Spring Stirs

 Some time last weekend, it started to feel like Spring. It's still cold, with bitter Southern winds that blow right through you - but I felt a shift. The shift was mostly in me. After feeling like the gardening part of my brain had gone into hibernation for the Winter, all of the sudden I couldn't stop thinking about garden planning. When I walked into my garden, I felt things starting to stir. In the pitch of bird song, in the fattening buds on deciduous plants, but also in me. All of the sudden I am having conversations with my fellow gardeners about plants and plans. On Sunday I went for a long walk and discovered a kōwhai tree covered in glorious yellow blooms, with a dozen tui noisily chatting and drinking the nectar. A sure sign of Spring where I live. In New Zealand, we go by the meteorological seasons, meaning Spring starts on the 1st of September. By the astronomical definition it stars at the Spring equinox on September 23rd.

 

Kōwhai flowers ripped from the tree by overenthusiastic tui

One thing I find myself thinking about this year is the number of food plants grown here that are from South America, particularly from the Incas. A few are grown commercially. Many more have been passed from one home gardener to another, sometimes for generations, becoming a commonplace sight in New Zealand gardens. Over the years, travelers to Aotearoa have picked up exotic plants on their journeys, bringing along with them.

I find I have become part of this chain of home gardeners passing around South American crops. Several of them are either in my garden right now or soon to be added. I have been doing some research into how and when they got here.

First were the cape gooseberries. I lived here two years before I noticed them in my back garden bed so I don't know how they got here. Perhaps they were here long before us, only it took me a while to notice them. I had eaten them once from a friend's parents' backyard where they were treated as nothing special. Now they have taken over a large patch of raised bed and produce year round. I can't keep up with harvesting them; I just do it when I have the time and mostly they go into the freezer for now. I'm still figuring out the best things to do with them. I think they are only okay raw but they are very nice cooked. They are closely related to the Mexican tomatillo which is used to make salsa verde so I plan to try making salsa with them. They are also said to make very good jam. Cape gooseberries have been here a long time; they were introduced by missionaries in the 1800's. Someone picked up some seeds at the Cape of Good Hope and that is where they got the name they go by in New Zealand. What they were doing there, already so far from their homeland in South America, I can only guess. That is a research project for another day.

My cape gooseberries overflowing their garden bed

The next to appear in my garden is something called yacón. Last Summer a friend of mine got some from someone who was giving away extra plants. She got more than she had room for and gave me a few. I already had most of my garden planted out for the season by then, but I couldn't turn down the chance to try something new. I found a spot to squeeze them in. I hadn't even heard of them and all she was able to tell me is they are a root vegetable that resembles jicama - another comparison to a Mexican crop which I am more familiar with. Recently I was at my friends house when she had just harvested her first crop of yacón so we tried it together (I should have harvested mine by now but I haven't gotten around to it!). It was a luminous pale peach colour, the texture very crisp and juicy, like a nashi pear, and sweet with a subtle flavour that's hard to pin down. I haven't found any mention of them in the gardening history I have been reading, so I think they may be recent arrivals.

Another friend got given something called a pepino last year and she has been telling me about them. I had never heard of them before. They sound something like a sweet melon, but they are a cold hardy perennial that sets fruit from Spring through Fall. Considering our temperate climate, this makes them a much better prospect than growing actual melons. I have never succeeded in growing an edible melon around here, though I always try because my son loves them. Recently my friend gave me a couple of pepino cuttings and I can't wait to see how they do in my garden. Pepino have not been in Aotearoa gardens for very long; 1,000 Years of Gardening In New Zealand by Helen Leach speaks of them as new arrivals and it was written in 1984.

All this research has reminded me of the Incan root vegetable know in New Zealand as a yam, though they are not a true yam at all. Known in their region of origin as oca, they were an important crop of the Incas. They are a common grocery store vegetable in New Zealand, though they are otherwise virtually unknown outside of the Andes. I remember discovering them in the grocery store when we first moved here, their striking bright red-orange colour and segmented appearance impossible to ignore. They looked like alien produce out of a sci-fi movie. I thought they were the most beautiful root vegetable I'd ever seen. I have heard that they are also very easy to grow in my region, so I decided to finally give it a try. I set a bunch of oca tubers aside to sprout along with some potatoes. According to one account, oca arrived in New Zealand in 1869 when an immigrant from England bought some at a stop over in Chile on his way to a new life in Aotearoa.

 

Beautiful oca, a.k.a. New Zealand yams

There is always something to learn when it comes to gardening - always a new dimension to explore. One does not need to know the history of these vegetables in order to enjoy growing them, but it's one more way to deepen my enjoyment of gardening and my connection to these plants. I look forward to growing my first oca, thinking about the fantastic journey this root vegetable has taken, and feeling like I am one more little piece of its story.

 

Sources / Recommended Reading:

Leach, Helen. 1,000 Years of Gardening in New Zealand. Wellington, A.H. & A.W. Reed Ltd, 1984.

Vietmeyer, Noel. "Lost Crops of the Incas." New Zealand Geographic, no. 010, Apr. - Jun. 1991. https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/lost-crops-of-the-incas/

Sykes, Bill. "Crops of the Incas in New Zealand." New Zealand Garden Journal, vol. 16, no. 2, 2013. https://www.rnzih.org.nz/RNZIH_Journal/Pages_4-7_from_2013_Vol16_No2.pdf