Garden ideas to supplement your menu The flowers have a subtle, delicate liquorice flavour which is great in summer salads and seafood dishes. IF YOU LACK SPACE TRY PLANTS THAT GROW WELL IN CONTAINERS: • Herbs: are a great addition to your garden. They smell delicious and offer taste testing’s for inquisitive fingers and mouths. Everyday herbs like parsley, chives, lemongrass and mint are easy to grow and are great additions to kai. • Vegetables: potatoes, kumara, lettuces, microgreens, herbs, garlic and shallots, capsicum, cucumbers, tomatoes, silverbeet and kale can grow well in containers. • Fruit: dwarf varieties, such as apricots, peaches and nectarines, lemons, mandarins, oranges, figs, and berries work great in containers. For container growing success make sure you water and feed regularly. Containers need to be at least 50cm wide and deep to accommodate a fruit tree. (Above tips from https://www.gogardening. co.nz/in-the-garden/2-0-1238/edibles-incontainers) OTHER FUN IDEAS INCLUDE: Plant sunflower seeds to support diversity in your garden. Bees, butterflies and other insects visit sunflowers to feast on pollen and nectar. Meanwhile, the pollen sticks to their bodies and they spread it from flower to flower. Without these insect pollinators there would be no sunflower seeds and no more sunflowers. Hint: Sunflowers planted in a large group for a big block of colour are more likely to attract visitors – especially butterflies. FUN FACTS: •Sunflowers attract good bugs such as lacewings, which eat aphids and other pests. •The tallest ever recorded was 7 metres! •Sunflowers will turn to face the sun. •In the centre of each sunflower are hundreds of seeds (sometimes up to 1000), which birds love to eat. Make a sunflower house: mark out a square within a grassy area which indicates the ‘walls’ of the house. Dig a garden trench along the walls, and plant sunflower seeds (or plants) along the trench. Don’t forget to leave a gap for the door so tamariki can get in! As the sunflowers start to grow, steady the plants using bamboo stakes and before you know it, you will have walls of sunflowers. Add mathematics as you observe the growth of your sunflowers. Which sunflower is the tallest? Get out your tape measure. Measurements are to be taken from the bottom of the plant (ground) to the base of the sunflower head or green bud. You can also measure the width of the sunflower head. Measurements should be the width (taken from left to right) across the sunflower bloom "face" only and must not include the petals. Looking for some fun ideas to incorporate creativity and sustainability in your garden this year, what about trying a rainbow garden? Plants that represent the colours of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and indigo) are great teaching tools that are exciting for children to plant. Edible flowers are great for adding to this theme. THERE ARE MANY EDIBLE FLOWERS. THESE INCLUDE: • Chive flowers have a similar flavour to their stems. Sprinkle on top of egg and cheese dishes or on salads. • Calendula - commonly known as Pot Marigold, the petals have a slight sweet buttery taste with a hint of pepper. Ideal in sandwiches or asparagus rolls. • Viola - this miniature member of the pansy family have a great taste and are great for sprucing up dishes in the cooler months of the year. • Nasturtium is probably the most recognisable edible flower. These generous, carpeting and rambling flowers bloom for months on end and are great in salads, pastas and stir fry. Plus, an added bonus is that their bright, open faced flowers attract bees and butterflies. • Lavender - pungent and perfumed, these flowers are usually best suited to sweet food like cakes, biscuits and drinks. • Borage - this easy to grow annual plant readily self-seeds and the leaves taste like cucumber. It has gorgeous blue flowers that are often used as a decoration on cakes and muffins. • Fennel - this entire plant is edible! From the bulbs, shoots, stem, and leaves, to the flowers and seeds. August 2023 { 32 }
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