I don’t consider myself a bad gardener, but.. I haven’t exactly had the best of luck growing stuff in NZ. I’ve been cursed with insects, diseases, funghi (& not the yummy kind), bad soil, extreme weather; you name it, I’ve dealt with it.

Despite living in an apartment, I’ve always wanted to be self-sufficient. I don’t have a lot of space or soil to play with but I’ve experimented with a wide variety of edible plants over the last few years. Not many are still with me however. After a plague of whitefly a few months ago I lost a lot of plants & sadly had to toss most of my garden including a tomato plant I nursed into season & was just starting to produce fruit when it became over-run & infested. So sad.

I was starting to lose hope & ready to give up. The remainder of my plants were looking so ill after all the stress & disease the whiteflies carried. I was looking into hydroponics & other techniques that might be a little easier to control but really I had given up.

Then a couple of weeks ago I was chatting to my remaining capsicum plants (bell peppers to the US folk) & to my surprise they were totally thriving & producing little flowers of hope! This week I am over-run with capsicum! I counted more than a dozen on just 4 plants!

I couldn’t be more proud of the hardy little plants right now. They’ve lived through everything & are giving us beautiful vegetables. So this post is dedicated to the wonderful things that give life all their might, keep growing upwards & push through the bad times.

Here they are in all their glory

…and here’s the little guy that made it onto our pizza last night!