Don’t overthink it too much, you’d be surprised what you can still grow in suboptimal conditions. I experiment all the time with different plants in different locations to see how well they grow, sometimes bad sometimes good.

Every year I would do many trips to buy bags of compost slowly, I decided this year just to buy it from a landscaping place and get it delivered. It’s a bit more expensive but I can get 1000L at once instead of 40L bags. I still can’t create enough compost myself for the whole garden.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In the peak winter months, the beds unfortunately get no direct sunlight throughout the day :(

But definitely promising what you say :) Hopefully we'll get a bit of a harvest going along this year through spring and summer :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Leafy stuff still does fine with indirect light, it may grow a bit slower and smaller but it'll still grow. If you're in Auckland or above there's barely a winter anyway :) In fact my outdoors sweet pepper plant is still alive here in Hamilton!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Oh really!? That's actually really good to hear haha. Might need to get started on getting the garden ready a bit faster then :)

Do you have a few peppers? What do you do to them during the winter? I heard they will stay dormant, but not too sure if that would be the case with no sun?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be honest this is the first time I've left one in all winter, it didn't seem to be suffering so I decided to see how long it would survive. It had a few peppers growing slowly on it still, but I removed them a few weeks ago so it can just concentrate on surviving the winter. I usually would start new chilli and pepper seeds each season. I've heard of people giving them a hard prune back and digging them up and storing indoors over winter, but that's usually in places with really cold winters where the ground freezes.

Just give it a go and see what happens! Worst case is you have to buy a new seedling from the garden centre 🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Sounds good :)

I do recall someone mentioning a hard prune back to me sometime ago. Hopefully the Auckland temps mean they won't have any problems :)