Special Edition - Long Weekend Ahead – Ideal Garden Time

This Sunday we place a special focus on your garden with additional garden themed stalls.

With the cooler temperatures, it’s a reminder to get the winter veggie garden established before it’s too late. The long weekend ahead will be an ideal time to get the garden ready for winter and spring supplies.

From garden knowledge to garden plants, manure, and tools, check out the additional offerings with a hot brew in hand. And don’t forget to turn your clocks back for an extra hour of daylight in the mornings with Daylight Savings.

Garden Knowledge

We have invited Don Cross from Te Pukenga NMIT to answer any of your burning questions all things vegetable gardens and best time to sow and plant. Don is a knowledge horticulture tutor, happy to share the knowledge you need to get your garden into shape.

Don also offers a Community Garden Course in Sustainable Horticulture. Whether you have been gardening for decades, or know nothing about gardening, the course teaches you how to

·        Grow a Home Vegetable Garden

·        Manage soil fertility, water and maintaining healthy plants in Horticulture

·        Grow a home orchard.

Horse Manure for a Cause

Marlborough Riding for the Disabled will be selling horse poo, fundraising for their operation.

"Our equine-based programmes help people living with a diverse range of conditions in the Marlborough region including emotional, learning or social difficulties, intellectual disabilities, traumatic brain injury, visual or hearing impairment, cerebral palsy, stroke, down syndrome, and muscular dystrophy.

"The programmes improves riders’ strength, balance and flexibility, posture and muscle tone, confidence and self-esteem, self-discipline, social skills and communication,” says Jo Ross, manager of the Marlborough RDA."

What makes RDA's horse manure so special?

“Our manure sales is revenue stream for RDA – we depend upon donations, grants, fundraising to help us cover costs,” says Jo.

By supporting the charity with horse manure purchase you keep their riders’ fees as affordable as possible.

“We average approximately $300 per month from manure sales, “ says Jo, ”and for our customers it’s a great addition to the garden.

Composting tips from the team

• Horse manure is not only an excellent source of organic matter, which will help improve almost any soil, it also provides macronutrients including nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. It also contains magnesium, calcium and sodium as well as a number of micronutrients.
• RDA’s horse manure is FRESH (usually less than two weeks old at time of sale). Fresh manure can heat up considerably (the temperature can get as high as 70⁰C), particularly when in a heap. This heat helps to kill seeds that may be present in the manure but can be very damaging to plants and seeds sown directly into fresh manure.
• We recommend that fresh manure be allowed to mature prior to use by either:
• Putting through a compost heap prior to spreading in your garden, or,
• Composting in situ in a fallow garden area prior to any planting of seeds or seedlings.



Garden Plants

Welcome to new stall holder Valley Nurseries. Growing a range of native plants, Sally will be attending the market once a month, starting April 3^rd. You will be able to select from a range of grasses, flaxes, sedge, pittosporum, akeake, 5 finger, coprosma, corokia and griselinia as well as a few others.

To fit your budget, we share an Italian recipe using eggplant and capsicum from the market later in this issue,

Vegetable seedlings

Kathryn from the She Shed Shop will also be back. She is singing to her vegetable seedlings, so that they grow an extra bit in time for Sunday. She’s brining a mix of lettuce, broccoli, silverbeet, sugar loaf cabbage for your veggie garden. 

Kathryn will also have kamo kamo, red chillies, cucumbers and maybe a few lettuces for your kitchen as well as a few other bits and pieces. Definitely lettuce she says, and apples.

Refurbished Garden Tools

Many tools can be refurbished to extend their life and make the work easier. Ron from Sharp As says “saws can have their teeth sharpened. Shovels, axes, loppers, edgers, secateurs, hedge trimmers and many more can be brought back to life.

Don't let a rusty edge make you think a tool is ready for the tip. Often it’s just superficial and an excellent tool lies underneath.

This Sunday Ron will have some refurbished tools to look at and for this Sunday only they will also be available for sale.



Autumn glory veggies galore

Aside from the garden theme, the usual suspects will be present with eggplants and capsicum in high season, new garlic, zucchini, marrows, lettuce, Asian greens, onions, tomatoes, carrots, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, figs, apples, pears, plums just some of the fruit and vegetables available from your local growers. Buying in season from the market is always better for your pocket. You will find much more goodness than listed here while browsing the market.

Take a peek at our website homepage, to see which stalls will be attending. We update this page on Saturdays.

Sleep an extra hour this Sunday

This year Daylight Saving time ends on Sunday 2 April 2023 at 3am when clocks are turn backward 1 hour to 2am.

Did you know? Daylight saving originated in New Zealand in 1868 and was first introduced in New Zealand in 1927. The current dates for starting and finishing daylight saving each year have been fixed since 2007 as detailed in the New Zealand Daylight Time Order 2007.

PS Thanks a bunch for voting for us

Today is the final day you can place your vote for your favourite Farmers’ Market.

Vote for us and be in to win also.

Place your vote here https://bit.ly/Outstanding2023. Thanks and see you Sunday.

Fig salad

We finish with a seasonal fig recipe.

“Fig season cannot go by without a fig and goats cheese salad,” says Lynne, market manager.

This one uses the beautiful large dark figs, married with a Cranky Goat goats cheese. I also put on toasted Pinoli Premium Pine Nuts, heritage tomatoes, lettuce and a dressing made of Flaxbourne levccino olive oil and rice wine vinegar, super easy and super delicious.

You can find all the ingredients at the market.