Pressing Flowers and Leaves This Summer.
Hello friends,
This summer I undertook the process of pressing my own flowers and leaves, with the intention to arrange them in specimen frames.
For years I've seen this done on Instagram and also Pinterest, and I wanted the opportunity to try this myself. I already own a flower press thanks to my husband making me one back in the days when I was pressing and drying leaves and flowers for my New Zealand Certificate in Horticulture, and I've kept the flower press all these years just in case I needed it once again.
So over the summer I wandered around the garden every now and then, picking out flowers and leaves that appealed to me, and then set up my flower press for pressing them.
My flower press is made out of plywood which is sealed with polyurethane, and measures 20 cm wide by 30 cm deep and 10 cm tall, and has 7 sections to press flowers. The flower press is held in place with screws, washers, and wing nuts to apply even pressure over the plywood sheets.
I cut up a large number of newspaper pages to fit the flower press, and got to work laying out the flowers in the sections.
I separated out the flowers and leaves into groups based on what flower and leaf type they were, and also how deep they were, so that similar depth flowers and leaves were pressed together in the same section.
Once the flowers and leaves were separated out, I placed them face down on two pieces of newspaper, making sure the flowers and leaves weren't touching. Two sheets of newspaper were placed on top, and then a plywood board was placed above them to form the next section.
Once all the sections were filled, I placed the last plywood layer on top, and then tightened the screws using the washers and wing nuts to begin pressing the flowers. With all the wing nuts screwed down evenly with the same pressure, the flower press was left in our dry garage for up to two weeks to press and dry the flowers.
When the flower press was finally opened, it was time to remove the flowers and leaves from the paper layers. It can be a little tricky to remove the flowers and leaves without breaking them, but the best method I've found is to pry the paper away from the flowers and leaves (instead of prying the flowers and leaves away from the paper). For more tricky specimens, I used a pair of fine and flat tweezers to slide between the paper and flowers to break the seal.
With the flowers and leaves released from the newspaper, I threw out or recycled the used paper, as sometimes the paper can develop a fungal infection from drying plants, or the paper becomes uneven afterward, making it unsuitable for pressing again. The resulting pressed flowers were laid flat in between tissue paper layers in a cardboard box for storage.
My plan for now is to continue collecting and pressing flowers and leaves, and later on in the year I will begin crafting my specimen frames...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Making Apricot Nectar
Hello friends,
Back in late December 2025, a neighbour turned up on my doorstep with a very large bowl of apricots in her hands, an entire bowl of unripe apricots she had harvested off the apricot tree outside my home. The tree had been planted by our local council on public land, with the intention that any fruit produced would be shared among the neighbours in our street. The fruit had just begun to ripen and fall, and I had been keeping an eye on the tree, and picking up the first few apricots dropping onto the grass each day.
My neighbour had decided to pick every single apricot off the tree in one go — they were not ripe, and were still very bitter. Her intention was to turn all the apricots into jam for herself, because she said she hated to have any fruit wasted. She thought it would be fair to give me a small amount of apricots because I had been looking after the tree throughout the year. So, she gave me a small bowl of apricots, and then went on her merry way to turn all the rest of the apricots into jam...
I have to admit I was annoyed with this occurrence, first of all it meant that no one else in the street could pick any apricots this summer, and two, I now had a bowl of unripe apricots which I now had to ripen. Luckily I had some ripe apricots for eating in my pantry, so I nestled them amongst the unripe apricots, and left them at room temperature with the hope they would indeed ripen.
Five days later, and with the majority of the apricots ripened, I broke them apart to remove the kernels, and then froze them away until I knew what I would make with them all. After taking some time to decide, I found a couple of recipes online, and chose to make some apricot nectar with the apricots, as I am very fond of drinking it on hot days, as it's very refreshing and cooling.
The first step was to defrost the 1 kg of apricots, and then I added it to a large pot along with 1 L of water.
I simmered it for half an hour, until the apricots had completely broken down.
To the pot I then added 500 grams of granulated sugar, and the juice of 1 large lemon, and then simmered the pot for a further 5 minutes while stirring.
At the end of the 5 minutes I took the pot off the heat, and let it cool.
The last thing to do was to pour the apricot nectar mixture through a fine sieve set over a large bowl, and push the apricots through the sieve until no more juice and puree came out. My mum happened to be visiting during this step, so she assisted me with this. She took the apricot remains from the sieve home with her, so she could put them on her Weetbix for breakfast, and she said it was very tasty.
With the sieving of the apricots done, the apricot nectar was ready to use.
I added a small dash of the concentrated nectar to a glass, and then topped it up with some chilled sparkling water. It was very refreshing, and it tasted just like the commercial bottles I had bought. Most of the nectar remaining was stored in the fridge for drinking over the next week.
I decided to dehydrate the remaining apricot nectar into fruit leather, using my dehydrator, and it was equally as delicious as a fruity snack. It was so tasty, that by the time it had dried properly, hubby and I had already started eating it straight off the drying sheet.
All in all, despite the frustrating start to this project, the resulting apricot nectar and fruit leather were very tasty, and I will look forward to repeating this with more apricots each year.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Shallot And Garlic Harvest for 2025
Hello friends,
Today I thought I'd share with you my recent shallot and garlic harvest, which happened in the third week of December in 2025.
All the way back at the end of May in 2025, I sowed shallots for the first time, along with three garlic varieties, Printanor (which I sow each year), Creole, and Fire. Every single year in early December my Printanor garlic gets rust, because in early December our spring weather pattern changes from sunny and dry conditions, to cloudy and damp conditions, which last until after the new year has begun. So in May 2025 I decided to grow two new garlic varieties, Creole, and Fire, with the hope that one of those varieties would be less likely to contract the garlic rust fungus, and give me a better garlic harvest for the season.
The first task was to harvest my shallots. It was my first time growing them, and they were very easy to grow. By the time I harvested them they had all flopped over, with each sown shallot producing 6 - 7 new harvested shallot bulbs. None of the shallot plants showed any sign of rust, even though they had grown side by side with the garlic varieties all throughout the winter and the following spring.
Next up was harvesting the three garlic varieties, which all had contracted the rust fungus in early December. The Creole garlic plants had the least amount of rust on their leaves, but they also had the smallest garlic bulb harvest.
The Fire garlic variety had contracted the worst case of garlic rust fungus on their leaves, but they also gave me the biggest garlic harvest.
And finally, the garlic variety Printanor contracted a moderate amount of garlic rust fungus on their leaves, but they also had a moderate garlic bulb harvest despite the fungus infecting the plants.
All in all, none of the garlic varieties were spared from being infected with the garlic rust fungus in early December, but the Fire variety of garlic did grow the biggest garlic bulbs despite the infection. Unfortunately this means that I haven't found a garlic variety yet that will resist contracting garlic rust in early December, but I can harvest a decent crop of garlic from the Fire and Printanor varieties at least. Garlic plants infected with garlic rust are safe to eat, but they do not store well, so the garlic bulbs have to be processed in other ways to preserve the harvest.
As a bonus while harvesting my shallot and garlic plants, I also harvested a rogue potato plant which had grown in the same garden bed, and we had enough potatoes harvested from this to feed us that night for dinner (and for leftovers afterward). It was our first potato harvest of the growing season, and we enjoyed the boiled new potatoes with a sliver of butter for dinner.
And as for deciding what to do this coming autumn at garlic planting time, first, I think I'll go hunting for some more new garlic varieties to try, and second, I'll grow the Printanor and the Fire varieties again with the hope that maybe, if I'm very lucky, this year my plants will be spared from the dreaded garlic rust virus.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Harvesting, Cooking, And Then Eating A Dahlia Tuber
Hello friends,
Yes, I finally did it. I finally had the opportunity to try harvesting, cooking, and then eating one of my dahlia tubers.
I've been growing dahlias from seed this year as part of my dahlia breeding program, and a lot of the dahlias that flower just don't have the characteristics I'm looking for in a great seedling. Either they're single dahlias, or they have very plain and boring colours, or their flower heads are weak (and they droop), so I pull them out of the ground once I'm sure I know what sort of dahlia they are like.
I plant my dahlia seedlings very close together for spacing reasons, and when I decide that a dahlia is not what I'm looking for, that's when the dahlia seedling is pulled out of the ground, giving more space for other dahlia seedlings to grow in the garden bed.
All ornamental dahlias are edible, particularly the tubers, and their taste apparently is reminiscent of a potato crossed with celery, depending on which dahlia variety you harvest and cook. Dahlia tubers contain inulin (a prebiotic carbohydrate), other carbohydrates, have four times the amount of potassium than bananas have, and are high in fiber, making them a great food source if needed (Dahlia nutrition information (Nsabimana and Bo Jiang 2011).
With all this in mind, the next time I had to remove an unwanted dahlia seedling, I decided it was the time to try cooking and then eating a dahlia myself. The seedling dahlia donating its tubers was Dahlia SR 11, a boring single apricot dahlia variety that had flowered a few times, but its flower hadn't improved at all...
I dug the dahlia out of the ground, removed the stems and leaves, and then washed out as much dirt as possible from the tubers and roots. After bringing the root system of the dahlia into our kitchen, I cut off the small tubers the dahlia seedling had begun to grow. Small dahlia tubers we thought would be less fibrous, and more easy to cook with, compared to older and bigger tubers.
After giving the tubers another wash to remove all the dirt, I peeled the dahlia tubers as was suggested on the internet by other sources. With them now clean, I put the tubers into a small pot containing water, and added a bit of salt (similar to when boiling potatoes).
We brought the pot of water up to a boil, and let the dahlia tubers simmer for 10 minutes. At that point we tested the tubers with a knife and found them to be al dente, which was what my research suggested meant that the dahlia tubers were ready for eating. We cut one of the dahlia tubers up into thin slices and ate the slice plain...
The dahlia tuber was okay to eat, and did indeed taste like a potato crossed with celery (and it was a little earthy tasting too, a bit like beetroot). A bit plain, but okay. We sprinkled a little salt on top of the dahlia tuber slices, and it definitely improved the taste.
Wanting to explore eating the dahlia tubers further, we decided to pan fry the rest of the cooked and sliced tubers, to try out other flavor combinations with them, using ingredients we already had in the kitchen...
Here are the dahlia tuber flavor combinations we tried:
- Chilli and Garlic - Definitely more tasty than plain, the flavor was improved by sprinkling a tiny bit of salt on top to finish.
- Parmesan and Salt - Super tasty when fried plain and then sprinkled with parmesan and salt at the end.
- Basil and Olive Oil and Salt - Quite pleasant, but not as nice as the Parmesan and Salt.
- Fried in Butter with Chilli and Lemon Juice and Garlic - Definitely my favorite. The chilli and lemon and garlic combination made the dahlia tuber super tasty. We think it would've been better with lime juice instead of lemon, but we didn't have any available at the time.
With all those flavor combinations completed, we were out of dahlia tubers to eat, and that was perfectly okay for ending our experiment in dahlia cooking and eating.
I think that doing this experiment in dahlia cooking and eating was a good experience to try once. It was okay to eat, but if it came to a choice between eating potatoes and eating dahlia tubers, potatoes would be my choice every single time. If it ever came to a point that there was no choice but to eat dahlia tubers to survive (like during a zombie apocalypse), I would very happily do it, as long as I didn't need to eat any of my precious named dahlia varieties to do so. Those are sacrosanct, but they would make great seed producing dahlias, and those seeds could then go onto produce seedling dahlias tubers which I would happily to eat in the long term...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.
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