Fresh Walnuts Picking Season in New Zealand!

Time passes so quickly, February 2018 is almost over.

In New Zealand, it is end of summer now, and is a season for fresh walnuts.

Have you foraged this season’s walnuts yet?

Walnuts Picking?

Yes walnuts!

They can be roasted to eat as is, or can make an awesome addition to any baking foods like cookies, muffins or cakes.

Alternatively, roasted walnuts can be added to salad or stir-fry.

They are rich in vitamin E and unsaturated fat, making walnuts really healthy food for our body.

But when you have been only buying bagged walnuts out of shell, we tend not think about where they come from.

Walnuts are seed (or core) part of green fruits that grows on a walnut tree.

When the fruit matures, green fruit naturally drop from the tree.

As the fruit start to get rotten, the inside (walnut shell) becomes exposed.

At this timing, if you visit your local walnut tree, you can pick many natural, fresh, organic walnuts from under the tree!

And this season is usually around February in New Zealand.

Where Can I Find Walnut Tree?

Walnuts tree can be found in various places in New Zealand.

Some people have them in our garden, but if your garden doesn’t have a walnut tree, then try looking for one in...

• Parks
• Roadside
• Car parks with lots of green areas surrounding it
• Garden of churches and chapels

Walnuts tree typically grow really tall, so you are unlikely to find a walnut tree in a small park.

If there is a large park with many deciduous trees, you might find walnut trees, too.

Around February, walnuts trees would bear some green fruits, about size of kids’ fists on the tree.

Some are found fallen on the ground underneath the tree.

So looking for a tree with green fruits on it or underneath it around February may be the easiest way to spot a walnut tree.

Once you are used to finding a walnut tree, you will be able to spot them by looking at tree shape, skin and leaves.

Also, there are some “foraging” maps available online. You might decide to use these as a guideline to find our first walnut tree.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-wine/84570132/foraging-in-new-zealand-how-to-find-free-fruit-in-your-city

As long as you adhere to basic manners and good practice, there should not be any problem picking walnuts off the ground.

But hurting the tree or shaking the tree to access fruits on the tree should not be tolerated.

Also, even if you spot a good walnut tree, if it is on someone’s private properly you must not access it without asking for a permission from the owner.

How to Pick Fresh Walnuts

In the right season, walnuts fruit will naturally fall – so all you have to do is pick them off the ground.

Green fruit on the left is the walnut fruit.

If walnut shell is fully exposed without any fruit, then it may have been there on the ground for too long.

If the walnuts feel very light or shell is very fragile, and it is most likely already rotten inside.

If the fruit outside walnuts shell is fully intact and really firm, then the fruit may have fallen prematurely and inside walnuts may not be very tasty.

Apparently, a good walnut is the fresh walnut shell with fruit still adhered on it, but the fruit outside is starting to rot and turned black.

But I guess, you just don’t know what comes out of the shell until you crack it open...

We picked ours with either some fruit attached, or fully exposed ones as long as they feel heavy and hard.

Try squeezing walnut with hand, if they crack easily then it is definitely rotten inside.

One thing to be careful is that, liquid that comes out of walnut fruit stains your hand brown.

They do not come off easily even after washing our hands with soap.

So if you do not want your hands to get dirty, you might want to use vinyl gloves to prevent the liquid from touching your skin.

Likewise, you should not wear your new, favorite cloth that you do not want get stained on.

Picked Some Walnut –!!

So we came home with a bag of walnuts from our local park.

Some looked quite fresh and had just fallen off the tree, while others looked like they had been on the ground for a while.

The park we went to had more than two walnut trees on site, and each tree produced walnuts with difference sizes.

We believe that we were a bit late for the season, as many good ones were already picked, and many rotten ones were left on the ground.

Some with fruit on, look really clean when outside fruit is taken off.

There are some tips and ways you can clean your freshly picked walnuts on the internet.

We washed ours in a tub of water and scrapped any adhered fruits from the nuts manually, using brush.

We then dried our walnuts under the sun for a while.

Look some are huge! I think they are from different variations of walnuts.

We just picked and prepared them like above, but we plan on cracking them open next, and either roast the content to eat them, or use them for cooking.

You could roast walnuts while they are in the shell, but this time we prefer to crack it open first so that we can get rid of rotten ones and select good ones for eating.

In our regular life, walnuts come unshelled in a plastic bag from the supermarket, normally.

So it was quite a new experience picking and washing our own walnuts. Our children enjoyed it too.

Now, it would be perfect once we manage to make a yummy walnuts cookies from these... !

Planting Walnuts to Grow Walnut Seedling...?

If you get a hold on fresh walnuts from the latest season, it may be fun to keep some for planting next spring.

Walnuts break out of dormancy and germinate in the spring after experiencing the cold winter.

So if you want to plant some walnuts, keep some good looking walnuts wrapped in wet paper, put them in a plastic bag and store in the fridge, then plant them into a pot next spring.

According to some sites on the internet, fresh walnuts has pretty good success-rate for germination.

If you keep several walnuts in the fridge for next season, the chance is that you will see at least one germinating and growing.

You need to be careful if you decide to plant walnut seedling into your garden, as a walnut tree grows into a very large tree in years time.

Walnut trees also produce and release a type of toxin from their roots, that prevents other plants from growing.

So while it would be a great fun to plant your self-picked walnuts in pots and watch them grow, you might want to keep them in pots and not directly planted in your garden.

We kept a few walnuts in our fridge to plant next spring.

It would be a fun experiment to do in the garden with children!

Summary

• February - Walnuts picking season in New Zealand!
• You can often spot walnuts trees in public parks
• Be careful picking walnuts trees as they can stain
• Keep some for germinating experiment, but planting directly into a garden requires some thought

Some people sell fresh walnuts from their garden on Trademe or on a road-side market around February so keep eye out for them if you want locally grown organic walnuts.

Happy walnut picking/buying/eating!

Growing Perilla Purple (Red shiso) in New Zealand

Spring has come to New Zealand, and I started on this year’s vegetable garden.

One of plants that I am really looking forward to harvesting is Red Shiso, or Perilla purple.

Red Shiso: A Great Traditional Japanese Herb

In Japan, people like making sour, pickled plums called Umeboshi.

They are such a bright red in color, despite of young plums being green or pale yellow.

The reason why they have such red color is because, plums are pickled with additional ingredient: red shiso (Perilla) herbs.

Red shiso herb has purple pigment, which turns very bright red when mixed with acid.

So when red shiso is used in combination with sour ume Japanese plums (that have very acidic juice), it produces that bright red color.

Red shiso themselves have very nice, original fragrance that matches well with Japanese dish, raw sashimi or rice.

So I wanted to grow my very own Red shiso in my garden, hoping that I will be able to harvest my own red shiso to use for cooking.

Red shiso is called by various name. See this wikipedia page for Shiso herbs. –>  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiso

They are sometimes called Perilla red or Perilla Purple.

Growing Perilla purple from Seeds: Watch out for birds!

So I picked up some Perilla purple seeds from Trademe.

In general, Perilla plants grow very well in full or half shades, and are not very picky on soil conditions either.

They do prefer well-drained soil, though.

They are energetic and supposed to be quite easy to grow.

However, their seeds take a while to germinate; approximately 10 days ~ two weeks for germination.

Germination requires exposure to sunlight, so you cannot bury seeds too deep and cover completely with soil.

You need to sow them shallow, and cover them with only a thin later of fine soil.

This sounded rather tricky for me, so I decided to let seeds germinate on wet tissue papers, then plant them into small pots once they start germinating.

Two weeks waiting and watering seeds for germination is very long….  especially compared to my cabbages and beans sprout really quickly only after 2-3 days!

It took nearly one month for perilla seeds to germinate and produce small new leaves.

I decided to bring pots outside, now that seeds have started to grow 2-3 cm tall ….. but this was a BIG mistake.

One morning when I came out of the house, many Perilla purple seedlings that were growing in my pots all disappeared!

Did they all die and melt down over night…. ? No.

It is most likely that bird outsides ate them all.

Even in Japan, birds like sparrows love Perilla seeds and sprouts.

I mean, even humans eat Perilla leaves and seeds, so they will be some delicious treats for wild birds.

Come to think of it, I did hear many birds jumping close by the window this morning…..

So my first attempt to grow Perilla purple from seeds, failed and I wasted a whole month….. orz

Trying again!! Growing Perilla Purple!

So I decided to try again.

Perhaps this time, I will grow them to be a larger size plant indoors first, then take them outside.

Perilla purple seeds germinating on wet tissue papers; it takes two weeks to get to this stage.

Some main new leaves starting to come out…. 2-3 cm tall.

Plant size reached 10cm… Leaves are much larger now too!

Too early to relax just yet, but I replanted the into larger planter.

Planter is placed under our room where we regularly hang washings and put other outdoor items, so hopefully birds will not come near it.

Perilla plant is still young and small, but when you pinch an end of a leaf, you can smell its characteristic fragrance…. yummy smell!

When plenty of leaves are ready for harvest,  I may use the to make Shiso-drinks (Perilla tea), or perhaps salted-perilla red flakes that tastes great on rice.

I just cannot wait for them to grow larger and start producing more leaves for harvesting!

Spring is here in NZ! Snails are here too! Snail & Slug pellets work really well….

Spring is here in New Zealand; temperature is getting warmer, day-light saving started and we have a lot longer sun!

It is a start of season when we can sow some seeds and see them grow.

Our children love growing plants in our garden. They water them and enjoy watching vegetables grow on them.

Unfortunately we had snail invasion in one of our vegetable garden….. there are some pictures of snails below, so be warned if you don’t like watching insects.

Enemy of vegetable garden: Snails and slugs

At the end of winter, we planted some seed potatoes in our home garden.

Potatoes are very easy to grow in home vegetable gardens. If you plant them late winter or early spring, they will grow fast during spring, and you can start harvesting in early summer.

Our potatoes were growing pretty well, until this happened to one of our fastest growing plant….

Noooo!! Being eaten!!

There are only stems left with hardly anything left of the leaves. We really should have done something before it gets this bad.

We have not spotted any worms and bugs that eat potato leaves yet, so we suspected slugs and snails to be the culprit.

It will only get worse as the temperature becomes warmer, so we quickly headed to a gardening store.

Purchased Snail and Slug pellets!

At our local Mitre10, we went to the gardening section and purchased Yates Blitzem pellets for killing slugs and snails.

The reason why we chose this product was because it was recommended to us by a friend, who grows and sells vegetable seedlings.

Yates Blitzem：A famous product!

For 500g, it was about 5 dollars? It was reasonably priced.

Content looks like this. Blue-green colored small pellets.

These pellets contain poisons that attracts snails and slugs, and kills them when they touch or eat these pellets.

Because these are poisonous, you do need to be careful so that small children and pets will not touch them.

According to the instruction on the box, you place them on the soil about 5cm apart between each pellet.

We often grew vegetables in our garden, but this is the first time we use slug & snail pellets like these.

Snail & Slug pellets are so effective!

Following day after placing Snail and slug pellets in our potato garden…. it is really effective. How do we know that? well….

There are many snails laying in our potato garden floor! They normally hide pretty well so we cannot spot them.

Like these snails… there are many of them, here and there…

Are they dead after eating the snail & slug pellet? So we had a closer look…

This one is upside down, cannot move well and bubbling!

EEEEEEK! Gross & scary! I feel so bad for them!! (although I tried to get rid of them)

We removed these intoxicated snails from our vegetable garden and buried them on a corner of our lawn.

There were about 10 snails just for this day. We were surprised how many there were, because we normally cannot spot them.

We were very impressed with how well these snail & slug pellets worked.

What is the active ingredient in Yates Blitzem？

The snail & slug pellets were so effective that I became worried what kind of ingredient is in them.

Specifications about Yates Blitzem are easily found on Yates official website below.

https://www.yates.co.nz/products/pest-control/snails-and-slugs/blitzem-snail-and-slug-pellets/

The main active ingredient is…. 15g/kg Metaldehyde

This “metaldehyde” is a compound frequently used for killing snail & slug, but also used sometimes as fire starter fuel for camping.

Refer to：Wikipedia　

There are a lot of information about metaldehyde on the internet, like this one.

“metaldehyde damages the mucus cells causing the creature to produce masses of slime and dehydrate. If not killed outright, it’s immobilised and unable to retreat to its daytime shelters”

引用元：http://www.slugoff.co.uk/killing-slugs/

Dehydration and paralysis!

So that’s why those snails were rolling on the ground after using snail & slug pellets…. Scary!

Of course these are toxic to human and other creatures too, if ingested. There are many reports of pets intoxicated after ingesting metaldehyde containing pellets. Even some cases of children as well.

After finding this out, I became concerned about using them on vegetable garden… do they get absorbed by vegetables that we are growing there?

But apparently, metaldehyde is used widely for protecting vegetables and crops from snails/slug all over the world.

Some say that these pellets are better than other spray-on insecticides that are directly applied to the plant.

Metaldehyde containing snail/slug pellets are also used for growing potatoes too.

参考：http://www.desangosse.co.uk/news/2015/02/23/potato-growers-urged-to-switch-to-the-better-metaldehyde-pellets-for-effective-slug-control

Tips for using Slug & Snail pellets

So some tips for using slug & snail pellets safely is as follows:

• Do not let these pellets directly touch vegetables you are growing.

• Place one pellet per 5-10cm as instructed on the package. Do not use more.

• Do not sprinkle from above vegetables – place them directly on the ground.

• These baits contain chemoattractant that attracts snails and slugs.

• You could place pellets on a flat stone/dish next to the plant (not directly touching the floor) and let snail/slug come to it.

• Place pellets near but outside of planters and pots. This way snails/slugs will be lured out of pots and planters to the bait.

• Remove slugs/snails that ingested pellets and are found on the ground immediately.

• You can also set up a trap by setting up “hide-place” for snails/slugs and place baits there.

Taken together, keeping a safe distance between your pellets and precious vegetables would assure that your vegetables will not be contaminated.

You do need to stay extra cautious that your pets and small children will not touch them.

It is probably a good idea to do this once at the beginning of spring ~ summer to kill off majority of snails as you should not use them when your crops are close to harvesting.

Go potatoes! Grow!

Summary of Snail & Slug pellets

So I was very impressed with how effective these Yates Blitzem snail & slug pellets are.

It almost works too well that it gets me worried about chemicals inside.

But when you start thinking about it, you are not sure what kind of insecticides and chemicals people may have used for the commercial vegetables.

Regulations are in place, but it is up to the growers how carefully to use these chemicals.

We are better off in New Zealand because most vegetables are home-grown and I am sure we can trust our local farmers…

I can also understand how some people love organic vegetables.

But since I cannot afford to always buy organic vegetables, I guess I will wash our leafy vegetables really well.

Anyhow, if you have concerns about snails and slugs attacking your precious vegetable garden or flower garden…

as you can see above, snail & slug pellets work really well.

Yates Blitzem Slug and Snail Control 500g

Fishing in Auckland with Kids 1: Okahu Bay Wharf

Our 8-year-old son loves fishing, and wants to give fishing a go on a sunny weekend. Being new to the area and having no prior fishing experience ourselves, we started off by looking for potential fishing spots with my children.

  

Fishing in Auckland with Family

New Zealand is a beautiful country surrounded by the sea, and Auckland being the “City of Sails”, fishing is a popular hobby. We see many people with their own boats and fishing gear enjoying fishing.

There are also various fishing boat charter services providing half-day or day-fishing tours. We would love to give these a shot one of these days.

But for now, our son is only 8-year-old, and we feel it is a bit too early to go on a whole-day cruise to catch a snapper. He might get too tired during the trip, or worth sea-sick. These tours are quite expensive too.

So we have been searching for a local wharf where we could get some fishing experience first. Ideally, somewhere easily accessible and safe with children. This time, we tried “Okahu Bay Wharf”, which was described to be a popular spot around Mission Bay, on the internet websites.

Tamaki Drive, Okahu Bay Wharf in Auckland

On the day, we traveled from Auckland CBD towards mission bay on Tamaki drive. The target location, Okahu Bay, was on the left hand side along the stretch of the Tamaki drive. It was right opposite to the car parking area of the Auckland’s famous Kelly Talton’s SEA LIFE aquarium.

We parked on the road along side the Okahu Bay wharf and unloaded our fishing gear, food and drinks.

At the Okahu Bay Whar, there is a long stretch of walkway out to the sea, about 150m in length. At the other end, the walk way splits up to T-shape.

It is fenced all the way, but with plenty of gaps so I would not take an eye off little ones. But we our primary school age-son was quite comfortable there. Overall it looked like a nice spot where family with kids could give fishing a try.

Okahu bay wharf

Okahu Bay Wharf is a Popular Fishing Spot

On the day we visited, it was cloudy with some wind and occasional shower. So it was cold day.

When we arrived Okahu bay wharf just before lunch time, there were already three groups of people enjoying fishing there. At the far end of the walkway, there was a group of young man who were enjoying swimming! Oh how nice it is to be young…..

After we started fishing, people with fishing gear kept on arriving every now and then. A lot of people came passed us just enjoying walks too, some with kids and some with dogs.

The wharf had visitors on even such a cold cloudy day, so I would imagine that on a sunny day of early summer, a perfect fishing day, this wharf will be quite busy with people trying to do fishing here.

At the end of walk way

No Fish for This Day!! (Danm It!)

We tried fishing for about two hours on this day. But unfortunately we could not catch anything ourselves. A guy who was fishing before us, had caught something that appeared to be Kahawai, a locally seen type of Arripis. It was quite large, not fitting his small chilly bin, as he was taking it home.

Other than that, no one else caught anything while we were at Okahu Wharf. According to some website or fishing forum though, you could catch some snapper by casting your line as far as possible in summer.

We did see some “hard-core-fisher” people who had really nice fishing gear and setting multiple of them along the wharf. So there is little doubt in us that this is a good fishing spot that attracts a lot of people.

We did not have any luck this time, but we would love to give it another shot at Okahu Bay Wharf.

Bring Your Own Fishing Gear (and Food!)

This Okahu Bay Wharf is a public domain and there is no entry fee for fishers. But it also does not have any manager on site or shops nearby. So you will need to bring everything you need with you, including fishing gear, bait, drinks and snacks.

We picked up our fishing bait at a petrol station between Auckland CBD and Okahu Bay. You can normally pickup bait and ice from a petrol station located within short range from a coast. They are often kept in a freezer outside of the shop with a lock, and you may need to ask the shop staff for them.  

So that was Our First Fishing at Okahu Bay Wharf

Unfortunately we were unable to catch anything, but we did enjoy the experience there. It seemed like a nice spot and we will definitely give it another shot! 

It is near mission bay so we could plan a whole day outing with kids; some fishing at Okahu bay wharf followed by icecream and playtime at the mission bay.

Chipmunks visit!

Chipmunks visit!

Earlier in the week, I took my children to a large famous indoor play centre, the Chipmunks!

What is Chipmunks?

Chipmunks is a franchise brand name for large indoor kids play centres. It is a play centre combined with café business, where you pay entry fee for kids to play, and once you enter parents could enjoying a cup of coffee and other café food. It is a great place to be, to entertain kids on those rainy gloomy cold days.

On the left is the play area; right is the café area with purple and yellow chairs.

Where can I find Chipmunks?

According to their website, they have 13 locations in the North island of NZ, and 5 more in the South island (checked in 2017). Out of those, 5 are located in Auckland region. They also have locations in Australia and Indonesia.

You can check on their homepage for more information.

è https://www.chipmunks.co.nz/

On the above website, you can also find administration fee information, and also send enquiries about holding birthday parties there.

The place is busy on Saturday and Sundays…!

For this occasion, we went to the Chipmunks in Tauranga. It was cloudy day looking like it could shower any time, and it was Saturday morning. So we expected that the place would be rather busy, and we were right!

We entered the premise around 10am and at that time, half of the tables were empty; the place did not seem all that busy. However, we noticed that there were reserved table. Later we found out that there were three birthday groups on that day, and the place got busier and busier!

Inside is huge! Enough space for kids to bounce and run!

The kids play area is very spacious. When you enter, straight away you see a large air-filled slide where children could bounce and roll.

Hard to see in this picture, but there is a huge slide at the back! I would love to give it a go but no adult is allowed, sorry!

Main play area has a large slide and three story climbing area too.

Air-pressured sponge shooting gun – super exciting for all boys and girls!

The favorite area for my boys is the shooting arena, where you can use one of air pressure gun to shoot out soft balls made of sponge-type material. The ball is about the size of kids’ fists, and it is soft. You pickup those balls, put it in a air gun, and push a button. Then you hear the “Shhh!!” sound and your ball will get shot out flying.。

The air-gun looks really large for kids and looks really cool!

Balls fall in the area underneath, and there little children are usually running around collecting some balls into a bucket or a bag.

A lot of fun just picking up balls too!

What to watch out for at the Chipmunks

Chipmunks is a café business, and it is not allowed to bring your own food and drinks. Instead, you have to purchase food and drinks there. They sell chips, nuggets, pizza, muffins and other variety of food you could eat for lunch.

They serve coffee too; a mum could probably enjoy a cappuccino while her child is playing in the play area if he/she is old enough to play by him/herself.

On the other hand, if you are bringing a little one, like preschool age, then you probably don’t want your eyes off them as it can be a bit dangerous with larger kids running and playing wild.

They do have an area especially for kids under 5, but even then a close supervision is required as it could still be dangerous if 2 year-old get bumped by a 5 year-old. Staffs are busy at the café and they do not have staff on watch for the play area.

Under 5 play area! They have a ball pool and some more toys inside!

Birthday party at the Chipmunks!

One of those days, I would love to plan a birthday party at the Chipmunks! It requires booking ahead of the time, so you will need to know when you want to hold it, and how many other kids you will invite.

That is a bit difficult for us as we don’t normally know which weekend we want to hold birthday parties, so we haven’t got around to using this service yet. But it would be an awesome party without doubt. You could organize food and gift packs, and even a visit from the famous Chipmunk!

How much does it cost to use Chipmunks?

The administration fee on entry is dependent on the day – e.g. if it is on the weekend, or if it is on school day, and the location (each location seem to have slightly different price plan).

The Tauranga franchise we went to;
1～2 year olds　 $9.90
3～11 year olds　$12.90 for non-school day,

And　1 – 11 year olds  $9.90 for school day

Supervising adult don’t get charged. The entry fee is one-off payment at the start, so it would be more for the money if you come in early and play for the whole day.  

Recommendations about Chipmunks

We have been to three Chipmunk locations, but all are busy on the weekends. Especially on the day with bad weather, all parents seem to think of the same idea….

But even on those days, it is quieter in the early morning, so my recommendation to go first thing in the morning as they open up.

It gets really busy around 11am-12pm, but some families who came early in the morning will leave without having lunch there, so it does calm down a bit in the afternoon compared with the peak time.

This time, we spent good three hours. Kids had chips and hot-dog munch meal sets, and I enjoyed my latte. It seemed though that even that was not long enough for my kids…. They were ready to play more!