589 Otaraoa Road, RD43, Waitara 4383, New Zealand
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Tikorangi Notes: Friday April 13, 2012.
13 April 2012
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The Cyclamen hederafolium are a delight
Latest Posts:
1) Those who shun all of the vast oxalis family because of the abominable habits of a few miss out on the autumn delights like Oxalis massoniana.
2) Raised beds and to dig or not to dig – that is the question. It seems these days that the rage is for raised beds, irrespective of whether they are needed.
3) GIY broad beans – we are very partial to this crop in our household.
4) Common wisdom is that you should only grow plants well suited to your area and conditions but Real Gardeners know this is a fallacy. It is wonderfully rewarding to succeed with marginal plants. My latest garden diary from Weekend Gardener magazine.
5) Secrets of a Lazy French Cook – nothing whatever to do with gardening, this one. But one of my other activities is book reviewing – mostly recipe books and children’s books (in addition to the gardening ones I receive.) This one is an entertaining read and a handy starting point for classic French dishes.
There has not been a whole lot of gardening going on here in the last week or two – too much energy and time required to renovate our one and only rental house on our property across the road. I think the role of property owner and landlord is much over-rated. But I did finally get to visit New Plymouth’s much loved and awarded new bridge on its coastal walkway. And it is a sensation, evoking the rolling waves so close by. It is wonderful to see a bridge that goes way beyond utilitarian and is dedicated entirely to pedestrians and cyclists. On a gloriously sunny and calm autumn day, it was a magical scene which left me in awe at the beauty of the district where we live.
Tikorangi Notes: Thursday 5 April, 2012
5 April 2012
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The lovely autumn peacock iris, Moraea polystachya, blooms for an exceptionally long time
Latest Posts: Thursday April 5, 2012
1) The pros and cons of the decorative, formal vegetable garden – the potager which seems to have become inordinately fashionable. Personally, we lean more to the meadow style of vegetable gardening.
2) The Ornamental Edible Garden by Diana Anthony and Gil Hanly reviewed. And well done to publisher Batemans, for continuing with some practices we used to take for granted in reference books but which others have done away with in the trend to over simplify for novice gardeners who get treated like children.
3) Brugmansia Noel’s Blush – huge trumpets in peachy pink.
4) Grow it yourself – asparagus. A crop for the long haul, this one, but ranks as my all time number one favourite vegetable.
Tikorangi Diary: March 30, 2012
30 March 2012
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The lovely autumn oxalis - O.eckloniana
Latest posts:
1) Lycoris aurea – the golden spider lily
2) I guess it was inevitable that the thoughts here would be directed to trees after the casualties of last week. We accord them a rather higher value than many New Zealanders who see them as a disposable commodity. Abbie’s column.
3) Grow it yourself: rocket. Merely a humble, quick growing brassica that has been elevated beyond its status in the lexicon of vegetables.
4) In the garden this fortnight and the talk is about sustainability and our guilt over the use of motorised equipment.
The clean up continues
... and Oxalis massoniana
Tikorangi Diary
A magic week of weather has seen first Mark and then Lloyd out cleaning up the fallen totara and Picea omorika. It is done. I rather liked the piles of sawdust like a zebra crossing where the ramrod straight trunk of the picea was cut for firewood. While it looked wonderfully straight, the wood lacked heart and was pretty soft.
The pretty ornamental oxalis are all coming on stream. I used to pot some of each to sell but finally figured that too few people shared my pleasure in these autumn bulbs so it was a waste of time potting them. These days we just enjoy them ourselves. The nerines are starting but won’t peak for another week or two.
Tikorangi Notes: Friday March 23, 2012
23 March 2012
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A salutary lesson in why trees should never be allowed to fork close to the ground - half the totara split out
Latest posts:
1) Ugni molinae or the New Zealand cranberry – a plant that every good family should grow. When it comes to encouraging children to venture out browsing in the garden, it ranks right up alongside fresh peas as a must. It is also easy care and a small shrub so once planted, it will last for years.
2) Clematis tangutica I was a little taken aback to discover that it is regarded as a weed menace in some areas. It has never been a problem here and instead is a source of pleasure in late summer with its lovely pure yellow flowers and silky, tasselled seed heads.
3) Lower maintenance gardening. I am unconvinced that there is any such thing as a low maintenance garden. There are certainly high maintenance gardens, moderate maintenance gardens and lower maintenance gardens but drop down below that and you end up with no garden at all. This week’s column focuses on lower maintenance options as befits a rental property.
4) The Easy Fruit Garden by Clare Matthews might make fruit gardening easy for gardeners in the UK but has little or no application here.
Tikorangi Notes:
At least the falling totara missed the garage
The Picea omorika felled itself
Last week was all about Womad and the weather held for a magic weekend of world music in the beautiful venue of Pukekura Park. By Monday evening, the magic was all used up and a storm of reasonably impressive proportions hit. Even Spike the dog was unnerved when we heard the unmistakeable sounds of large branches cracking and breaking. In the morning, the damage was clear. A large gust had taken out half a totara tree which would be around fifty years old. The wind tunnel created then broke out part of a Picea omorika around the same age. In falling, the totara twisted a large amelanchier and some drastic remedial action will be needed to save any of it.
The clear lesson here is the need to keep trees to a single leader and a good shape from the start. Forked leaders create a point of weakness, even though it may take 50 years to reveal itself.
We escaped lightly. Friends around Oakura report greater damage. It is only a few weeks since Patea to the south bore the brunt of hurricane force winds. The mess here is largely superficial and with the very large trees we have here, we are relieved that it was not a great deal worse.
Damage to the multi forked Picea omorika several metres up
Tikorangi Diary: Friday March 16, 2012
16 March 2012
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What can I say? One of life's more unusual experiences this week. Anda Union.
Is that a Mongolian by my washing line? Why yes, actually, he is.
Latest Posts:
1) Araucaria heterophylla commonly known as Norfolk Island Pine. All I want to do is to put a Christmas star on top each time I see one of these handsome landscape trees.
2) Grow it Yourself Fruit and Nuts by Andrew Steens – the latest offering in the New Zealand garden books market.
3) It’s a plant product so it must be natural and safe, right? Think again. Maybe natural, hardly safe Abbie’s column.
4) Onions. Are they worth the effort to grow?
Tikorangi Notes: Friday March 16, 2012
Each year at this time, New Plymouth hosts Womad, a remarkable event which brings a host of interesting world music performers and musicians to the area. This week we had the delight of hosting Anda Union in the garden giving a special performance for Tikorangi locals, including the two senior classes from the local primary school. These Mongolian performers keep the ancient music of their tribal homelands alive and this includes fascinating throat singing. It is like nothing else, really.
The whole experience was made more memorable because as soon as the musicians arrived, it was clear they wanted to see the garden. I took them on the short tour of the top garden (lunch, hosted by Todd Energy was awaiting them, to be followed by the performance). Their pleasure in seeing the garden was a delight, even if there were some language barriers.
The school children arrived a little early, while the adults were still eating. One of their teachers asked if they could also have a look in the garden so I headed off with them. They were entranced by the magical feel under the rimus (and some of the kids could even identify the trees). When we came to the path down to the park, these bright buttons of 8 to 10 year olds shrieked with delight and sprinted down the hill to play jumping games across the stream. We could have spent a great deal longer looking at different things. Glenys the Gecko was sunbathing on her tree and while it was possible to show her to a few children, pressures of time meant we had to head back to the marquee for Anda Union’s performance.
All this, and it was my birthday too. Mark, naturally, took credit for organising it all for my birthday, even down to the delicious lunch.
Anda Union - bringing the music of bygone Mongolia to Tikorangi.
Tikorangi Notes: Friday 9 March, 2012
9 March 2012
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Latest posts:
1) Big white, scented punctuation marks through the summer woodland – Crinum moorei variegated.
2) Lobelia lore, lest you are in search of a cure for syphilis. Or maybe good summer perennials are more to your taste. I adore blue flowers.
3) Personally, I am far from a fan of the traditional cabbage but should you be more enthusiastic, Grow It Yourself looks at the genre of cabbage this week (and yes, I did mean genre, not genus).
The low tech approach to flushing the stream bed
Tikorangi Notes
We have given up waiting for the summer which is clearly never going to arrive in full strength. At least the autumn bulbs bring some seasonal cheer. The exercise of cleaning out the stream continues in a very low tech manner. Mark has lifted the water level and channels it through a small opening in a purpose built corrugated iron barrier. The current generated is sufficient to flush the mud downstream as long as he stirs it up with the rake, to get the mud particles back in suspension mode. How far he can get it cleaned by this method remains to be seen – the ponds will represent a challenge to span with the barrier. A pontoon, he says he needs. I just can not quite visualise how he will manage a pontoon but all this saves the exercise of having to hire a sludge pump.
The disappointment this week is our yew tree which is looking alarmingly as if it is in decline. Fungal root disease is the verdict – a casualty of an unusually wet summer. As it is about 60 years old and a shapely, clipped feature defying the laws of gravity to lean on an angle, we would be sorry to lose it. We don’t spray much at all these days, but this tree warrants a dose of heavy duty fungicide to see if we can halt its rapid decline.
Felix the Kiwi, our clipped yew, may be succumbing
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An award, not a rum deal.
2 March 2012
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I am thrilled to accept the ALCOHOL SPRONSORSHIP PRESS AWARD for the week, administered by NZ media star Steve Braunias, for my work on the Penguin and Tui story (More Bad Penguin). It is not that we are rum drinkers. It is just that I think it might be the greatest highlight in my writing career to date, supplanting my pride at being voted second most popular writer (beaten only by the TV reviewer) in the local paper some time ago. Fame and rum await, if not fortune.
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Categories: stop press
Abbie Jury, Penguin NZ, plagiarism, Tui NZ Vegetable Garden
