Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

Sustainability – the buzz word for 2009

In between the excesses of food and alcohol which mark the current festive season for many of us, New Year is traditionally a time for reflection and resolutions to do better in the coming year (or weeks, sometimes only days!). So too, have we been reflecting on directions in gardening. It feels like such a short space of time since I used to write deploring the horrors of the pretentious minimalist garden and the clonal aspects of many gardens which used an identical palette of plants and a very narrow palette at that. The minimalist garden is just so passé now that it is consigned in history to the same category as the 1970s conifer garden planted under a mulch of black plastic and either pebbles or scoria. Fad gardening.

But the rise and the rise and the continuing rise in popularity of the vegetable garden and growing fruit trees at home has taken pretty well every professional in the garden and horticulture scene by surprise. Who isn’t growing at least a few lettuces, herbs and mini toms at home these days? Those who have been doing this all their lives will not be surprised at all but are possibly basking in the wholesome glow of virtue. Novices will be discovering that it takes hard work and time to be anywhere near self sufficient and there is no guarantee that it will save you money until you are a great deal more competent and experienced, but the beauty of veg gardening is that there are repeated minor triumphs to encourage you along the way. Intermittent or random reinforcement, it is known as in psychological jargon – the most powerful form of behavioural reward there is.

It is likely that the global economic crisis and the global panic which has yet to hit New Zealand as hard as the UK and USA but which is waiting like the wolf at the door will serve to encourage this desire to be a little less dependent on the supermarket and fruiterer this year at least. And when I think about the books I have received to review in the past couple of years, publishers must have been picking this growing interest in thinking local, eating according to the seasons and producing one’s own food. Both gardening and cookery books have been dominated by these themes in recent times. Yes this is fashion, but not fickle fad of the trite nature of minimalist gardens. And it is very positive garden fashion.

The other underpinning theme that is starting to come through gardening internationally is sustainability. That will, I predict, become the buzz word that will replace organics. Historically, the home vegetable garden and orchard has been practiced reasonably sustainably through the centuries from when our forbears made permanent settlements and moved away from the early slash, burn, crop and move on to fresh ground regime. But ornamental gardening has by no means been a champion of sustainability. In fact it has roots firmly in wealth, power and status and good environmental practice did not even feature on the radar. It still doesn’t, in many cases, but the tide is turning.

The worst excesses of the use of chemicals in the garden have been curtailed to a large degree by government regulation and a jolly good thing too. It is not that long ago that Paraquat used to be seen as a super quick acting alternative weed control to glyphosate. In terms of a heavy duty chemical which was extremely dangerous to humans and all round bad for the environment, Paraquat ranks right up there. And it was only one of many that the toxic generations of gardeners from the 1950s to the 1990s saw as progress but which are now widely deemed unacceptable.

For some time now, I have been advocating a reduction in the application of chemicals in routine garden management, and moving away altogether where possible and I am certainly not a lone voice. I am just reflecting a growing body of opinion which is saying that we gardeners need to be more responsible in how we manage our garden environment and to question some of the very dodgy practices embraced in the past and which some gardeners still follow. The perfect swathe of lawn (in my experience invariably achieved by environmentally bad practice using frequent applications of some pretty heavy duty sprays and chemical fertilisers) may come to be seen as dodgy in the extreme sooner rather than later. As embarrassing as an SUV, in some quarters at least. We have already seen the move away from the mono culture of the rose garden where perfection is achieved by fortnightly spraying. In nature, it is rare to find a mono culture (where only one plant variety grows) and in gardening, mono culture or mass plantings of single varieties is not sustainable either.

Mark is reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma which is both illuminating and somewhat scary, causing him to rethink some long held opinions. No longer can we assume that organics = good for the environment and the planet = more healthy and sustainable. The growth of industrial organics (mass production of food which meets organic regulations to satisfy consumer demand – even frozen organic TV dinners, for goodness sake) can leave a carbon footprint larger than conventional food production, requiring even higher usage of fossil fuels in production. There is a charming and naive association that goes on in most people’s heads whereby organic food evokes images of local, small scale and seasonal production which respects the environment , all typified by the farmers’ markets. This may still be largely true in New Zealand but it is certainly not true in the increase of organic food production overseas which is managed just as cynically as conventional large scale production of anything else. So too with anything labelled natural, which we have been conditioned to accept as superior to unnatural or synthetic and therefore all good for us and for the environment. If you pause to think about it, there are many naturally occurring substances which are not at all good for us or for our planet so all we have done is buy into a marketing term.

I suspect we are seeing a devaluing of the term organic. Watch instead for the term sustainable which embraces most that is good about the organic movement but takes it all a step further philosophically. And as 2009 looks destined to bring us both economic and environmental crises on a scale hitherto unseen, the human response to such massive problems will often be to think smaller, to think locally and to take more responsibility for our own patch where we can influence what happens. That is where sustainable practices in gardening and food production start.

Battening down the garden for summer

After a brief flurry of distinctly warm days a few weeks ago when Mark and I were lured into the swimming pool for the first time this season, we appear to have cooled down again and have had plenty of grey days since. But unlike some places, we can be confident that summer will arrive here and at some point we will get a protracted period of bright light, comparative heat and dry…

Unlikely though it seems to us here, there are parts of the world where you put your garden to bed for winter because there is a period of some months when the ground is too cold to work and the days are too short. Most of the UK falls into this category, as do inland areas in Europe, the US and Canada where the ground can freeze or remain under a blanket of snow and ice. Not so here. Winter in Taranaki is a pretty busy time for gardeners and we are so mild that even the grass continues to grow. Instead, summer is the time when we batten down hatches and prepare for harsher conditions. But only relatively harsher. My late mother used to hate summer. Her beloved Concert Programme got taken over for interminable cricket commentaries and there was very little she could do in the garden. Boredom set in for her and she couldn’t wait for the cooler temperatures and autumn rains.

Forget planting trees and shrubs now. All you will do is stress them badly and it can take quite a while for stressed plants to pick up lost growth. You can dig and divide clumping plants (perennials, grasses and the like) as long as you water them in well but it is best to do this after a bit of rain or they can wilt and sulk and look very sad.

Forget sowing lawns, even if you think a sprinkler is justified. Wait for autumn or spring for this activity.

There are few plants that are best pruned in summer. While roses benefit from constant light pruning, cherry trees are the big exception to the winter and spring pruning rule. In fact, the time to get out and prune your cherries is right now. Where you have patches of dense foliage, it is likely you have witches broom and the entire section needs to be removed. You won’t get flowers on witches broom and, left unchecked, it will take over the whole tree. Beyond that, you can summer prune to shape plants and to remove dead wood, but be very careful not to remove too much foliage because most plants only make a spring growth and are more likely to die if you leave them hacked about at this time of the year.

Container plants will need watering every single day, and more than once a day if they are overplanted hanging baskets or congested pots where it is difficult to keep the required moisture levels high. Don’t be fooled if you see water running out of the bottom of a dry pot – it does not mean you have soaked the plant. All that is happening is that the water is finding an easy path straight through and the roots and potting mix can remain bone dry. If it is really parched, you need a surfactant to encourage the water to penetrate. A squirt of dishwashing liquid will suffice. Unglazed pots such as terracotta and wire hanging baskets dry out even faster and will need more attention. Repotting root bound plants to larger containers makes it easier to keep them watered but make sure you soak the root ball until it is wet through before you pot it. I have put most of my pots to bed for summer – brought in under the nursery irrigation system. I will get them out again in autumn. Lacking an automated irrigation system, home gardeners may have to resort to moving their container plants to shady positions, preferably near a garden tap so that it makes watering easier…

You should have had mulch laid on your garden six to eight weeks ago. Mulch works both ways – it retains existing moisture levels but conversely, if your soil is already dry, it stops any moisture penetrating from above. So there is no point in mulching dry garden beds. And if you think a good soak with the garden hose will get the soil moist enough to lay mulch, try it in one spot and then excavate to see how far the water has gone down. In most cases it will only be a few centimetres which is nowhere near enough. Consign the idea of mulching to the “must-do-next-year basket”. Good gardeners mulch. It is not exciting. It is not spectacular but it is good routine practice.

Experienced vegetable gardeners know that soil which is worked to a fine tilth holds water better than compacted soil. While the top layer will dry and form a crust, it is protecting the moisture levels underneath. It should be possible to develop gardening practices which avoid the need to pour on large quantities of water to the vegetable garden in all but the sandiest of soils. Enriching your soil with humus encourages water retention. Raising beds so that you can flood narrow channels between the rows directs water to the roots where it is needed. Always remember that it is the plant’s roots that need the water, not the foliage. And because you want the roots to go deep, rather than stay on the surface, you want to direct water deeply and not just wet the top which does little more than keep down the dust.

There is some amazement right through the nursery and plant retail industry at just how vegetable gardening has taken off this year, along with the planting of fruit trees. Sure some more desultory gardeners may fall by the wayside, but others will now be enjoying the fruits of their labours and finding that it is enormously rewarding to be able to wander out the back door and pick fresh herbs, vegetables and fruit. It is by no means a certainty that it will save you money, especially not at peak times when there is a glut on the market. You need some experience to be able to work your way into a position where growing produce at home seriously impacts on the food bill. And you need time – quite a bit of time if you are going to do it on a larger scale or to aim for self sufficiency. But the rewards are well and truly there for the converted and the ever increasing number of books on home produce and self sufficiency are an indicator of growing interest in this wholesome activity.

The good news is that at this time of the year, vegetable gardening dovetails in nicely with ornamental gardening. At a time when there is not a great deal to do in the flower garden beyond ongoing weeding, deadheading and general light maintenance, the veg garden is calling loudly. This is a time for intensive input with the start of the summer harvests and the preparation for winter crops. In our household, the call of the vegetable garden always gives Mark a perfect excuse for escaping from the house (sometimes, horrors, even from guests) and hiding out, all the while still feeling busy and virtuous. I wonder if this has any bearing on his recent expansion of the vegetable gardens to two further plots a goodly distance across the property?

A Gardener's Christmas

What I would really like Santa to bring me this Christmas is a genuine kink free hose or two. We own lots of garden hoses here and all are meant to be kink-free. Over a period of time, none are… There is little more annoying than using the hose and finding the water stops suddenly because it kinks in the same spot every time. Then the water pressure either blows it off the tap which sprays water everywhere, or when I bend to straighten the offending kink, the end of the hose suddenly develops a life and will of its own and sprays me with water. Either way, I get wet. Maybe Santa knows a manufacturer of hosepipes which don’t ever go into kinks. I am told that using a hose reel keeps kinks at bay, but as I regularly use four different garden taps, unless I want to keep moving the entire shebang, I would need four hose reels and four brand new hoses which may be asking altogether too much from Santa.

I am hoping Santa may also go to the Boxing Day sales (I may need to accompany him) and buy me two ladders. One needs to be a stable but lightweight two or three step affair for pruning plants which are just above my reach and one needs to be taller for reaching higher. OSH would not like our ladders here at all. They are somewhat unstable and held together by baling twine, but at least they have their rungs.

Other gifts for gardeners that I would recommend include good secateurs. Decent secateurs last for many years (as long as they don’t end up in the compost heap) and will retain a sharp edge for clean cuts. It is false economy to buy cheap secateurs which are invariable nasty. Grape snips, however, are lightweight and cheap and much appreciated by women gardeners with smaller hands (and presumably by Asian gardeners according to the Lockwood Smith school of thought). They are so much easier to carry in a pocket and I prefer them to conventional secateurs for lightweight trimming. If you are feeling generous, give the recipient a couple of pairs. We own a smaller and lightweight pair of secateurs bearing the brand ARS which Mark and I both treasure as being easy to use and keeping a good sharp edge. We bought them years ago for taking cuttings and they have remained firm favourites for ease of use.. I did have a handy secateur sharpener given to me by friends, until I mislaid it (quite possibly with various secateurs and trowels in the compost heap). It doesn’t do anywhere near as good a job as a proper sharpening stone but for a quick-fix sharpen, it works well enough to get by. They are cheap enough and I need to buy another one but I am still waiting for my missing one to reappear.

Pruning saws are not cheap, at least not for a quality brand, but are worth their weight in gold. My preference is for a straight blade, not a curved one.

Every gardener needs more than one wheelbarrow and here, too, you really do get the quality you pay for. The last barrow I purchased was dirt cheap but alas something went wrong in its design and if you put anything in the tray at the handle end, it tips back. If you are going to go for a really cheap option, at least look at an assembled model and try putting a couple of unbreakable items in it before you buy, to check for stability. I recall inheriting a dreadful barrow from my mother with the same design flaw. The big chunky contractor’s barrows are sturdy, but most women will find them too heavy and the handles too thick to use comfortably. Plastic trays don’t rust out if you leave them out in the rain or filled with debris.

Trowels are another item which every gardener needs in multiples. Even with the best of intentions, they go missing on regular occasions, sometimes never to reappear. I am sure that trowels take themselves off to some secret gathering place, there to commune with other wayward trowels, forever safe from discovery. Either that, or they are imbued with some deluded desire to grow up and become spades and they are hiding out in the interim, awaiting their metamorphosis. Mark’s advice is that blue is the easiest colour to find in the garden so he prefers bright blue handles. But many of us can testify that even secateurs and trowels with high viz handles can disappear when your attention is momentarily distracted.

I really prefer not to be given garden ornaments or decorations. These are a matter of personal taste and being rather pernickety in the matter, I would rather chose my own (or have none).

If you are looking for books to give for Christmas, it is hard to go past The Artful Gardener (reviewed on this page last week), by Rose Thodey and Gil Hanly. It is a very good book and would be welcomed by most serious gardeners. In the classics, Hilliers Manual of Trees and Shrubs is a good standby for every bookcase. If you are feeling really generous, Audrey Eagles massive tome on New Zealand plants would be welcomed by most enthusiasts. Botanical art prints are also a safe option, well liked by most people who enjoy plants and gardening. You can often find these reproduced on quality greetings cards and picture frames are so cheap now that it could make a thoughtful gift within even a child’s budget. Botanical art, by the way, shows the botanical detail of the plant being painted – the stamens, petals, seedheads and other parts of the plant anatomy. They are not just chocolate box pictures of pretty flowers which may fall into the same category as garden ornaments and decorations.

Ours is a household which never gives gift vouchers or money in any shape or form. Second hand books are acceptable because they show thought, but gift vouchers are utility and take no thought at all and it is perfectly obvious to the recipient how high a dollar value you place on them. But, as a friend pointed out, others view vouchers differently and gardening vouchers are often well received when other inspiration is lacking.

Another friend suggested sun hat and sun block as a thoughtful gift. I would add that littlies who need help buying small gifts for gardening parents, relatives or grandies could do much worse than giving a new nail brush and hand cream!

The final suggestion over morning coffee for a welcome Christmas gift was a gardener. Although it is more likely that a willing garden labourer is what many of us would prefer. I am not sure that Santa himself fits the bill on this one. A younger, leaner and fitter model would be better to have at one’s beck and call. Preferably one that is amenable, obedient, has a little initiative but not too much and is easy on the eye. Thanks, Santa.

I dream of hostas with a snail free leaf

Hostas have been preoccupying me for the past fortnight. First up, Mark and I volunteered to take a workshop on the topic during our recent festival and were a little taken aback at how many people turned up to hear our pearls of wisdom on the topic. And secondly, I have spent this week dividing and repotting hostas in the nursery. I have reached the point where I even dream about them which may be a sad commentary on the state of my life at the moment. But there are probably worse subjects to dream about than hostas.

When we used to sell plants by mail order, we were often surprised by the number of people who fail to understand that hostas are deciduous – in other words they disappear underground in autumn to re-emerge in all their glory in spring. And it is all that fresh spring growth which is their greatest appeal. That and their endearing tolerance of shaded conditions, even dry shade.

The worst example of hosta ignorance came from a new customer in Auckland. We despatched her order by courier in late autumn and she faxed back to say that the carton had arrived and all the plants were in excellent order, bar the hostas. I can still recall her words: “It appears there has been a rabbit in the carton eating the hosta foliage. Or if the hostas are meant to be like this, then I don’t want them.” I can not remember how we resolved the situation but I am pretty certain we never sent her another plant list. Some customers, as Mark has been known to observe, put the cuss into the word customer.

As with most other plant genus, hosta aficionados like to search out the new or the different (and in the hosta world, new does not always equal visibly different) so a full hosta collection can become rather large. But we are tending the other way and weeding out varieties which have minor variations at best. In fact I find it impossible to tell the difference between Patriot (itself a sport of Francee) and Minute Man. All three varieties are green with a white edge and googling hostas throws up a host of other minor variations of the same original plant. Hostas are not all stable in type and some varieties tend to throw up what are known as sports – aberrations or variations. Occasionally it will be something worth having but that is rare… The flip side of the coin is that the variegated hostas can tend to revert to a plain colour and that reverted part of the clump will often be stronger growing so will take over in time. So if you have a fancy hosta with a plain section, it pays to cut out that reversion. As most of the newer varieties in this country have come in as tissue cultured plantlets (in other words they have not been divided from an established clump but have been increased in a laboratory from cell divisions and grown on agar), the problem of reversions is becoming more common. Tissue culture is not always stable and can throw up variations or reversions.

The most common mistake made by less experienced gardeners is to be seduced by all the wacky variegations and to plant them together – the green with white edging, the reverse variegation of white with a green edging, the blue and yellow both ways and the green and gold options. After all, who wants to buy a plain coloured hosta, especially if it is plain green or a low key blue toned one? My rule of thumb is that every variegated hosta needs at least two plain coloured ones to set it off. So a showy big blue hosta with a yellow edging is going to look a great deal more effective if it is grouped with a small plain yellow and a mid sized plain blue plant. It is the variation in size, leaf shape and some level of restraint in combining patterned leaves which makes a hosta patch pleasing to the eye.

If you can’t bring yourself to buy plainer hostas and nobody is offering you divisions, raise seed. No matter what parent plant you collect the seed from, the vast majority of offspring will return to plain colours, mostly green.

Hostas are predominantly for shady areas of your garden. They are tolerant of very dry shade under trees but equally they will be happy in damper areas with heavy soils. What they don’t like are light soils in full sun – their foliage will just burn and the plants will fail to thrive. You can get away with reasonable light levels on the margins of sunny areas but the paler variegations (the plants with white or pale yellows) will burn and crisp around the edges in direct sun.

The greatest problem with growing good hostas, as every gardener knows, is slugs and snails which feed voraciously on the leaves. I spoke to many garden visitors, particularly from Auckland and Hamilton, who talked about walking out at night and crunching their way across snails and I can remember seeing the phenomenon once in Palmerston North where it was like a horror movie (The Invasion of the Snails, perhaps, or Snails’ Revenge) with literally hundreds of them teaming across a concrete pathway. If you have a snail problem of this magnitude, forget growing anything that is snail fodder. But if you have only a moderate issue with these herbivores, a combination of good selection and good management can keep the problem within manageable bounds. Choose hostas with thicker, tougher leaves rather than the soft and wispy types. Slimy crawlers do not appear to like slithering over gritty surfaces so circling plants with sand, sawdust, baker’s bran or similar will often deflect them elsewhere. We have little problem under our rimu trees with the thick carpet of rimu needles. Yes you can use slug bait, but it is not very nice stuff and can poison dogs, hedgehogs and birds so be very sparing – one bait per plant is all that is required. If you head out with a torch on a misty or rainy night after a dry period, you will often find the hungry offenders on the move.

Given that every discussion about hostas comes down to slug and snail control in the end, I leave you with the thought that most of the slugs in this country and all of our icky snails must have come in on plant material. What I do not understand is why, on those early boats bringing settlers to New Zealand along with all their trappings to remind them of home (blackbirds, thrushes, sparrows, trees and plants), they did not usefully employ themselves on the long sea voyage exercising digital control to ensure that not a single pesky slug or snail survived. It would have saved us a great deal of trouble in the garden.

The view of the washing in the garden

I am of the clothes line generation. A clothes drier is extremely rarely used here. I have been known to take pride in the fact that I raised three children in cloth nappies and never owned a drier. I bought one cheaply in a garage sale some years ago but old habits die hard and it is banished to an outside shed where it is used maybe once or twice a year, and not at all in the last twelve months. Years of relative poverty taught me to conserve power and old habits die hard.

But I find clothes lines reasonably fascinating and it is an ongoing issue to which many garden openers will relate. The bottom line is that it is not okay for garden visitors to be greeted by the sight of your smalls flapping in the wind. Some things are best kept private. We figured some years ago that we could no longer peg the washing on the line during peak garden visiting times. In our case it is exacerbated by the fact that our washing line is a genuine old fashioned model (none of the new fangled rotary types here) which consists of a long wire strung between two trees in a relatively conspicuous position close to the back door with good air movement for optimum drying and all held up by a bamboo prop which we cut as required from our giant bamboo stand down in the park. I like it. It is old fashioned and suits our situation and has served the house inhabitants here well for coming up to 60 years.

We had an elderly friend visited recently and her companion stayed in the car near my washing line (acquaintances and strangers tend to use the car park which is some way distant) while we made our greetings and she asked if they could look around the garden. The companion hopped out of the car and commented that she had been studying my washing on the line. I looked. Being an old school type of person in some ways, I still wash my whites and pales separately and it was a white and pale day. But arthritic fingers (not great for a gardener) mean that I have delegated the task of pegging out the washing on cold days to the other half and I must say that we agreed he had done a splendid job of it and his pegging out was most creditable.

This is not always the case with many men. Back in my earlier days, I used to do some facilitation (goodness knows what it is called in modern parlance) of women’s discussion groups and one of the most successful icebreakers in my repertoire was to get each participant to talk about pegging out the washing. It probably wouldn’t work these days as the clothes drier has replaced the washing line in many households and maybe domestic tasks are shared more equitably, but 20 years ago women used to light up and talk readily about this routine task that we all performed on a daily basis.

Every group would have participants who bemoaned the dreadful job their husbands did if they pegged out the washing. Untidy, misaligned, disordered, tee shirts stretched and all the rest of a multitude of crimes against laundry. All the participants had their own particular style. Some still adhered to that wonderful suburban value that underwear must always be pegged on the inside rows of a rotary clothesline so that it is not visible to anybody who visited during the day. It is difficult to know what to do with bras and knickers if your line is the classic one wire between trees. I met women who had to colour tone their pegs. Ah, pegs. That is a whole new topic of great concern. What sort of peg you like can be very personal. I recall one whose favoured peg was not available in Taranaki. In fact you had to get up to the King Country to find them so every time she travelled north, she would buy a spare packet.

I don’t recall that I was an isolated case in that I could ignore pegs and groups of like items, but I would often (not always) colour tone the arrangement. I still do on occasion. All the blue items adjacent to the striped or spotted green and blue items leading into the greens, the browns, yellows, reds and so to the blacks at the end. A truly multi coloured item could be a source of angst as to where it best fitted in the chain of colour.

This would never suit the perfectionist who wants to group items by use – all tea towels together, all socks in a row matched in pairs and all tee shirts followed by skirts and trousers.

As he has gained more practice in routine pegging out, I notice my other half tends towards that orderly approach and he has mastered skills which are equal to mine in the pegging stakes. Not only that, but he usually brings the washing in and what is more, he folds it as he takes it off the line. I never fail to be impressed.

With only two of us left at home these days, it is a great deal easier to manage staying up to date with the laundry while hiding all evidence from garden visitors over the busy garden open season. Clothes horses do a fine job and I still don’t use the drier. But it may come as no surprise to those who know the Govett Brewster Art Gallery’s permanent collection to hear that Christine Hellyer’s blue washing line installation is a favourite of mine.

I have seen garden designers struggle with placing washing lines in gardens, banishing them to areas around the back, screened from view. The problem is that around the back is often south facing and lacking in adequate sunshine or air movement so it is not an effective solution for drying. The retractable clothes lines which tuck back neatly into a box attached to a wall look to be a tidy solution if you have a suitable building to anchor them but I doubt that many are large enough for family use. And they are not suitable in our situation where the only location would see it stretched over the driveway. Besides, I am fond of my historic one wire with bamboo prop.

But this issue has been around for a fair while. Readers who knew Mark’s late mother may remember her as a woman not lacking in a sense of humour but definitely strong on propriety. I can recall being here about thirty years ago to help her and Felix with hosting an international coach tour. We farewelled them all after a longish visit and walked back to the house where Mimosa was absolutely mortified to see her washing basket sitting on the door step with her lace and nylon bloomers draped out to dry for all the world to see. She had forgotten to move them out of sight. She did have the grace to laugh at herself.