- Spring must be close. We have the first flower on Magnolia Vulcan open and the early miniature daffodils are opening. The English snowdrops are in full flower. Start to panic. Spring will rush upon us and the time for digging and dividing clumping plants will run out.
- Divide clivias now. The leaves on the divisions do not need to be cut back before replanting. Clivias are best in shade and need to be away from frosts.
- Winter is a time for pruning (roses, hydrangeas, all deciduous plants except cherry trees and most evergreen trees and shrubs).
- If you are growing hellebores, do not let all the seedlings around them grow. They are promiscuous seeders and germinating like mad now. If you let all the seedlings grow, the patch can get crowded out. The seed will not normally be true to the parent unless you have controlled the pollination last year.
- Grapes need to be pruned before the sap starts running in mid August. If you want any sort of crop, prune your vines and now is the optimum time.
- Pick kiwifruit and put them in a cool dark place or fridge to extend the season. I enquired from a horticultural scientist friend last year whether it was possible to get a plant of the yellow fleshed kiwifruit and he merely shuddered at the thought (it is tightly protected for commercial reasons) and told me to raise seed.
- Earth up potatoes (mounding the soil around the plants) and you can also earth up around broad beans, brassicas and most green vegetables. It reduces weeds and stabilises the plant, giving more protection to their surface roots. Unlike most ornamental plants, these vegetables do not rot off at the stem if you raise the soil level.
- A precise correspondent tells me that English domestic goddess Nigella Lawson was not named for the flower nigella damascens as I suggested last week. No, her father was a Conservative MP named Nigel and apparently she has two sisters called Horatia and Thomasina (maybe the parents had hoped for sons). I preferred the flower association theory.
Category Archives: Seasonal garden guides
July 20, 2007 Weekly Garden Guide
- Onions like settled ground so prepare the onion bed now for sowing in early spring (late August) and then keep it weed free. If you live inland and have heavy frosts, you can take heart that Jack is meant to break down the clumps and sweeten the soil so his visits are not all bad.
- If you grow frost tender material that needs protecting from the occasional frosts, you may like to try old umbrellas as frost protection. Easier to whip out than frost cloth and don’t blow away like single sheets of newspaper. Our yellow clivias looked quite cute with red and blue brollies earlier this week. A keen new gardener on the coast tells me he put in poles beside his bananas when he planted them and puts up cheap golf umbrellas when frost threatens.
- If you have a well protected spot (not too windy and cold), you can start planting the first crop of peas. Sown now, you may have fresh peas by mid spring (around 2 to 3 months to maturity depending on the variety). Peas are a great crop to grow with children. You won’t get any peas for the cooking pot but at least they will be snacking on something which the Government Food Police will approve of.
- It is still winter cleanup time with copper and oil spray for all deciduous fruit trees and roses. It is usual to prune the roses before spraying but it probably doesn’t matter. Even if you never spray roses in summer, this one winter spray is reputed to make a big difference to their summer performance.
- Haunt the seed stands in the local garden outlets and pick out the annuals you want for this year. Most can be sown in trays now, some can be direct sown in milder coastal areas at least. Ditto spring vegetable plants, especially salad vegetables. Prepare now because time and spring wait for no gardener and will be on us before we realise it.
July 13, 2007 Weekly Garden Guide
- Alas we are told that global warming may not mean a rise in temperature here to enable us to grow our own coconuts and mangoes but merely more extreme weather events such as last week’s tornadoes and Northland’s floods. So do not go planting tropical fruits in the garden this week.
- However, it is a great time for planting all other ornamental trees and shrubs. Where possible, avoid staking when planting out. Some rocking movement encourages the plant to strengthen its trunk to hold itself up. Without wanting to anthropomorphise plants, they do get lazy if you stake them firmly and they rely on the stake. That said, plants in very windy conditions or standards which have not developed sufficient strength in the trunks to hold up their heads yet will need some support. Always use a flexible tie such as old pantyhose or strips of rubber (from inner tubes) to avoid ringbarking the trunk by rubbing. Few plants survive ringbarking. You can buy balls of stockinette in garden centres which last for a couple of seasons in the garden but shun the garish colours if you can. Black is the least intrusive colour for tying plants in the garden.
- It is still good dig and divide weather.
- Prune roses, wisterias and hydrangeas.
- The sweet scent of daphne brightens up the winter garden but if you have just bought a plant, look for a position in half sun with good drainage and friable soil. Outside a window, by a door or path is good for sniffing as you pass.
- August will be a busy time for planting in the vegetable garden so take any opportunity you can to prepare the ground in July. Sow seeds in trays now of lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, silverbeet and spinach so that you have good seedlings ready to plant out in the garden as soon as the weather warms up.
- It is not too late to plant broad beans.
- Winter vegetables may need a winter spray of copper to beat fungal diseases. While you are about it, copper is a good clean up spray for roses and deciduous fruit trees.
July 6, 2007 Weekly Garden Guide
- When the weather is foul and wintery, remind yourself that at least the days are getting longer already. Extended daylight hours are some consolation for the fact that the worst of our weather comes after the shortest day.
- Prune roses. If you have a fire or woodburner, cutting the prunings to short lengths and burning them is one way to go in disposing of this problematic waste. Never put them in the compost heap. They don’t rot down for years. Take flesh wounds from rose thorns seriously. They harbour fungi and bacteria and rose wounds can turn particularly nasty, even to the point of hospitalising you.
- Snowdrops (galanthus) are one of the few bulbs which you can lift and divide when they are in full growth and flower. If you are lucky enough to have these little charmers, they are coming into growth now and you can see where they are. Most bulbs are moved in their dormant season and we have yet to find an explanation of why galanthus are different.
- Prune wisterias but do not cut them off at ground level and then ask why you never get flowers. They flower on last year’s spurs and are treated like a fruit tree. Prune back to three buds on each spur. Take off all the long whippy growths, the wayward branches and badly borer infested branches.
- Cut off old raspberry canes. Raspberries set fruit on the new canes but shorten these new canes where necessary to keep them manageable. Technically the old canes should have been taken off as soon as they finished fruiting but there is no harm done if didn’t.
- Pruning of grape vines can be started now. Generally prune back to one or two buds per spur along the main vine. Remove all spindly growth.. It is the strong thick spurs you want. It looks really drastic but will pay dividends in cropping later.
- Mark harvested some of our first sugar cane yesterday and subjected anybody around to taste testing it. To our surprise, it was actually very sweet, if somewhat stringy. We don’t think it has a great future as a staple crop here, except maybe for biofuel. but these garden oddities add interest.
June 29, 2007 Weekly Garden Guide
- The timing and methodology of rose pruning is a matter of some debate. However, with the cold weather, roses are now dormant and the trigger to spring into new growth again is related to the warming of temperatures. So it does not appear to matter whether you prune now or through until early or even mid August. If you are not inclined to prune carefully, bush roses in particular will apparently respond just as well to a pass over with the hedge clippers. If you have plants with colourful rose hips, you may wish to delay your pruning and enjoy the display. The high health rugosa rose Blanc Double de Coubert has a splendid display of golden autumn coloured foliage in our garden at this time which is a bonus.
- If you are planting new roses, look for full sun and good air movement to encourage healthier growth. Very sheltered spots allow pests and diseases to flourish. As a plant group, many roses have a pathetically small root system when you consider the scale of their growth and their flower power each season. So planting them in optimum conditions will give better results. Well cultivated soil, lots of compost and humus and feeding in springtime at least.
- Ornamental plants need feeding when springing into full growth and through their growing season. Most plants are quietly resting through winter so you are wasting time and money applying fertilisers at this time of the year. Save the fertilising for spring. Most of it will just wash away unused at this time. The exceptions are plants currently in growth such as bulbs and polyanthus.
- There is still time to get in plants of winter vegetables such as brassicas (cauli, broc and cabbage). Celery, onions and shallots can be planted now, along with the garlic you bought last weekend and failed to get in the ground.
- Possibly we are a little late with the warning, but precious plants may need protecting from frosts. Newspaper, shade cloth, bubble wrap or even lightweight sheets will work if you don’t have proper frost cloth. Having draped some of the exposed clivias and the blue lachenalias on Tuesday night, Mark referred to me as the “newspaper fairy” on the loose. But the sheets of newspaper worked and we avoided most damage from what was a severe frost here.
- We did find out what fire fang was (the potential calamity in the compost heap). After cautioning that Mark should perhaps be watching out for Pokémons around the compost, our correspondent informed us that fire fang is in fact an actinomycetes fungus. A white fungus which can occur where there is a combination of animal manure and dry conditions. Mystery solved. We preferred the Pokémon theory.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 