As a journalist, I’ve always been keen to dig the dirt - but I never thought that’d extend to a vege garden.
What changed was when I moved flat in April to the bottom floor of a three-level house, just above Queenstown’s Frankton Track.
Just outside was a patch of grass with a corn cob remnant which suggested some cultivation had taken place.
The idea of a garden didn’t properly germinate until I was overseas, in August, possibly over a few drinks.
Call me a late bloomer, if you like, but at 64, I’d never considered becoming a gardener in my entire adult life - possibly because I don’t, sorry, can’t, cook.
Still, I decided if - a big "if" - I could actually grow something, I’d give away any produce I produced to a couple of local charities, and any friends who could cook.
I’d also dug up some enjoyable memories as a nipper of thinning carrots in my dad’s backyard garden, which also featured a flourishing rhubarb patch that seemed to look after itself.
Aware people were living on the two floors above me, I asked my property manager if he’d mind me putting down a garden.
He gave the "green" light, and, what’s more, even funded a gardener to come in and turn the soil.
I’d been told not to think about planting anything until Labour Weekend, to reduce the risk of a cold snap ruining any nascent crop.
That gave me ample time to tap friends for ideas on what I should be planting,
Come the Saturday of Labour Weekend, my mate Craig took me to a garden centre where, like a kid in a candy store, I bought some implements and also a selection of parsley, silverbeet and lettuce plants, a strawberry plant, a rhubarb plant and a plastic bag of potato tubers.
And mint in a pottle, along with packets of radish and beetroot seeds.
That afternoon, under my watchful eyes, Craig and other mates, Jodi and Kenny, kindly planted about a third of the patch, leaving the balance for planting out in subsequent weeks.
Relishing that night the prospect of harvesting the fruits of our labours sometime in 2024, I was a bit taken aback early next morning, as I headed off to watch a Rugby World Cup semifinal, to bump into, for the first time, the gentleman who lived on the floor immediately above me.
He told me he’d already planted out the whole patch in rare organic Colombian potatoes - which would explain those few tubers we found the day before.
Assured later by my property manager I’d done nothing wrong, I nevertheless decided not to provoke a turf war by planting any more veges.
Since then I’ve watered "my" patch occasionally, but ample spring rain’s done the job, so far - for the first time in my life I’ve actually welcomed the pluvial stuff.
Thankfully, pretty much all the veges are springing to life, though so, unfortunately, are the weeds, so looks like I’ll have to put my "green" fingers to work.
Ask me later, but so far, despite the odd juxtaposition of spuds popping up between lettuces - call it companion planting, if you like - everything in the garden’s looking rosy ... my mint, however, seems to have disappeared.
Roll on a harvest celebration come autumn.
By Philip ‘Scoop’ Chandler
