty old now, you you could group bees into two classes. One managed bees kept in beehives, and the feral bees are the same species that lived in trees or lived in holes in walls. Now unfortunately, all the feral bees that live in trees, live in holes in walls, are dead globally. There are none left. The only bees left in the world, and a European honey bee, are kept in beehives and are treated for disease by beekeepers. Okay. So that in my lifetime that has been a substantial change to the environment that bees like I mean, it's a bit of a disaster. There's no two ways around it. But it's not the end of the world, though. It is possible to keep bees and manage the diseases that uh infect bees. The main bee pathogen is a small mite call vivo, and that only appeared around the 1950s, the 1950s in in Korea and Japan and places. It infected other types of bees, but it didn't affect the European honey bees. And if you take an analogy with COVID, COVID has been around possibly thousands of years, but jumped species into humans around 2020. Okay. The varroa mite was around in other animals that jumped species into honey bees around the 1950s or before. The honey bee had no resistance to it and it decimated honey bees globally. It is possible to treat varora, but um and beekeepers globally do this. Keeping bees, because there are no more feral bees around, only bees that are kept in hives by beekeepers, for the general well-being of your garden, um, it's really beneficial to keep a hive or two. You know, it's not too much work. It's it's not like keeping a pet where you've got to keep them every you know, free them every day. We have put them in a corner out of the way, uh say behind the garage, and just look at them every few few weeks and a couple of times a year harvest this really delicious honey from them and then treat them treat them with medication periodically as you monitor the the disease. When when we started I I kept bees in Australia since I was about 50 years of age, so about 25 years now. And when we when we introduced uh bees into our garden, it was quite a noticeable improvement in the state of the garden. And my wife's a very avid gardener, and you can see more flowering plants or more flowers, better fruit. So adding a beehive does make a difference to your garden. It's not something we just keep in a corner and check now and again. There are definite signs of improvement in our garden. And it didn't affect the pets, it didn't affect the children or the neighbors. They unlike wasps, which will attack people at the barbecue, but if you're drinking soft drinks, sugary soft drinks, honey bees will leave you alone. They're not interested in humans at all. It is an important hobby. It can it can be very beneficial to your garden. It there are noticeable differences or improvements to the fruit and vegetables and the number of flowers that are produced on trees on another plant. So New Zealand beekeepers are lucky, there aren't as many or the more lethal pathogens in New Zealand as there are in other countries. You have unfortunately the mite of a roar, which is the big problem globally, and you have another bacterial disease, you've got American foul boot. The two the two important diseases that aren't found in New Zealand are European foul brood and a small beetle called small hive beetle, which are in Australia and many parts of the rest of the world. So through my book on beekeeping or on beekeeping diseases, it is important to know about other types of diseases so that if one accidentally came into New Zealand and broke quarantine, you you could recognize it. Like the vlog mite that's found in New Zealand almost certainly came in by plane because it was first located around Auckland Airport. No one knows exactly how it came in. It's come into Australia by plane a few times, but quarantine officials at the airport have noted it and killed it. So it is in it is there now. Um so it can come in by a variety of ways, both by ship, by land. Some beekeepers unfortunately smuggled queen bees into more seas. They think my European queens are better than Australian or New Zealand queens. So I bring one of mine in, and that can bring diseases in. So that's that's a bit of a problem as well. And diseases for bees are spread uh globally through that method. Now people think, oh my my bees might be diseased, does that mean my honey is unsafe? And it it doesn't none none of the pathogens uh of honey bees affect humans. So no matter what, if unfortunately a disease you or honey bee has, it's still very safe to eat the honey. There are no issues at all with humans. It's quite an easy hobby. It's um you you get a beehive from a local beekeeper or a club or a local beekeeping store, and it's in good stores in New Zealand, put it in your backyard and it's minimal maintenance, and you just check it every few weeks in the spring and early summer. You extract honey. I'd like to add that sharp honey is completely inferior to your own honey. Okay. There's no comparison. Your own honey is called garden honey because uh the bees collect uh pollen from nectar from a variety of sources, and it makes it a very delicious mixed meal of honey, whereas sharp honey is is usually only yellow box or only eucalypse or only orange or something, and it's diluted with poor quality honey, so it's not as tasty as your own honey. One I mentioned uh is disease, but another reason is in the last say since the end of the Second World War, there's been this enormous growth in monocultures globally. Whereas I mean, in my life, my early childhood, there weren't huge areas of say canola or whatever, there were small crops of a variety of plants. The hedgerow around fields contained a variety of what I'd say uh weeds, you know, but still flowering plants and very beneficial to bees and very nutritious. But a lot of farmers have eradicated those to increase their crops. So that that means that the food that bees get from nature isn't as nutritious and as varied as it used to be 50 years ago. Farmers and hobby beekeepers as well, who have gardens, they put a lot of pesticides on on their crops and on their flowers just to just to get the pests out of the way. Unfortunately, bees eat the nectar from that, and that has a detrimental effect on bees generally. So it's not only disease, mon monocultures and excessive use of pesticides globally also has a very detrimental effect. But uh so it it is very beneficial to you listeners who are very avid gardeners, I'm sure all of them are, to keep to keep a beehive. It improves the environment around the home in general, but in particular, they will see an see an improvement in the garden, uh in their garden and also in their neighbor's garden. You know, it isn't something you can keep to yourself. Um so I'd I'd encourage any interested gardener to consider keeping a keeping a beehive. If you got one beehive, say, you think or you look at it regularly, you think, oh, this is the way beehive bees behave, then you get another beehive next to it, and they do something totally different. You know, so each beehive, like each human family, is very different to each other. So if you've got three beehives, the third hive, the bees in there, do things very differently again. So it is a big learning experience. It's and they are very, they are very diverse and um they're safe with kids. Um, my my children enjoy looking at them. My dog never got bothered with them.
SPEAKER_02How many hives would be a good number to have in your backyard?
SPEAKER_00I s I assume most listeners are in urban backyards. Yeah. One would be enough. All you need is one. The the risk is that if you lose the beehive, say it dies, or the bees leave for some reason, um, it's often beneficial to have a second beehive as backup. And you certainly don't get them too. I've kept about 10 in my in my backyard and more elsewhere. Bees fly about two to four kilometers for food. Right. So what you do in your garden isn't gonna have that much effect on them. They'd rather stay close to home. They can't get what they need close to home, they will fly two to four kilometers and come back with food.
SPEAKER_02My other, sorry, my other question. Do you think, in your knowledge, chewing on the actual honeycomb will help someone build up basically antibodies to help with hay fever if it's from within their region? Is there some truth to that?
SPEAKER_00Um, actually, there's no truth in that. I'll tell you why now. What gives hay fever is things like grasses, the pollen from grasses, okay? No, bees, unfortunately, don't collect the pollen from grasses. They collect the pollen from apple trees, lemons, chrysanthemums, things like that. And and so although the pollen from flowers and lemon trees and so on are in honey, they're not the pollens that give you that give you um hay fever. So I'm so I'm sorry to dash you.
SPEAKER_02Well, although you've you've dashed my um my hopes on on hay fever uh hearing. We do have your fabulous book, Honey Bee Pests and Diseases, the Complete Guide to Prevention and Management. We have a book here. What we usually do, Robert, is you come up with a a reason or a question that our listeners have to answer and get a chance to win the book. What's the question you'd like to ask our qu our listeners?
SPEAKER_00How are bees beneficial to their garden? And what what they can do to their garden to make it much more bee-friendly?
SPEAKER_02Sounds good. Got me thinking that I'd like to put a couple of hives on here.
SPEAKER_00If I can add one more point, which is a bit counterintuitive for most people. If you split New Zealand into rural areas and town areas, okay, bees actually do better in town areas and in rural areas. Really? And particularly in Australia, which is more arid, but in general, within towns, there's a more there's because a lot of people have very well tended gardens and water supply, it's it's it's there's actually a lot more flowering plants and a diversity of flowering plants in urban areas than there are in any particular location in or most locations in a yeah. So it's a bit counterintuitive. So if any of you listeners um think, oh, I I can't keep bees, I I I live in the middle of Auckland or whatever, or Wanganiwi, that I'd say don't let that deter you. It they are very good locations for bees and so.
SPEAKER_02Well, Robert, thank you so very, very much. It was lovely to meet you. It was so nice to be able to just sit back, listen, not ask too many questions, but actually understand. And for someone who does not know anything about bees, I believe, get it? What you've said is how it's written in this book, then it is certainly going to be very easy for the layman to be actually be able to understand. Thanks, buddy and gentlemen.
SPEAKER_00My pleasure to be here with you.
SPEAKER_02Well, Ellie, I can tell you I was a little nervous uh before this interview, thinking it could have been a little more academic than what I would be able to, my little brain capacity could take, but what a wonderful interview and what a gentleman.
SPEAKER_01Isn't he just? And that accent is delightful.
SPEAKER_02At least fallen in love with Robert's accent. Just love it. And so what a great book to give away. And talking about books, we've got a book of the week.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, our book of the week is Soil by Matthew Evans. Now, we have talked about this book before, but I'm having a wee refresher about soil building at the moment. And I picked that book up, had a read, and just wanted to let those listeners that have just joined us know that this is a book they should have on their bookshelves. On the cover of the book, it says A Love Letter to Mother Earth.
SPEAKER_02How gorgeous. And talking about love letters, Mother Earth, and looking after it, something to do with our gardening term today, land steward.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. Land steward is someone who applies ecological principles in their garden in order to respect the land they inhabit. Observing and applying best practices such as incorporating native plants, harvesting rainwater, mulching, which I'm doing a lot of at the moment, creating habitats for wildlife, and then feeding the soil.
SPEAKER_02Well, we are all of us podcasters here. We are, what are we calling it? Land stewards. Now, question for gardeners, you're telling me we've got a question. This is a section that if you do have a question you'd like to ask us, simply email that said question to coach at your gardencoach.nz. So what's the what's today's question?
SPEAKER_01We've had a letter from Barrett. She said, Love your podcast and learning with you. It's wonderful to finally have a resource on gardening knowledge for this area, which is cool. Yay. And she's uh she's given us three questions, but we'll look at one today. She said, How do you handle wild veg that just pops up? I sometimes leave them and find they go really well, like lettuce and pumpkins, but sometimes they don't, or they mess with what I'd plan to put in the particular spot, but I find it really hard to pull them out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's like me and the wastage. Don't like wastage.
SPEAKER_01No, I know, it's terrible with the thinning. You had the problem with carrots, didn't you?
SPEAKER_02So what's your answer to that?
SPEAKER_01Well, volunteer vegetables, which is what we call them, they're brilliant. They are in tune with nature and they pop up when the conditions are just right. So if possible, leave them where they are, they're happy. This is when crop rotation and true permaculture clash though. So to mitigate in my garden, I follow the crop rotation guidelines to improve the soil, and where possible, for example, where plants are great companions, I leave the volunteers in situ. This method usually works very well for me. If, however, they're really in the wrong bed, dig them up, get rid of them. Or dig them up very, very carefully and relocate them.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you so much for that. Please do uh keep bringing your questions to us. We would I think there's two more for those uh for we will answer maybe next week's. Yeah, we can do that. We're just running away with more time on time. Um Instagram account of the week, Ellie. Something kind of well, not local here, but travelling three hours or three and a half hours south to uh the coast of Dunedin. What's your Instagram account?
SPEAKER_01We've got at St. Clair Flowers. Now there are some magnificent pictures on on this Instagram. Make a weird sneaky look. Did you? Yep. Beautiful floral arrangements with prints that are available for purchase as well. So come and take a look. It's lovely.
SPEAKER_02That's very cool. And local events, our noticeboard, what's going on in the garden, what's happening locally uh this week?
SPEAKER_01We've got the Well Autumn Fit Harvest event that's coming up. So go online and book your tickets for that. Um, the Harwie of Food Forest working bees on Saturdays. Just remember not to turn up if it's raining. Grow Wanuker, have their working bees on Saturdays and Wednesdays, and of course, we're preparing for the Wanaker MP show, which is coming up really soon. Pickles.
SPEAKER_02And our scarecrow is scaring the beaches out of me every time I go into my gene cave and it's dark. I keep thinking someone's in there, really. Um, if you've got anything related, garden-related and activity that you'd like us to promote here on the podcast, please do get in touch by email. Think email again is coach at your gardencoach.nz. Uh and we have still got the competition for the crop uh rotation poster.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, we're with them on Friday. Friday. Friday the first. So um get your entry in before then.
SPEAKER_02If you can't remember what the question was, pop back to last week's podcast and figure out and have a wedding to that interview. Uh it was brilliant. And get getting for your chance to win the crop rotation poster. That's up, Ellie. What a great week. Fantastic week. Thanks, Jen. Bye. Happy gardening. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Your Garden Coach. If you've enjoyed listening and you've found the advice helpful, please give us a five-star rating as this helps the algorithms reach more king gardeners, novelist, or experienced. Remember to like and subscribe so that you never miss an episode and do tell your friends and family about us. You'll find more details in the podcast notes below. Head on over to our Instagram account, Your GardenCoach underscore nz, for more information, photos, reels, and competition entry details, and to ask any garden questions. We're also growing our website, leaf by leaf, www.yourgardencoach.nz. And if you'd like a personalised kitchen garden consultation with the fabulous Allie, email coach at your gardencoach.nz. Ali's Garden is open to view via www.secretgardens.co.nz, and you can book yourself a visit online.
