In the Garden, March 5, 2010

Mark surveys his field of buckwheat, swan plants to the right

Mark surveys his field of buckwheat, swan plants to the right

  • This is the first year we have tried buckwheat as a green crop and we notice it has the added benefit of feeding the bees. Bees are critical for pollination so having a bee-friendly style of gardening can help counteract the well publicised problems with declining bee populations. We bought the buckwheat from Kings Seeds (www.kingsseeds.co.nz). Green crops are a time honoured method of restoring fertility to land which is repeatedly cropped and are just as relevant today for the home vegetable gardener as they were hundreds of years ago when readers may remember from school history lessons about early agricultural practices of leaving a field fallow.
  • More than just a green crop, if you let the buckwheat go to seed, it can be used as bird food for hens or pigeons. Feed the whole seed head out and the birds will do the rest.
  • It being March, the winter vegetable planting calls. Fresh vegetables tend to be quite expensive in winter so home produce can be economic as well as satisfying. If you are anything more than a dilettante, ignore the trendy advice to grow your vegetables all together in a style reminiscent of the herbaceous border. This means you can not possibly practice rotation where you alternate different types of crops through the same piece of ground. A green crop is followed by the greedy feeders such as potatoes and corn, followed by brassicas and leafy crops and ending up with the root vegetables which do better in soil which has not been freshly fertilised.
  • If you can’t remember the sequence of crop rotation, it is good practice to always plant a different crop to the one just finished. This greatly reduces the chance of building up diseases in the soil and pesky pests in the surrounds.
  • It is time to be festooning outdoor grapevines in netting to keep the birds out, if you want a crop. As soon as they start colouring, the birds will be in like a shot. Even when netted in, they will find the one hole or gap you may have left.
  • Feed deciduous fruit trees and plants now so that they have time to take up the nutrition before they go dormant.
  • As a postscript to my column last week about monarch butterflies, a reader rang with the handy hint to use spring clothes pegs to suspend chrysalises which have become dislodged. You can only do this where there is sufficient stem attached to the top of the cocoon – do not peg the cocoon itself or you will damage the butterfly forming inside. She also commented that when a caterpillar in the process of metamorphosis becomes dislodged (that is the stage when the caterpillar hangs like an upside down question mark and starts to turn green) she has had success constructing small hammocks out of Chux dishcloth. They can still turn into a chrysalis and she then pegs the Chux so they subsequently hatch out successfully. There is a slight question mark over Mark’s dedication in that he has yet to enter the stage of constructing chrysalis hammocks.

Tikorangi notes 5/3/2010

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March 5, 2010: In the Taranaki garden this week – from growing buckwheat as a green crop to constructing individual hammocks for metamorphosing monarch caterpillars.

March 5, 2010: Angelica gigas – feeding the bees this week and if they would make some space, it would also feed the butterflies.

March 5, 2010: A step by step pictorial guide to chip budding – the horticultural equivalent of micro surgery.

One country's treasured plants are another country's roadside plants, even weeds

One country’s prized garden plants are another’s roadside wildflowers and weeds. The South African agapanthus grows so easily here that it is regarded as a low value roadside plant bordering on a weed though it must be said it is a real feature up and down the roads of our area in summer. I was completely confused by some English garden visitors one summer who asked what was the giant bluebell which grew everywhere in our area. It wasn’t until I next went out our gate that the penny dropped and I realized they were referring to agapanthus. Mind you, as they also asked about the yellow lacecap hydrangea on our roadsides (which I worked out was wild fennel), I don’t think plant identification was their strong point.

Wind anemones and agapanthus on our road verge

Wind anemones and agapanthus on our road verge

This is a particularly good dark blue agapanthus which grows beside the little row of rustic letterboxes serving the houses here. Being on rural delivery, the flag up on the letterbox is a message to the postman that there is also mail to be collected – yes, in this country, the rural mail service picks up as well as delivers mail to individual properties.

Agapanthus are on the banned list in more northern areas of New Zealand because of their invasive and seeding habits. In our area the giant gunnera (Chilean rhubarb), so prized in cold climates overseas, is on the pest plant list banned from sale and scheduled for eradication – both tinctoria and manicata.

The Japanese anemones (hupehensis var. japonica) make a great roadside planting but are rather too strong and invasive as a garden plant in our conditions. I have a sentimental attachment to these flowers which we know as wind anemones. On the night before our wedding a few decades ago, Mark turned up to see me with an armful of white wind anemones he had gathered on the roadside. How romantic is that?

Flowering this week: Angelica gigas

Angelica gigas alive with bumble bees and honey bees, along with a few unwelcome wasps leaving little room for the butterflies who would also enjoy it

Angelica gigas alive with bumble bees and honey bees, along with a few unwelcome wasps leaving little room for the butterflies who would also enjoy it

Being on a train of thought about feeding the butterflies and the bees, I could not pass by the purple flower heads of Angelica gigas which are rarely seen without the nectar feeders this week. In fact the whole bush is fair humming. This is an ornamental angelica (the edible one is Angelica archangelica) which originates in the areas of Korea, Japan and northern China. It is biennial which means it flowers in its second year, sets seed and dies and observant readers will not be surprised to find that it belongs to the carrot family, or apiaceae. Apparently it can grow up to two metres but our plants sit with flower heads closer to 150 centimetres. At this size, it does not quite fit in with carpet bedding plants but it is splendid in the herbaceous or mixed border. If you don’t garden with glyphosate, angelica should seed down easily but to be sure, gather at least one seed head and germinate in controlled conditions. There is nothing particularly rare or choice about this plant, though we understand this form is a recent collection, but it is a charming addition to the late summer garden.

Autumn chip budding: step-by-step with Abbie and Mark Jury

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 26/2/2010

February 26, 2010 Monarch caterpillars and butterflies – a safer mid-life obsession than buying a Harley-Davidson.

February 26, 2010 Flowering this week: Justicia carnea (the candlewick bedspread of the plant world).

February 26, 2010 In the Taranaki garden – garden tasks and hints for the coming week.

There are good reasons why we are always green in Taranaki. In this case it was summer rain yesterday morning – around 10cm in a very short space of time. The water disappears nearly as quickly as it arrives and within ninety minutes of taking this photo, the sun was shining again and the flood waters had receded entirely.