Tikorangi notes: April 16, 2010

Latest posts:
1) April 16, 2010 There are times we have regretted letting our purple bougainvillea reach its natural massive proportions but it is a splendid sight in flower.
2) April 16, 2010 There are no like for like replacements for the ever handy (if a little dull and clichéd) buxus hedge.3) April 16, 2010 Making the most of mild autumn conditions in the garden – what to do in the Taranaki garden this week.

Our venerable old man pines against the blue sky of autumn

The common reaction from New Zealanders to our massive, but elderly pine trees is that we should be taking them out immediately because they are dangerous but we are fond of their scruffy majesty on our south eastern skyline. Planted in a double row around 1880 by Mark’s great grandfather, they were originally a shelter belt and will rank amongst the oldest specimens in the country. Californians are often impressed because these Monterey pines tower around 50 metres or over 150 feet high which we are told is unusual for their homeland on the Monterey Peninsula.

Our Monterey pines - not all are exactly at right angles to the ground

But to New Zealanders, they are just crusty old Pinus radiata, a cultivar the timber industry has made our own as a very quick turn around, low grade timber crop covering vast acreages.

Occasionally we lose a pine tree – running about once every fifteen years at the moment – and the last one dropped itself in the one clear space that we would have chosen had we deliberately felled it, doing minimal damage as it crashed down but gouging out a 30cm deep indentation on the ground. Because they started life as a shelter belt and are planted in more or less straight rows, they now give us a woodland avenue below to grow frost tender material such as vireya rhododendrons, cymbidium orchids, monstera delicosa and a range of woodland bulbs. Such is their location, they would have to removed by logging helicopter but we are happy to live with them as a characterful backdrop.

Flowering this week – our rather rampant bougainvillea

Decidedly rampant, extremely spiny but quite spectacular - the bougainvillea

Decidedly rampant, extremely spiny but quite spectacular - the bougainvillea

Not, as we assumed, originating in the Bougainville Islands, but named for the French explorer, Louis Antoine de Bougainville and hailing from South America. We think this form is glabra, from Brazil. There is nothing rare about these scrambling climbers and they are appreciated throughout the temperate and tropical world for their display which can be all year round in latitudes close to the Equator. Here they peak in summer to autumn. It is not the insignificant flowers that make the show but the coloured bracts which surround the flowers and hang on for a long time. The colours range from the royal purple of this variety through cerise, red, pink, lilac, orange, gold and white. Left to their own devices , these can be formidable plants. Ours smothered a dead tree to around ten or fifteen metres high, and a little shy of that figure in both width and depth until the host tree rotted and fell over bringing down most of the bougainvillea with it. It then became a major mission because one of the other characteristics of this genus is its many sharp thorns.

Most of what are sold now are hybrids and they are not left to their own wayward habits as we have done. They are easy enough to trim and shape when small, sometimes trained as standards. We saw some really interested topiary specimens in Bali where three different colours had been grafted onto one stem and then trained to shape as a curious container plant. They are also recommended for hedging and with their thorny ways, they may be just the ticket to deter burglars in crime-prone areas with a mild climate.

In the Garden – April 16, 2010

  • Forward planning is needed if you want to move larger trees and shrubs in winter. This involves wrenching the plant, which is simply cutting the roots in a staggered sequence well in advance of the moving process. This will shock the plant but also encourage it to form fresh young roots. Move as large a root ball as you can physically manage. Make the first cuts now with a sharp spade around two sides of the plant. You will follow up with the next cut in two weeks or so.
  • Continue planting out in the ornamental garden and the orchard. Pretty well anything and everything can be planted successfully now though you may need to protect tender material for the first winter as it acclimatises to your conditions. Tender plants are those which do not like cold, wet or frosty conditions.
  • The autumn rains trigger a new round of weeds so try and stay on top of these to save work later on. Slugs and snails also become more active with wetter, still mild conditions. If you reduce numbers now, you may reduce the spring population explosion.
  • Autumn leaf fall is starting. Raking these into mounds or heaps and keeping them moist will accelerate their breakdown. You can then rake them back thinly over the area later in the season to nourish the soils with leaf litter. There is no excuse for burning leaves.
  • If you are harvesting pumpkins, they are best dried out before storage and eat the most blemished specimens first. The softer green skinned buttercup types don’t store anywhere near as long as the armour plated grey skinned ones.
  • By now you should have your winter vegetables in the ground. We are not far off planting for spring. You can get in broad beans, spring onions, winter spinach, peas and even leek plants (though they will only make small specimens now) and the ever faithful brassica family. You can start preparing the beds for garlic which can be planted from next month. Dig the area over incorporating compost and animal manures and then leave it to settle down until planting time.
  • Get any bare areas which are not going to be planted until spring sown down in green crops as soon as possible. We can not over-emphasise the value of green crops in terms of good, sustainable gardening practice. Vegetable gardening involves constant cropping, stripping goodness from the soil. You need to keep replenishing it and it is so much better to do it by compost, manure and green crops than synthetic fertilisers (which do nothing for the soil structure and the worms).
  • Shame on Te Radar. Delightful he may be, but we saw him on Sunday TV filling his new raised vegetable bed with plastic sacks of commercial mix. There is nothing sustainable about that practice.

Alternatives to buxus hedging

A step by step guide by Abbie and Mark Jury first published in the Taranaki Daily News and reproduced here with permission as a PDF.

New Outdoor Classrooms are uploaded fortnightly.

Tikorangi notes: Thursday 15 April, 2010

R.I.P. Buffy –
Farewell to a feisty character.

The end of a chapter. Buffy the cat, a part of our lives for over 10 years, is no more.

The end of a chapter. Buffy the cat, a part of our lives for over 10 years, is no more.