- The season of panic for gardeners is nigh. The slow moving cold days of winter are over and the rush of spring means the pressure is on to get everything done. Priority number one has to be pruning grapevines if you have them – their sap is on the move already. If you are not sure what you are doing, our Outdoor Classrooms on the topic (both winter and summer pruning) show how – click on the Outdoor Classroom topic to the right or type into the search box immediately below the photo of yours truly on the top right.
- Kiwifruit are pruned in a similar manner to raspberries – take out old fruiting canes and weak growths, leaving the best of last season’s new growth to set fruit for next season. It is usual to tie kiwifruit along horizontal supports to increase crop yield and to keep them under control.. We saw them trained to cover pergolas in northern Italy where they were regarded as rather more exotic than here. They were very effective and we are thinking of trying it.
- Keep sowing peas fortnightly and sow onions from seed.
- Get a mulch onto the asparagus patch if you are lucky enough to have one. It is the optimum time for feeding this crop as it breaks dormancy and comes into growth.
- It is the last call for using hormone sprays on the lawn, if you feel you must. After this next week or so, put the spray right away to back of the cupboard until all deciduous plants in your own and your neighbours’ gardens have put on their fresh foliage later in spring. You can cause terrible leaf damage which can last until leaf drop next winter, or even kill the plant in bad cases, with even the slightest whiff of spray drift at the wrong time.
- It is the time for digging and dividing spring and summer perennials which will be coming into growth.
- Do not delay on sowing new lawns or patching balding old ones. The lawn we showed in the last Outdoor Classroom is now a pleasing swathe of green though still very fresh.
- Apparently the use of Cold Water Surf as a moss killer is widely known, judging by the calls I received after last week’s Countdown to Festival. And it is quick – I tried it on a mossy path and within three days it had turned brown. Don’t be too generous lest you be like the person who told me she laid it on so thick that her lawn foamed when it rained. Another caller told me it does not have to be CWS – any washing powder will do so I have bought the cheapest I can find to experiment. Be a little cautious though – it will either be the alkaloids or the phosphates or something caustic that causes the moss to die. In moderation, septic tanks show these are not a problem but you probably don’t want to carpet your environment in them. Vinegar also works.
Category Archives: Seasonal garden guides
In the Garden: August 13, 2010
Prunus Pink Clouds - bringing in the tuis
• Spring has certainly made her presence felt this week and our tui have returned to the flowering cherries, including one distinctive golden brown tui in its third season here. It is the campanulata or Taiwanese cherries in flower at this time which attract the native nectar feeders. Try and buy sterile, named forms if you are planting them because some can seed too freely.
• With the warmer weather, there will be an explosion of germinating weed seeds so be vigilant and try and eradicate this crop before they get established and seed further. Spreading a thick enough layer of mulch will suppress weeds as well as retain moisture levels for when drier weather sets in but lay your mulch after you have done a weeding round, not on top of existing weeds.
• Slugs and snails are also getting more active. If you are looking for alternatives to poisonous baits, you can try baker’s bran in reasonably thick circles or mounds (irresistible to the slimy critters who then get picked off by the birds). Alternatively, ring plants in sand, grit or masses of crushed egg shell – it is not bullet proof but it helps discourage them. Or make traps from the time-honoured hollowed out orange skin or half empty cans of beer – but you do have to go round and squash them after you have encouraged them to congregate. Getting out with a torch at night, especially after rain, can show up quite a number of them too.
• Spare a thought for permanent container plants. They need their potting mix replaced every two years and they need feeding at least once a year in spring. You may need to hose all the old mix off the roots and trim the roots to fit back into the same pot. It is less stressful to the plant to do it now rather than when it starts to look very sad in summer.
• I read a hint in a gardening magazine to trample down green crops before you dig them in to the vegetable garden. The crushing process hastens the breakdown. It seems to make good sense. Get onto digging in any green crops without delay.
• If you still plan to plant fruit trees this season, get right onto it now. The sooner they go in, the better chance they have of getting established. The same applies to all trees and shrubs for the ornamental garden.
• And a bouquet this week to Todd Energy who have started the process to put in screening plantings to block their Mangahewa-C well site from public view. Living as we do in green countryside peppered with ugly, albeit small, industrial sites, we applaud this new move and hope that other energy companies will follow the lead. These sites can be rendered almost invisible to ground level view by simple plantings but it has taken a long time before one company has decided that this is an appropriate priority. By planting the right species, they can contribute to the environment as well.
In the Garden: Friday August 6, 2010
We are harvesting our white sapotes now
- If you can grow orange trees or avocados, you may like to try the white sapote or casimiroa edulis – an exotic taste of Mexico whose fruit ripens at this time of the year. I would describe it as a cross between vanilla icecream and creamy custard in flavour and texture. It will tolerate light frosts only but you can get a good crop in our coastal areas and it is an attractive plant, tropical in appearance.
- In case you are wondering after looking at our Outdoor Classroom this week, Mark sowed a rye and fescue grass seed mix for our lawn. He also added microlina – a fine native grass which he tries to encourage, for which he harvests his own seed. There are experts in grass seed mixes around if you wish to seek out good advice. Turf rye appears to be a good option for shady lawns but sandy lawns (which turn brown in summer) remain problematic if you don’t want to use kikuya.
- Esteemed colleague Glyn Church advised last year that all winter pruning should be finished by the time birds start nesting. Some readers may need to start panicking – it is clear that the birds are gathering nesting materials here and our first clutch of ducklings is imminent. Give grape vines and kiwifruit priority if you have them. Their sap starts to run early.
- If the tastes of Italy are what you covet, you can get Franchi seeds mailorder from Italian Seeds Pronto – the catalogue is available at http://www.italianseedspronto.co.nz or you can buy seeds off the shelf at Vetro or Fresha. These are large packets of seed with plenty to share and a range of Italianate goodies which go beyond the common tomato, capsicum and lettuce varieties.
- Keen veg gardeners will be champing at the bit to prepare the ground for planting out (dig in green crops and start cultivating the ground) and sowing seed in trays or pots to keep under cover in order to get an early start in a few weeks time. You don’t gain anything by trying to get summer seed sown or plants out before the soils have had a chance to start warming up and the risk of frost is past. If you really want to try and push the pace, get a cloche or build a cold frame from old windows. However, carrots, onions, parsnip, beetroot, peas and brassicas don’t mind the cold if you want to be out sowing and planting. Get early crop potatoes in now – by the time they come through in three weeks time, you can mound them over to protect them from late frosts.
- We gave the All Round Bad Idea of the Week Award to the recommendation in a national gardening publication that your wheelie bin makes a great container for growing potatoes (just drill holes in the bottom first, we are advised). Not only do few of us actually own our wheelie bin, as a container for growing potatoes it is miles too deep, will take far too much dirt or potting mix and that doesn’t address how one is supposed to get the harvest out from the bottom later in the season. If you can’t grow them in the ground, try stacks of tyres though why anybody would prefer to fiddle with potatoes in containers eludes us.
In the Garden: July 30, 2010
The low tech slug bait station
- The official start of spring may be another month away but gardeners know that it really starts earlier than that and we can expect significant warming of temperatures in August. This means the pressure is mounting to finish winter pruning. You really do want it done before September and time will run out all too soon. This refers to the usual candidates: grapevines, raspberries, apple and pear trees, hydrangeas, roses, wisteria, hybrid clematis, sasanqua camellias, rhododendrons and most deciduous plants.
- As you complete the winter clean-up round, it is the optimum time for getting fertiliser and mulch laid. Plants will leap into growth soon and that is the time when you see maximum uptake of fertiliser. Laying a good layer of mulch will greatly reduce the spring weed infestation if you do it properly (covering the whole area to a depth of 4 to 6cm). In areas prone to drying out over summer, the mulch layer will conserve moisture levels.
- September will signal the start of the busy planting time for summer vegetable crops. If you were good and sowed down bare areas in autumn green crops, you should be starting to think about digging these in. We are still cold and you need to allow six weeks for the crop to break down in the ground before you start planting again. This means you can be using the ground about mid September.
- If you have already sown early potatoes, keep mounding up the soil around the shoots as they grow (commonly referred to as earthing up). This helps the soil to warm up faster, encouraging more growth, kills the weeds and gives some measure of frost protection to the tender shoots. Early potatoes need every helping hand you can give them and particularly to be given protection from frosts (which means you can’t plant them inland yet).
- Keep an eye on slug and snail attacks on emerging bulbs. I found a treasured spring crocus which I don’t think was meant to have frilled edges to each bloom. Don’t broadcast slug bait like fertiliser. One bait can kill many. Our practice is to establish little bait stations where necessary – a screw top lid from a milk container with a couple of baits and a large shell semi covering it. The shell looks unobtrusive and keeps the bait dry while allowing the varmints in to feed. Don’t forget that slug bait has an attractant in it so you don’t need to carpet the ground so thickly that they trip over the stuff.
- Heavy lichen infestations on plants can be unsightly but rarely poses a threat to plant health. Lichen growth is an indication of very pure air (lichens are one of the first organisms to succumb to pollution). If it worries you, you can do a clean-up spray with copper or lime sulphur. If you are using the latter, keep it to deciduous plants in winter and cover any plants below with a tarpaulin so that they do not get damaged or killed.
In the Garden: July 23, 2010
The cloche, not as Spike the dog briefly thought, a dog agility tunnel
• In response to the many search engine terms I see coming through on line most days, if your buxus (box) hedge is looking brown and the leaves have fallen off, it is dead. If it is still in the mid stage with extensive browning and many areas with no leaves, it is dying. In the vast majority of cases, the problem is buxus blight. It can be treated in its early stages by repeated spraying but you will have to continue spraying because it is a fungus that does not go away. There is no point in replacing the dead sections with more buxus because they will just get infected too. That is it in a nutshell.
• It is time to address problems with lawns. If you insist on using hormone sprays (and some common lawn sprays are hormone based), get it on straight away. If you delay too long, you risk causing severe damage to deciduous plants just breaking dormancy. It doesn’t matter how careful you are – spray drifts invisibly and the slightest whiff can damage other plants at critical times. Our next Outdoor Classroom topic will be on renovating a tired lawn but often all lawns need is a minor bit of attention. Fill hollows and dips with top soil, over sow bare patches, dig out flat weeds, use a garden fork to lift compacted and solid soils.
• Mark is particularly brassed off at the sparrows which have destroyed his freshly germinating peas. He is constructing a moveable frame from split giant bamboo to be covered in netting in an attempt to beat the critters.
• A cloche in the vegetable garden is particularly valuable at this time of the year to protect young crops. Our microgreens are doing very well under cover, though Spike the dog had a brief time when he found the ends unsecured and thought that the cloche resembled an agility tunnel.
• The advice for the ornamental garden is the same as it has been for weeks on end – prune. Time will start to run out for heavy pruning soon. You want it all done before the plants start their spring spurt. Then dig and divide overgrown clumping perennials.
• Onions can be sown now. These are generally done from seed (except for shallots which are grown from segments). Onions are gross feeders and the usual rule of thumb is to plant them where you had a green leafy crop which was heavily fertilised last summer. Where space is limited, any onion types other than spring onions or shallots are probably a low priority because they are cheap to buy and widely available. However commercial onions are usually one of the more heavily sprayed crops so if you are shunning sprays, you may like to give them space at home. Red onions are easy to grow but have a shorter storage life.
• It is time to prune grapevines. We covered this in Outdoor Classroom last year.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 