It is always great to see new businesses come to town and even more so when they bring us Italian flavours with the requisite Italian panache and style. Italian Seeds Pronto are New Plymouth based but offer a national mail order service supplying seed of heirloom and heritage vegetable varieties sourced from Italy. They kindly sent samples of pomodoro tomatoes and basil seed packets and I can’t report on the growth and flavour until the end of the season. But if you have ever been to Italy and sampled their very flavoursome fresh produce (best tomatoes I have ever eaten were the ones I consumed there in May), you may want to look at their stylish catalogue. From Italian parsley through to finocchio (fennel bulbs are a favourite here), a range of tomatoes, lettuces, radicchio, Roman cauliflower, rockets, celeriac and more are all available in seed packets.

There is a section of certified organic seed all priced at $8 a packet while the remainder at $6.90 a packet and the catalogue tells you how many seeds you can expect for your money. These seem to be very generous so you can share with friends.

Their website is not up and running yet but they can be contacted at italianseedspronto@ihug.co.nz or phone/fax +64 6 758 4190.

Labour Weekend is traditionally the big time for the vegetable garden plant out, unless you live inland in areas which get late frosts. Certainly in coastal areas, it should be safe now to get pretty well all crops and small plants out into the open. If you are taking plants out from covered conditions in a glasshouse, they may need some hardening off if by some miracle we have warm sunny weather. Give them a couple of hours in the sun and then cover them up with shade cloth or newspaper or any other light cover to stop the sun from burning tender foliage.

• You can now sow direct into the ground such tender crops as melons, tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkin and capsicum but you will get more growth if you start them off in containers in a glasshouse. Corn can be sown straight into the garden now and repeating this fortnightly through the season will extend the supply. It is the same with successional sowings of dwarf beans, peas and lettuces. Get main crop potatoes in and start the kumaras.
• If you have veg plants in pots under cover, take care that they do not get stunted in their growth by getting dry, starved or too big for their pots. Crops like corn never fully recover from being set back and will respond to stress by bolting into flower early as small plants.
• If you are planning to plant hedges, trees or shrubs, get onto it as soon as possible so the plants have a chance to settle in and make some new root growth before we get an extended dry period. We can warm up and dry out alarmingly quickly in early November, especially close to the coast. Ensure that the root ball of the plant is wet through and lay mulch on top of the soil to slow drying out.
• All gardens will benefit from laying mulch. This needs to go on before the soil dries out, not after. A good mulch adds humus to the soil and stops it from getting parched and cracking.

If the weeding calls you, take note of Christopher Lloyd’s comments: Many gardeners will agree that hand-weeding is not the terrible drudgery that it is often made out to be. Some people find it a kind of soothing monotony. It leaves their minds free to develop the plot for their next novel or to perfect the brilliant repartee with which they should have encountered a relative’s latest example of unreasonableness.

When our good friend Tony Barnes was quoted on the gardening pages last week as saying that clivias are generally immune to slug and snail damage, he did not mean that these little critters shun the clivias… What he meant (we assume) is that they don’t eat them. However, if you have a slug and snail problem on nearby plants, you may find that they have taken up residence between the clivia leaves. A daytime search yielded up around 15 or 20 snails hiding in each clivia clump in one of our garden borders. As clivias are often companion planted with hostas, it pays to be aware that they may be daytime sleeping in the clivias and night-time feeding on the surrounding plants.

• While on the subject of hostas, you can still lift and divide these as they come into leaf. Make sure you replant into well cultivated soil. Similarly, clivias can be lifted and divided even when they are in flower.
• Mark the location of daffodil clumps which failed to flower well this spring because you will forget where they are when they go dormant. Dig and thin the patch to encourage flowering or relocate them all to a sunnier position.
• Time is running out for the spring pruning of evergreens… We are starting to panic here so if you haven’t done yours, you are not alone but don’t delay.
• If you have never seen a davidia involucrata (also known as the Dove Tree, Ghost Tree or Handkerchief Tree) in full flower, go and see the one at Tupare. They take a long time to flower but when they do, it can look as if somebody has pegged white hankies all over the tree.
• You are running out of time to get summer crops such as melons, tomatoes, cucumbers and kumaras started – all the crops which need as long a growing season as possible. You can buy plants but it is much cheaper to do it from seed. Scarlet runner beans and green beans can be started now. These are heavy cropping, easy and reliable for home gardeners to grow and should be sown in fortnightly succession to ensure continued supply.
• Earth up early potatoes as they grow. This is reputed to encourage better potato set and reduces competing weeds at the same time.
• Now is the optimum time for getting your vegetable garden producing to maximum capacity for summer crops so don’t put it off any longer.
• If you want big leeks, you can start them now from seed, either in trays or directly into the garden. Leek planting can continue through summer, depending on how large your like your leeks to be. However, it is getting late for onions but you can still get a good crop if you get the seed in now.
• We have never had much success with growing celery and much prefer Florence fennel, but if you like the former, you can sow seed now to plant out in December. The Curious Gardener’s Almanac claims that eating celery results in negative calories. Apparently it burns up more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to start with. That is assuming you don’t fill the central cavity with peanut butter or cream cheese.

It pays to deadhead hellebores (winter roses). The spent flowers provide a splendid nursery for aphids and the seed which eventually falls can germinate too freely and over time the seedlings will compete with established plants and all become choked. It is also a great deal easier to pull out freshly germinating seedlings rather than leaving them until later when you have to dig them, rather than pull them. Being promiscuous flowers, unless you have isolated your plant, the seedlings will not come true to their parent.

• If you are saving hellebore seed, sow it while still very fresh. It does not like being kept and germination rates fall dramatically.
• Trees and shrubs tend to follow a sequence where they flower and then go into growth, so optimum pruning time is often as flowering finishes. Tidy up daphne bushes now but the common odora types are best with light pruning, rather than radical hacking back. If you have a scruffy bholua (the Himalayan daphne), it can be subjected to heavy pruning though it can take a year or two to recover.
• Moss growing on paths can be hazardous, making them slippery and is a common occurrence in our damp climate. There are various products you can buy, though if you price out common household bleach you may find it is cheaper. Heavily diluted swimming pool chlorine will also work. If you want to avoid using chemicals, including chlorine, where the moss is thick you can push hoe or scrape it off and then rake it up. The path will then dry out better and remaining moss spores are more likely to die. Or a water blaster will give a thorough clean up if the path surface is up to it. Be very cautious about laying paths out of old bricks, especially in shady or damp areas. They may look quaint and rustic but they can become veritable skating rinks quite quickly.
• Gaps in perennial beds will be apparent by now and it is a good time to dig up clumps of plants to split up and spread into gaps.
• It is still a little too cool to get too carried away planting out the vegetable garden, except for seeds such as peas and beans. Labour Weekend is the traditional D Day for getting baby plants and summer crops in because the risk of cold snaps is greatly reduced by then. As it is only 2 weeks to Labour Weekend, you need to ensure the garden is cleaned up, dug, raked, rested and ready to receive its crops.
• If your deciduous fruit trees are at the green tip stage (new shoots showing but not yet in flower), you have time to get the critical copper and oil spray on. The oil is to deal to over wintering red spider eggs as well as other nasties, including codling moth. It is best done in winter, but a summer strength oil with copper is better than nothing.

We are heading quickly towards mid spring and plants are romping into growth. This is the time to finish major pruning and shaping. You then follow up later with a light hair cut on the new growth if required.

• As plants put on their new growth, it is the optimum time for feeding them. At a recent dinner party of a number of seasoned gardeners, we all agreed that the local product of BioBoost is as good as any and better and cheaper than most.
• Slugs and snails are at their most active. If you use slug bait, remember that one bait can kill a number of offenders so do not use it like fertiliser. Slug bait is pretty nasty stuff so wear gloves and/or wash your hands thoroughly after handling it. If you don’t like slug bait, getting out at night with a good torch and digital control can effect a reasonably good hit rate, especially on damper nights though it is tricky to manage both torch and umbrella. Spreading gritty material such as sand, sawdust, crushed egg shells, pine or rimu needles discourages many slimy crawlers although they only head off to easier pastures. The old favourites of a buried beer can with a few centimetres of beer at the bottom (they are drawn by the scent and then get trapped or drown) or hollowed out orange skins can attract them until you do a killing round in the morning. It is not friendly to liberate captives into your neighbour’s property. Don’t be sentimental. Squash them.
• The cold blast this week is a timely reminder of the value of cloches in establishing early vegetable crops. The usual modern cloche is a series of hoops with an opaque or clear plastic cover and allows you to cover a decent length but you can get cheaper alternatives for smaller areas. Even opaque plastic milk containers will act as a mini cloche for a single lettuce.
• Plant climbing and dwarf beans, carrots, peas, cauli, broc, beetroot, spinach and salad veg. These can all go directly into the garden as seeds or plants…
• If you didn’t do it last weekend, then get onto planting seeds of melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, aubergines and capsicums into containers as soon as possible. Keep them in a warm spot and you will be ready for planting out at the end of the month. If you have bought little plants of them already growing, don’t check their growth by putting them straight into the garden. It is still too cold in most areas. Pot them on to a larger container if needed and keep them warm and in growth.
• Top dress garlic and strawberries with a light dusting of blood and bone if you haven’t done so already.

In 1939, Jens Jensen pontificated:

In the plan of human conduct there is a marked difference between the mind which sees beauty in a simple violet and which sees it in a pompous rose or dahlia. On the one hand we have a love for the free and untampered flowers of God’s creation and on the other hand for a flower of social ills, sophistication, and conceit.

Well dang me. And there I was thinking that indeed violets are lovely; it is just a shame they can be so invasive. But we had no concept that Mark’s plant breeding could be held responsible for social ills!