Growing vegetables or fruit in your backyard has made a comeback. David Bruce learns how its done.
Don Harvey jokes he has black fingers, not green fingers.
An enthusiastic tractor collector and restorer, he has his hands black with oil as much as green with gardening, but still has an impressive vegetable plot at his Swift St, Oamaru, home.
While his first love is restoring tractors, including three owned by his father, and he was a reluctant ''green fingers'' for this feature, it is obvious he also has a flair in the dirt.
His vegetable plot, and the rest of the garden, was immaculate, partly prompted by a Sunday visit by various members of the North Otago Horticultural Society on the day before the Otago Daily Times arrived.
Before the 73-year-old and his wife retired in Oamaru from their Heather's Island Cliff farm, growing vegetables took a back seat to farming.
''I spent about two days a season in the vegetable garden on the farm - one to clear it and one to plant it. Because of farming, the rest of the time it was just left to grow,'' he said.
His raised garden at his Oamaru property was more the result of fate than by design.
The couple bought their new retirement home on a back section in 2004. It had two shrubs and a lawn.
They landscaped the garden themselves, but the vegetable garden and its location came about by accident.
Mr Harvey wanted another double garage, for his tractors, and a workshop to work on them, although Mrs Harvey pointed out one tractor had moved into the double garage attached to the house.
When soil was removed for the concrete floor for the new garage, it was piled further down the section.
That evolved in to a deep-soiled vegetable garden.
Mr Harvey levelled the soil off with a shovel, built a retaining wall around it and ended up with a raised garden.
He reckons it is enough for them - the perfect size.
But around the edge of the vegie plot has been added redcurrants, blackcurrants and raspberry canes, covered to protect them from the birds. A glasshouse has tomatoes.
Raspberries were on the menu from the end of November, and new potatoes from the first week in December, with a good crop expected for Christmas.
He sticks to growing main vegetables - potatoes, broad beans, carrots, lettuce, parsnip, broccoli, beetroot and pumpkins.
Pumpkin he is keen on - he had 40 off the first year's plants but has not matched that since.
He has difficulty with celery: ''My wife likes it but I don't''.
Mr Harvey avoids spraying, uses only a small amount of super phosphate, with compost and sheep manure. For the first time, he planted oats as a green crop in May and dug them in during winter.
He believes soil around Oamaru needs sulphur, hence the super phosphate.
With a motto of ''Keep it simple'', Mr Harvey forks over the ground thoroughly and deeply before planting to reduce weeding and watering just when needed, with more time now for a vegie plot in retirement than on the farms.
Tips
• Keep it simple.
• Cultivate the soil well to avoid weeds later.
• Plant it and let it grow.
• Keep seeds wet until they sprout to keep cats off.