Mystified about how to set up and run a business? Join the club! In this series of blog posts, I will discuss my top tips for start ups. Some people like to keep all their cards close to their chest and don’t give anything away for nothing. I’ve never really been one of those people. I’m all for sharing information, which was not always possible in my previous profession as a lawyer due to client confidentiality. Law can also be extremely competitive, especially in a large commercial firm, so some people can be reluctant to help their colleagues develop both as a practitioner and in their professional career as a lawyer. During my journey as a business owner thus far, so many people I’ve met along the way have passed on some gems of advice which I have gratefully received. I’m paying it forward, as a way of giving back to the community that’s given me so much support.
This is the fourth blog in a series of posts on this subject. In Part I of my top tips for start ups, I covered the subject of money. In Part II of this series, I outlined 10 further principles regarding creating and running a business. In Part III of this series, I outlined another 10 key principles related to start ups. I will keep this post a bit more brief. After reflecting on the issue further, I’d like to share five further tips for start ups. 1. Use your common sense In the day-to-day running of a business, you need to use your common sense. An issue recently arose where a person posted negative feedback on my Facebook page regarding a product which I was trialling on behalf of another business. I contacted the businesses involved and mentioned the comment that had been made in respect of the product. While I hated being the bearer of bad news, I don’t think I would be doing my job of being a brand ambassador properly if I didn’t draw it to their attention. Sometimes you need to use your common sense in dealing with delicate situations such as this. You don’t learn everything at business school. 2. It’s fine to do things from first principles As I have mentioned in a previous post, I don’t have a Commerce degree or an MBA. I also haven’t read a single book on how to run a business, even though there is a lot of literature on the subject. It’s fine to do things from first principles. Don’t worry about different theories, concepts and big words. Break everything down and think things through for yourself. Learn from the bottom up, rather than the top down. While I was a university student, I held a few part-time positions in retail, including at a pharmacy and a clothing store. It taught me so much about how a business functions and I’m implementing a lot of that knowledge in my own start up. Don’t worry if you don’t have an MBA from Harvard. Learn from your life experience like me. 3. Have role models If you’re thinking of creating a start up, it’s a good idea to have other entrepreneurs that you look up to for advice, ideas and inspiration (which is my slogan for Anita’s Garden). I personally admire Elon Musk for his creative streak and sheer ingenuity, as does the partner who I previously worked for in the Corporate team at Bell Gully. 4. Don’t worry if you don’t know all the answers I once found myself questioning whether an item used in the course of running my business was an asset or an expense. I remember feeling upset that I didn't know the answer, despite studying accounting at secondary school and having a father that was a chartered accountant who spent lots of time discussing the discipline of accounting with me. It’s okay if you’re not sure of the answers to these thorny questions. A friend from law school once told me that the one thing he really admires about me is that while I don’t have all the answers, I’m not afraid to ask the questions. Remember that things aren’t usually black and white. Try to come up with your own conclusion based on your analysis and reasoning. 5. Be open-minded Recently, I had two people approach me asking if I wanted to become a sales consultant for Arbonne, a cosmetics company based on a multi-level marketing model (formerly known as network marketing). While I decided it wasn’t for me, especially since I have so much on my plate with my start up Anita’s Garden, I did learn a few interesting things about business models along the way. This information might be valuable when considering how to structure my business in future.
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Pumpkins and squash always feature prominently in our summer garden. They are very easy to grow. Almost too easy, most gardeners would agree. As they do take up quite a bit of room, a lot of gardeners don’t bother growing them.
For those that do grow them, pumpkins are somewhat taken for granted in the garden. Indeed, the biggest problem you’ll probably have is working out what to do with your abundance! It’s a good thing that they store well and will see you through autumn and winter. Like zucchini which I discussed in an earlier blog post, in previous years, we’ve always taken pumpkins and squash for granted as a guaranteed summer crop. But by a freak of nature we were cursed with a terrible season last summer and harvested very few pumpkins and squash as a consequence. I’ve therefore decided to do a bit more research into growing them so I can work out where we went wrong. Despite being so easy to grow, pumpkins in particular are hideously expensive in supermarkets, especially at Christmas time because it’s a popular feature of the traditional roast for lunch. A small wedge of pumpkin can cost around $6 and it’s hardly enough to feed the entire family. Unfortunately, your own homegrown pumpkin crop won’t be ready by Christmas for you to harvest but in my view, it’s worth growing pumpkins so you can store them for a time when crops become scarce in the garden. Homegrown pumpkins taste so much fresher and nicer than store bought ones. In your garden, you can also grow unusual varieties which are not found at the supermarket. Pumpkins are very versatile in cooking. Pumpkin can be used in soups, added to curries, served with roasts, used as a gourmet pizza topping and added cold to salads. Squash are all different and can be used in a variety of ways, but we normally just have them steamed with a bit of butter, salt and pepper. I hope that with the help of the information in this guide, you’ll be able to grow some of your own pumpkins and squash successfully this season. Traditionally, pumpkins and squash can be planted outside in New Zealand by Labour Weekend, which is a long weekend with a public holiday falling on the Monday after the weekend (like a Bank Holiday in England). Labour Weekend usually falls towards the end of October. This year, Labour Weekend starts on 21 October. While it’s natural to want a head start on the season, my advice is to not be in a rush to plant out seedlings. There is often a dramatic difference between day and night time temperatures at this time of the year and the weather can still be quite temperamental. Young seedlings are particularly tender. Once they’ve been hit by a sudden cold snap or exposed to consistently low temperatures, they never really recover. It’s therefore a good idea to wait until the beginning of November to plant pumpkin and squash seedlings into your garden, when temperatures are warmer. This way, the seedlings you plant out will be a bit more established and strong enough to survive any setbacks along the way. In saying that, it does depend on where you live. New Zealand’s climate varies dramatically from region to region and I do have to remember that not all of my audience lives in Auckland or even New Zealand for that matter. My personal gardening experiences are limited to our urban homestead in the Auckland region, so please take this into account when considering my advice. On the same token, what grows well in my environment may not necessarily thrive in your own microclimate. So please don’t blame me if things go wrong and the varieties I’ve recommended don’t grow well in your garden! Sowing pumpkins and squash from seed It’s much too early to think about planting pumpkins and squash outdoors. It’s still way too cold! However, I wanted to write a guide to growing pumpkins and squash now because you can start sowing them under cover from seed. It’s really easy to grow these curcubits from seed and it allows you to grow unusual varieties which aren’t found in garden centres. It takes about six to eight weeks from the time of the germination of a pumpkin or squash seed to produce a plant that is large enough to transplant outside. Pumpkins and squash can be started from seed indoors in October or even earlier if you live in a more temperate zone and have a hot house to protect them from the cold. Pumpkin and squash seeds need warmth in order to germinate. I germinate seeds in punnets or egg cartons filled with seed raising mix from Gardn Gro. I like Gardn Gro’s seed raising mix as it is very fine in texture, enabling seeds to push through the mixture easily as they rise to the surface. I place the punnets and egg cartons inside plastic incubators which you can purchase from garden centres. I then place the incubators on a heat pad indoors and spray plants with water once daily or twice if the seed raising mixture is very dry. If you don’t have a heat pad you can also use your hot water cupboard which will also provide seedlings with a warm environment so they can germinate successfully. How to care for pumpkin and squash seedlings For new gardeners, those who don’t wish to start their pumpkin and squash seedlings from seed or if you’ve simply left it too late, plants are available for sale in nurseries from September onwards. Palmers stock a great range of these seedlings. Awapuni also sell high quality, large grade pumpkin seedlings delivered direct to your door. If you order 7 or more bundles of seedlings, delivery is free. I plan to sell a variety of different pumpkin seedlings in my own boutique nursery later in the season. Keep an eye out for details in my newsletter, on Neighbourly and my Facebook page as to when they become available. During October and November, I will also circulate updated lists of available stock in my plant nursery to subscribers of my free weekly gardening newsletter. To be added to my mailing list and receive these notifications, please email me at anitakundu.nz@gmail.com. I’ll probably be selling seedlings a bit later than stores because I’m merely a home gardener, germinating and caring for seedlings in our patio at home without the help of the horticultural technology that you would expect to find in a commercial operation. Without a hot house, I simply don’t have a head start on the season like large-scale nurseries. To compensate for this, I do try and offer seedling varieties which are unusual and can’t be found in garden centres or online retailers. This is a good thing as it enables me to collaborate with other businesses in the industry and promote their brands. You can achieve a lot by working with other people in the same field (no pun intended), as opposed to simply trying to compete with them. To read my further thoughts on this issue, please click here. Whoever you decide to buy plants from, take care to keep plants undercover until early October as zucchini are frost sensitive. The weather can be temperamental in spring and the nights are often still quite cool. From then on, start “hardening them off”. This is the process of exposing plants to the outdoors incrementally, for example, for two hours in the middle of the day for the first week, increasing to four hours per day for the next week. Continue to bring the plants indoors at night. By the third week of October, it should be safe to leave plants outdoors overnight. Pumpkin and squash varieties If you’re planning to grow pumpkins and squash from seed, you’ll find that they come in an impressive array of shapes, colours and sizes. So many different varieties to choose from! Like me, you’ll have a hard time deciding what to grow in your garden this summer. The most traditional variety of pumpkin that you’ll find year round in most supermarkets in New Zealand is called crown pumpkin (Whangaparoa Crown and Pumpkin Crown F1, Egmont Seeds). Also popular in home gardens here are the Australian heirloom varieties Jarrahdale and Queensland Blue (Egmont Seeds). Triamble (Egmont Seeds) is another great heritage variety which stores very well due to its thick skin. But our favourite grey heirloom traditional pumpkin would have to be Blue Hubbard (Egmont Seeds). This variety of pumpkin is extremely large and has a hard shell which makes it ideal for long storage. The flesh is yellow-orange, sweet and fibre-free. I also really like the heirloom Italian variety Tonda Padana (Franchi Seeds), which is beautiful and has alternating vertical grey, orange and green stripes. I highly recommend growing the heirloom variety Marina di Chioggia (Franchi Seeds), which yields large knobbly fruits that are deep blue-green in colour. Both Tonda Padana and Marina di Chioggia are simply beautiful on the outside and have delicious orange flesh on the inside. Butternut pumpkin is one of our favourite varieties because of its lovely orange flesh and rich, sweet taste. Try growing Rugosa (Franchi Seeds) and Buffy’s Gold (Egmont Seeds). If you like making pumpkin pie, a good choice is Sugar Pie (Egmont Seeds). If you want to grow pumpkins purely for size and as a novelty, especially if you have children, try growing Atlantic Giant (Egmont Seeds). There is something for everyone! Our favourite varieties of squash include Gem Squash (Pumpkin Squash Gem Squash Hybrid, Egmont Seeds) and Spaghetti Squash (Tivoli F1). My mother comes from South Africa and she introduced me to Gem Squash a few summers ago. These incredibly prolific squash are small, round and dark green in colour. We enjoy them steamed with a bit of butter, salt and pepper. Every summer, we also grow Spaghetti Squash. The stringy flesh is similar to spaghetti in texture. Spaghetti squash can be baked in the oven and the flesh can them be scooped out and cooked slightly in a pot with butter, lots of garlic, salt and pepper. Simply delicious! Another variety of squash worth growing and which performed well in the garden last year is Golden Nugget (Egmont Seeds). We also enjoy growing Kumi Kumi every summer (Egmont Seeds). Kumi Kumi is a green ribbed squash which can either be used fresh from the garden or stored over the winter once it has matured and the skin has turned hard. To order seeds from the very extensive Egmont Seeds range, visit http://www.egmontseeds.co.nz/. To find stockists for Franchi Seeds or to order Franchi seeds directly from the New Zealand distributor Italian Seeds Pronto owned by Gillian Hurley-Gordon, visit http://www.italianseedspronto.co.nz/. How to care for pumpkin and squash plants Pumpkin and squash need at least 6 hours of sunshine per day, so be sure to plant seedlings in the sunniest spot in your garden. Before planting pumpkin and squash seedlings, take the time to prepare the bed properly so plants receive adequate nutrition. Dig the area over that you wish to plant your seedlings in. Mix plenty of compost and some sheep pellets into the ground. I highly recommend Gardn Gro’s Wonder Nuggets, which are 100% organic and function as an excellent fertiliser. Rake the ground so that it is nice and level. Add some tomato fertiliser to each plant’s hole at the time of planting, to give plants a strong start to life. Be sure to water plants every day, preferably early in the morning or in the evening. In November and December, plants are in their most active growing phase. Try not to get too much water on the leaves, otherwise your plants may develop powdery mildew. Liquid feed melons weekly to encourage the growth of healthy leaves and the formation of flowers, which will develop into fruit after they have been pollinated. Pollination of pumpkins and squash Pumpkins and squash need to be pollinated in order to develop fruit. As the flowers on pumpkin and squash plants are quite large, you’ll find that bees will do all the work for you. Personally, I wouldn’t bother going to the effort of pollinating them by hand, unlike melons which benefit from hand-pollination, which I covered in a previous blog post. Harvesting your pumpkin and squash Generally speaking, pumpkins and squash need a very long growing season in order to mature and for the flesh inside to sweeten. With the exception of Gem Squash and Kumi Kumi, which can be picked young and fresh, it’s advisable to leave pumpkins and squash to die on the vine and then harvest them in early autumn. I normally harvest my pumpkins and squash in March or sometimes even in April. While this may seem like a long wait, don’t forget that there will be plenty of other veggies to harvest in the garden during the summer, such as zucchini, tomatoes, eggplants, capsicums and chillies, and potatoes. As mentioned above, pumpkin and squash can be stored over winter. After harvesting them, clean and wipe the pumpkins and allow them to dry properly. Store them in a cool, dry place. Make sure they’re not touching each other so that the air can circulate freely. Inspect your pumpkins and squash from time to time for rot. We find that pumpkins and squash store very well for around six months, but it is possible to store them properly for longer than this. Zucchini (or courgettes as they are sometimes called) are a staple vegetable in the summer garden. They are very easy to grow. Almost too easy, most gardeners would agree. Zucchini are somewhat taken for granted in the garden. Indeed, the biggest problem you’ll probably have is working out what to do with your abundance! In previous years, we’ve always taken them for granted as a guaranteed summer crop. Normally, we’re foisting them off on our neighbours, friends and family by the bag full. But by a freak of nature we were cursed with a terrible season last summer and harvested very few zucchini as a consequence. I’ve therefore decided to do a bit more research into growing zucchini so I can work out where we went wrong.
Despite being so easy to grow, zucchini are hideously expensive in supermarkets, even in the summertime when they are supposedly in season. Zucchini range between $8-$10 per kilo and I simply can’t understand why this is the case. Homegrown zucchini taste so much fresher and nicer than store bought ones. I hope that with the help of information in this guide, you’ll be able to grow some of your own successfully this season. Zucchini are very versatile in cooking. They don’t have a lot of flavour in themselves, but are great paired with herbs, spices and condiments such as olive oil and black cracked pepper, which really brings out their taste. Zucchini can be used in Italian dishes such as pizza, pasta and parmigiana, added to stir fries and curries, served grilled in sandwiches and antipasto platters or simply thrown onto the BBQ. Traditionally, zucchini can be planted outside in New Zealand by Labour Weekend, which is a long weekend with a public holiday falling on the Monday after the weekend (like a Bank Holiday in England). Labour Weekend usually falls towards the end of October. This year, Labour Weekend starts on 21 October. While it’s natural to want a head start on the season, my advice is to not be in a rush to plant out seedlings. There is often a dramatic difference between day and night time temperatures at this time of the year and the weather can still be quite temperamental. Young seedlings are particularly tender. Once they’ve been hit by a sudden cold snap or exposed to consistently low temperatures, they never really recover. It’s therefore a good idea to wait until the beginning of November to plant zucchini seedlings into your garden, when temperatures are warmer. This way, the seedlings you plant out will be a bit more established and strong enough to survive any setbacks along the way. In saying that, it does depend on where you live. New Zealand’s climate varies dramatically from region to region and I do have to remember that not all of my audience lives in Auckland or even New Zealand for that matter. My personal gardening experiences are limited to our urban homestead in the Auckland region, so please take this into account when considering my advice. On the same token, what grows well in my environment may not necessarily thrive in your own microclimate. So please don’t blame me if things go wrong and varieties I’ve recommended don’t grow well in your garden! Sowing zucchini from seed It’s much too early to think about planting zucchini outdoors. It’s still way too cold! However, I wanted to write a guide to growing zucchini now because you can start sowing zucchini under cover from seed. It’s really easy to grow zucchini from seed and it allows you to grow unusual varieties which aren’t found in garden centres. It takes about six to eight weeks from the time of the germination of a zucchini seed to produce a plant that is large enough to transplant outside. Zucchini can be started from seed indoors in October or even earlier if you live in a more temperate zone and have a hot house to protect them from the cold. Zucchini seeds need warmth in order to germinate. I germinate seeds in punnets or egg cartons filled with seed raising mix from Gardn Gro. I like Gardn Gro’s seed raising mix as it is very fine in texture, enabling seeds to push through the mixture easily as they rise to the surface. I place the punnets and egg cartons inside plastic incubators which you can purchase from garden centres. I then place the incubators on a heat pad indoors and spray plants with water once daily or twice if the seed raising mixture is very dry. If you don’t have a heat pad you can also use your hot water cupboard which will also provide seedlings with a warm environment so they can germinate successfully. How to care for zucchini seedlings For new gardeners, those who don’t wish to start their zucchini seedlings from seed or if you’ve simply left it too late, plants are available for sale in nurseries from September onwards. Palmers stock a great range of zucchini seedlings. Awapunialso sell high quality, large grade zucchini seedlings delivered direct to your door. If you order 7 or more bundles of seedlings, delivery is free. I plan to sell a variety of different zucchini seedlings in my own boutique nursery later in the season. Keep an eye out for details in my newsletter, on Neighbourly and my Facebook page as to when they become available. During October and November, I will also circulate updated lists of available stock in my plant nursery to subscribers of my free weekly gardening newsletter. To be added to my mailing list and receive these notifications, please email me at anitakundu.nz@gmail.com. I’ll probably be selling seedlings a bit later than stores because I’m merely a home gardener, germinating and caring for seedlings in our patio at home without the help of the horticultural technology that you would expect to find in a commercial operation. Without a hot house, I simply don’t have a head start on the season like large-scale nurseries. To compensate for this, I do try and offer seedling varieties which are unusual and can’t be found in garden centres or online retailers. This is a good thing as it enables me to collaborate with other businesses in the industry such as Palmers and Awapuni and promote their brands. You can achieve a lot by working with other people in the same field (no pun intended), as opposed to simply trying to compete with them. To read my further thoughts on this issue, please click here. Whoever you decide to buy plants from, take care to keep plants undercover until early October as zucchini are frost sensitive. The weather can be temperamental in spring and the nights are often still quite cool. From then on, start “hardening them off”. This is the process of exposing plants to the outdoors incrementally, for example, for two hours in the middle of the day for the first week, increasing to four hours per day for the next week. Continue to bring the plants indoors at night. By the third week of October, it should be safe to leave plants outdoors overnight. Zucchini varieties If you’re planning to grow zucchini from seed, you’ll find that they come in an impressive array of shapes, colours and sizes. Traditionally, zucchini are long and dark green. There are a few different varieties on the market in New Zealand. This season I’m growing Milano di Nero (Franchi Seeds), Partenon F1 (Egmont Seeds) and Amanda F1 (Egmont Seeds). I’m also growing Fiorentino (Franchi Seeds), which is a long, ribbed, light green variety of zucchini. There is also Striato D'Italia (Franchi Seeds), a dark green variety with light green stripes and small ribbing. It is also possible to find yellow varieties which are incredibly prolific too. My favourite is Solar Flare F1 (Egmont Seeds). Used together with green-skinned varieties, yellow zucchini add a lovely burst of colour to dishes. Finally, you can also grow round zucchini (for example, Courgette Rond de Nice and Piccolo from Egmont Seeds) and scallopini, which are round with scalloped edges as the name suggests and come in a range of colours, including green, white and yellow (for example, Zucchino Custard White from Franchi Seeds and Patty Green Tint F1, Courgette Scallop Mix and Sunburst F1 from Egmont Seeds). If you’re having trouble getting your kids to eat vegetables, they may find these novelties appealing. To order seeds from the very extensive Egmont Seeds range, visit http://www.egmontseeds.co.nz/. To find stockists for Franchi Seeds or to order Franchi seeds directly from the New Zealand distributor Italian Seeds Pronto owned by Gillian Hurley-Gordon, visit http://www.italianseedspronto.co.nz/. How to care for zucchini plants Zucchini need at least 6 hours of sunshine per day, so be sure to plant seedlings in the sunniest spot in your garden. Before planting zucchini seedlings, take the time to prepare the bed properly so plants receive adequate nutrition. Dig the area over that you wish to plant your seedlings in. Mix plenty of compost and some sheep pellets into the ground. I highly recommend Gardn Gro’s Wonder Nuggets, which are 100% organic and function as an excellent fertiliser. Rake the ground so that it is nice and level. Add some tomato fertiliser to each plant’s hole at the time of planting, to give plants a strong start to life. Be sure to water plants every day, preferably early in the morning or in the evening. In November and December, plants are in their most active growing phase. Try not to get too much water on the leaves, otherwise your plants may develop powdery mildew. Liquid feed melons weekly to encourage the growth of healthy leaves and the formation of flowers, which will develop into fruit after they have been pollinated. Pollination of zucchini Zucchini need to be pollinated in order to develop fruit. As the flowers on zucchini plants are quite large, you’ll find that bees will do all the work for you. Personally, I wouldn’t bother going to the effort of pollinating them by hand, unlike melons which benefit from hand-pollination, which I covered in a previous blog post. Harvesting your zucchini It can take what seems like forever for your first zucchini to be ready for picking but be patient! In early summer, it will usually be cooler so it might take awhile for them to grow to full size. You can pick zucchini at any stage. I prefer to pick them when they are smaller because they are sweeter and you can stay on top of your harvest, which can sometimes get out of control. Some people wait until their zucchini grow into marrows and serve them stuffed with breadcrumbs and mince. It’s a good idea to check your plants every day as they can swell up very quickly. One summer I remember checking our plants in the early morning and there were none ready to be harvested. We went away to the beach for the day. By the time we returned home in the evening I checked the garden again and five enormous marrows had suddenly developed! Got a glut of zucchini that you can’t get through all at once? Zucchini can be stored in the fridge for up to 2 weeks prior to consumption, or you can do what we do and give them away to family, friends and neighbours. Mystified about how to set up and run a business? Join the club! In this series of blog posts, I will discuss my top tips for start ups. Some people like to keep all their cards close to their chest and don’t give anything away for nothing. I’ve never really been one of those people. I’m all for sharing information, which was not always possible in my previous profession as a lawyer due to client confidentiality. Law can also be extremely competitive, especially in a large commercial firm, so some people can be reluctant to help their colleagues develop both as a practitioner and in their professional career as a lawyer. During my journey as a business owner thus far, so many people I’ve met along the way have passed on some gems of advice which I have gratefully received. I’m paying it forward, as a way of giving back to the community that’s given me so much support.
This is the third blog in a series of posts on this subject. In Part I of my top tips for start ups, I covered the subject of money. In Part II of this series, I outlined 10 further principles regarding creating and running a business. In this post, I will outline another 10 key principles related to start ups. 1. Reputation is everything A business is built on the back of its reputation. During my law degree, I spent a lot of time researching the concept of reputation in the context of defamation law. For those of you who are interested, you can read my Honours seminar paper and Dissertation, which I have recently uploaded onto my website. Please don’t rely on my work for legal advice. The articles were written a long time ago so the cases I examined may no longer reflect the current legal position. They are purely academic research. Not to mention the fact that the law in your jurisdiction may differ to New Zealand. If you’re a student, I don’t mind if you rely on my work but please remember to acknowledge me as the author and provide details of the source and date of publication. You certainly don’t want to be accused of plagiarism by your tutor! Linked to the concept of reputation is the importance of image, which I will examine below. 2. It’s also about image As discussed in my Honours seminar paper and Dissertation on the topic of defamation, reputation and image are two different things. Reputation is what a person (or business) is in fact. Image is what a person or business appears to be. There is some truth to the saying that appearance is everything. Rest assured that this doesn’t mean that you need to look like a supermodel. However, you do need to be conscious of how you portray yourself and your business to others, including clients, allies (such as brands you’re promoting) and competitors. 3. Integrity is important How you behave will affect your business’s reputation. In your business dealings, be strategic and smart, but not sneaky. Remember, you reap what you sow. Even if you’re not religious, you have to admit that actions have consequences. If you cut corners, fail to honour promises or deliberately deceive others, you will soon lose people’s trust and ultimately their business. 4. You (and your business) are worth something. Don’t forget that your business accrues goodwill over time. Goodwill is inextricably linked to the concept of reputation (see above). It is an intangible asset (again, this takes me back to Accounting which I studied at secondary school. As a business owner, it is proving to be an incredibly useful subject!). Goodwill can be difficult to quantify. Also, don’t forget that you have value as an individual behind the screen of your business. It is easy to lose sight of this. This is very important for bloggers and social media influencers who have built a name for themselves and become a public figure in their own right. People will pay you to deliver talks, host workshops and promote their brand. 5. Expect to work your butt off Start ups are hard work, especially in the beginning. I’m a testament to this. A lot of people are envious of my lifestyle, especially other lawyers. It’s true that I live in activewear and a lot of work is done from my laptop while lying in bed with the cat on my lap. It’s also true that I spend a lot of time on social media. However, nothing is ever as simple, happy or fun as it looks, as a very wise friend once told me. A lot of time and effort goes into maintaining an active and interesting blog. Don’t forget that I have to constantly come up with original content, so creativity is key. Then there is preparing the content of my weekly gardening newsletter. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Click here to read about what a typical day looks like for me. If you want better hours or are looking for a lifestyle change, then creating and running a business might not be for you. 6. Multi tasking is an important skill In order to run a business successfully, you need to be able to multi task. I’m constantly trying to progress different things in parallel, such as writing blog posts and newsletters, pitching to businesses I want to promote and replying to correspondence from followers. This is not as easy as it sounds. I’m fortunate that I developed this skill during my career as a lawyer, when I normally worked on several different cases or transactions at the same time. While I was working at the Paris office of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, I was involved in a very large arbitration, but had to deal with different aspects of the case simultaneously, such as interviewing witnesses, drafting submissions, briefing experts and quantifying quantum, for want of a better expression. 7. Keep up with the times Don’t fall behind, especially with technology. I made this mistake myself as I was one of those people who refused to get a smartphone for a very long time. I succumbed in April this year after a lot of pressure from family members who kept complaining that they could never get hold of me. I can honestly say that it has changed my life. How else would I be able to snap photos of our garden and upload them to Instagram so quickly? It’s an indispensable tool for running a business and that’s the only reason I got one. There are so many great apps which help you to connect with your customers and promote your business for free. Some of my favourites include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat. Having finally mastered all of this, I’m sure something new will come onto the market next month. 8. Delegate You can’t do everything yourself. Learn to delegate and share the load with others. If you can’t afford to employ someone to help you with your business, there might be another solution. We host wwoofers who help us around the garden year round. This frees me up a bit so I can devote some time to my business every day. 9. Enjoy a day of rest Give yourself a day off every week, even if you’re not religious. We all need a bit of rest sometimes so we can reset for the coming week. I’m notorious for working around the clock seven days a week and really need to practice what I preach. As you get older, you’ll find that your body changes and you don’t have the stamina that you had in your 20s. A day off doesn’t necessarily mean vegetating with Netflix and munching on a bag of potato chips. I’m a firm advocate of active relaxation because that’s just how I’m configured. For a start, switch off your phone. See a movie, read a book, go for a walk, spend time with your children or catch up with an old friend. You’ll feel so much better for it and you’ll be able to function more efficiently when you switch on to work again. 10. Learn to switch off Learn to disconnect. This is no easy task as we’re surrounded by technology which puts our brains into constant overdrive. I’m continually plagued by thoughts about my business when I’m out and about, whether walking or running, at the supermarket or running errands. I actually carry a notebook with me so I can scribble down all my ideas as they come to mind! How can you detach yourself? Meditation can help. I took Les Mills Body Balance classes (a mix of pilates, tai chi and yoga) on a regular basis at a gym I used to go to a few years ago. It took a long time for me to learn how to relax but eventually I could see the progress. Be patient. You’ll get there in the end too. This is my first guest post. As you will recall, mum and I host wwoofers to help us around the garden. We are hosting a lovely young girl from Lucerne in Switzerland called Merle Link, who is leaving tomorrow for the Coromandel. Merle is planning to study to become a primary school teacher. She is an extremely talented singer who performs at weddings back home (check out her YouTube channel). She asked if she can perform at mine if I ever get married in the future and I said yes without any reservations. She is truly amazing. I've asked Merle to provide her perspective on travelling in New Zealand and her vision for the future. My name is Merle (yes it is hard to say that in English) I’m 19 years old and I’m from Switzerland. I’ve just finished school this summer and have a break of six months before I have to do a course for the university I want to go to. My mom travelled to New Zealand when she was about my age and she’s still talking about it so much she always showed me the pictures when I was younger and I fell in love with them so I decided to go see that beautiful place myself. I booked my flight around April this year and then started to plan how I want to travel and where this journey should lead me to. My brother travelled to New Zealand two years ago and he did WWOOF-ing he told me that he met some really nice people and that he learned a lot in that time. So I just found myself searching the page and immediately liking the idea of living with someone, helping them work and have a different perspective than just as a normal tourist. Because I knew that I would land in Auckland I searched for places near the city there were a few different ones and I read through their profiles and I liked the one from Anita’s garden immediately. I liked it a lot that there were many informations about them and the garden so I asked them if I could work and live with them for a week and the messages were really nice and I felt even more excited to go there than before. I’ve helped them to plant seedlings and I helped Anita with her blog. I feel like my English really improved just from talking to them a lot and they were so nice. Now that my stay here is coming to an end I feel sad but I feel also excited for the next three months of my journey. In the first month I’ll be travelling around on the north island my next stop is Coromandel and after that I’ll go to Tauranga and then the next almost two months I’ll travel around on the south island and I’m really looking forward to see Milford Sound. I’ll leave New Zealand on the 21 of December and I know even now that I’ll miss it really bad. Now that I’ve told you something about my journey I’m going to tell you something about my person. As I wrote I am 19 years old and for some people that might be really young to travel alone but I feel confident and glad that I am able to do that. When you think back to the time when you were 19 do you remember how it felt to realize that you’re an adult? That life is getting serious and you have to make decisions that will be important for your career or just have a huge influence in who you will be as a person? So yes I am young and I feel like that I’ve made the decision to travel alone for three month in a place that is so far away from my home will strengthen my personality and yes it kind of scares me but at the same time I am so full of happiness that I can do that on my own. When I get back home I’ll have to make a course to go to university and it takes six month until I’m done with that course. After the course university will start in September and then three years later I will be a primary teacher I’ll teach my own classes and I’ll have a huge responsibility. If I don’t take a year off I would never be able to do a journey like that again. And even if it wouldn’t have such a great influence in my personality. Hopefully this journey will make me more confident and open to foreign things I think that should be the purpose of a journey like that, it should change something in who you are and maybe change your way to look at things. To travel is really expensive but in Switzerland the salaries are really high so I’ve earned a lot of money in a short time. As a singer I had the opportunity to sing on weddings and I think it is one of the best ways to earn money with something you love doing. Because there were only three weddings this year I had to find something else to earn some money with and there was a possibility that my school offered that you could clean the schoolhouse one week in the vacations and that’s the way I got all the money together all by myself and I’m really proud to say that because I think not many people at my age are able to say that. I took a few pictures from the garden because photography is another thing that I really like doing and here are some of them: And here’s a picture from me if you’re interested in what I look like: And last but not least pictures of Lucerne where I’m living:
Mystified about how to set up and run a business? Join the club! In this series of blog posts, I will discuss my top tips for start ups. Some people like to keep all their cards close to their chest and don’t give anything away for nothing. I’ve never really been one of those people. I’m all for sharing information, which was not always possible in my previous profession as a lawyer due to client confidentiality. Law can also be extremely competitive, especially in a large commercial firm, so some people can be reluctant to help their colleagues develop both as a practitioner and in their professional career as a lawyer. During my journey as a business owner thus far, so many people I’ve met along the way have passed on some gems of advice which I have gratefully received. I’m paying it forward, as a way of giving back to the community that’s given me so much support.
There is a lot of ground to cover, so this is the second blog in a series of posts on this subject. In Part I of my top tips for start ups, I covered the subject of money. In this post, I will outline 10 more principles related to creating and running a business. 1. You don’t need a business plan It’s perfectly fine for your business to evolve organically. Mine did. Everyone’s business unfolds differently, a bit like career progression. There are no precise steps you must follow in creating or running a start up. 2. You don’t need business qualifications in order to run a business Don’t worry if like me, you don’t have a Commerce degree or an MBA. Some of the most successful business owners I know dropped out of school at a young age and don’t have any formal qualifications. Merv Snell of Gardn Gro is a case on point. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of education and spent many years at university, training to become a lawyer. I have great respect for others who have dedicated years of their life to tertiary study. Who isn’t in awe of Oxbridge and the Ivy League institutions? But sometimes the best education occurs outside the classroom. 3. Learn on the job Linked to not needing business qualifications in order to create and run a start up is the idea that you can and should learn on the job. My new venture requires me to wear many different hats. I have to be able to draw on a broad knowledge base and skill set in order to run my business. I don’t have a formal qualification in horticulture. I learnt about gardening by reading books and magazines, conducting research and experimenting in my garden. I had to work hard to master a completely different subject. At times, I have to play the role of a journalist in order to write articles for my newsletter, even though I have no formal journalism qualification. Running a business is basically an exercise in PR, yet I did not study Communications. You can’t study everything at university. You need to also learn by doing and pick things up along the way. 4. Collaborate, even with competitors It’s very short sighted to see the competition as the enemy. Collaboration is really important for business owners, especially new businesses wanting to break into an industry and make a name for themselves. Collaboration is a term that comes up again and again in a fantastic Facebook group I belong to called Girls in Business (it’s a closed group so you’ll need to either ask to join or be added by an existing member. Thank you Jessica Condor Gelinas for putting me onto this one!). But what does collaboration mean? Put simply, collaboration is where business owners work together and support each other in their respective enterprises. An example of collaboration includes promoting another reputable business or person in the same industry on your social media accounts. Chances are, they will do the same and it’s a great way of increasing your number of followers. Don’t forget that even though the field of law can be fiercely competitive, lawyers also need to collaborate. Partners in different departments often share the same clients and advise on different aspects of large cases and transactions, which can be complex and require input from specialists in different areas. Also, different offices of a firm may end up representing the same clients, who also have branches across the globe. Be community minded. Reach out to others in the same industry and partner up, work together and support each other. 5. Business development is an on-going task Don’t expect to ever get on top of business development. Building a business is an on-going process. Your work will never be finished! 6. Contacts are key As with the legal profession, in business, contacts are key. Network! It’s a great way to market yourself and your business. Whenever I visit garden centres, I always stop to chat to the staff. Over the years, we’ve gotten to know each other very well and know each other by name. This made it much easier for me to approach these businesses and become their brand ambassador. Contacts can often be formed in unexpected ways. Networking doesn’t only occur when you swap business cards at a conference. In my personal experience, the closest connections are formed over time and require a bit more effort. Allow me to illustrate this. After a somewhat disappointing experience at a store I regularly shop at, I got in touch with the manager via the website and highlighted the issues arising during my encounter. The next day, he followed up with a telephone call. He apologised and said that he had rectified the issues immediately. That weekend, he came over to our house with complimentary products which I had sought during my visit but had been unable to purchase because they weren't in a good condition at the time. If that isn’t great customer service, I don’t know what is. I must have just had a freakish experience, because since then every shopping experience there has been a good one. The manager has become a close contact and we always stop and chat when we run into each other in the store. I am so impressed with both him and the business more generally. I will be promoting that business in future through my blog and social media accounts. 7. Rome wasn’t built in a day So my cousin and her husband once told me when they heard about my start up. They’re right. By nature, we’re impatient creatures. We expect to have achieved our key milestones months, if not years ago. Empires weren’t created overnight. The Greeks and Romans toiled away for quite some time. Good things take time. Be patient. It can take some time to see the fruits of your labour. Think baby steps. Which brings me to my next point. 8. Baby steps Linked to the old adage that Rome wasn’t built in a day, remember to take things one step at a time. Everything you do is a potential building block, a stepping stone to something else. Nothing is ever a waste, especially not education. Click here to read my thoughts on this subject. I’ll use authoring a book as an analogy. As a friend of mine once posted on his timeline on Facebook, everyone wants to write a book, get rich and become famous overnight. But realistically, who will buy a book written by someone who isn’t very well known? If writing a book is your goal, you need to concentrate on creating a target audience first. Furthermore, sitting infront of a Word document and writing a novel is a daunting prospect, to me at least. You need to break it down into bite sized pieces. To start, you might want to consider starting a blog like me as a way of practising your writing. But before all that, it helps if you can write well to engage your readers. The ability to write well takes years and years of dedication as a student. Reading very broadly also helps a lot, as well as learning other languages. I found that studying French enriched my understanding of the English language. While we’re on the subject, in my opinion, a blog is better than a book. In recent years, I’ve found myself not enjoying books as much as I have in the past. Books often contain boring bits. I’ve ended up skipping pages or even chapters, rather than reading from beginning to end. Times have changed and I don’t think people read as much as they used to. Whitcoulls, New Zealand’s largest book chain, nearly went into receivership a few years ago. Thanks to constant interruptions from technology, we have much shorter attention spans these days. Blog posts are short, sharp and sweet. Reading them is therefore easier to fit into a busy schedule. You can read a blog on your phone, which is convenient if you’re constantly on the move like me. You can also be selective and only dip into the topics that really interest you. 9. Go with the flow Linked to taking things a day at a time is the concept of going with the flow. Sometimes, events can occur unexpectedly and life doesn’t always go according to plan. Like me, you may find that your career evolves in a peculiar way. Don’t try to swim against the tide. Sometimes you can’t go directly from A to B. This reminds me of a case I read when I was in law school, where a judge famously commented that the beauty of the common law is that it is a maze and not a motorway. Applying this idea to life, sometimes you might have to take a more circuitous route when working towards a goal. This brings us back to the idea of taking baby steps. You have to be able to walk before you can run. Life is an experience. Enjoy the journey! 10. Beware the law! Businesses don’t operate in a vacuum. Don’t forget that everything we do, whether in our personal or professional lives, is governed by the law. In business dealings, contract law is important as you need to honour any agreements you enter into. Be careful what you say about others as you certainly don’t want to be sued for defamation. Intellectual property is another important field for business owners like me, who maintain an active blog and write newsletters which impart a lot of original information. Don’t forget that your work will often be protected under the umbrella of copyright. It’s sort of like the ICloud. Copyright arises naturally in the course of your work. Unlike a trademark, you don’t need to register copyright. People will need your permission before they can reproduce your work. Watch out for my next blog in this series of posts on top tips for start ups. Mystified about how to set up and run a business? Join the club! In this series of blog posts, I will discuss my top tips for start ups. Some people like to keep all their cards close to their chest and don’t give anything away for nothing. I’ve never really been one of those people. I’m all for sharing information, which was not always possible in my previous profession as a lawyer due to client confidentiality. Law can also be extremely competitive, especially in a large commercial firm, so some people can be reluctant to help their colleagues develop both as a practitioner and in their professional career as a lawyer. During my journey as a business owner thus far, so many people I’ve met along the way have passed on some pearls of wisdom which I have gratefully received. I’m paying it forward, as a way of giving back to the community that’s given me so much support.
There is a lot of ground I’d like to cover, so this is the first blog in a series of posts on this subject. I’d going to start by covering the topic of money, which is something that’s close to everyone’s heart. After all, we need to make a living in some way! Below I’ve set out 10 business principles related to the subject of money. 1. Income can flow from several different streams Don’t feel that you have to derive income from solely one source. Businesses can be multi-dimensional. It’s perfectly normal to generate income from several different avenues these days. At Anita’s Garden, I have the potential to earn income through sales in my boutique plant nursery, advertising, hosting workshops, giving talks and my consulting service. My initial impression was that I was being pulled into too many different directions and it made sense for me to focus on supplying customers with just one product or service. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I might be wrong. I’m still developing and defining the nature of my business, but Anita’s Garden contains two distinctly different components. As discussed in a previous post, Anita’s Garden exists as a place, a physical organic urban homestead in Auckland which people are welcome to tour for gardening ideas and inspiration. Anita’s Garden also exists as a business which provides a range of gardening-related services. The different dimensions to my business are inextricably linked and complement each other Earning income is not necessarily a straight forward process. Hearing about or using one service can lead to a consumer considering to engage the business in other ways. That’s how marketing works. Revenue can generated more effectively when all of these elements work together in harmony. 2. It’s not just all about the money The sole purpose of a business is not to merely make a profit. A business must exchange something of value with customers, such as supplying a product or providing a service. The primary purpose of my own enterprise is to educate people about how they can grow their own food so they can reduce their grocery bills and improve their overall health. You may find that you have many facets to your business that don’t seem to generate income directly. I spend a lot of time writing blog posts and publish a free gardening newsletter every week. I also spend a lot of time answering questions from people via email and on social media. This is very similar to a law firm. As a lawyer, not all the time you spend at the office is billable. There are many tasks you spend a lot of time on which cannot be charged to clients, such as time recording, billing, pitches to potential clients, writing newsletters and drafting presentations to existing clients on a range of legal topics. You can’t charge for everything. But on a closer analysis, some of these activities do generate income indirectly as they are classic methods of business development. These types of PR help to build a strong client base. These activities have also made me more marketable as a brand ambassador, as businesses are more likely to work with a promotor that can market their brand effectively through many different channels. 3. Deal not just in cash, but also in kind You don’t have to execute all your business transactions in cold hard cash. Think outside the box. This is especially useful when first starting out and funds are limited. Offer to swap services with a specialist consultant in lieu of payment. If you’re acting as a brand ambassador, accept gift vouchers from the businesses you are promoting instead of money. Trading one thing for another is advantageous from a fiscal perspective. 4. Sometimes you need to spend money in order to make money Some business owners are reluctant to give away stock for free or at promotional rates, especially in the early days. It’s true that inventory is precious and has monetary value. But you’ll find that the more you give, you the more you will receive in return. Even if you don’t believe in God, this is a fundamental principle of marketing. For example, if you run a competition, you’ll start receiving more followers and likes on your Facebook page. Social media works exponentially. It’s always slow starting out, but the more followers you have, the more other people will discover your page and then they will start following you. The rest will follow. Trust me on this one. The exception to this principle is when it comes to advertising. This brings me to my next point. 5. The best advertising is often free Don’t bother paying for advertising, at least in the beginning. When I first started out, I went to the effort and expense of printing flyers for my business and distributing them around our neighbourhood. This was a complete flop. I’m sure most householders didn’t even bother to read my leaflet and it went straight into the bin. Social media should be your primary marketing tool. It’s free to have a Facebook page, install Snapchat, set up an Instagram account, be on Twitter and even create a website. Make the most of all of these mediums to promote your business. They work and they're free. 6. You don’t need to invest a huge amount of capital upfront to start a business I started from scratch. As a former lawyer, I’m risk adverse by nature. I didn’t want to assume responsibility for a bank loan which I might default on repaying if my business went pear-shaped. Start small, but think big. Click here to read my previous blog post on this subject. 7. Develop a fee structure for your business Depending on the nature of your business, this is no easy task, especially if you’re working in an obscure industry or providing a novel service like me. The question I’m currently asking myself is what on earth do I charge for consulting on garden design and development? Figure out how to quantify your work. Are you going to charge by the hour or per project? Will you apply a standard rate or will you put a value on projects on a case by case basis? Law firms generally charge clients by the hour, which is broken down into six minute billing segments. However, this may not be the most appropriate model for your business. Even within the legal field, there has been a shift away from charging for time actually spent working on a file towards an overall budget or outcome-oriented fee structure. 8. Don’t forget to pay tax! Remember to keep accounting records and file an annual tax return. As your business grows, you may need to hire an accountant. For now, I’m able to keep my own records, thanks to studying Accounting at school and lots of extra tuition from Dad who was a Chartered Accountant. Be honest about your income and expenditure. It’s always tempting to understate income and overstate expenses. There are clever ways that you can minimise the amount of tax you have to pay but it’s probably best to seek professional advice first. Don’t break the law! You never know, you might end up being audited by the IRD. That’s a scary proposition for an auditor’s daughter. 9. Remember to re-invest in your business This takes me back to the subject of Accounting, which I studied at secondary school (I had no choice in the matter, as the daughter of an accountant). To understand the principle of retained earnings, let’s consider law firms, which are often in the corporate structure of a partnership. Partners of a large commercial law firm in London might have a PEP (profit per equity partner) of £1.6 million, but I doubt they take home the entire amount. While I was working as a lawyer, I can’t exactly say that I’ve discussed this issue with the partners. But for the sake of the survival of your business, it’s not a good idea to withdraw all your profits. Extending this principle and as stated above, if you’re given vouchers or gifts from companies, pass them on to your followers. It might be tempting to pocket promotional materials, particularly if funds are tight. Handing them down the line to your followers is great PR and will generate an even bigger client base. In doing so, you’re essentially re-investing in your business. 10. Don’t expect to jump straight from your day job into a successful, profitable business It is totally unrealistic to expect a seamless transition from your day job to a profitable enterprise. Often people start working on a business on the side while they are employed. This is possible if you have civilised working hours, but if you are a lawyer at a large commercial firm, you will find that you simply don’t have enough spare time to pursue another avenue in parallel with your legal career. There is a solution. Dedicate yourself to your day job and try to progress as far as possible within your firm. Save hard. When you walk away from the financial security of your day job, you will at least have some funds behind you to finance your start up. Watch out for my next blog in this series of posts on top tips for start ups. Eggplants are one of my favourite vegetables and feature in our summer garden every year. Homegrown eggplants taste so much fresher and nicer than store bought ones. Eggplants can be very expensive in supermarkets and greengrocers, so they are a valuable addition to the home garden. Eggplants are very versatile in cooking. They don’t have a lot of flavour in themselves, but are great paired with herbs, spices and condiments such as olive oil and black cracked pepper, which really create a taste sensation in your mouth. Eggplants can be used in Italian dishes such as pizza, pasta and parmigiana, added to Indian and Asian cuisine, served grilled in sandwiches and antipasto platters or simply thrown onto the BBQ. Eggplants are a little trickier to grow than tomatoes, but they are relatively disease resistant. Armed with the right information, you’ll be picking your own fresh eggplants in no time at all. Traditionally, eggplants can be planted outside in New Zealand by Labour Weekend, which is a long weekend with a public holiday falling on the Monday after the weekend. Labour Weekend usually falls towards the end of October. This year, Labour Weekend starts on 21 October. While it’s natural to want a head start on the season, my advice is to not be in a rush to plant out seedlings. There is often a dramatic difference between day and night time temperatures at this time of the year and the weather can still be quite temperamental. Young seedlings are particularly tender. Once they’ve been hit by a sudden cold snap or exposed to consistently low temperatures, they never really recover. It’s therefore a good idea to wait until the beginning of November to plant eggplant seedlings into your garden, when temperatures are warmer. This way, the seedlings you plant out will be a bit more established and strong enough to survive any setbacks along the way. Sowing eggplants from seed As mentioned above, it’s too early to think about planting eggplants outdoors. However, I wanted to write a guide to growing eggplants now because it’s not too late to start sowing them from seed. In fact, the timing is perfect. It takes about eight weeks from the time of the germination of an eggplant seed to produce a plant that is large enough to transplant outside. It’s really easy to grow eggplants from seed and it allows you to grow unusual varieties which aren’t found in garden centres. Eggplants can be started from seed indoors in July and August. In the past, I have started eggplants as late as September and even early October, but they will produce a crop later in the season, in March and April. For a continuous supply of eggplants from January through to April, successive sowings are recommended. Eggplant seeds need warmth in order to germinate. I germinate seeds in plastic punnets filled with seed raising mix from Gardn Gro. I like Gardn Gro’s seed raising mix as it is very fine in texture, enabling seeds to push through the mixture easily as they rise to the surface. I place the punnets inside plastic incubators which you can purchase from garden centres. I then place the incubators on a heat pad indoors and spray plants with water twice daily. If you don’t have a heat pad you can also use your hot water cupboard which will also provide seedlings with a warm environment. How to care for eggplant seedlings For new gardeners, those who don’t wish to start their eggplant seedlings from seed or if you’ve simply left it too late, plants are available for sale in nurseries from September onwards. Palmers stock a great range of eggplant seedlings. Look out for Gellert’s grafted eggplants in store in October. These large, established eggplants are grafted onto vigorous rootstock and will bear fruit without fail. They are very easy to grow, making them ideal for beginners. Gellert’s grafted eggplants are also suitable for gardeners in more temperate zones around New Zealand characterised by shorter, cooler summers. Awapuni also sell high quality, large grade eggplant seedlings delivered direct to your door. If you order 7 or more bundles of seedlings, delivery is free. I plan to sell a variety of different eggplant seedlings in my own boutique nursery later in the season. Keep an eye out for details in my newsletter, on Neighbourly and my Facebook page as to when they become available. During October and November, I will also circulate updated lists of available stock in my plant nursery to subscribers of my free weekly gardening newsletter. To be added to my mailing list and receive these notifications, please email me at anitakundu.nz@gmail.com.
Take care to keep plants undercover until early October as eggplants are frost sensitive. The weather can be temperamental in spring and the nights are often still quite cool. From then on, start “hardening them off”. This is the process of exposing plants to the outdoors incrementally, for example, for two hours in the middle of the day for the first week, increasing to four hours per day for the next week. Continue to bring the plants indoors at night. By the third week of October, it should be safe to leave plants outdoors overnight. Eggplant varieties If you’re planning to grow eggplants from seed, you’ll find that they come in an impressive array of shapes, colours and sizes. Traditionally, eggplants are purple and round. However, it is also possible to find yellow and white varieties which are usually smaller in size but are incredibly prolific. For yellow eggplants, try growing Golden Egg (Kings Seeds) and for white eggplants, sow White Star F1 (Yates Seeds and Kings Seeds) and Ivory F1 (Egmont Seeds). The most reliable and traditional eggplant variety in New Zealand is Black Beauty (Italian Seeds Pronto). Black Beauty resembles the shape of eggplants found at the supermarket and is a firm favourite in my vegetable garden each summer. For something a little different, try growing the Italian varieties Prosperosa, Tonda Bianca and Violetta Lunga from Franchi Seeds. Franchi is a range of magnificent heirloom seeds imported from Italy and supplied in New Zealand by Italian Seeds Pronto, owned by my friend Gillian Hurley Gordon. Last summer, I grew all of these varieties with great success. Prosperosa is an extremely productive variety with shiny, lavender-purple skin and medium sized round fruits. Tonda Bianca is an early to mid-summer variety which produces large round white eggplants with beautiful lilac shading. Violetta Lunga produces long glossy deep purple fruits that are perfect for grilling on the BBQ. You may have also noticed long, light purple eggplants in ethnic greengrocers in New Zealand. They are normally imported from Fiji. For reasons unbeknown to me, these Asian-style eggplants are actually easier to grow and are more vigorous than their rounded and deeper purple counterparts. My favourite Asian-type varieties include Dok F1, Asian Bride F1 (please excuse the very politically incorrect name!) and Tsakoniki. Seeds for Dok eggplant are becoming increasingly difficult to source in New Zealand, so I plan to purchase seedlings from Awapuni as I have done in previous years. This year, I am also growing Purple Comet F1 (Kings Seeds) and Ping Tung (Egmont Seeds) for the first time, so it will be interesting to see how these new varieties fare for me. To order seeds from the Egmont Seeds range, visit http://www.egmontseeds.co.nz/. To find stockists for Franchi Seeds or to order Franchi Seeds directly from Italian Seeds Pronto, visit http://www.italianseedspronto.co.nz/. Those living overseas can source the wonderful Franchi range through their own local distributor online (for the UK see Seeds of Italy’s website http://www.seedsofitaly.com/ and for the US see Seeds From Italy’s website http://www.growitalian.com/) or find stockists in your home country. How to care for eggplants Eggplants need at least 6 hours of sunshine per day, so be sure to plant seedlings in the sunniest spot in your garden. Before planting eggplant seedlings, take the time to prepare the bed properly so plants receive adequate nutrition. Dig the area over that you wish to plant your seedlings in. Mix plenty of compost and some sheep pellets into the ground. I highly recommend Gardn Gro’s Wonder Nuggets, which are 100% organic and function as an excellent fertiliser. Rake the ground so that it is nice and level. Add some tomato fertiliser to each plant’s hole at the time of planting, to give plants a strong start to life. As eggplant fruits can be heavy and weigh plants down, some support is recommended. It is a good idea to stake and tie eggplant seedlings at the time of planting to avoid injury to the roots of your plants later on. Eggplants can also be grown in containers. It’s actually my personal preference to grow eggplants in large black pots, as I’ve never managed to grow them successfully in the ground. The truth is out! My theory is that containers are ideal for such heat-loving plants. The temperature in a pot is warmer than soil in the ground, which can still be quite cool in late October and early November, when seedlings are traditionally planted. Black also radiates the heat. Be sure to use a high quality potting mix and use fresh mixture each summer. Gardn Gro’s Premium Potting Mix is ideal as it contains a slow release fertiliser which lasts for 8-9 months, a wetting agent and trichoderma disease protection. Be sure to water plants generously every day, preferably early in the morning or in the evening. In November and December, plants are in their most active growing phase. Liquid feed eggplants weekly to encourage the growth of healthy leaves and the formation of flowers, which will develop into fruit. Did you know that eggplants are self-pollinating? Bush movement from the wind is sufficient for pollination. Bees are therefore not important for the pollination of chillies and capsicums. However, hand pollination can increase your potential yield. Personally, I’ve never bothered as I’ve always found myself swamped with an abundance of eggplants from January through until the end of April. Harvesting your eggplants Eggplants need a lot of sunshine in order to produce fruit. Be patient. Always remove fruit with a pair of scissors or secateurs rather than pulling them off the plant. Enjoy! Lilies are my absolute favourite flower as they are simply beautiful. Lilies make excellent cut flowers as they have long stems. They look stunning in bouquets and are a popular flower for wedding arrangements. They can be scented and unscented, coloured or plain white. Lilies feature prominently in our flower garden every summer without fail.
As a novice gardener five years ago, I was a bit daunted by the prospect of growing lilies. They are so exquisitely beautiful that I assumed they would be difficult to grow. This is not the case at all. My first lily in the garden was an oriental lily called Hot Spot, which I planted in memory of my father after he passed away in 2012. To my surprise, it flowered on cue in February, producing the most beautiful speckled pink and white oriental lily with a strong perfume fragrance. Lilies are very easy to grow and require very little care. Once planted, they can be left in the ground for many years undisturbed. Lily varieties Set out below are some of the main lily varieties. Asiatic – Asiatic lilies come in a wide range of colours and have no fragrance Oriental – Oriental lilies are highly fragrant and incredibly beautiful Double oriental – Double Oriental lilies are double-flowering and highly fragrant Double Asiatic – Double Asiatic lilies are double-flowering without any fragrance OT Hybrid – OT hybrid lilies are a cross between Oriental and Trumpet lilies. They are fragrant like Oriental lilies. OT Hybrid lilies are my favourite variety as they are perfumed and have long stems, which make them perfect for picking. LA Hybrid – LA Hybrid lilies are a cross between Asiatic and Longiflorum (Christmas) lilies. They are colourful, softly fragrant and very popular for floral use. Patio Asiatic – Patio Asiatic lilies are shorter and therefore ideal for containers Patio Oriental – Patio Oriental lilies are also shorter in size and are perfect for pots. They are fragrant like regular Oriental lilies. Christmas lilies – Christmas lilies are commonly known as Trumpet or Longiflorum lilies. If planted by September, they will flower around Christmas time. Christmas lilies make stunning cut flowers or they can be left in the garden to admire. Tiger lilies – Tiger lilies make a somewhat unusual addition to the garden. They are tall and are very easy to grow. How to grow lilies Lilies can be grown from a bulb or from seed. If grown from store bought bulbs, lilies will flower in their first summer. You can expect lilies grown from seed to flower in around five years. The most common way to grow lilies is to purchase lily bulbs in winter when they are dormant. It is imperative that lily bulbs remain moist when they are out of the ground. If they dry out, they will fail to grow. This is why they are commonly sold in a bag filled with some dirt or sawdust. You can find lily bulbs in garden centres in winter, from June until early September. Palmers stock a great range of lily varieties every season. As you become a more experienced gardener you might find yourself searching for more specialised varieties. Mail order companies such as Bulbs Direct and NZ Bulbs stock a fantastic range of lilies every winter and deliver directly to your door. I have been a customer of both of these businesses for many years and have always been impressed by the range and quality of their lily bulbs. It’s a good idea to place your order early in the season to avoid missing out on popular varieties which can sell out very quickly. To plant a lily, dig a hole in the ground about twice as deep as the bulb. Make sure that you loosen the soil around the area. Add some bulb fertiliser and mix well into the soil. Plant the bulb with the roots facing downwards. If the bulb has started to shoot, the green tip should be facing upwards. Cover gently with soil, making sure that you don’t damage any shoots in the process. Water well. It’s a good idea to insert a plant label at the time of planting, so you can find your bulb later on after flowering, when the foliage has died down. Patio varieties can be grown in containers and look fantastic when they are flowering. For taller varieties, some support is recommended. It’s a good idea to place a stake in the ground at the time of planting to avoid damaging the bulb later on. How to care for lilies As mentioned above, lilies require very little care. As their most active growing phase occurs in spring when it rains very often, you probably won’t need to water your lilies until November, when it rains less frequently and the soil becomes noticeably drier. When your lily flowers, you have two options. You can either leave the flower in the garden to admire or you can pick your lily and put it in a vase inside the house. If you choose to pick your lily, make sure you leave at least 1/3 of the stalk in the ground, as this provides nourishment for the bulb after it finishes flowering. Leaving no or little of the stalk will result in poor flowering the following season. As the foliage on your lilies dies down, sprinkle some bulb fertiliser around the base of the plants to feed the bulbs so they flower well the following season. Multiplication of lily bulbs Lilies are great value as they multiply profusely. Over the years, I have acquired quite a collection of bulbs without having to purchase additional bulbs each season. There are three ways that you can increase the size of your collection of lily bulbs. Firstly, lilies multiply underground (or in pots in the case of Patio Asiatic and Patio Oriental lilies) over time. Every few years it’s a good idea to carefully lift your lily bulbs and gently separate the mother bulb from the smaller bulbs which surround it. Don’t leave it until after five years like me, or you will find that the task becomes much more difficult and takes a long time as the bulbs are much bigger. If like me you don’t have a lot of ground space, you can replant the smaller bulbs in a trough until they reach flowering size and are large enough to go into the garden. Another way to increase your collection of lily bulbs is to remove and transplant the bulbils which form up the stalk of the lily after flowering. This is how I managed to dramatically increase my stock of Christmas lilies which I originally purchased from NZ Bulbs around five years ago. After they had flowered, I noticed that some of the lilies had formed little bulbils up the sides of the stalks. I carefully pulled them off the stalks and planted them in five plastic terracotta troughs filled with potting mix. Some of them flowered last year, although the flowers were shorter than those from the mother bulb. This makes perfect sense, as the mother bulb is older, bigger and therefore produces more and taller flowers. Over the past week, I planted all of these bulbs into the garden. They are a mixture of Triumphator (pink and white) and White Heaven (pure white, as the name suggests) Christmas lilies. Finally, you can save seed from your plants and try to propagate lilies from seed. If you wish to save seeds from your lilies, you’ll need to leave the flower on the plant. After the flower dies, you will notice that some lilies contain seed pods. Wait until the pods are completely dry on the plant. Carefully cut the pods off the plant, open them and remove the seeds. Let the seeds dry for a couple of months before storing them in a ziplock plastic bag or paper bag. Label and leave them until Spring. You can sow the seeds in a punnet filled with some seed raising mix and leave it outside. I like to use Gardn Gro's seed raising mix as it is fine in texture. Seeds can push through the dirt easily and rise to the surface. It takes awhile for lily seeds to germinate, so be patient. Once leaves start to emerge, let the seedlings grow for a year, after which time you can carefully transplant them to a larger trough or container. Last year, I successfully propagated lilies from seed purchased from a mail order seed company. I also saved some seed from my own plants last season so it will be interesting to see whether I’m able to propagate them successfully this spring. Watch this space. Promotion from NZ Bulbs – Christmas Lily White Heaven At the moment, NZ Bulbs are running a promotion on the Christmas Lily White Heaven, which is reduced to just $2 per bulb. This is a reduction of more than a third of the usual retail price and is an excellent bargain. White Heaven is a slightly shorter variety of Christmas lily, making it perfect for picking as it’s not too tall and heavy for a vase. If planted now, White Heaven will flower at Christmas time. Chillies and capsicums have their pride of place in my summer vegetable garden every year. They are very easy to grow, relatively disease resistant and taste great. Nothing beats picking your own fresh peppers for salads and sandwiches. Chillies are a wonderful addition to Indian and Asian curries, as well as Mexican cuisine. Both capsicums and chillies can be very expensive in supermarkets and greengrocers, so they are a valuable addition to the home garden.
Traditionally, chillies and capsicums can be planted outside in New Zealand by Labour Weekend, which is a long weekend with a public holiday falling on the Monday after the weekend. Labour Weekend usually falls towards the end of October. This year, Labour Weekend starts on 21 October. While it’s natural to want a head start on the season, my advice is to not be in a rush to plant out seedlings. There is often a dramatic difference between day and night time temperatures at this time of the year and the weather can still be quite temperamental. Young seedlings are particularly tender. Once they’ve been hit by a sudden cold snap or exposed to consistently low temperatures, they never really recover. It’s therefore a good idea to wait until the beginning of November to plant chilli and capsicum seedlings into your garden, when temperatures are warmer. Sowing chillies and capsicums from seed It’s too early to think about planting chillies and capsicums outdoors. However, I wanted to write a guide to growing chillies and capsicums now because it’s not too late to start sowing them from seed. In fact, the timing is perfect. It takes about eight weeks from the time of the germination of a chilli or capsicum seed to produce a plant that is large enough to transplant outside. It’s really easy to grow chillies and capsicums from seed and it allows you to grow unusual varieties which aren’t found in garden centres. Chillies and capsicums can be started from seed indoors in July and August. In the past, I have started chilli and capsicum seedlings as late as September, but they will produce a crop later in the season, in March and April. For a continuous supply of chillies and capsicums from January through to April, successive sowings are recommended. Chilli and capsicum seeds need warmth in order to germinate. I germinate seeds in plastic punnets filled with seed raising mix from Gardn Gro (http://gardngro.co.nz/). I like Gardn Gro’s seed raising mix as it is very fine in texture, enabling seeds to push through the mixture easily as they rise to the surface. I place the punnets inside plastic incubators which you can purchase from garden centres. I then place the incubators on a heat pad indoors and spray plants with water twice daily. If you don’t have a heat pad you can also use your hot water cupboard which will also provide seedlings with a warm environment. How to care for chilli and capsicum seedlings For new gardeners, those who don’t wish to start their chilli and capsicum seedlings from seed or if you’ve simply left it too late, plants are available for sale in nurseries from September onwards. Palmers stock a great range of chilli and capsicum seedlings. Awapuni also sell high quality, large grade capsicums and chillies delivered direct to your door. If you order 7 or more bundles of seedlings, delivery is free. To order plants from Awapuni, visit https://awapuni.co.nz/. Take care to keep plants undercover until early October as chillies and capsicums are frost sensitive. The weather can be temperamental in spring and the nights are often still quite cool. From then on, start “hardening them off”. This is the process of exposing plants to the outdoors incrementally, for example, for two hours in the middle of the day for the first week, increasing to four hours per day for the next week. Continue to bring the plants indoors at night. By the third week of October, it should be safe to leave plants outdoors overnight. Chilli and capsicum varieties Popular chilli varieties that perform well in New Zealand include Cayenne, Jalapeno and Sweet Banana. Egmont Seeds stock all of these varieties or you can buy plants from garden centres throughout the country every spring. I grow these classic varieties every summer and they yield an abundance of chillies without fail. For something a little different, try growing the Italian varieties Lombardo, Topepo Rosso and Calabrese from Franchi Seeds. Franchi is a range of magnificent heirloom seeds imported from Italy and supplied in New Zealand by Italian Seeds Pronto, owned by my friend Gillian Hurley Gordon. Last summer, I grew Lombardo and Calabrese with great success. Lombardo is an extremely productive long, sweet lime green chilli which is perfect for frying. Calabrese produces small round hot red peppers. This summer, I’m looking forward to sowing Topepo Rosso for the first time. For the months of September and October, Italian Seeds Pronto has Lombardo and Topepo Rosso peppers on special for just $5. This is great value as there are tons of seeds in the packet so you will be able to share or swap with friends, as well as have lots spare for future seasons. The most reliable and traditional capsicum variety in New Zealand is Californian Wonder (Egmont Seeds). Californian Wonder resembles the shape of capsicums found at the supermarket and is a firm favourite in the garden each summer. I also highly recommend Corno Rosso (Franchi Seeds), which has performed splendidly in previous years. Corno Rosso turns red when ripe and is sweet in taste. It is ideal for stuffing, frying and grilling. To order seeds from the Egmont Seeds range, visit http://www.egmontseeds.co.nz/. To find stockists for Franchi Seeds or to order Franchi Seeds directly from Italian Seeds Pronto, visit http://www.italianseedspronto.co.nz/. Those living overseas can source the wonderful Franchi range through their own local distributor online (for the UK see Seeds of Italy’s website http://www.seedsofitaly.com/ and for the US see Seeds From Italy’s website http://www.growitalian.com/) or find stockists in your home country. How to care for chilli and capsicum plants Chillies and capsicums need at least 6 hours of sunshine per day, so be sure to plant seedlings in the sunniest spot in your garden. Before planting chilli and capsicum seedlings, take the time to prepare the bed properly so plants receive adequate nutrition. Dig the area over that you wish to plant your seedlings in. Mix plenty of compost and some sheep pellets into the ground. I highly recommend Gardn Gro’s Wonder Nuggets, which are 100% organic and function as an excellent fertiliser: http://gardngro.co.nz/shop/Fertilisers/Wonder+Nuggets+8kg.html. Rake the ground so that it is nice and level. Add some tomato fertiliser to each plant’s hole at the time of planting, to give plants a strong start to life. As capsicum fruits can be heavy and weigh plants down, some support is recommended. It is a good idea to stake and tie capsicum and chilli seedlings at the time of planting to avoid injury to the roots of your plants later on. Chillies and capsicums can also be grown in containers. It’s actually my personal preference to grow chillies and capsicums in large black pots, as I’ve never managed to grow them successfully in the ground. My theory is that containers are ideal for such heat-loving plants. The temperature in a pot is warmer than soil in the ground, which can still be quite cool in late October and early November, when seedlings are traditionally planted. Black also radiates the heat. Be sure to use a high quality potting mix and use fresh mixture each summer. Gardn Gro’s Premium Potting Mix is ideal as it contains a slow release fertiliser which lasts for 8-9 months, a wetting agent and trichoderma disease protection. To purchase this amazing product online, visit http://gardngro.co.nz/shop/Growing+Mixes/Premium+Potting+Mix+15L.html. Be sure to water plants generously every day, preferably early in the morning or in the evening. In November and December, plants are in their most active growing phase. Liquid feed chillies and capsicums weekly to encourage the growth of healthy leaves and the formation of flowers, which will develop into fruit. Did you know that chillies and capsicums are self-pollinating? Bush movement from the wind is sufficient for pollination. Bees are therefore not important for the pollination of chillies and capsicums, nor is it necessary to pollinate them by hand. Harvesting your chillies and capsicums Chillies and capsicums need a lot of sunshine in order to turn red (or whichever other colour they are supposed to be, such as orange, purple or yellow). Be patient. They will eventually change colour. Always remove fruit with a pair of scissors or secateurs rather than pulling them off the plant. Chillies can be frozen and used free-flow in cooking. There’s no need to defrost them beforehand. Simply remove chillies from your freezer and throw them into whatever dishes you are preparing in the kitchen. Enjoy! |
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