Tikorangi notes: July 30, 2010

Latest posts:
1) July 30, 2010: Agapetes serpens – aptly described by somebody else as a vegetable octopus, we love the fact it feeds our native birds despite its origin in the Himalayas.
2) July 30, 2010: All Gardeners Dream – Abbie’s newspaper column.
3) July 30, 2010: In the garden this week – tasks and hints from pruning to making little slug bait stations to lichen.
4) July 30, 2010: Around the province, gardeners are counting down to our annual garden festival at the end of October – the latest update.
5) July 27, 2010: Camellia Diary 4. The sad story about camellia petal blight in NZ.

Towering 20 metres up in the air - our queen palms

Tikorangi Notes:
We enjoy our queen palms (Syagrus romanzoffiana), now of rather towering stature at about 20 metres high and half a century old. But their falling fronds can be a bit of a menace and there is certainly no way of getting up to groom those hanging about waiting to fall. You would not want to be underneath one because they weigh a surprising amount at the base and crash down with considerable force – taking out a large wodge of a camellia below recently. Mark has been moved to comment that there are rather a lot of vegetable time bombs planted very close to houses and apartments in Auckland, often by landscapers who all too frequently lack the

Falling from 20 metres, the fronds can be somewhat alarming.

plant experience to know what their selections are capable of when mature. Palms, you see, take up little space, are easy-care and wonderfully evocative of the warmer temperatures of the tropics so have been all the rage in urban gardens for some time now. As they keep reaching for the sky and growing in stature, the potential for falling fronds to cause damage increases – you certainly wouldn’t want your house spouting to be caught by a falling frond, let alone your car. But the average life expectancy of a garden plant in this country is, I have been told, a mere 10 years (before being chopped out and replaced by the latest fashion) so the chances of many palms reaching sufficient maturity to cause problems are not great.

Plant collector: Agapetes serpens

Agapetes serpens - attracts nectar feeding birds in winter

Agapetes serpens - attracts nectar feeding birds in winter

Agapetes serpens is a surprisingly hardy woodland plant from the Himalayan region and there we have been for years thinking it was a somewhat tender plant from India! Right general geographic area at least (she says in self defence). It is an evergreen shrub but with arching growth – aptly described by another as being like a vegetable octopus. What is really lovely through winter and spring is the prolonged flowering season when the branches are festooned with tiny hanging red bells with cute little chevron markings which Mark always thinks resemble Chinese lanterns and these must contain nectar because the wax-eyes come in to feed regularly. Mark was delighted to see even a bellbird come in to feed on one of our plants.

In the wild, A.serpens is often epiphytic which means it grows perched in the embrace of a larger tree. Consequently, in a more suburban environment, it is equally suited to growing in a container or a hanging basket. As the plant matures, its roots develop into big nubbly, woody protruberances pushing themselves above the soil, which we assume is for water storage. We grow serpens both in the shade where its foliage stays predominantly green and in full sun where it tends to be red-toned. I am still a little hesitant about declaring it as totally hardy so in colder, inland areas it would probably be wise to treat it as a woodland plant which needs some overhead cover rather than using it out in the open.

Agapetes are related botanically to the vacciniums (which includes proper cranberries) and all are members of the wider ericaceae family which takes in the heaths and heathers as well.

All Gardeners Dream

Buying bare sticks with a dream but at least this Magnolia Iolanthe has the promise of flower buds

A letter to the editor last week talked about the Pukeiti dream as if Pukeiti had the monopoly on dreams. I would suggest that pretty well every gardener I know works on dreams. It is what keeps us going. Call it vision, if you prefer, or hope or trust – but every time somebody buys a bare stick in mid winter, they are dreaming of what it should look like in spring when it comes into leaf.

Often folk will plant a long term tree with a dream. No matter that they know they will not live long enough to see the tree reach maturity. When one heads out with the spade and the plant, the dream is of how it may look in the future, always with the hope that subsequent generations will appreciate it. If it wasn’t for the dream, why would anyone plant rimu, kauri, totara, davidia involucrata, monkey puzzle trees (Araucaria araucana) and any number of other high quality, slow growing trees? Maybe to plant one is a dream for the future, to plant many is an inspired vision.

I briefly toyed with a theory that ornamental gardens (those planted merely to delight the eyes and nose and not to feed the stomach) are based on dreams whereas the current rage of the productive garden (fruit and veg) is based on pragmatism and quick results. But Mark disabused me of that idea immediately. No, he replied. Of course all those fruit trees and edible crops are based on dreams. Romantic dreams, fantasies even, of The Good Life, of eating wholesome food that not only tastes yum but is free of dodgy chemicals, of children who frolic out joyously to pick the silver beet for dinner and then consume it with gusto. The mere term home orchard conjures up picture book images of apple trees laden with ripe red fruit awaiting harvest. Hark, is that a swing I see hanging from the branch of the old apple tree? (But not from our dwarf apples, unless it is for dolls). The common mental image used to have grass beneath the trees in the old orchard (entered by a lichen encrusted wooden gate) but that betrays my age. These days it is more likely to be comfrey carpeting the ground below. Or maybe borage to attract the bees. It really does not matter that we all know there is a big gap between reality and the dream. There is much that can go wrong. The barefoot children can be stung by the bees on the borage. The trees need pruning and, upon occasion, spraying if there is to be much of a harvest. None of it is as easy as it looks. It takes time and practice to learn. Some veg crops will fail altogether. Some will hardly be worth the effort while some will yield an embarrassingly large harvest, much of which goes to waste. It will rain and the ground will get soggy and boggy (garden dreams are usually sunny). It is the nature of gardening that it is unpredictable and greatly dependent on factors beyond our control – particularly the weather.

Ornamental gardening is even more based on dreams because it is purely aesthetic and there is not much of the quick random reinforcement of harvests, however meagre. Those who rip into gardening and view it like interior decoration will overplant badly to get a quick effect and then tend to lose heart when it all becomes an overgrown jungle too quickly. Creating a lovely garden and creating a lovely house interior are opposite ends of the spectrum. Interior design is about creating the perfect picture (hopefully combined with good function) from the start. It is a fixed picture, already finished in its perfection and it sets the standard to maintain (though in all honesty it is mostly downhill from then on as day to day living scratches the paintwork, marks the carpet and personal clutter builds up).

Gardening, on the other hand, is about putting the building blocks in place and allowing time for plants to grow with the hope that the mental picture will be achieved over time. It is a much less exact and precise activity, fraught with outside interference. A garden is never finished. It is in a constant state of change and prone to unpredictability. That is why we dream, why we build mental pictures of our goals.

We may put in a row of little plants at 60cm spacing and trust that in time the plants will close up together, grow uniformly and make a smart hedge. Or we may build a seat beneath an overhead frame and trust that the bare sticks we plant will come into leaf and flower to create a shady bower for summer. We may (and more should) plant an arboretum across many acres with fine specimens of trees for centuries to come. Or we may develop a large garden which we hope will create a magical place full of scent, colour, form and botanical interest as well. Or we may just plant an orange tree and hope optimistically that in the future there are so many oranges to harvest that it feels fine to squeeze the juice from half a dozen just to get a glass of fresh OJ a day.

They are all dreams. No, the whole issue about dreams here is about who pays for them. Once the public purse is expected to foot the bill, it becomes a whole new ball game. Some might think that only the very naïve or optimistic could believe that the Pukeiti dream of the founders is in safe hands in the public sector. What will be safer in the public sector are the expansionist dreams of the latter day guardians of Pukeiti and that doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the hallowed founders. But even they may have been surprised to read last week that Pukeiti is apparently some sort of de facto war memorial. Hmmm….

In the Garden: July 30, 2010

The low tech slug bait station

The low tech slug bait station

  • The official start of spring may be another month away but gardeners know that it really starts earlier than that and we can expect significant warming of temperatures in August. This means the pressure is mounting to finish winter pruning. You really do want it done before September and time will run out all too soon. This refers to the usual candidates: grapevines, raspberries, apple and pear trees, hydrangeas, roses, wisteria, hybrid clematis, sasanqua camellias, rhododendrons and most deciduous plants.
  • As you complete the winter clean-up round, it is the optimum time for getting fertiliser and mulch laid. Plants will leap into growth soon and that is the time when you see maximum uptake of fertiliser. Laying a good layer of mulch will greatly reduce the spring weed infestation if you do it properly (covering the whole area to a depth of 4 to 6cm). In areas prone to drying out over summer, the mulch layer will conserve moisture levels.
  • September will signal the start of the busy planting time for summer vegetable crops. If you were good and sowed down bare areas in autumn green crops, you should be starting to think about digging these in. We are still cold and you need to allow six weeks for the crop to break down in the ground before you start planting again. This means you can be using the ground about mid September.
  • If you have already sown early potatoes, keep mounding up the soil around the shoots as they grow (commonly referred to as earthing up). This helps the soil to warm up faster, encouraging more growth, kills the weeds and gives some measure of frost protection to the tender shoots. Early potatoes need every helping hand you can give them and particularly to be given protection from frosts (which means you can’t plant them inland yet).
  • Keep an eye on slug and snail attacks on emerging bulbs. I found a treasured spring crocus which I don’t think was meant to have frilled edges to each bloom. Don’t broadcast slug bait like fertiliser. One bait can kill many. Our practice is to establish little bait stations where necessary – a screw top lid from a milk container with a couple of baits and a large shell semi covering it. The shell looks unobtrusive and keeps the bait dry while allowing the varmints in to feed. Don’t forget that slug bait has an attractant in it so you don’t need to carpet the ground so thickly that they trip over the stuff.
  • Heavy lichen infestations on plants can be unsightly but rarely poses a threat to plant health. Lichen growth is an indication of very pure air (lichens are one of the first organisms to succumb to pollution). If it worries you, you can do a clean-up spray with copper or lime sulphur. If you are using the latter, keep it to deciduous plants in winter and cover any plants below with a tarpaulin so that they do not get damaged or killed.

Countdown to Festival, July 30, 2010

  • Festival gardeners have not been slacking inside during winter. Much of the preparation work is carried out while others huddle by the fire. In Waitara, Alathea Armstrong has finished her structural alterations – widening borders and altering shapes, much aided, she says, by a mild winter. Currently she is keeping track of her emerging delphiniums after the Attack of the Slugs last year. It would be a brave slug that ventured near the plants now. She has been planting a new bed using the two roses Lavender Dream and Mum in a Million and she is most enthusiastic about the Mum rose which she grew last year and describes as being absolutely gorgeous.
  • Down the road, Margaret Goble says she is back on track with garden preparation after a rather bad garden accident in February took her out for some time. Family and friends rallied around, much to Margaret’s gratitude because hers is a large and detailed garden to manage singlehandedly. Rose pruning has been completed (an enormous task with her huge rose collection which is meticulously maintained) and lime and BioBoost have been added to the soil. Her window boxes and handsome hanging baskets are planted and she is eyeing up the concrete which has turned green over winter.
  • Up the hill a little from Stratford, at Mountside Betty Brunton has joined the league of Gardeners on Crutches after recent surgery and is trying to work out how she can get around her garden with the spray unit while only semi mobile so that she can get Vapourguard onto her recently pruned hydrangeas, fuchsias and roses. She wants to protect the fattening buds from getting frosted. Her hellebores are looking fantastic and evoke memories of the late Jill Kuriger who was a fine plantswoman, a Festival stalwart for many years and a wonderful gardening identity. Betty says her trilliums are just pushing through the ground and she is hoping that my Mark will hurry up and have some plants of the related paris ready to share soon.
  • Still in the Stratford area but across the other side, Bruce and Lorri Ellis at Te Popo had their garden routines disrupted when recent high winds swept through taking out two trunks of a triple trunked Montezuma Pine. As the tree was around 100 feet tall (or over 30 metres), this type of damage is not for the faint hearted. One trunk catapulted to earth landing with force in Lorri’s pink garden where it caused huge damage but at least that was better than the second trunk which became wedged half way down in a 50 foot (15 metres) claret ash. The surviving trunk also had to removed because it was now unstable and a threat to nearby buildings so specialist arborist services were required. Something unforeseen like that can really blow the budget and take up time. Here at Tikorangi it was one of our tawa trees we lost about the same time but at least it fell cleanly and didn’t do too much damage to the big leafed rhododendrons below.
  • In New Plymouth, Alan and Cath Morris at Pukemara describe their garden activities as fine-tuning in preparation for their first Festival experience. They have finished the pruning round somewhat earlier than usual because they are having some time out in August. Alan has constructed a park bench out of marcrocarpa and sited it in their Gully Garden so that visitors will be able to have a rest and admire the outlook. They have also relocated a bed of azaleas which had been getting too shaded by adjacent rhododendrons. In fact they are quite pleased with how the garden is looking even though it is wearing its winter cloak and plan to keep it that way up until opening time at the end of October. At this stage, there does not appear to be any garden angst or panic in the Morris household.
  • Also in New Plymouth at Nikau Grove, Elise Lind says her current challenge is learning to garden in shade. As all their plantings have grown, the character of the place has changed and where once there was sun, now there is overhead canopy. This is exactly what they wanted, especially on the waterfall bank but there is an ongoing process of having to find under planting suited to the changing conditions. At least, Elsie notes, there is the indubitable bonus that weeds tend to be sun lovers so they are far less of a problem these days.