Quince blossom

A quince branch covered in blossom

If I were to plant one fruit tree solely for its flowers it would be the quince. The true quince, Cydonia oblonga, has a long history of being cultivated. Its beautiful flowers and fruit were appreciated by the very first civilisations in the countries now called Iraq, Turkey and Greece, where the quince tree evolved. 

 Close up of a 'Smyrna' quince blossom

The quince fruit is very beautiful too, so it is an excellent ornamental as well as useful tree. It is a relatively small tree (5-8 metres maximum) with a spreading habit if given space. The quince trees are flowering in the Eco Garden now – here are some more pictures to show how pretty they are...

'Giant of Gascony' 

quince flowers

 - the tree is being grown on

the lawn as an ornamental to

complement the double 

flowering cherry behind it.

 An old quince tree in full flower

How to pot up seedlings

Do try this at home. You will need

a work bench

pots

potting mix

water

seedlings

 Seedlings growing and waiting to be potted up, above black plastic containers full of water which keep the glasshouse warm at night.

I sowed tomato, cucumber, broccoli and many other vegetable seeds in punnets and pots in the lean-to glasshouse on August 17. The glasshouse is not heated, but we store the sunshine overnight in large black plastic containers of water kept under the bench. These heat up during the day and release heat slowly after dark. Vegetable seeds and seedlings don't need a lot of heat to germinate and grow (15 degrees C is the minimum required) but they do better if the temperature is kept as even as possible.

Tomato seedlings with their first true leaves are ready to be potted up.

One month later some of the baby seedlings have their first true leaves (the ones that look like the leaves of the adult plant). They are therefore ready for potting into larger pots where they can grow to the size they need to be for planting out in the garden (or sharing with friends, family, neighbours and good causes). 

Shake the potting mix gently around the plant, holding it upright as you do so.

There is only one thing you really need to know to pot up seedlings successfully – DON'T SQUEEZE THE STALK. The stalk is the main trunk line carrying water, nutrients and energy between the roots and the leaves. If you crush or bend its delicate tissues during potting up it will not be able to do its job properly, and the seedling will not flourish.

So hold the seedling by one of its seed leaves, lower the plant delicately on to the damp potting mix in the pot, shake more potting mix carefully around the roots and stalk until the plant can stand up unaided, then gently tamp the potting pix around the plant before watering it.

That's it. Keep the potted-up plants warm and well-watered, and within 3 or 4 weeks they will be ready for planting out in the garden.

Crab apple blossom

Crab apple blossom from an unnamed seedling 

crab apple tree in the Eco Garden

It's hard to pick a favourite flowering tree of spring time. Right now in the Eco Garden there are kowhai, magnolias, flowering cherries, amelanchiers, peaches and an over-sized ngutu kaka all saying – pick me! But I keep coming back to the crab apples. I love them so much I have planted some 15 of them around the Eco Garden. I love their simple flowers (some species and cultivars are scented) in spring, and their colourful little apples in autumn. 

Malus ioensis Plena blossom; and a young M. ioensis tree in
full bloom.

My favourite of favourites is the American species and cultivar Malus ioensis Plena. It is a selection of M.ioensis, originally made in Illinois, and chosen because it has many more double flowers than the wild type. Its buds are deep pink, then the flower opens to show palest pink (fading to white) petals. These are violent-scented, in an old-fashioned talcum powder sort of way.

Another American beauty, similar to Plena, is M. coronaria Charlottae, which also has scented flowers, and lots of semi-double flowers in pale pink and white. Neither tree has particularly profuse or ornamental crabs (usually just a few large bright green ones), but their autumn leaf colour is good. 

The other crab apple trees in my garden put on a great show of crabs, in red and orange. I especially like the almost triangular shape of the shiny red crabs on the NZ bred variety 'Ellerslie'.

While the crab apples are at the height of flowering in New Zealand, they are showing off their fruit in North America. A great place to see them in flower or fruit is in the Jennings Crab Apple Collection at Cornell University in upstate New York. This is a great collection of American and other species and cultivars. Alexy Sergeev, a visiting physicist at Cornell, took some great photos of crab apples in the Jennings collection in 2005. 

I don't know what hemisphere the crab apple tree in the picture below thought it was in when I photographed it three years ago on the Lincoln University campus. I have never seen a tree with so many flowers - and so much fruit - on it at the same time. I guess those fruits are not very tasty to the birds, or they would be long gone - like most of my crab apples. 

 
P.S. Crab apple blossom makes a fine bouquet for the second birthday of the Eco Gardener blog. It is a still rather a mystery to me who reads this blog and why, but I do know that there have been over 31,000 page views since it was launched two years ago, and that in each of the last three months the number of readers from the USA has been greater than the number of readers from New Zealand. Hence I thought it was only fair to showcase my American crab apple trees, and let those readers know how much they are appreciated Down Under.

New Asian flavours in Aotearoa

Typical Nyonya cuisine ingredients - ginger, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, 

chilli peppers

I am still digesting all the many, many things I learned at the Food Bloggers conference in Wellington on August 24 and 25. It is taking a while to get them on to the blog because while I was away spring went 'sprong!' in the Eco-Garden, and I came back to profusion of spring colours and scents - and seedlings popping up in the glasshouse from the seeds I sowed in pots before I left for Wellington. (Except for the pumpkin and zucchini seeds, which had been eaten by a rogue mouse which sneaked into the glasshouse.) There were also lots of weeds to pull out, carrot seeds to sow, and many other spring tasks to get on with.

But as I worked away at growing food, I kept remembering the delicious flavours of the lunch served to the conference participants on August 25. It was prepared by staff from the Little Penang restaurant, which serves authentic Malaysian Nyonya food. Less than a year old, Little Penang is already a big hit with Wellington diners, to judge by the reviews at MenuMania. Nyonya cuisine is a delicious mixture of Malay and Chinese ingredients and techniques, developed over several centuries by Chinese immigrants to the Malay peninsula, and their Chinese-Malay descendants.

Chinese food traditions and base ingredients have been retained, but many new flavours and combinations have been added. Before lunch we were shown our dessert being prepared. It was a special little cake called Ang Ku Kueh or Red Tortoise Cake. Some of us were able to try our hands at moulding a ball of soft rice flour dough with a hole poked in it around a small lump of sweet bean paste, pinching it shut, flattening it a little, then pressing it in a traditional wooden mould, which makes the distinctive pattern on the cake. Read more about the cakes on the Nyonya Food website.)

Mary from the Little Penang restaurant shows a finished cake.

Then we sat down to three delicious savoury courses. First came pieces of chicken on a bowl of rice made fragrant (and golden) with coconut milk and spices, then a salad of cabbage and other blanched green veges with tofu and hard-boiled egg, dressed with a delicious 11 ingredient satay-style sauce. This was made using properly roasted and ground fresh peanuts – peanut butter is a big no-no! After comparing this sauce with the peanut butter versions I have had I can certainly see why, as the flavours and texture are so much better. Finally we had thick noodles served in a soupy sour sauce in which the flavours of tamarind and anchovies predominated. This was like no other dish I have ever eaten in New Zealand, and a real revelation.

A Nyonya style salad with spicy peanut sauce

I will be experimenting with making Nyonya dishes in my own kitchen from now on, and growing some of the ingredients in my glasshouse - but most of all I am looking forward to my next trip to Wellington, and dining at Little Penang.