Author Archives: Abbie Jury

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About Abbie Jury

jury.co.nz Tikorangi The Jury Garden Taranaki NZ

Glam Gardening with a Nod to Things Italianate

Anything La Bella Italia is the New Cool.

Glam gardening is the fashion of the new millenium.

I decided this, dear Reader, based on rather slender evidence but everywhere I look, I see confirmation of these two conclusions. Time was when anything from France was the height of sophistication and style but these days it is Italy that is in vogue. Italian gardening, Italian cooking (anything with olive oil and sun dried tomatoes), to Italian shoes and handbags, to clipped cypresses and tiled entranceways – all add up to Italian style. And we want it, indoors and out.
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This week 11 Aug 2006

  • A bit of an oops last week when we advised harvesting remaining crops of carrots and onions. It should of course have been carrots and parsnips. The onion crop has just been sown.
  • If you are a bit ho hum about cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower or a little bored by utility veggies generally, there is a wonderful array of gourmet seed available locally. Mark could not resist strawberry spinach (can’t wait), asparagus pea (the mind boggles) and Florence fennel. The Florence fennel should yield the fennel bulbs used in Italian cooking but not generally available in greengrocers and supermarkets.
  • Peas are best staked when young to avoid damage and to give them something to climb. Peas can be sown at two weekly intervals to keep a succession in summer.
  • New potatoes planted now should be up by the end of August. They can be protected from late frosts by mounding up soil if it looks as if the new shoots may get burnt. There is a splendid range available in garden shops at the moment and one enterprising New Plymouth garden centre has a pick and mix where you can select as few as five of each variety so you can experiment with different types and not have to buy the whole 3kg bag of one type.
  • While camellias are just starting to come in to their own in the garden, potted plants in garden centres usually open blooms earlier and most will be in full flower now. It is an ideal time to chose and for planting in the garden. Camellias also make splendid specimens in containers – just make sure you have plenty of drainage holes at the bottom of your container and don’t drown a small plant in an oversized pot.
  • Container plants need to be repotted every couple of years. Winter is a good time to do it, especially if the plant is struggling or you plan to trim back the root ball. The cooler weather reduces stress on the plant. If you trim the roots, make sure you trim the top as well so that a reduced root system is not struggling to support on oversized top.
  • Buying deciduous plants in winter when they look like a cluster of bare sticks takes trust, but now is the best time for planting and garden centres will have their best selection available at this time.
  • It is a good time to look at your young deciduous trees and to keep them to a single trunk while you can see what you are doing and before the sap rises. Double leaders can lead to structural problems later and don’t look great.

This week 4 August 2006

  • If your magnolias are opening with some badly deformed flowers, the likely cause is a possum with a taste for the buds. It will eat the centre out, leaving the bud looking fine until it tries to open. The best solution we know is high velocity inter cranial lead but if you are in town, you will have to resort to trapping. It is usually only one critter that discovers this morsel. It is not part of their staple diet. If you want to make sure you have caught the offender, you can do an autopsy (as Mark does) and examine the contents of its stomach but this is not compulsory.
  • Now is the time to prune deciduous trees of all makes and models except prunus (flowering cherries). The idea is to do this before the sap is flowing, which won’t be long. Cherries get pruned in summer because of the fear of introducing silver blight.
  • Slugs and snails are on the move. Remember that slug bait is toxic to dogs and hedgehogs and should not be laid on like fertiliser. One bait can kill a number of the slimy creatures and a little often is a great deal better than a lot in one application. Strategically placed, one bait per plant is all that is needed.
  • Harvest remaining carrots and onions now and store in the fridge or a cool place. If you don’t harvest them, they will go into growth shortly and lose their flavour and texture.
  • It is all go for planting in the vegetable garden. In sheltered warmer positions, seed and plants of most brassicas and other utility vegies including beetroot, onions, carrots and peas can all be planted.
  • Salad lettuces and lettuce mixes can be sown into the garden or, for quicker results, into trays in a covered area like a conservatory for harvesting as micro greens.
  • A light application to lawns of a nitrogen based fertiliser such as urea or Bioboost will give a quick fix to tired or yellow grass. “Light” is the key word here – spring is the main time for feeding the lawns. This application is a pick-me-up only.

The ever popular daphnes

I have never forgotten nursery colleagues of ours saying that they grew daphnes and lemon trees “because pretty well every garden has at least one of each”. In the case of daphnes, it is a continuing market because they need replacing now and again and there is always room for one more.

For most people, daphnes begin and end with odora – the fragrant and delightful shrub in flower now. In fact there are about fifty different species, although the number commercially available in this country is closer to four or five and there are probably a thousand odora selections sold to every one of the others.
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This week July 28 2006

  • Prune and shape sasanqua camellias. These are the autumn flowering camellias which are finishing flowering. The rule of thumb is to prune most plants after flowering. Sasanqua hedges can be clipped now or specimen plants shaped and thinned.
  • Rose pruning: those in very cold areas might chose to wait until next month but in most of Taranaki, rose pruning is happening now or has been done already. If you don’t want to fiddle with cutting each branch back to an outward facing bud, a pass over with the hedge clippers is less elegant but reputedly effective. Keep rose prunings out of the compost. They need to be burned or fed through a mulcher. Treat any skin wounds from rose thorns with respect. Major infections are not unknown to unwary pruners.
  • For those fortunate enough to have macadamia and avocado trees, watch out for rats who will race you to both if you are slow off the mark. There is nothing worse than finding a rat has beaten you to the last of the avocadoes or that it has drilled though the macadamia shells.
  • Carrot seed can be sown directly into the garden. Protect the seed from heavy rain until it has germinated. We use a narrow strip of nova roof. Alternatively, a top dressing of compost will stop the soil caking before the fine seed starts sprouting.
  • Now is a good time to sow onions, to be harvested in summer.
  • Asparagus divisions are available in the shops. This luxury vegetable is a permanent fixture in the garden and takes three years before you can start to harvest a crop. That said, if you have the space and plan to stay, there are few delights to equal heading out to pick your own asparagus in spring. With our good drainage in Taranaki, we don’t need to worry about putting drainage material (gravel and the like) at the bottom of trench, but the recommendation is to prepare a bed by digging 60cm deep and incorporating compost, then planting the divisions at 45cm spacings with the crown 10cm below the surface. Mark thought he had dug to China when he prepared his trench for our new bed (double digging it all, too) but in fact he barely got more than 35cm so the 60cm recommendation may be a bit over the top.
  • Mark is just now finishing pruning the grapevines – even we follow our own advice, albeit a week late.