Pruning a rampant climber: step-by-step with Abbie and Mark Jury

1) This climber has gone well past the point where a light trim will suffice and allow more light in the window behind. However, we don’t want to dig it out and cutting it off at the ground is likely to kill it. This is an ornamental jasmine (not the dangerously rampant variety) and we like the fragrance.

2)The tendrils going over and under the spouting, and even worse, under the roof tiles are a warning that action needs to be taken now. Looking into the mass of vines, you can see that the downpipe is under threat and also that the plant is putting out new growth from the middle and not just on top.

3) Cut back the foliage hard. We are aiming for a curved shape around the corner of the house. It is easier to work out which vines to keep when you can see where each one is headed. You can use a chainsaw for the initial shaping and follow up with clippers and secateurs to tidy up the rough cuts.

4) Trace the path taken by the vines and remove unwanted stems in sections. If you try and pull it out in long lengths, you run the risk of damaging the growths you want to keep. We are trying to protect the house and to allow the window to be opened so we are thinning extensively. More frequent pruning would have avoided this.

5) Thin out clutter and remove all dead wood.

6) The finished product looks shorn and a shadow of its former self but should grow away strongly. In our mild and soft climate, we can do this type of cutting any time of the year but gardeners in cold, inland areas may wish to wait until late winter or early spring, timed for just before the plant will put on its first flush of new season’s growth.

7) This is the photo that we did not use in the newspaper when this feature first ran – not perhaps the best advertisement for safe practice (though Mark asserts that he was holding on tightly with the hand which is out of sight…).

Camellia Diary – the second entry. May 13, 2010

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Camellia sasanqua Elfin Rose - a personal favourite

Camellia sasanqua Elfin Rose - a personal favourite

Now that we are well and truly into autumn, it is the sasanquas which are the dominant flowering shrub in the garden. What they sometimes lack in flower substance and form, they more than make up in mass display. And in a country where camellias are used extensively as garden plants and shelter, we have been hit hard by the advent of the dreaded camellia petal blight from mid season onwards. The sasanquas flower early enough to miss the onset of that scourge.

Crimson King - a graceful plant with a light canopy

My personal picks are Elfin Rose and Crimson King which just keep on flowering but there are a host of others which are very charming in their own right – Bettie Patricia, Gay Border, Mine No Yuki, Yoimachi (a sasanqua hybrid), Bonanza and Silver Dollar to name but a few.

Many of our plants are decades old, three to four metres high and just as wide. Of all the different groups of camellias, sasanquas particularly lend themselves to clipping and shaping, turning into either layered forms or light canopies often growing from multiple trunks. There is a grace to be found in their natural growth habit and form which is not always present in the more sturdy japonicas.

In the species, we couldn’t help but notice that brevistyla was brief indeed in flower. While individual blooms continue to open, the mass flowering can only have lasted ten days. The closely related microphylla, however, has continued to put on a really good show for nigh on a month now. I was writing a piece on the earliest flowering camellias for a national gardening magazine and friend and president of the NZ Camellia Society, Tony Barnes, mentioned C.granthamiana as one of the earliest to open.

We are pretty sure it is C. gauchowensis

We have it somewhere in the garden but we appear to have mislaid it – which is to say that Mark can’t remember where he planted it and neither of us have come across it yet. We have what we think is C.gauchowensis in flower. It is another pristine white single bloom as many of the species are , on a narrow, columnar bush. Unfortunately it does get easily weather-marked. Few of the species are inherently spectacular when compared to the modern cultivars on offer but they have a quiet charm which we enjoy.

Tikorangi notes: May 6, 2010

Latest posts:

1) Dear oh dear, Penguin Books (NZ). Did nobody even bother to double check the content of the new Tui New Zealand Fruit Garden book released this week? Not only are there rather too many errors, but there seems to be a certain amount of what might be called plagiarism going on – a bit too much cutting and pasting from easily traced overseas websites (even Wikipedia – who cuts and pastes from Wikipedia for a book?) and none of it seems to be attributed.

2) A woodland plant supreme – now Farfugium japonicum argenteum but still often referred to as a ligularia.

3) Autumn is well and truly here and we advise taking full advantage of the continuing fine, calm and dry weather – garden tasks for this week.

Some fruits of a Tikorangi autumn

It is feijoa season here. This is a fruit from South America which we have almost made our own in mild areas of New Zealand. The plant grows to a large evergreen shrub which is amazingly forgiving, tolerating even salt winds so it is sometimes used as hedging. Good forms will fruit prolifically. When our children were little, we had a row of four old plants along a roadside boundary and they would routinely head outside with a teaspoon to sit under the trees and eat their fill. Now that they have all left home and live in places where the humble feijoa is virtually unknown, they get very nostalgic when I tell them the fruit is falling. For those who have never encountered a feijoa (and they don’t transport well so while they are sold dirt cheap in fruiterers and on roadside stalls locally, they are not generally shipped elsewhere), the common method of eating them is either to scoop out the centre with a teaspoon or to peel it and eat the whole centre. There are no bothersome pips or stones.
And just to show how mild we are, the physalis (referred to here as Cape Gooseberries even though they too are South American) seed down and pop up around the place and we even grow macadamia nuts successfully. We are right on the margins of suitability for growing macadamia trees and we get occasional years when fruit set is aborted, but in the main they crop consistently for us. It is just a shame they are so difficult to get out of their shells because they are a Rolls Royce nut of choice.

The Tui NZ Fruit Garden – dear oh dear.

The latest update on this article is The Sequel, a second coming for Tui NZ Fruit Garden

Sally Cameron is attempting to punch well above her weight in her book The NZ Fruit Garden. Her main experience seems to be in food writing and cooking and she runs a catering company in Auckland. Her gardening credentials are very limited and it shows in this Penguin publication sponsored by the Tui garden products company.

There is nothing wrong with using a researcher to pull together a comprehensive book as long as the editor/publisher ring-fences her with an expert panel to review the information. There is no evidence that this was done. Alas, being a keen home gardener on the North Shore is not sufficient. There are too many errors and in places the information is simply not adequate. Even worse, there are sufficient instances of unacknowledged quotes to make me breathe the dreaded word: plagiarism.

All those multitudes of fruit trees and plants sold in the past two years need attention. Clearly the time is right for a manual. And a manual is what this book is. To be fair, it is a well-presented book designed to be used often – good-quality paper, opens flat and even has a thoughtful heavy-duty plastic cover. The majority of the book is an alphabetical listing of 58 fruits and nuts, each giving some information on the origin, recommended varieties and the where, when and how of growing them. In addition to that, the first 50 or so pages give a great deal of generic information on propagation, planting and care. At the end of the book, there is a section on pests and diseases and a monthly diary for maintenance and harvest tasks. From almonds and apples to walnuts, most of the crops you will ever want to try growing are included – along with quite a few that you cannot grow, though you are not likely to learn that from this book. Tui’s sponsorship is generally unobtrusive. Superficially, the book looks really helpful and the design is good. Sadly, looks can deceive.

I went to double-check some of the information on apricots, particularly the claim that ‘‘many people think they are subtropical’’. In New Zealand, we all know the best apricots come from Central Otago and nobody ever claims that area to be subtropical. According to Cameron, apricot trees are considered subtropical, which means they can tolerate temperatures from 0 degrees Celsius to over 35 degrees Celsius and still remain healthy. Puhlease. That is not a definition of a subtropical plant. Elsewhere in the book, she recommends them as a suitable crop for Northland. But worse was when I found the Wikipedia entry and thought it seemed familiar. It was. I had just read it in the book.

Cameron: There is an old adage that an apricot tree will not grow far from the mother tree.
Wikipedia: There is an old adage that an apricot tree will not grow far from the mother tree.
Cameron: Although often regarded as a subtropical fruit, the apricot is native to a continental climate region with cold winters.
Wikipedia: Although often thought of as a ‘‘subtropical’’ fruit, this is actually false – the apricot is native to a continental climate region with cold winters

The guava entry is a worry. Actually, it’s even more than a worry when I compared it to easily tracked online sources, to which it owes a rather large debt. Cameron: The guava succumbs to frost in any area – it is a tropical fruit after all. Even if summers are too cool, the tree will die back.

There’s a slight problem here. She is writing about the large growing tropical guava, Psidium guajava, which you may have tried eating in Asia (I found it disappointing). But what we can and do grow here – and which has similar hardiness to a lemon – is the strawberry guava, Psidium littorale. The recommended varieties and some of the photos in the Cameron book are of P. littorale, but they are included under the tropical guajava and there is no indication that Cameron knows the difference. In our 30 years of experience with growing littorale, it does not suffer from any of the hideous pests and diseases she lists at length. Added to that is the propagation information, which is bizarre. Why even mention air-layering when it is not recommended and is so rarely done in this country as to be virtually unknown? The reason: because it appears to be cut and pasted from an easily traced Californian website that was all about guajava. Had Cameron known her material, she would have explained that littorale is commonly raised from seed in this country.

Cranberries: what is grown widely and successfully in New Zealand and indeed is now branded the New Zealand cranberry is, in fact, Myrtus ugni. Most New Zealanders wouldn’t even know that it is not the true cranberry and that the fruit used for Ocean Spray cranberry juice and dried or frozen cranberries is, in fact, a vaccinium.We have never heard of proper cranberries being grown in this country, though presumably you could grow them in Southland, because they need cold temperatures and may be happy in the southern peat bogs. Presumably the author didn’t know about cranberries, because the book doesn’t even mention Myrtus ugni, which you can buy from pretty well every garden centre here, but instead is all about vacciniums. That is the problem with using overseas references without local knowledge. Even then the information given is contradictory. In one sentence, vaccinium is recommended for growing around ponds and other soggy areas. In another, it is recommended that you plant it in the coldest, wettest spot in your garden, but adds that the ground should never be waterlogged. Has the author never heard of the cranberry bogs in North America and seen the deliberate flooding of them? And honestly, what rush of creative frivolity led to the recommendation that they are suitable for growing in hanging baskets?

Gooseberries: according to this book, gooseberries need 800 to 1500 hours of chilling in order to fruit well. Really? What constitutes chilling? Is it temperatures below 5 degrees Celsius – 3 degrees, maybe – or below freezing? Nowhere is that information given, which means that it is very hard to start counting your hours of chill. And the huge range is questionable. Does the author mean that gooseberries require a minimum of 800 hours of winter chill below a certain temperature, but if your hours are much more than 1500 (which presumably takes you to alpine areas in this country), the growing season may be too short?

What the New Zealand reader really needs to know is that because gooseberries need a cold winter to fruit well, you are probably wasting your time unless you live in the centre of the North Island or from Christchurch southward. Measuring winter temperatures in hours of chilling is an American custom not usually seen in this country.

Avocados: the advice is that avocados do best inland away from ocean winds. This could be interpreted as suggesting that they will grow more successfully in Inglewood than Waitara, but we can tell you that in this part of the country, you can only grow avocados successfully in mild coastal areas. In fact, even in warmer areas of New Zealand, you can get frosts if you’re more than 5 kilometres inland. So in this country, avocados have to be grown in coastal areas. Again, I tracked the source of Cameron’s information to a Californian website.

The entry on lychees is lifted pretty much word for word from a copyrighted website belonging to the California Rare Fruit Growers (I started with Wikipedia and found it one click through.)

Under quinces, one of the photographs labelled quince blossom is in fact chaenomeles blossom. And while one of the photos of the fruit is indeed a quince, the other one is chaenomeles. And the photo by the quince header is, we suspect a crabapple. It is certainly not a quince. One is left with the uncomfortable suspicion that nobody involved with this book realised that quinces (cydonia) are an entirely different plant to japonica apples (chaenomeles).

I could keep going, listing the glaring deficiencies in this book. It is riddled with them. You can spend $45 on it if you wish and I am sure it will receive glowing reviews in other media because, superficially, it looks good. It is a book that was probably rushed out to meet a market demand and escaped anything but the most perfunctory of editing. It lacks rigour in every aspect. Near enough is close enough and it all looks just lovely, darling.

I don’t wish to be accused of going on a witch-hunt, but I turned back to Cameron’s earlier volume, The NZ Vegetable Garden, also published by Penguin and sponsored by Tui. I actually gave it a good review in this publication. I randomly inspected the garlic entry and went to check a rather odd piece of information. It took me all of two minutes to find a copyrighted website, http://www.garliccentral.com/varieties.html, which contributed at least some of the exact wording for page 116 in that book.

It should be an embarrassment to a credible publishing house like Penguin, but presumably nobody bothered to check for relevance, accuracy, or plagiarism. Looks are all in this current world of publishing and cut and paste has a lot to answer for.

POSTSCRIPT: My, but Penguin acted quickly to recall the book from sale. Given an advance copy of this column, they issued a recall within 24 hours.

Front page of the morning paper, no less.