- Only mad dogs, Englishmen and dead keen gardeners are doing much in the ornamental garden at the moment. But do stop weeds from going to seed if you want to save yourself a great deal of work later. If you catch them before the seeds are set, you can push hoe them or just pull them out and leave them to frazzle in the sun. But if you can see seed heads formed already, you will have to gather them up and either put them out in the rubbish or hot compost them. Weed seeds will survive baking in the sun and indeed survive most people’s compost heaps which don’t get hot enough to sterilise. If you have rubbish collection, the wheelie bin is the safest option for seeds.
- While you can’t be doing much planting in the ornamental garden, you can at least summer prune, limb up, tidy up and deadhead. We tend to be spring garden specialists in this country and can look rather dull, green and tired in full summer. A grooming round can freshen it all up considerably.
- We summer prune the roses constantly, trimming back to leaf buds where possible, deadheading and generally tidying up the bushes. If you don’t spray your roses, this is an important process to look them looking half way decent. The books all recommend watering and feeding too, but we don’t tend to get around to this.
- Most clematis which have finished the first flush of flowering and which may now be sporting an unfashionable powdered white look (powdery mildew) can be cut back to a few centimetres of growth. Feed them, give them a good drink and they will spring back into fresh growth and even flower for you in about six weeks. You can not do this to all clematis, but most of the hybrids that you buy will respond to this treatment.
- In the vegetable garden, harvest continually to encourage the likes of beans, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes to continue producing fresh crops.
- Even though we have had little real summer yet, the end of January signals the time to get late sowings of corn in to carry you through to early winter. Planted after that, they are unlikely to mature in time.
- Basil is best pinched out to encourage bushy plants.
- Most garlic will be ready to be harvested and alas after a bumper crop last year, we are going to be lucky here to have sufficient to keep the vampires at bay. Store in cool, dark conditions with good air movement – in other words plait them in traditional style or recycle mesh onion bags.
- If you enamoured of the Brussels sprout, you need to be getting in plants right now if you want to be confident of a harvest later. Keep up with sowing fresh salad greens – a little often is the key.
- The new gardening programme on Prime (Sunday at 7.00pm) is all about learning to veg garden but unless you fit the demographic (urban dwelling female, under 40, upwardly socially mobile and probably drinking skinny milk decaf latte and driving a people mover), it may not inspire you.
Category Archives: Seasonal garden guides
In the garden this week January 15, 2010
- Mark is keeping an eagle eye out for the nasty potato and tomato psyllid which has made an unwelcome arrival in this country. A call from a Central Taranaki gardener describing psyllid-like symptoms had him searching the internet for additional information. The psyllid is a bit like a white fly but it will destroy crops if left untreated. It injects a bacteria into the plant in the process of sucking the sap and that bacteria weakens the host. Alas it has been found already in Taranaki. If your potatoes or tomatoes have symptoms which don’t look quite right for standard blight, seek out additional advice. All garden centres have apparently been circulated with information on this pest from Crop and Food. It appears that the psyllid may be easier to control than whitefly and can be treated with a pyrethrum but early action is essential. Plants can grow out of it if you get onto it early enough.
- It is time to get a summer copper spray onto citrus trees. Whilst mostly easy care, the occasional preventative spray on these can pay dividends in avoiding premature fruit drop.
- Winter firewood needs to be felled without delay if it is to dry in time. This is by way of motivating you to get out and prune your cherry trees now. Cherry wood burns well.
- Now is also a good time to get out and carry out summer pruning and limbing up on evergreen trees and shrubs. Cleaning out the accumulated debris from dense conifers can reduce the habitat for slugs and snails and keep the plant in a healthier state with better air movement.
- • Do not let your vegetable garden dry out. Most vegetables put on a great deal of rapid growth and adequate moisture is essential to sustain that.
- Keep mounding up the earth around potatoes. This protects the tubers from the sun which is what turns them green and there is a school of thought that says it leads to a heavier crop but we have not seen proof of this.
- Continue planting successional salad vegetables, green leafy veg, corn, beetroot and dwarf beans.
- The article on the food pages on Tuesday listing edible flowers missed out courgette flowers (divine stuffed with a ricotta mixture – pumpkin flowers can also be used) and day lilies. If you don’t mid sacrificing the flowers, day lily buds are surprising tasty and can be a good addition to salads.
In the garden 08/01/2010
- In the nursery, our rule of thumb has always been that cuttings of deciduous plants should be in by now but you have perhaps another week up your sleeve. If you have a controlled propagation set-up of some form (a heated mat, hot box or similar), you can get more difficult cuttings to root. Easy plants like hydrangeas, some viburnums and grape vines are not so time sensitive, but now is optimal. The general rule for most cuttings is to pick fresh season’s growth which is still green but firm, not floppy or brittle.
- Don’t even think about major re-organisation in ornamental gardens or planting trees and shrubs. Full summer is not the time to do this at all. It is, however, ideal for lifting and dividing bulbs. The spring flowering ones are dormant now while the autumn flowering ones are just going into growth so do them first. When bulbs get too congested, they don’t flower as well or as long. When replanting, remember that they always need good drainage as they can rot out, especially when dormant. Most also do better in full sun.
- Learn from our schools and the current generation of children. Be sun smart. Work in the shade or move a sun umbrella around the garden where you are working during the heat of the day. It is quite pleasant sitting out digging and dividing bulbs under a sun umbrella.
- If your container plants are so dry that water just runs straight through, you will need to take action. Adding a squirt of detergent or surfactant to the water can help as can plunging the entire pot in water, if you can. A little water often is more likely to soak into container plants so water dry plants twice a day.
- In the vegetable garden it is the very last chance to get main crop potatoes in. You can still get a late tomato crop through if you plant strong plants. Corn can continue to be sown until the end of the month with a reasonable expectation of success.
- While some of us are still waiting for summer to make its full statement as opposed to the teasers so far, vegetable gardening is such that one is always looking ahead, in this case to winter (ssshh). If you are really keen, you can be sowing Brussell sprout seed now. February is the month to start swinging into planting most winter veg.
- We are currently harvesting raspberries, loquats, a few strawberries when we beat the birds who have built a secret tunnel into the cloche, rhubarb, tangelos, early season plums (the red Phillips plum), pawpaws, the never ending oranges and avocados. Alas the vegetable repertoire is a little more limited but Mark promises to try harder.
In the garden 01/01/2010
- If you are making only one New Year’s gardening resolution, for long term gains resolve not to let weeds go to seed. Long term it is labour saving. The light rains this week will have given enough moisture to start the next round germinating. Get them early with the push hoe. If you have ignored the last round and they are setting seed now, weed with a bucket at your side or you will be spreading the seed. Unless your compost heap generates high temperatures (and the black plastic types rot the contents, rather than sterilising by heat), keep seed heads out of the compost. You can either put them out in the rubbish (hopefully they get buried so deep in landfill that they can not germinate there) or if you don’t have rubbish collection, putting them in a black plastic rubbish bag in full sun should work.
- Do not delay on dividing the autumn flowering bulbs which will be triggered into growth soon. These include nerines, belladonnas, colchicums (often called the autumn crocus), most ornamental oxalis and cyclamen hederafolium. The rejuvenated clumps will reward you soon enough.
- Flowering cherries are summer pruned to avoid the effect of silver blight. If you have a tree with witches broom, you will have noticed in spring that you had sections which did not flower and where the foliage was much denser and came while the rest of the tree was flowering. Cut out the witches broom before it takes over the entire tree (which it will over time) because then you will have to cut out everything.
- If you had a problem with silver leaves on rhododendrons last year, check for fresh infestations now by looking underneath the leaves. The problem is leaf sucking thrips. The adult thrips are black and thread-like while the youthful offspring are white. The usual approach is to blast them with a systemic insecticide which the plant sucks into its circulation system. If you are not at all keen on this approach, cut out weak and badly infested plants (the damage won’t be showing in the new leaves yet but it will happen), and open up around other plants to increase air movement. Theoretically, an oil spray will suffocate the little critters and you can use a mix of light cooking oil with a squirt of detergent mixed with warm water. However, the problem is that you have to spray directly onto the underside of all leaves because it will only suffocate on contact so this is only practical where you have a very small number of plants. We haven’t tried them but apparently the collars of insecticide wrapped around the trunk can work well. The DIY approach is to secure a band of carpet around the trunk and then inject the concentrated systemic insecticide into the carpet. Wear gloves.
- Garlic can be harvested when you think it has reached a good size. Lift it and leave it on the ground while the foliage dies off. After being given a large bulb of smoked garlic at Christmas, we are keen to try smoking some of this year’s crop to see if it extends its shelf life through the season. Garlic tends to lose its oomph after about six months. The smoked garlic is wonderful for aioli and summer dressings.
- Unlike garlic, you have to wait for the tops of onions to bend over and start to wither before lifting the crop.
- Keep successional sowings of sweet corn, lettuce, salad veg and beans going and in a warm spot, you can plant a late crop of tomatoes.
In the garden 18/12/2009
Often called the New Zealand Christmas tree, the pohutakawa or Metrosideros excelsa is flowering right on cue
In our local city of New Plymouth this week, the sight of the flowering pohutakawa on Currie Street which should gladden the hearts of all but the most determined haters of this wonderful coastal genus. They are flowering right on cue for Christmas. This should mean that both the Patea and Waitara plantings are coming in to their own – well worth an annual trip around to admire this plant which has become an icon of our area.
Got it - Gladiolus papilio
Update: By 7.30am this morning, I had received the first phone call after this item appeared in our local paper: If anybody can name this species gladiolus, we would be pleased to hear. It is indubitably beige in colour with a burgundy flare edged in gold inside the bell flower, very pretty and a million miles from Dame Edna’s gladdies. Despite spending some time on Google, we still have not managed to identify it.
So now we know it is Gladiolus papilio, syn. G. purpurea-auratus, also referred to as the butterfly gladiolus from the Cape of Africa. It is a variable species but we seem to have two distinct forms in NZ – the one shown above and a two-toned red form. A kind reader has promised to send me the red form.
A cautionary tale from a disappointed neighbour who tied up his tomatoes with the stretchy stockinette bought in rolls – the wet weather kept the tie so wet that the poor tomato stems rotted off. A timely copper spray may have helped. Tying more loosely, using freezer twists or nylon string instead could have avoided the constant damp.
If you are feeling a tad discouraged by the weather, you are not alone. While it was brilliant during early November, the past month has been all downhill and everybody else is probably suffering similarly. Friends report roses turned to slush, buxus blight spreading rampantly along with blights and mildews on anything and many things. The good news is that we probably will not have a drought this season and the bushfire risk is non existent.
Weeds are the number one priority. It is much easier to kill them while they are small and conditions mean that they are fair rocketing away at the moment. Make the push hoe your friend and keep it at the ready. We shouldn’t need to mention it, but push hoes are better for the environment than glyphosate and if you don’t have one or more, ask for one from Santa.
In the veg garden you can sow most crops but lay off the brassicas until later in the season. It is not worth the battle with the white butterfly. You can still get tomatoes in for a late crop, but use plants now, not seed. Last chance for planting water melons. Keep successional sowings of corn, beans, peas and salad vegetables going. Thin earlier crops and eat the thinning as micro veg.
As Christmas Day falls next Friday, we will not be back for a fortnight which sees us into the New Year. May we wish all readers a happy and safe festive season. If visitors outstay their welcome, you can always head out to the garden with your secateurs and push hoe. There is something infinitely restful and soothing about the repetitive tasks of gardening.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 