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.
Flowering this week – we still call it Urceolina peruviana
From the alpine meadows of the Andes, Stenomesson miniatum
I was all set to write about this little gem of a bulb from our rockery, which we have always known as Urceolina peruviana but a quick net search tells me that it is now called (wait for it) Stenomesson miniatum. At least the Peruvian reference gives a hint to its origin from the alpine meadows of the Andes but do not be thinking that this means it is extremely hardy. In fact the snow blankets it in winter, protecting it from the damaging effects of freezing. In our mild climate, it is largely evergreen although the occasional frost can turn the leaves to slush. It is completely deciduous in colder conditions.
Whether stenomesson or urceolina, it is a member of the amaryllis family and we appreciate it particularly for its timing. It flowers now when pretty well all the spring bulbs have finished so the hanging (or pendulous) trumpets in orange with even longer yellow stamens are a standout feature. It has a reasonably long flowering season over several weeks and if you have sufficient to enable picking, it lasts well in a vase. Also to its credit, there is a not a lot of choking leafy foliage for the months following flowering. In fact there is not a lot of foliage at all which makes it tidy in the garden. The bulbs don’t increase at a speedy rate so it is a plant to treasure if you can acquire it.
Dining al fresco – furniture options
Getting my eye in for outdoor furniture options
I see that summer officially starts on Tuesday but our thoughts turned to the first of the summer wines a few weeks ago. That is to say that I floated the idea of some new outdoor furniture for us to sit in greater comfort with glass in hand. My Mark is a man of many talents but shopping is not one of them. When it comes to larger purchases, I have to do the legwork in advance, narrow it down to a preferred option plus a back up position and then psyche us both up for a joint shopping expedition. So I have been getting my eye in on current options, both in shops and on line.
Wooden furniture largely falls into two camps: Indonesian teak and kwila (hardwoods) or Cape Cod style which is more commonly made in tanalised pine and often painted. We have an existing teak table and eight chairs which are fine but I have another use for them and I want more comfort. I have a twinge of conscience each time I look at the current furniture. I suspect an orang-utan may have been made homeless in order to supply the timber for my patio furniture. Back about eight to ten years ago when we bought it, sustainable logging was not a key selling point. Now it is a huge issue and every purveyor of Indonesian hardwood outdoor furniture from the cheapest to the considerably more upmarket outlets claims that their source is sustainably managed. Call me a cynic, but I wonder if in fact all these offshore buyers were not booked in for consecutive days to visit the one and same model plantation with the claim that it is a fine example of wonderful environmental management and their furniture is being made exclusively from timber milled from this location. The bottom line is that Indonesia’s hard wood forests are disappearing at a completely alarming rate and the timber is going somewhere. It may be optimistic to think that they are not going to supply the decking and outdoor furniture for wealthy Western al fresco living. It is more likely that sustainable logging in heartland Indonesia means cutting out the hardwood forest to replant in high yield palms.
I won’t be buying more furniture made from Indonesian hardwoods at this stage. If you have some (and who hasn’t), you may like to try extending its life by painting it with a mix of about half raw linseed oil and half turpentine. If the mix is a little thick, add more turps. The proportions are not critical. The turps helps the mix get absorbed readily and stops the timber from being sticky. Sadly, I must warn that you can’t put it in a huffer bottle and spray it on (I tried but the mix is too viscous) so you need to brush it or apply it with a rag. It will wreck the brush and if you use a rag, be cautious what you do with it afterwards because it can combust. However it is a great deal cheaper and just as effective as expensive wood preservers sold for the same purpose, though it will darken the wood.
The Cape Cod furniture is allegedly in the American style (fairly loosely speaking, I suspect) favoured on that peninsular of Massachusetts. Personally I think the common style of chair looks as if it were designed for the human equivalent of Jack Russell dogs – long in the upper leg (deep seats) but extremely short in the lower leg (close to the ground) and with a sharply angled back to the chair which looks really bad for posture. They are quite cute to look at in that picket fence sort of genre and it appears to be fashionable to have them painted in alarming garish colours, rather than in gently weathering timber but at least they are made from ethical timber.
Next is that tubular aluminium and nylon look. At its best, it is very stylish in its contemporary appearance with clean lines and it is probably very practical. At its worst, it just looks utility and cheap – and there are very cheap options from some outlets. It is not for me but if I lived in a penthouse apartment with lots of shiny stainless steel and, perspex panels and glass, I would probably feel it was entirely appropriate to the environment but I would only want the more upmarket quality of this style.
So to the French provincial look (sometimes Italian), marketed these days as shabby chic. It is usually cast iron, sometimes wrought iron and I admit I love the look. When we bought our old wooden suite, what I would really have adored was the French provincial dining table and eight chairs which was a mere $6000 close to a decade ago. It wasn’t overly comfortable, it couldn’t accommodate a sun umbrella and it certainly wasn’t practical (the heavy chairs would have been difficult to push in and out on our imperfect, outdoor surface) but it was stylish. These days the price has dropped (the quality too) and alas shabby chic has come to mean chipped paintwork in pastel colours peppered with rust. I don’t want chipped paintwork and rust and I do want comfort. Shabby chic is founded on the real McCoy – weathered by time and of undeniable quality. Repro shabby chic does not do it for me.
Finally we come to the option of African colonial which is outdoor wicker. Proper wicker is a wonderfully organic and aesthetically pleasing material (though it can descend from chic to plain shabby alarmingly quickly) but it is designed for a very dry climate. So what is on offer here is made from synthetic materials. I was surprised to find that if you buy good quality, the guarantee runs to five years which is a lot longer than I expected. African colonial probably takes the prize for all round comfort – clearly the gin drinking representatives of HM Government in that continent knew a thing or two about comfort.
We have yet to make our decision but certainly my forays on the topic have highlighted three points:
1) Like most things in life, you get the quality you pay for.
2) The really, really, really stylish options are found on the internet and are divine but out of our league altogether. I may even rather have the new car I could buy with the money instead.
3) Bringing your outdoor furniture under cover at the end of summer greatly extends the life expectancy of same.
I did not see any of the polyester resin furniture that I have maligned over a period of many years. Maybe it has gone – I wish. I will not even deign to comment on the naff swinging love seats under their own little awnings which look like a floral surrey with a fringe on top. But I would comment that the cantilevered umbrellas that are for sale everywhere this year are desirable. We haven’t owned one yet but we have used one and they completely eliminate the intrusive presence of an umbrella pole in the middle of everything. We are looking forward to being well set up shortly for the summer wines.
In the Garden November 27, 2009
• Try planting up simple pots as Christmas gifts but get them done now to have them looking at their best in a few weeks time. Punnets of annuals are ridiculously cheap to buy. Planted now, three small plants (plugs, they are called) will fill a pot which measures around 20 to 25cm across. I still remember my splendid summer combination years ago of blue ageratum and cerise petunias. Or you can find cheap herb plants if you want to give an instant herb garden. Ceramic and terracotta pots are inexpensive these days, especially the classic terracotta type despite the fact they still seem to be imported from Italy. This is a good activity to carry out with children and will go down well with grandparents as it shows thought and effort. The cheapest potting mix is fine for annuals but keep the pots well watered and protected from slugs and snails while they settle in.
• With summer coming, set the level on the lawnmower a notch higher. Cutting the lawn very short does not mean you reduce mowing. Instead it tends to stress the grass so the weeds move in.
• If you have onehunga weed in your lawn, you have left it late to spray it but it is the one really bad weed which we think justifies a chemical assault. It is the weed that puts tiny prickles into any bare feet that dare tread upon it. There is a targeted spray called, we understand, Prickleweed Killer which doesn’t kill off the desirable grasses. If there are any children in your life, get onto dealing to it this weekend as your first task. Do not let this weed go to seed.
• Apples will have set their fruit for the year which means that if you had a codling moth issue in the past which you have not done anything about, odds on the larvae are scaling the trunk now to reach the fruit, if they have not yet made the journey. This means it is too late for pheromone traps which are designed to catch the moth before it lays eggs. You will either have to put up with moth eaten fruit or resort to some insecticide spray. Apparently lavender bushes or nasturtiums planted below will discourage infestations in the future but we have yet to see proof of this. It may be worth a try but I would keep to lavender because it is likely that rampant nasturtiums will engulf your entire apple tree. Tipping new growths by hand will largely deal to the leaf curling midge which attacks the very ends. Unroll the leaves and you may find a small pink creature inside. You either nip them off or spray them.
• The end of this month means you are running out of time to plant kumara, yams and any other type of sweet potato. Give these priority along with tomatoes. Potatoes planted now will be a late crop so you don’t want to delay on these either.
• It is four weeks until Christmas so get quick maturing salad vegetables in this week for harvesting at that time. It is much nicer to head out and pick your own mesclun, rocket, microgreens and radishes.
• If you are a fan of monarch butterflies, you will need to get swan plant seed in urgently to get the autumn crop through to feed the late caterpillars. Real enthusiasts will also be sowing seed trays of zinnias, marigolds and other autumn crops of annuals to feed the butterflies.
Flowering this week – Kalmia latifolia “Ostbo Red”
Kalmia Ostbo Red with its look of piped icing rose buds
Kalmias are evergreen members of the heath family, growing here in similar conditions to rhododendrons (they like an acid soil) and coming into flower just as the rhododendrons are largely over. They are native to the eastern seaboard of North America from Canada to Mexico so are tolerant of a wide range of temperatures but generally we would describe them as very hardy. Americans often refer to them as the Calico Plant or Mountain Laurel. Over time, they will grow to about 1.5 metres high but they are pretty slow growing.
Kalmias are not rare but they are not often available in garden centres simply because they are notoriously difficult from cutting. Sometimes plants will come in a rush through tissue culture (micro propagation) in which case you should buy on sight because you don’t know when they will be offered again. If you know of somebody with a plant you can grow them by layering (we did an Outdoor Classroom on the topic about six weeks ago) or if you find any seed on a plant, they are straightforward and reasonably consistent from seed although you will get some variation from the parent. Alas some of the common named varieties don’t set much, if any, seed at all.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 