• Queen’s Birthday Weekend may herald the first arrival of new season’s rose plants in many garden centres but it also marks Arbor Day. Planting a tree will do more for the environment than planting a rose. If you can’t tell a good variety of tree from a cheap filler tree, then get some advice from somebody you trust.
• If you buy bare rooted roses (as opposed to ones in planter bags or pots), don’t let their roots dry out at any stage. Plant them immediately, trimming any ragged or damaged roots. Roses are best in full sun with rich, friable soil. Plants will have had a quick prune before being despatched from the nursery but you usually need to follow up with a tidying prune at some stage after planting. We will bravely tackle rose pruning made simple in a few weeks time in Outdoor Classroom.
• The recent run of dreary wet weather has meant that our soils are pretty waterlogged. It is a good rule of thumb to avoid walking on garden beds where possible, but even more important when soils are we. Many experienced vegetable gardeners keep a couple of long boards lying around. These can be handy to act as a straight edge for planting in rows but their primary use is to walk on when soils are wet. The board will disperse your weight and greatly reduces soil compaction. They should be used at all times in conditions with heavy soils which does not generally apply in Taranaki – think the mud and clay of Auckland, Manawatu or Dunedin and be grateful for our friable volcanic soils.
• If you have positions where you often take a shortcut across a garden or have to stand in the same spot in order to weed, think about placing a stepping stone or paving slab to stand on to avoid continual compaction.
• Lilies of most descriptions, rhodohypoxis and pleione orchids are all dying down now and can be lifted and divided if required. With pleiones, the large central bulb becomes mushy and black, never to appear again and it is the green back bulbs which will grow and flower.
• Rocket much prefers cooler weather (it bolts straight to seed in summer) and makes a good winter crop in pots or a seed tray.
• Bringing outdoor furniture in under cover for winter greatly extends its life expectancy. We know this from experience.
Tikorangi Notes: 28 May, 2010
Latest posts:
1) 28 May, 2010: The banana crop of 2010 revealed but really about our recommended tasks in the garden this week.
2) 28 May, 2010: The wonderful lemon fragrance of Backhousia citriodora.
3) 28 May, 2010: More about bananas – our Outdoor Classroom on thinning to get better crops.
4) 28 May 2010: The burgundy coloured loropetalums, China Pink in our case, are a splendid additon to our gardens here.
5) 26 May, 2010: The story of Cordyline Red Fountain.
The persimmon in autumn is more about looks than taste, for us at least
As autumn morphs into winter here (to paraphrase our inimitable television weather presenter), we seem to be doing the Squirrel Nutkin impersonation and following a food theme. We aim to be self sufficient in vegetables and most fruit – I say aim, some years we get closer than others. But with only two of us left at home these days, I don’t have to resort to buying much fresh produce at all.
One of the edible crops we grow which we rarely eat ourselves is the highly ornamental persimmon which looks fantastically decorative in the autumn. This is an elderly astringent variety which means one needs to wait until it so ripe it is nearly rotting before it becomes palatable. Even at that stage, I only like the jelly-like segments at the very centre and find the outer flesh rather clarty and sticky. I am sure it would make an excellent gelato, icecream or granita but none of these appeal in the chill of late autumn. It is possible to buy non-astringent fruit and plants which can apparently be eaten crisp, like an apple, but I have yet to bring myself to buy one when we have all these going to waste at home. Except that they are not really going to waste because they bring us a great deal of pleasure over many weeks just adorning the bare branches of the tree.
In the Garden: May 28, 2010
The banana crop this year was particularly disappointing. Mark took the teasing in good heart and blames a few severe frosts last year at a time when we were overseas
• It is time to batten down the hatches for winter. If you have frost tender plants you need to get under cover, don’t delay. Mark spent the better part of the weekend building a Rolls Royce protective shield for his fruiting bananas, so determined is he to get a good crop through next summer. Reduce watering of house plants and move sensitive plants off window sills. Never let them sit in water (the fastest killer of African violets) and remove saucers from beneath outdoor container plants.
• Valiantly eating my way, mostly singlehandedly, through the feijoa crop, I can report that the fruit from the old fashioned Coolidgei is a great deal tastier than the more common Unique. As the fruiting season finishes, you can get in and do any pruning you think is required. This is an optional activity but I did notice in our Urenui days that the row of four very large plants on our boundary which were mostly shaped to a single leader with a canopy made gathering the fruit a great deal easier than our current bushier plants. If you only get pathetic little fruit, you probably have seedling grown hedging. You will need to buy a named variety if you want good sized fruit in the future. To extend the harvesting season, you will need to plant early, mid and late fruiting varieties – check www.feijoa.org.nz for recommendations. Most named varieties are self fertile.
• Mark is pleased to still be harvesting fresh corn and green beans. It has been a bit of a close-run thing on whether the last sowings will get through in time but there is no doubt that you can extend the season by successional plantings. We would be harvesting yams at this time, had they been planted last spring.
• Think garlic and shallot planting for the veg garden along with broad beans. It is the optimum time for all three crops. Garlic and shallots like really well cultivated and enriched soil but incorporate any animal manure and compost a few weeks in advance of planting to give it a chance to settle and mellow.
• Generally speaking, the next major planting push in the veg garden will not happen until August when temperatures start to rise again. Wise gardeners will try and keep weeds under control in the interim but you have basically left it too late for sowing green crops.
• Queen’s Birthday weekend is coming up soon – this is traditionally rose buying time when garden centres take delivery of new season’s crops. The timing of rose pruning is flexible. While gardeners in colder spots will want to delay pruning until later in winter, in warmer areas it is fine to prune any time from now through to the end of August.
Flowering this week: Backhousia citriodora
The lemon fragrance from Backhousia citrodora has to be experienced to be believed
I would be the first to admit that the creamy fluffy floral clusters of this small(ish) tree are not showstoppers though they are pretty enough in their own way and make a change for autumn flowering. Nor are the long narrow leaves eye-catching though the red-brown velvety new growth is very tactile. In fact, the visuals of this plant are remarkably modest especially when you consider it is an Australian from the coastal rainforests of Queensland and northern New South Wales. The knock-you-dead aspect is the lemon fragrance when you crush or even brush past a leaf and the flowers also exude wafts of lemon. It has quite the most delicious lemon scent of any plant I know, bar none. This is apparently because Backhousia citriodora, commonly referred to as the lemon myrtle, has higher concentration of citral (lemon oils) than many other plants, including lemon verbena. In fact it is harvested commercially for lemon flavouring. I have to admit that I have not tried it in a culinary context but I will do so. You can apparently use the leaf whole (like a bay leaf) or chopped and it will give a lemon flavour without the problems of curdling, even in milk puddings. So I have read.
While not overly hardy, if given some protection when young, the backhousia should be able to grow throughout most of our area. I have seen it in a protected valley in Canberra Botanic Gardens where apparently it can survive frosts of 8 degrees. It is a member of the myrtle family and it can be clipped. This may be a plant to put alongside a bay tree in the vegetable garden or plant it by a path so you can pluck a leaf to sniff when you pass.
Tried and True – loropetalums
Loropetalums
• Widely available from most garden centres.
• Evergreen shrub.
• Tolerant of a surprisingly wide range of conditions but may need protection from heavy frosts and strong winds.
• Burgundy forms give colour all year round.
The wine red forms of the loropetalum are a particularly good recent introduction to this country
The wine red form of loropetalum (sometimes called the Fringe Flower) is a relatively recent introduction to this country and a particularly good one at that. It builds in layers and left unclipped it can reach two metres by two metres reasonably quickly. It is easily shaped but is rather brittle so will snap off in wind. We grow China Pink but there is a form called Burgundy and several others – all appear to be very similar and equally good with one exception. Shun Razzleberry if you find it on offer. It starts with good colour in spring but then changes quickly to a murky, dull olive green of no merit that I can see. The flowers on the burgundy forms are interesting clusters of shocking pink spidery petals and stamens but discreet, not showy. If you have a Singapore stopover and go to the Chinese gardens there, you will see all sorts of techniques with bonsai, clipping and hedging of the attractive loropetalum shrub.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 