Category Archives: Garden lore

Wisdom and hints

Garden lore

It is obvious that close planting [of shrubs] gives a furnished look to a border almost immediately, equally obvious that it is wasteful and expensive.

The Well-Tempered Garden by Christopher Lloyd (1973).

Dead heading rhododendrons

The usual advice is to dead head all rhododendrons. In fact, while they all look a great deal better for dead heading, it is really only necessary to do the ones that set seed. You will be able to tell by looking, if you didn’t do them last year, because they will have spent pods similar (but almost certainly smaller) to the ones shown in the photo. Some rhododendrons can set so much seed that they weaken themselves and eventually die. My neighbour swears by coating his fingers in olive oil before he goes out to dead head. It stops the gunky residue from making your hands sticky.

Garden lore

It surprised him to discover that gardening, for all its air of prelapsarian serenity, is furiously competitive, frequently indulged in by the envious, the deceitful, the quietly criminal.

The Pedant in the Kitchen by Julian Barnes (2003).

Onehunga weed or prickle weed in the lawn.

Onehunga Weed

Onehunga Weed

The greatest curse of the lawn is the prickly Onehunga weed. If you know you had it last year – prickles in the feet- now is the time to act. It will take several years to eradicate entirely, but it will get worse if you leave it. You want to break the cycle and stop it from setting seed in early summer. These weeds are annuals – usually they germinate in autumn, romp away in spring (right now, in fact), flower, set seed and prickles and die as lawns dry out over summer. If you only have a little, hand weed it. There are specific sprays developed for Onehunga weed (ask at your local garden centre). We prefer to let the grass grow considerably longer than usual and then follow up in two to three weeks time by cutting it very short – scalping it in fact. The growth stretches the Onehunga weed up and it does not survive being cut very short. Timing is of the essence – if you leave it too late, the prickles and seeds will be developing. Onehunga weed does best in poor conditions. It is not so good at competing in a lush, healthy lawn.

Garden lore

If you have a flowering cherry (prunus) with large areas which haven’t bloomed this spring, it is likely it has witch’s broom. Those branches will sprout much denser foliage than the rest of the tree and will take over the tree if left unchecked. Mark the base of the affected branches (spray on paint cans are good for this) and cut them out in summer which is the time for pruning these trees. Cherry trees of Japanese origin are particularly vulnerable to this affliction and if you don’t do anything about it, you will end up taking out the entire tree because it will not flower at all.

“The best way to get real enjoyment out of the garden is to put on a wide straw hat, hold a little trowel in one hand and a cool drink in the other, and tell the man where to dig.”

Charles Barr
(about whom information is hard to find, beyond this particular quote).

Garden lore

Labour Weekend is the time honoured occasion for getting the bulk of summer vegetables planted in this country, particularly those which require the soil to have warmed up a little. If you prepare the beds as soon as possible and leave them without planting, there should be time enough for the first crop of weed seeds to germinate. If you then push hoe these on a sunny day, you will save yourself quite a bit of weeding later. You want to catch them just as you get the haze of green showing. If you have enough time to allow for two flushes of weeds before planting, so much the better.

“These are most anxious times on account of the slugs. Now every morning when I rise I go at once to the garden at four o’clock and make a business of slaughtering them till half past five, when I stop for breakfast.”

An Island Garden by Celia Thaxter, 1894

Such dedication!

Garden lore

Don’t wait until January to batten down the hatches for summer. As you do the spring tidy and weed, follow up by laying mulch. This slows the soil from drying out over summer and suppresses many weeds from germinating. A loose layer of compost, bark chip, calf shed shavings or similar organic material needs to be about 6cm deep in order to be effective. For more information on garden mulches, check out Outdoor Classroom.

“Hoeing: a manual method of severing roots from stems of newly planted flowers and vegetables.”

Henry Beard (American humourist).