Posted by shiny on May 01, 2026 at 00:00 and edited at September 20, 2026 at 10:39

Autumn is when the garden hands over the last of what it's got, and the cider press comes back out.

The last of the harvest

• Mar 26 — still harvesting.
• Apr 6 — some whataroa harvested.
• Apr 19 — risotto for dinner, made with pumpkin that grew straight out of the compost, plus onion and elephant garlic harvested back in February. Rice and butter were the only two ingredients that didn't come from home.
• Apr 26 — my entire kumara harvest went into a single meal. Wellington, it turns out, is not really kumara-growing country — not yet, anyway, despite what climate change might do to that over time. Same day: roast butterflied chicken, kumara, pumpkin, and new potatoes — described at the time as "the last harvest from the season."

So many pumpkins

By early May the pumpkins were done — genuinely so many pumpkins that I harvested "the last one" and then immediately qualified it with "unless I find another hiding behind a tree next weekend." That's pumpkin season in one sentence.

Cider season

Apples went from tree to fermenter in June: crushed, pressed, and into the fermenter, with a borrowed splash of surplus vodka for the airlock. By June 21st, 30 litres of cider were bottled, and a feijoa wine ferment was starting up right behind it.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, the honest math of the whole exercise came out: about twice a year, a 20kg bag of flour for around $40 is the only real grocery expense for a meal — everything else is garden, saved seed, and compost.

Next up: what a year of harvesting and preserving actually adds up to, sitting in the larder.

Photos: today's harvest (Mar 26), whataroa harvest (Apr 6).