Plant Collector: Arisaema sikokianum

Arisaema sikokianum

Arisaema sikokianum

You have to love arisaemas. They are notable for their ability to change sex. When immature or not growing strongly, they are male. When romping away with vim and vigour, they become female and capable of setting seed. The poor weak male will still flower but is only suitable as a pollen donor. Should the female weaken itself by setting too much seed or coming under stress, it will have a little rest, becoming a male again. Is this a commentary on the human condition, I ask.

A. sikokianum is a Japanese species, remarkable because it is one of the few which holds it head above the foliage. Most varieties hide coyly beneath a canopy of leaves but sikokianum stands erect and proud, and somewhat phallic in appearance even when female. It grows from a flattish, circular corm but the problem is that, unlike most corms, bulbs and tubers (including most other arisaemas), it doesn’t multiply and set offshoots. You have to gather seed to increase it by raising them in pots or seed trays. But it is worth the effort to get a little clump or drift because the flowers last for weeks and are truly eye-catching. These are woodland plants, happiest with a light canopy of trees above, and humus rich soil which never dries out but which never gets waterlogged.

Arisaemas belong to the Araceae family which also includes arum lilies and the mouse plant (arisarum). You may have picked certain similarities in appearance, though they are not close relatives. A. sikokianum is available in New Zealand though you will have to search it out. These treasures are not standard garden department fare in this day and age. We also have quite a bit of success with A. speciosum (which is easy to grow and multiply) and A. candidissimum, if you find them available but we struggle with some of the showy varieties which need more of a winter chill.

Grow it Yourself: gherkins and cucumbers

Gherkins are a pickling cucumber. Cucumbers are actually a tropical plant so are not going to want to be planted out until temperatures have risen. By all means start them from seed now but keep the babies under cover for a few more weeks. But is it worth growing gherkins at home? Fresh, home pickled gherkins should always taste much better than those commercially produced but you have to be pretty passionate about them to want to grow them yourself. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking you will put in one plant because then you will get a few baby gherkins every few days whereas what you want is plenty of them all at once so you can start the pickling process. You probably need about five plants, each of which will take up a square metre, and then pull them out and compost them as soon as you have harvested sufficient quantities.

All the cucurbits are gross feeders (hungry plants) so they need rich, fertile soil in full sun with plenty of depth to get their roots well down. They also need plenty of water during the heat of summer but as they are prone to mildew and all sorts of nasty diseases including Fusarium wilt, you are best to direct water to the root zone and avoid wetting the foliage. Keep the sprinkler well away. You can train the runners over a frame or structure to reduce the amount of ground space required or you can just leave them to sprawl over the ground like pumpkins. Personally, I think it is worth making more effort with a few cucumber plants which will gently crop from January to early April, when salad veg are most in demand. I am particularly keen on the little Lebanese cucumber. But then I would say that because we have neighbours who adore pickled gherkins. We make land available, they grow them and pickle them and give us a jar or two.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday October 14, 2011

Feeding from both the veltheimia and the agapetes

Feeding from both the veltheimia and the agapetes

Latest Posts:

1) ‘Tis spring – must be rhododendron time. R. johnstoneanum “Ken Burns” in Plant Collector this week.
2) A call for more rigour and less fervour in Abbie’s column this week – what used to be called The Good Life (courtesy of Felicity Kendall and whover Briars – was it Richard?) but is now styled Green Urban Living.
3) Grow it Yourself – beetroot this week.
4) Tikorangi Diary and notes about half price clearance special on most magnolias.

Tikorangi Notes:
I was delighted by the sight of the little waxeye gathering nectar from the veltheimia flowers outside my office window. We often see them working the Agapetes serpens (which I describe as the waxeye bush, for its ability to feed the birds) but this is the first time I have seen one feeding on the veltheimia which looks better suited to humming birds because of its very long, tubular flowers. We do not have humming birds in this country which has always seemed a bit of a pity to me. We would gladly trade blackbirds and sparrows for humming birds.

Rain has not helped the garden preparation this week – our annual festival (now styled the Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacular) starts in a fortnight so the pressure is on. I did feel sorry for the tour group here on Wednesday when it was hosing down but at least it wasn’t windy or cold! The magnolia season is drawing to a close with only Serene looking picture perfect now. But the michelias (now also reclassified as magnolias) have a longer season. The first of Mark’s new series, Fairy Magnolia Blush, is looking particularly pink this year. Indubitably pink which, in the world of white michelias, is pretty remarkable. More rhododendrons open every day though the maddenii and nuttallii types are generally later flowering and won’t be doing much for another fortnight. The garden is open every day now and we are generally around for plant sales – sound the car horn if we do not appear because we will be in the garden.

Indubitably very pink this season - Fairy Magnolia Blush

Indubitably very pink this season - Fairy Magnolia Blush

Rhododendon johnstoneaum “Ken Burns”

Rhododendron johnstoneanum "Ken Burns"

Rhododendron johnstoneanum "Ken Burns"

October is the peak time for rhododendrons and while this group of plants has seen a considerable slide in popularity in recent years, there is delicious anticipation in watching buds fatten, show colour and then gradually open. We would not want to be without plenty of them in our garden and this week it is “Ken Burns” that is looking delightful. It is hard to describe the colour. I would call it honey buff, others describe it as champagne. The buds are buffy yellow with a pink flush and the fully open flowers fade out to a cream with a yellow throat. It is even lightly scented. The leaves are quite small and slightly hairy and the plant stays well furnished and compact to about 1.2 metres high and a similar width. But for those of us living in warmer parts of the country, one of the real stand-out features of “Ken Burns” is that it stays healthy and rarely gets affected by nasty thrips (which turn the leaves silver and weaken the plant) or by sun scorch.

I had always thought that this is just a superior selection of the species R. johnstoneanum (which is as it occurs in the wild – raising species from seed gives variation within the seedlings), but it appears that there is a school of thought that it may be a natural hybrid (in other words, R. johnstoneaum crossed with something else unknown). The story goes that the original plant was growing in the garden of Mr Ken Burns who lived near Timaru and it was nearly lost when a bullock leaned too heavily on the fence and inflicted major damage on it. Somebody salvaged the plant and named it for Mr Burns. It is not at all the done thing to name plants after oneself. Since then, all plants bearing this name have been propagated by cutting which keeps the plant true to name. To raise it from seed would be to give rise to more seedling variation so it would no longer be “Ken Burns”.

The latest take on living sustainably

First published in the Waikato Times and reproduced here with their permission.

Ah, the romance of picture book chookies in your back yard

Ah, the romance of picture book chookies in your back yard

The Good Life has come to Havelock North, but it has been renamed Green Urban Living and it is all absolutely simple and easy to manage, requiring very little time. That is according to author, Janet Luke, who has written a book of encyclopaedic spread (but not encyclopaedic detail) based on her own personal experience. The book is backed up by 32 You Tube clips and many website references.

Topics covered include setting up a green urban garden, compost, sustainable water use, growing vegetables, fruit, herbs, flowers (an eclectic mix ranging from paeonies to sunflowers to globe thistles), keeping chickens, beekeeping, worm farms, gardening with kids – all peppered with Top Tips, recipes, and hints. Plus photos – all in 172 pages. It is a very busy book.

On the positive side, the author is passionate about her topic and comes to it from practical and personal experience. If you are into the new age, trendy urban living which wants to be green but is not too purist, then you may well find the enthusiasm and simplified advice in this book is a wonderful motivator. I looked at some of the You Tube clips and there is an engaging naivety and brevity about them. Janet Luke has worked extremely hard to put together a comprehensive but user-friendly package.

If you are a crusty, hardened old cynic who has been through all this (going green is hardly a new concept – many of us chose that way back in the mists of the post Woodstock era of the 1970s), then the newfound zeal, sweeping statements and sometimes very woolly thinking of the latest converts can seem a little like reinventing the wheel.

Green? Hmm. I don’t see buying grow bags filled with potting mix as being green. Nor do I think wheeling your barrow around your neighbourhood as soon as you hear a lawnmower start up is particularly green. For starters, you have no idea what chemicals your neighbours may have used on their lawns (some lawn clippings are too toxic to use in a compost heap). Added to that, you are taking away their organic material to your site – which hardly follows permaculture principles.

Do we really believe that cabbage whites have large enough brains to be duped?

Do we really believe that cabbage whites have large enough brains to be duped?

We are deeply suspicious of the claim that white butterflies are territorial. The current received wisdom is that you can deter incoming cabbage whites by putting half eggshells on sticks amongst your brassicas, fooling them into thinking that another cabbage white is already in residence. This is not the first time I have seen this claim so I did a quick Google search to see if I could find a credible source to confirm it. The key word here is credible. I failed. We are storing our eggshells and when the first cabbage whites of the season show up here, Mark will be out testing this theory. Having observed clouds of cabbage whites on crops such as swedes, we lean to the view that this piece of advice is more wishful thinking than actual fact.

But it is not doubt that we feel regarding the claims that commercial corn is mostly genetically modified and controlled by the terminator gene so it makes sense to keep to heirloom varieties. The author clearly has not got to grips with the differences between F1 hybrids, line breeding, selection, genetic modification and the terminator gene. And seed companies in NZ like Kings and Yates might be a little annoyed to see the suggestion that their product is GM. Internationally, many commercial crops of maize have undergone genetic modification (in which case, it can equally be argued that the dreaded terminator gene is a good thing because it will stop the escape of some GM material into the wider environment), but what is sold in this country, certainly for home gardeners, is not GM. It is either the result of controlled crosses (which is an F1 hybrid) or of line breeding (selecting out the best performing cobs and continuing with them). That is what has brought us the new generation, sweet and tender corn that we all expect now. By all means go back to the heirloom varieties if you wish. Just don’t expect to be eating the tender and super sweet product because those old varieties are tougher and starchier and more akin to maize. Sweetcorn has improved in taste and texture in recent times, which cannot be said of all vegetables.

The retired beekeeper we had staying last week was critical of the chapter on beekeeping. He was surprised to find that top-bar hives, as promoted by the author with near religious zeal, are even legal in this country and he pointed out numerous reasons why they are inferior to the Langstroth hive. Of course Langstroths don’t look cute. He also felt that, given the author’s brief experience of beekeeping, she has been very lucky so far and she makes it look too easy altogether. I just thought that the advice that you could have your beehive on an apartment balcony or the shed roof came more from the Do As I Say school of advice, rather than the Do As I Do school. How on earth are you going to monitor and look after your hive if it is on a shed roof? That said, it is interspersed with some sound advice with regard to legal requirements and she recommends you join a local beekeeping club. I could not understand, either, why apartment dwellers would want to have a worm farm on their balcony. Move to ground level, I say.

It is great to see interest in topics related to sustainability, reducing one’s carbon footprint and organics. I would just prefer to see a little more rigour along with the joyous fervour.

Green Urban Living by Janet Luke. (New Holland; ISBN:978 1 86966 322 3).