- Every vegetable gardener knows that Labour Weekend is a signal for the great plant out. Sensible gardeners in colder areas will be cautious but in most of coastal Taranaki it is now fine to put in the first sowings of corn and to plant out all the summer veg such as tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, aubergines, pumpkin and melons. Main crop potatatoes and kumara can go in, along with peas and carrots. This just may be the biggest weekend of the vegetable year. It is not critical that these vegetables all get planted this weekend but give priority to melons, kumaras and aubergines, if you like them, because they need long growing seasons.
- Thin out earlier sowings of vegetable seed. One lesson we have learned from the micro-veg/mesclun fashion is that all these fresh, young thinnings are delicious in salads and stirfrys.
- We are currently eating our fennel bulbs and yet again we are reminded of just how versatile and easy this vegetable is. Its aniseed taste is very mild when eaten raw (grated in salads or salsas) and all but disappears when roasted or sliced for stir fries. The fennel we are eating at the moment was planted at the end of February this year, but you can sow a crop now.
- A reminder that it pays to keep an eye on self seeded annual flowers and to pull out inferior specimens before they get too far down the track. I particularly dislike the crosses we get between old fashioned blue pansies and yellow pansies – they show as a yukky blue and brown combination with no merit. If you don’t keep an eye on your self seeders, in time they will become dominated by the lowest common denominator. We saw it happen over a period of years in a planting of beautiful electric blue meconopsis poppies in Dunedin Botanic Gardens. With the red form in the same bed, over time they ended up with an awful lot of murky maroon colours and far too few pure blues.
- Daffodil bulbs can be protected from the dreaded narcissi fly by removing foliage and piling on a layer of mulch. The flies lay their eggs in the top collar of the bulb and gain access down the foliage stems. Daffodils need 65 days of growth, which is a very precise figure. If you can recall back that far, as long as your daffodils were in growth by mid July, you can safely remove the foliage now and put them to bed for summer.
- While the Great Vegetable Plant Out takes priority for most people (this is your summer and early autumn harvest you are planting), in the ornamental garden, it is getting perilously close to the last call for planting out woody trees and shrubs and any pruning and shaping. It is also the optimum time for feeding and for getting mulches onto garden beds. No wonder spring is such a busy time in the garden.
- Writing of the Labour Weekend plantout, I relocated Mark, a good North Taranaki boy, to Dunedin for three years in our early life together. Corn is a very marginal crop there because the growing season is too short and he carefully started his corn plants in baby pots and planted them out at Labour Weekend, as one does. It snowed on the Tuesday and his poor little corn plants all died. We moved back north.
Pruning vireya rhododendrons: step-by-step guide 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.
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Sculpture in the garden
The large chicken netting peacocks in the meadow at Hilliers were both whimsical and charming
Would we consider having an exhibition in our garden during Rhododendron Festival, the sculptor asked. It is pretty last minute but we replied in the affirmative, though rather regretting the missed opportunities in the official programme which had long since been printed.
We have tended to be a bit iffy and sniffy about sculpture in gardens and it wasn’t until we saw it at Hilliers and at Wisley in England that we found a perspective we could live with.
The key issue is quite simple. In our eyes, gardens are about plants and they should be the stars. Even garden design is primarily a vehicle to carry the plants and to enhance the viewing experience. Drop a sculpture into a garden and in most cases the created object made by a human becomes the dominant feature. The plants and garden become the backdrop. That is fine if sculpture is your interest and you merely want a pleasing outdoor venue to display a collection. As long as the piece is placed well, the garden setting can enhance it considerably. But the reverse is rarely true and takes a great deal more skill.
Gardens are more usually dominated or taken over by the sculptural statement. If you doubt this claim, walk around a garden which has a significant sculptural installation. Do you look at the sculpture or the garden? I bet your bottom dollar that you look at the sculpture first (and longest) and the garden setting second but the detail of the garden slips into the background.
- Sputnik shapes in a bed of vinca at Hilliers
When we visited Hilliers famed gardens and arboretum near Winchester earlier this year, there was a sculpture exhibition in place. And even we, pretty dedicated as we are to the plants and gardening side, looked in the first instance at the sculptures. Don’t get me wrong. We really liked some of them and it was here that we figured that our personal tastes lean more to the organic forms which represent shapes in nature. This was a large exhibition with many artists involved so it lacked the cohesion and vision which are part of a solo display. It was also temporary and that was when we decided that there is a world of difference between permanent installations and short term exhibitions. The latter can add a great deal of interest to the experience of the visitor (which is why we said yes to the sculptor who approached us) without the commitment of permanence.
- Ephemeral whimsy in willow at Wisley
The RHS Wisley gardens just outside London had some charming, large, woven willow creations placed strategically in parts of the garden which were otherwise a little empty, almost barren. There is something about the ephemeral nature of woven willow which ages gently and will in time disappear entirely, making it fit easily to the surroundings. The whimsical nature of these works added appeal. But these were hardly Serious Sculpture or High Art – large woven toadstools and pieces of fruit don’t quite rank up alongside massive Henry Moore pieces.
In the end, garden sculpture is about personal taste and our personal tastes lean more to smaller scale, environmentally sympathetic whimsy which can gently blend in to our garden, rather than dominate. Others prefer much bolder pieces which shout out a statement and where the garden and environment curtsey to the power of the piece.
From what I can see from his list, Rangitikei artist Steuart Welch from Cannock Forge is bringing to us pieces from both ends of the spectrum – big bold statement pieces which require a truck to move and some which represent the whimsical aspect of his nature. We are really looking forward to seeing the effect of placing such strong pieces in our garden and learning first hand how to tread that line between enhancing a vision and dominating it. The works will remain in place throughout our Rhododendron Festival until the second week of November.
Flowering this week – Veltheimia
More likely to be veltheimia bracteata than capensis
Indubitably veltheimia, but whether bracteata or capensis for the species is a bit open to debate. In fact we may even have hybrids between the two though that does not seem to be widely mentioned as an option. The flowers can look a little like a cross between a red hot poker (kniphofia) and a lachenalia on steroids. The pink form is more common and it is such a robust performer that I am inclined to think it is the easier bracteata. The yellow form with pink blush, called Rosalba, is much rarer and sought after. We had thought that this was the species capensis but it flowers at the wrong time and is such a reliable and strong performer that it is more likely to be predominantly bracteata. We also have a creamy yellow veltheimia which is touchy, difficult, fussy and doesn’t thrive at all which is a shame because the colour is purer than Rosalba.
Whatever, these big bulbs from South Africa (members of the Hyacinthaceae family) are a little tender in constitution for cold areas because they are in growth during winter. For many years, they have been perfectly happy in the narrow dry house border which gets all the morning and midday heat but only occasional rain. In recent times we have found that they can be successful grown in open woodland and indeed bracteata is referred to as a forest lily in South Africa. It is truly remarkable how many wildflowers of that country have come to form the majority of interesting bulb material grown in our gardens here. If you acquire veltheimia seed, it germinates easily but is best sown fresh
October 16, 2009 In the Garden
- In the vegetable garden, the end of October signals the time for the major plant out for summer crops. The soils are warming up by then and for all but the most extreme areas, the threat of a late frost is over. Even minor late frosts can be devastating to plants with tender, young growth. It is not critical that you time it for Labour Weekend – a week or two either side is fine. But if you have your garden all dug and ready and waiting, keep raking it regularly to expose any germinating weeds to the sun and air and to keep it well tilled and fluffed.
- The only reason to raise a vegetable bed any more than about 20cm above the ground is to save your back. As vegetables rarely go much deeper than that, any additional depth is wasted soil which will compact over time. But raising the bed a little does stop you walking on it and compacting it. If you do not have permanent paths to keep you off the soil, you can use wooden boards that you move around. Pavers are also a good option that can look attractive and you can lay yourself at moderate cost.
- Mounding rows of the vegetable beds on an east-west axis has been proven to accelerate growth, particularly when soils are heavy, damp or cold. Mark routinely mounds his vegetable rows here. The east-west axis is to ensure maximum and even exposure to the sun.
- Keep sowing a few lettuce seeds each week to ensure continued supply. One of the skills of good veg gardening is managing successional sowing to keep a range of vegetables available in the garden, rather than feast or famine. A diary is very helpful to record what you have done, as long as you remember to refer to it next year. While it is getting late for main crop onions, those sown now can be harvested as spring onions later.
- In the ornamental garden, give top priority to planting out woody trees and shrubs before we get too warm and dry, pruning evergreens, dividing perennials and feeding anything that looks needy. Time is fast running out for all these tasks. It is already too late for moving trees and shrubs. Wait until autumn to carry out further relocations.
- If you are currently enjoying clivias, especially the highly desirable lemon or even peach toned varieties, you can increase the chances of your plant producing good seed by hand pollinating. This involves transferring the pollen from one plant to the anthers of another plant. Usually a paint brush is used to carry out this process. If you carried out this operation as we advised last year, the seed is probably still on the plant and it is fine to collect and sow it now.
- Lawns are currently showing their weaknesses including major weed infestations. You can green up sad, yellow or starved looking lawns with fertiliser (the locally produced Bioboost can be spread any time without risk of burning dry lawns). Keep shunning hormone sprays for a few weeks longer to avoid any risk to surrounding plants coming into growth. While we normally advocate cutting lawns reasonably long (leave at least 2.5cm in length), scalping a lawn at this time can deal death to some of the seasonal weeds. The one weed we think you can justify spraying is the highly undesirable and prickly Onehunga weed. Seek advice from your local garden centre as to what is currently recommended to deal to this menace to bare feet. If you have children in your life, you will need to take action on this one.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 