- The run of bad weather has been most unkind to roses. Removing spoiled foliage and sludgy blooms will help reduce disease. Prune back to a leaf bud if there are no more flower buds and let the rose come again, hopefully in a sunny spell for repeat flowering types. Keeping air circulation around the roses also helps to keep fungi and bacteria at bay so try not to let other plants cuddle up too close.
- Wisterias need a summer prune to keep them under control and to maximise flower bud set for next spring. Work out which are the main leaders and remove all the rampant spring growth back to four or five leaf buds from the main stems. Don’t worry if this seems extreme – they will stage a comeback and need their winter prune as well. The summer prune is less precise and can be done with hedgeclippers if you are in a hurry. Keep an eye open for borer holes while you do this. Pouring a bit of cooking oil will smother anything down the hole or you can fill the hole with flyspray.
- The wisteria summer pruning regime also applies to apple trees. Hedgeclippers are better than nothing.
- Keep an eye on container plants. They dry out very quickly from here on through summer, especially if they are rootbound and it is very difficult to get the plant to absorb water if it dries out too much. Liquid feed containers and baskets which are full of hungry annuals or perennials. Shrubs which have been planted with slow release do not generally need liquid feeding as well.
- If you have any convolvulus, you should have sprayed it two weeks ago when it was starting to advance. But better now than leaving it. If it is around special plants, use Roundup but otherwise Banvine is the best option.
- If you are battling wandering jew, get in now while it is flushing and in full growth. Deal to it now before it becomes four times the size. Amitrol or Grazon are the best spray options. Roundup doesn’t touch it. If you are hand pulling it, you have to get every last piece out and load it in to a black plastic rubbish bag and cook it in the sun. Under no circumstances throw it over the bank. Every piece will grow again.
- Get in main crop potatoes now and plant pumpkins before it is too late. It is still all on to plant tomatoes, corn and runner beans while keeping successional sowings of broad beans, peas and lettuces going.
Author Archives: Abbie Jury
This week 8 Dec 2006
- The run of bad weather has been most unkind to roses. Removing spoiled foliage and sludgy blooms will help reduce disease. Prune back to a leaf bud if there are no more flower buds and let the rose come again, hopefully in a sunny spell for repeat flowering types. Keeping air circulation around the roses also helps to keep fungi and bacteria at bay so try not to let other plants cuddle up too close.
- Wisterias need a summer prune to keep them under control and to maximise flower bud set for next spring. Work out which are the main leaders and remove all the rampant spring growth back to four or five leaf buds from the main stems. Don’t worry if this seems extreme – they will stage a comeback and need their winter prune as well. The summer prune is less precise and can be done with hedgeclippers if you are in a hurry. Keep an eye open for borer holes while you do this. Pouring a bit of cooking oil will smother anything down the hole or you can fill the hole with flyspray.
- The wisteria summer pruning regime also applies to apple trees. Hedgeclippers are better than nothing.
- Keep an eye on container plants. They dry out very quickly from here on through summer, especially if they are rootbound and it is very difficult to get the plant to absorb water if it dries out too much. Liquid feed containers and baskets which are full of hungry annuals or perennials. Shrubs which have been planted with slow release do not generally need liquid feeding as well.
- If you have any convolvulus, you should have sprayed it two weeks ago when it was starting to advance. But better now than leaving it. If it is around special plants, use Roundup but otherwise Banvine is the best option.
- If you are battling wandering jew, get in now while it is flushing and in full growth. Deal to it now before it becomes four times the size. Amitrol or Grazon are the best spray options. Roundup doesn’t touch it. If you are hand pulling it, you have to get every last piece out and load it in to a black plastic rubbish bag and cook it in the sun. Under no circumstances throw it over the bank. Every piece will grow again.
- Get in main crop potatoes now and plant pumpkins before it is too late. It is still all on to plant tomatoes, corn and runner beans while keeping successional sowings of broad beans, peas and lettuces going.
A love affair with poppies
I am very partial to poppies. At least to some of them. My mother was an Iceland poppy fan. While she was an accomplished gardener, I doubt that she ever deliberately grew an annual in her life and the Iceland poppies (papaver nudicaule – from the Arctic regions) were the only flower I ever remember her buying in bunches. From memory, they are a cut flower that you buy in the bud stage, burn the stems and then they open in the vase.
I don’t wish to be disloyal to my mother but I don’t share her fondness for the Iceland poppies – the predominance of orange, salmon and yellow colours don’t do it for me. It is the corn poppies and the Himalayan poppies that are bringing me pleasure at this time.
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This week 24 Nov 2006
- If the rain ever stops, consider giving outdoor wooden furniture a protective coating to prevent mould growth, cracking in the sun and complete dehydration. You can buy product from hardware stores which is excellent but I find rather expensive (well, very expensive if you have lots of wooden outdoor furniture). I use a mix of somewhere around one third to one half raw liniseed oil to two thirds or one half turps, brushed on with a paint brush. The turps makes the oil spread more easily and stops the wood from being sticky for long. It should make outdoor furniture last longer. It certainly makes it look better.
- Fertilise, fertilise and fertilise. This is the optimum time of the year to feed everything and hopefully the worst of the rain has passed so any topdressing won’t wash away.
- Shape, prune and feed rhododendrons now as you deadhead them. They are in full growth so will recover faster from heavy pruning.
- Stop picking asparagus now and give them a good feed, if you have not already done so. If you keep picking the spears, you will deplete the crown and weaken the plant for future cropping. After you eating all its early shoots, the plant now needs the chance to put on some foliage and build strength over summer.
- If your new potatoes have succumbed to blight, as ours have, dig them promptly in case the blight travels down in to the tubers and save some for seed for a late autumn crop.
- Keep the successional sowing of corn, peas and salad vegies going.
- With all the recent rain, staying on top of the weeds has been difficult but take any opportunity to hoe and rake the vegetable garden and to handweed flower beds.
- Botrytis is a problem with grapes in the current conditions. A spray with a suitable fungicide which targets botrytis (such as Bravo) may be advisable. It shows up as brown patches on the leaves at this time of the year and will seriously affect fruit set. Keep vines open by removing excess foliage, thin and unwanted growth along with removing all laterals until the fruit is set. Once this has happened, you let the foliage grow to strengthen the plant.
Buying some controversy
Isn’t it wonderful that the Fringe Festival was apparently so successful? Thousands of people turning out to see the gardens, all priced at $2 or less. I am not kidding. Anything that promotes gardening and gets people out enjoying gardens is great. And there is clearly a market for often low key gardens with added attractions such as the The Liquorice Lady and the Rawleighs salesperson, knitting and pickles for sale. A yearning, perhaps, for the nostalgia of the church fete or the early days of the Rhododendron Festival two decades ago.
But now that the Fringe organisers have proven they can do it, perhaps they should no longer be fringe and they should find their own time of the year. How much better to have two separate garden festivals at two different times of the year and have two bites at the cherry? There really is no reason why they should be run at the same time, the very same dates in fact.
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Tikorangi The Jury Garden 