We are not great on growing annuals (my expensive packet of white cosmos seed failed to germinate), but if you use annuals for bedding, you will be wanting to get plants in now for a display when the family turn up for Christmas… If you can be bothered deadheading annuals, it greatly extends their display time because their instinct is to flower, set seed to ensure their continued survival and then die. So delaying the seeding stage forces them to put up more flowers.

• Ornamental pots are remarkably cheap these days and a simple pot planted with annuals now can make a charming gift for Christmas Day – a good gift for widowed aunts or people who like flowers but do not garden much. If you want to do it well, buy a potting mix with a quick release fertiliser added, pop in the baby plants and keep watered and disbudded so the plants grow to fill the pot before you let them set flower buds a couple of weeks out from Christmas.
• Wisterias can be rampant growers and are putting on their spring growth in a bid for world domination. Cut back the long, waving shoots to more manageable proportions – three or four leaf buds out from the branch is all they need. It is the same principle with apple trees which need an early summer prune as soon as the growths sprint away.
• From here on, the ornamental garden is more about summer maintenance – pruning, shaping, mulching and staying on top of weeds. There is a limit to how much creative work and planting you can do over the summer months.
• But it is all go in the vegetable garden where you should be sowing and planting successional crops of all the staples – corn, peas, beans and salad vegetables. Main crop potatoes, kumara, pumpkins and other cucurbits can all be planted. Watch out for pests such as whitefly, aphids, leaf roller caterpillars and the like. Early vigilance can hold them at bay and prevent major problems developing.
• Queen wasps are still on the wing, building up their nests. Mark can be seen out with pyrethrum spray stalking both the queen wasps and the narcissi fly. Getting rid of the queens now holds wasp infestations at bay.
• The one lawn weed worth spraying for is prickly Onehunga weed which makes it impossible to walk barefooted. We should have reminded you earlier to do it – if you have a problem with it, ask at your local garden centre for advice on which spray is currently recommended and permitted and make it a priority.

And a quote from Anon this week: God made rainy days so gardeners could get the housework done.

The sudden arrival of sunshine, heat and dry this week was slightly surprising after the severe cold of the previous week but we have been warning readers for some time about the need to get woody trees and shrubs into the ground as soon as possible. Make sure you soak plants in a bucket of water until the bubbles stop rising before planting, to ensure that the root ball is wet right through. If you are planting into full sun, you may need to acclimatise plants to the bright light by spending a few days having them in full sun for a couple of hours only. Many plants are grown in shady conditions (or under shade cloth) and can burn quickly in our bright sun.

• You can keep on planting out perennials and annuals in the ornamental garden as long as you are willing to water regularly while they settle in. Perennials can be lifted and divided while they are in full growth.
• Autumn flowering bulbs are generally going dormant now so you can lift them and fluff over them from now on if they looked as if they needed some attention earlier this year.
• It is probably safe to mow off your daffodil foliage now even if they have not yet died down. Removing the foliage a little early reduces infestation by the dreaded narcissi fly which lays its eggs in the crown of the bulb so the larvae can hatch and eat it out.
• Top priority this week should be getting mulch onto your garden if you have not yet done so. Bare earth is not good earth. Cover it with compost or some layer of humus to condition the soil and to reduce moisture loss.
• Absolutely last chance to sow seed of delights such as melons, aubergines, tomatoes and capsicums if you hope to get a full crop through. Buying plants is a better option now because they need as long a growing season as possible.
• Continue sowing corn, green beans and main crop potatoes.
• Get a copper spray onto tomatoes to prevent blight.
• Stay on top of the weeds. The push hoe is more friendly to the environment than glyphosate.
• Monarch butterfly enthusiasts will need to keep an eye on over wintered swan plants. The yellow aphid is invading the plants and needs to be destroyed because they do not disappear on their own like other aphids. Digital control (squashing them between your fingers) is the first line of defence as the first of your monarch caterpillars will be coming through and spraying with pyrethrum will kill them as well as the aphids.

If it is all too much for male readers, heed the advice of one T.H. Everett (whoever he may have been): A man should never plant a garden larger than his wife can take care of.

We had a minor triumph here with the first bowl of home grown strawberries this week. It is necessary to cover your strawberries with netting if you want a harvest. The birds are willing to eat them as soon as a small amount of red shows so will beat you to the fruit pretty well every time. We need a little more warmth and sun to bring up the sugar levels but the first fruit of the season are pretty special when you grow them yourself.
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• Limes have a much shorter season than lemons but are excellent to use if, like ours, they are thin skinned and full of juice. A gin drinking friend tells me that you can freeze slices of fresh lime and use them instead of ice cubes in your G & T. A Chinese garden visitor told us it is common practice in Asia to freeze fresh lime slices for use in cooking. And the fresh new leaves are excellent to use in Asian cooking over the next couple of months. They are tender and very aromatic at this time of the year. If you have the space and are in a warmish area, it is worth growing both a lime and a lemon tree.
• We grow quite a bit of citrus fruit in our garden and have fresh oranges all year round. Mark’s parents discovered 40 years ago that having citrus grafted onto trifoliata stock is the secret to growing them successfully this far south.
• This is the worst time of the year for weed growth. Stop this first crop of weeds going to seed or you will rue your failure for years to come. Push hoeing is very effective on a sunny day when the sun will frazzle the weeds but you have to push hoe before the seed heads have formed or rake up the weeds to prevent spreading the seeds.
• Do not delay any longer on getting woody trees and shrubs into the ground so they can get settled in before drier and warmer conditions come (which they will). If you are in an area which dries out quickly (coastal areas like Pukearuhe and Patea), you can heel plants into the vegetable garden for summer and relocate to their final position in autumn.
• Getting the vegetable garden producing for summer and autumn should be a priority. Aubergines, melons, tomatoes, all the members of the cucurbit family (cucumbers, courgettes, pumpkins and the like), main crop potatoes, sweetcorn and kumara can go in now.
• For a fun activity with children, plant sunflower seeds. There is little to rival a giant sunflower for a sense of achievement though you do need to think ahead on how you plan to stake a 2 to 3 metre triffid because the achievement is equalled by the disappointment when littlies find their giant has fallen over or bent and snapped. Dwarf sunflowers are for adults. Give children the real McCoy at least once in their life.
• Start deadheading rhodos as they finish flowering. Apparently if you oil your fingers (olive oil is fine), you don’t get the sticky residue on your fingers.

To be honest, we won’t be doing much in the garden this week beyond talking to visitors and whipping around with the blower vac and lawnmower. Like many others, we are entering our single biggest open garden week of the year. If you don’t have your own garden open, then get out and visit some who do. Even vegetable garden fans have a selection this year in an innovative move (check out the Rhododendron Festival programme for these). What is more, the veg gardens are free or donation only. There is no excuse for staying at home this week.

• If you are tempted to buy plants (and Festival week is a big retail week) get them into the ground as soon as possible because dry and warm weather will come soon. We do not recommend teasing out the roots at planting. The only time the roots should be touched is when you can see a pot-bound plant has resorted to growing its main roots around in circles. In this case you need to liberate the roots or cut them because the poor plant will just stay with spiralling roots. Otherwise, it tends to do more damage than good to tease them out. Make sure you cultivate the ground well so that the young roots can grow out further, plant to the same level as in the pot, firm it down but don’t stamp it down vigorously and mulch it. You can add fertiliser if it makes you happy but we tend to rely on home made compost to feed the plants. Rhododendrons perform best with good drainage (never plant in heavy wet conditions), good air circulation (reduces pests and disease) and reasonable light levels (or they may not set flower buds and can get leggy). Sun for half the day is ideal.
• Now is the optimum time to fertilise most plants. They are in full growth and the uptake of the fertiliser will be most efficient. Read the instructions on quantity – more is not better and you can burn the roots by over fertilising which can result in leaf scorch.
• Deadhead pieris (often called lily of the valley shrubs) if you want good flower set for next season.
• The great vegetable plant out continues. Give priority to crops which need the longest growing season (tomatoes, melons, kumara etc) and to crops which you plant in succession to ensure ongoing harvests ( green beans, peas, corn and salad vegetables). It is important to keep your vegetable garden soils light and aerated. Quick maturing plants don’t like heavy, compacted soil. Avoid walking on beds where you can and make the push hoe your friend.
• Pumpkins can be started on a mound comprised of layers of soil and lawn clippings. The decomposing grass generates heat which speeds up germination and initial growth considerably. Don’t make the heap too big or you may cook the seeds. A metre wide by 60cm high is about the right size.
• Shun hormone spray at this time of the year if you have planted out your tomatoes or have grapevines. Hormone sprays are often used on lawns.

The quote from the week is a thought to ponder while out garden visiting and comes from American landscape architect Thomas Church:

Style is a matter of taste, design a matter of principles.