• It is time to make the second cut to large plants you are wrenching (root pruning) in preparation for shifting when the rains finally come. You should have cut two sides several weeks ago. Make the remaining cuts now and let the plant rest for another couple of weeks before you cut any roots below and start the moving process. We remind again to keep the root ball as large as you can physically manage. You can still shift plants that haven’t been wrenched but it does help plant health to do the preparatory work.
• Alas winter is just around the corner and motivation for intensive gardening can wane when it gets cold. Although we are still dry, cooler temperatures mean less stress on the plants and less evaporation so take full advantage of the extended, calm autumn weather to get the autumn clean up done and to plant out if you can get the hosepipe close to water in.
• Polyanthus respond particularly well to lifting and dividing every year or two and the rewards in increased vigour and flowering come quickly. Heucheras are another plant I have found need to be lifted and divided regularly if they are to retain their size and vigour. Give them a cooler position in the garden (not the sunny borders) and plenty of humus-rich, friable soil without root competition from nearby plants.
• Most deciduous perennials will be looking sad and tired. Cut off the dying tops and compost them unless you have noticed that their seed heads are feeding the birds.
• You can plant garlic from now onwards. Don’t plant the cheap Chinese imported stuff – it is from the wrong hemisphere so out of its growing season and often carries viruses which will affect production badly. If you haven’t saved your own fresh garlic from the summer harvest, go and buy some proper New Zealand bulbs. The large cloves will give the best results – each clove should grow to form a bulb. There is a great deal of debate about spacing but if you keep to around 15cm apart and space the rows at 20cm you should be right. Full sun, good drainage and lots of feeding will help get a better crop.
• Sow broad beans.
• If you subscribe to Sky, make a point of watching the Living Channel at 5pm on Sunday afternoons. The British show how to make a really informative and interesting garden programme with BBC Gardeners’ World and what is more, this is actually hot off the production line and is the 2010 series (as opposed to being five years old!).
Category Archives: Seasonal garden guides
In the Garden: April 30, 2010
• I am reliably informed that the autumn colour in colder inland areas is at its very best. The sudden cooling of temperatures in March followed by a long, dry and calm autumn has resulted in a splendid display. If you are wondering why we never get great autumn colour in coastal areas, it is because we lack the sharp seasonal changes which trigger deciduous trees to colour before dropping.
• Cleaning up fallen leaves and spoiled fruit from under your fruiting trees helps to reduce pests and diseases which can winter over in the debris. This is particularly true with apples and pears. Lay a blanket of compost after the clean-up to suppress weeds and to condition the soils.
• If you are wondering how to prune your raspberry bushes, we will do an Outdoor Classroom on this shortly. While timing is not critical, it is easier to see what you are doing when the leaves have dropped. The rule of thumb is that you remove all fruiting canes from this summer and just keep the new canes.
• Finish the autumn feeding round as soon as possible. While evergreen plants don’t go dormant like deciduous plants, their growth slows right down over winter which slows their ability to take up fertiliser. There is no point in feeding deciduous plants which are dormant or in the process of going dormant.
• Despite being horrified at the price and initially suspicious of an approved organic spray for aphids, Mark was pleasantly surprised to find that Yates’ Nature’s Way did actually work on the swan plants – killed the aphids without affecting the monarch caterpillars at all though it needed repeat applications because it is nowhere near as powerful as the pyrethrum based sprays. On the other hand, the Tui product, Eco-Pest, which is primarily canola oil, had absolutely no effect at all on the aphids when applied at the recommended dosage.
• Most gardeners will be looking at some pretty sad and leafless tomato plants by now. Unblemished tomatoes can be ripened off the vine so harvest these now and keep in an airy, light place to ripen. Gather up all the spent tomato plants and leaves and dispose of them in the rubbish or by hot composting to reduce fungi spores wintering over. I see the advice from Andrew Steens in the Weekend Gardener magazine is to put such diseased foliage on your lawn and then run over it repeatedly with a mulcher mower to chomp it up and leave it to feed the worms in your lawn. This of course assumes that you not one of those ecologically challenged types who kills out the worms in your lawn to preserve a better green sward.
• Some time ago, I wrote a glowing review of The Artful Gardener by Rose Thodey and Gil Hanly. I see it has been reduced from $60 to $25 on special at Touchwood Books (www.touchwoodbooks.co.nz). It was worth its original price, let alone the reduced price.
In the garden this week: April 23, 2010
• We are dry. If you dig down a little, you will probably find that even if you have watered, the soil is very dry. Rain will come, we know that. But in the meantime if you have been busy planting, you will need to water until we get some consistent rain. Keep an eye on container plants too. They can get stressed by drought even at this time of the year. If you have laid new lawn or oversown bare patches, it will probably need regular watering.
• It is time to cut back the old Helleborus orientalis foliage and any seed heads that you have left on them. This is optional as an activity but does greatly improve the visibility of the winter flower display. It may also reduce the infestations of aphids in your garden. I have found some heavily infested plants. While you are about it, pull out germinating seedlings to avoid overcrowding. Hellebores are one plant which is less than grateful to be lifted and divided. Raise fresh plants from seed, rather than splitting up established clumps. They can last for years in quite heavily compacted soil. We like to lay a blanket of compost after cutting off the old foliage.
• For cheap winter colour, pansies, primulas and polyanthus can be very cheering. Existing polyanthus plants need dividing often and can be done right now. Proper English primroses are delightful but prefer a cool climate – here we tend to get mostly foliage and little flower. Sadly the auricula branch of the primula family also likes it much colder. Inland gardeners may manage them but in coastal areas, they are more likely to be a waste of effort.
• If you haven’t trimmed your formal hedges, don’t delay.
• If you like silver beet, it is one of the most reliable stand-by plants for the home gardener because you can just keep harvesting off the same plant all season and it will keep growing. Spinach, on the other hand, which some of us much prefer, is picked once and that is generally it. Both can be still be planted.
• Planting in the veg garden continues to be focussed on brassicas but not Brussels (it is a bit late for those now unless you have large plants ready to go in), broad beans, peas and leafy greens. You may enjoy trying some of the quick maturing Asian and oriental greens of the pak choy and mizuna types. Kings Seeds have a superb range of these less common crops available by mailorder but we have also noticed local garden centres extending the range they stock. There are a host of alternatives to silver beet, spinach and Buttercrunch or Iceberg lettuce.
In the Garden – April 16, 2010
- Forward planning is needed if you want to move larger trees and shrubs in winter. This involves wrenching the plant, which is simply cutting the roots in a staggered sequence well in advance of the moving process. This will shock the plant but also encourage it to form fresh young roots. Move as large a root ball as you can physically manage. Make the first cuts now with a sharp spade around two sides of the plant. You will follow up with the next cut in two weeks or so.
- Continue planting out in the ornamental garden and the orchard. Pretty well anything and everything can be planted successfully now though you may need to protect tender material for the first winter as it acclimatises to your conditions. Tender plants are those which do not like cold, wet or frosty conditions.
- The autumn rains trigger a new round of weeds so try and stay on top of these to save work later on. Slugs and snails also become more active with wetter, still mild conditions. If you reduce numbers now, you may reduce the spring population explosion.
- Autumn leaf fall is starting. Raking these into mounds or heaps and keeping them moist will accelerate their breakdown. You can then rake them back thinly over the area later in the season to nourish the soils with leaf litter. There is no excuse for burning leaves.
- If you are harvesting pumpkins, they are best dried out before storage and eat the most blemished specimens first. The softer green skinned buttercup types don’t store anywhere near as long as the armour plated grey skinned ones.
- By now you should have your winter vegetables in the ground. We are not far off planting for spring. You can get in broad beans, spring onions, winter spinach, peas and even leek plants (though they will only make small specimens now) and the ever faithful brassica family. You can start preparing the beds for garlic which can be planted from next month. Dig the area over incorporating compost and animal manures and then leave it to settle down until planting time.
- Get any bare areas which are not going to be planted until spring sown down in green crops as soon as possible. We can not over-emphasise the value of green crops in terms of good, sustainable gardening practice. Vegetable gardening involves constant cropping, stripping goodness from the soil. You need to keep replenishing it and it is so much better to do it by compost, manure and green crops than synthetic fertilisers (which do nothing for the soil structure and the worms).
- Shame on Te Radar. Delightful he may be, but we saw him on Sunday TV filling his new raised vegetable bed with plastic sacks of commercial mix. There is nothing sustainable about that practice.
In the garden this week: April 9, 2010
- Autumn is well and truly here so the summer hiatus in the ornamental garden is over. This is a splendid gardening month. Our temperatures should stay mild well into May so there is some time left in the growing season for plants to settle in. It is a better planting time, as used to be traditional, than in the spring because the plants can establish themselves and prepare to put on a show as soon as the weather warms after winter. Spring is the planting time for very cold climates and none of Taranaki ranks as very cold by international standards.
- If you have been intending to plant a few fruit trees or even an entire home orchard, get out to the garden centres now and see if they have the plants you want in stock yet. However, don’t be like Mark who has already purchased many fruit trees and bushes in anticipation of his new orchard but alas the space has not yet been made available as there is still the remnants of a nursery in it.
- Make sure you buy grafted or budded walnut trees and avocados. Seedlings are a waste of time and space. Walnuts are by far the most widely successful nut in our climate. If you want to try macadamias, keep to grafted named varieties and remember they come from warmer climes so you have to live in our temperate coastal strip and to give the trees maximum warmth and shelter. Walnuts are a great deal hardier and easier to get out of the shell for the home gardener.
- Plant hedges. Plant trees. Plant shrubs. Plant bulbs. Don’t forget the anemones, ranunculus and tulips you may have chilling in the fridge.
- Divide clumping perennials without delay. They will settle in nicely and start re-establishing themselves so as to reward you earlier in spring and summer.
- Don’t delay on sowing new lawns or over sowing bare patches in existing lawns. The grass needs to germinate and get established before growth slows down in winter.
Plant peas now in the hope of a super crop later
- Continue with the autumn feeding round on ornamentals but get this done as soon as possible so the plants have a chance to take it up into their systems. Slow release fertilisers are designed for container plants not for general garden use and they are a great deal more expensive. Keep to the cheaper all purpose fertilisers for spreading on lawns and gardens – blood and bone, nitrophoska blue and Bioboost types. Good compost is also nutritious.
- You can sow peas now for a change from brassicas and green leafy veg. Continue the autumn clean up in the vegetable garden, removing all diseased foliage from the site to break the cycle of re-infection. Sow down bare areas in a green crop. If you just leave it, the weeds will make a green crop but you are building a major problem for next summer when the weed seeds in the soil will explode exponentially.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 