Annabel Langbein's Winter Planting

There’s a great saying: “Starting a garden is like catching a train. If you're late, you miss it." Right now there’s such an abundance of produce around, it’s easy to forget the fact that once the summer’s sun has gone it will all be over.

Annabel’s Stuffed Snow Peas

Summer is all about enjoying the sunshine and with that comes entertaining! Make the most of fresh summer snow peas with this great party starter snack.

Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 30 mins

Ingredients:

100g (about 30) snow peas
150g cooked prawn meat or chicken, finely diced
3 tbsp good-quality mayonnaise
finely grated zest of ½ lemon
1 tsp lemon juice
¼ tsp smoked paprika
salt and ground black pepper, to taste

Method:

Pour boiling water over snow peas to cover.
Drain and cool at once under cold water.
Split open on one side.
Combine prawn meat, mayonnaise, lemon zest and juice and paprika and season to taste with salt and pepper.
Spoon mixture into snow peas to form small boats.
Cover and chill until ready to serve.

Prepared snow peas will keep in the fridge for several hours.

For more great recipes from Annabel Langbein, see annabel-langbein.com

If you want to be picking fresh harvests through winter and early spring you need to get back into the garden NOW. It’s too late for long-lead crops, such as eggplants, tomatoes, chillies and beans, but lots of other vegetables will grow happily through the autumn and be ready for harvest in winter – provided you get them in the ground during February and early March.

In Wanaka I have been planting seeds and seedlings of various brassicas (planting seedlings gives you a four- or five-week lead over planting seeds). If you're starting tender seedlings during the heat of summer, you'll need to provide them with some shade, either by planting them under other plants, or in a shady place. Make sure you plant in the cool of the evening, and water in well when you plant them and every day until they are established to minimise the shock of transplantation.

February is still too hot for cauliflower seedlings, but cabbages, broccoli, brussels sprouts and all the Asian greens can go into the ground now, as it’s important they get a head start before the ground temperature drops.

I’ll plant a row or two of bok choy every couple of weeks over the next five or six weeks – in a few weeks I’ll be able to harvest small leaves and after four or five weeks the whole plants will be good to pick.

If you live somewhere hot, it’s still too early to plant spinach seedlings – wait until early March as they will just bolt if you try to plant them now.

Broccoli is a great crop to grow pretty much throughout the winter – again I plant six seedlings every couple of weeks over the next four to six weeks to provide me with harvests throughout winter and spring. If you leave it too late in the season to plant brassicas you’ll find that, instead of properly forming, they (and many other crops) will just go to seed when the days start to lengthen in spring.

Now is also a good time to get beet seeds, carrots, radishes, salad seeds and plants, and fennel plants in the ground. It’s getting late for leek seeds you could but plant seedlings now for harvest in spring.

It’s been such a late, cold summer in Wanaka this year, that lots of my so-called spring crops, such as snow peas, broad beans and sweet peas, are still on the go. So I’ve decided to plant more to see if I can get an autumn harvest. You don’t know if you don’t try! Year-to-year the seasons differ, and in these times of climate change there’s a real sense of “who knows what will grow”.

Regardless of the weather, now’s the time to jump on the train!

Annabel