Battening down the garden for summer

After a brief flurry of distinctly warm days a few weeks ago when Mark and I were lured into the swimming pool for the first time this season, we appear to have cooled down again and have had plenty of grey days since. But unlike some places, we can be confident that summer will arrive here and at some point we will get a protracted period of bright light, comparative heat and dry…

Unlikely though it seems to us here, there are parts of the world where you put your garden to bed for winter because there is a period of some months when the ground is too cold to work and the days are too short. Most of the UK falls into this category, as do inland areas in Europe, the US and Canada where the ground can freeze or remain under a blanket of snow and ice. Not so here. Winter in Taranaki is a pretty busy time for gardeners and we are so mild that even the grass continues to grow. Instead, summer is the time when we batten down hatches and prepare for harsher conditions. But only relatively harsher. My late mother used to hate summer. Her beloved Concert Programme got taken over for interminable cricket commentaries and there was very little she could do in the garden. Boredom set in for her and she couldn’t wait for the cooler temperatures and autumn rains.

Forget planting trees and shrubs now. All you will do is stress them badly and it can take quite a while for stressed plants to pick up lost growth. You can dig and divide clumping plants (perennials, grasses and the like) as long as you water them in well but it is best to do this after a bit of rain or they can wilt and sulk and look very sad.

Forget sowing lawns, even if you think a sprinkler is justified. Wait for autumn or spring for this activity.

There are few plants that are best pruned in summer. While roses benefit from constant light pruning, cherry trees are the big exception to the winter and spring pruning rule. In fact, the time to get out and prune your cherries is right now. Where you have patches of dense foliage, it is likely you have witches broom and the entire section needs to be removed. You won’t get flowers on witches broom and, left unchecked, it will take over the whole tree. Beyond that, you can summer prune to shape plants and to remove dead wood, but be very careful not to remove too much foliage because most plants only make a spring growth and are more likely to die if you leave them hacked about at this time of the year.

Container plants will need watering every single day, and more than once a day if they are overplanted hanging baskets or congested pots where it is difficult to keep the required moisture levels high. Don’t be fooled if you see water running out of the bottom of a dry pot – it does not mean you have soaked the plant. All that is happening is that the water is finding an easy path straight through and the roots and potting mix can remain bone dry. If it is really parched, you need a surfactant to encourage the water to penetrate. A squirt of dishwashing liquid will suffice. Unglazed pots such as terracotta and wire hanging baskets dry out even faster and will need more attention. Repotting root bound plants to larger containers makes it easier to keep them watered but make sure you soak the root ball until it is wet through before you pot it. I have put most of my pots to bed for summer – brought in under the nursery irrigation system. I will get them out again in autumn. Lacking an automated irrigation system, home gardeners may have to resort to moving their container plants to shady positions, preferably near a garden tap so that it makes watering easier…

You should have had mulch laid on your garden six to eight weeks ago. Mulch works both ways – it retains existing moisture levels but conversely, if your soil is already dry, it stops any moisture penetrating from above. So there is no point in mulching dry garden beds. And if you think a good soak with the garden hose will get the soil moist enough to lay mulch, try it in one spot and then excavate to see how far the water has gone down. In most cases it will only be a few centimetres which is nowhere near enough. Consign the idea of mulching to the “must-do-next-year basket”. Good gardeners mulch. It is not exciting. It is not spectacular but it is good routine practice.

Experienced vegetable gardeners know that soil which is worked to a fine tilth holds water better than compacted soil. While the top layer will dry and form a crust, it is protecting the moisture levels underneath. It should be possible to develop gardening practices which avoid the need to pour on large quantities of water to the vegetable garden in all but the sandiest of soils. Enriching your soil with humus encourages water retention. Raising beds so that you can flood narrow channels between the rows directs water to the roots where it is needed. Always remember that it is the plant’s roots that need the water, not the foliage. And because you want the roots to go deep, rather than stay on the surface, you want to direct water deeply and not just wet the top which does little more than keep down the dust.

There is some amazement right through the nursery and plant retail industry at just how vegetable gardening has taken off this year, along with the planting of fruit trees. Sure some more desultory gardeners may fall by the wayside, but others will now be enjoying the fruits of their labours and finding that it is enormously rewarding to be able to wander out the back door and pick fresh herbs, vegetables and fruit. It is by no means a certainty that it will save you money, especially not at peak times when there is a glut on the market. You need some experience to be able to work your way into a position where growing produce at home seriously impacts on the food bill. And you need time – quite a bit of time if you are going to do it on a larger scale or to aim for self sufficiency. But the rewards are well and truly there for the converted and the ever increasing number of books on home produce and self sufficiency are an indicator of growing interest in this wholesome activity.

The good news is that at this time of the year, vegetable gardening dovetails in nicely with ornamental gardening. At a time when there is not a great deal to do in the flower garden beyond ongoing weeding, deadheading and general light maintenance, the veg garden is calling loudly. This is a time for intensive input with the start of the summer harvests and the preparation for winter crops. In our household, the call of the vegetable garden always gives Mark a perfect excuse for escaping from the house (sometimes, horrors, even from guests) and hiding out, all the while still feeling busy and virtuous. I wonder if this has any bearing on his recent expansion of the vegetable gardens to two further plots a goodly distance across the property?

In the garden 18/12/2008

  • Give roses a summer feed. These are plants which put on a simply astounding display of flower power based on pathetically little root systems and they appreciate a helping hand. While some rose enthusiasts maintain a traditional and rigorous spray programme, if you are less than enthusiastic about this dodgy environmental practice, take stock of which roses are still looking good in your garden and which ones are looking poorly, diseased or starting to defoliate. Our advice is to take out and burn the latter and nurture the former. Roses vary hugely in disease resistance and we strongly advocate picking the varieties which will stay acceptably healthy without chemical intervention. If readers wish to email us with recommended varieties which they have grown without sprays, we would be happy to disseminate the information. Contact us on jury@xtra.co.nz
  • Keep a weeding bucket on hand so that as you pull out weeds, you can dump them in the bucket. Weeds tend to be hardy survivors by definition and can still ripen their seeds if you leave them lying on the garden.
  • Set the lawnmower height a notch or two up so that you are leaving more length… Scalping the lawns is never good practice and stresses the grass even further as the heat and dry of summer hits. It is a fallacy that cutting the lawn very short reduces the time between mowing. It just kills the grass and allows weeds to get away instead.
  • It is all go in the vegetable garden with planting out salad veg, beans, corn, carrots and peas. Leeks can be started now from seeds or plants, in preparation for winter harvest. Keep pinching out the laterals on tomatoes and giving them a copper spray. They will need this after the recent rain to keep blight at bay. Grapevines also need attention, thinning out the laterals and reducing the young fruit to one bunch per stem (or lateral). You will get better flavour if you sacrifice quantity for quality.
  • Thin apples if you have a heavy fruit set. Give the plants a light summer prune. This can be done with hedge clippers.

Quotes this week courtesy of the Macbird Floraprint calendar which arrived in the mail (all from that prolific Anon):

Lawnmower: a magic wand for making teenagers disappear.

Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your back gets used to it.

When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.

In the garden 12/12/2008

  • Roses need regular deadheading to keep them healthy and to encourage further flowering. Give them a light prune at the same time to encourage them to stay bushy and to put on new growth in the right places. If you keep a cardboard carton at your side and cut the prunings to fit, they will dry out quickly so you can incinerate them in a few days. Never put rose prunings in the compost heap.
  • Primula heladoxa is the common, vigorous yellow primula which has now finished flowering. If you have them planted on the edges of waterways, make sure you deadhead them to prevent spreading the seed. While you may like them, your neighbour downstream may not and Regional Council certainly won’t.
  • As citrus trees finish flowering, get a copper and summer strength oil spray onto them to keep disease at bay.
  • If your hostas look really tattered and holey, you can give them a radical haircut, feed them and give them a good drink and they will produce new growth. However unless you take steps to reduce the slugs and snails, they will just eat the fresh leaves again.
  • As hybrid clematis finish their first flowering, you can cut them down almost to ground level, feed them and water them and they will spring into new growth and flower again for you in six to eight weeks time.
  • Keen brussel sprout fans will be sowing their seed now. We are not brussel sprout country (they prefer colder, drier climates) but we grew Maxim last year and it did very well for us.
  • Keep up with sowing corn, green beans, lettuce, leeks and carrots. All can be done from seed at this time of the year which is a great deal cheaper than buying plants.
  • Keep pinching out the laterals of your tomatoes to encourage the plants to be bushy. They are growing like mad at this time. You can still put in plants of tomatoes (and cucumbers) for a late crop.

The closing quote this week is from the inimitable but late Christopher Lloyd of Great Dixter fame:

There is a psychological distinction between cutting back and pruning. Pruning back is supposed to be for the welfare of the tree or shrub; cutting back is for the satisfaction of the cutter.

A Gardener's Christmas

What I would really like Santa to bring me this Christmas is a genuine kink free hose or two. We own lots of garden hoses here and all are meant to be kink-free. Over a period of time, none are… There is little more annoying than using the hose and finding the water stops suddenly because it kinks in the same spot every time. Then the water pressure either blows it off the tap which sprays water everywhere, or when I bend to straighten the offending kink, the end of the hose suddenly develops a life and will of its own and sprays me with water. Either way, I get wet. Maybe Santa knows a manufacturer of hosepipes which don’t ever go into kinks. I am told that using a hose reel keeps kinks at bay, but as I regularly use four different garden taps, unless I want to keep moving the entire shebang, I would need four hose reels and four brand new hoses which may be asking altogether too much from Santa.

I am hoping Santa may also go to the Boxing Day sales (I may need to accompany him) and buy me two ladders. One needs to be a stable but lightweight two or three step affair for pruning plants which are just above my reach and one needs to be taller for reaching higher. OSH would not like our ladders here at all. They are somewhat unstable and held together by baling twine, but at least they have their rungs.

Other gifts for gardeners that I would recommend include good secateurs. Decent secateurs last for many years (as long as they don’t end up in the compost heap) and will retain a sharp edge for clean cuts. It is false economy to buy cheap secateurs which are invariable nasty. Grape snips, however, are lightweight and cheap and much appreciated by women gardeners with smaller hands (and presumably by Asian gardeners according to the Lockwood Smith school of thought). They are so much easier to carry in a pocket and I prefer them to conventional secateurs for lightweight trimming. If you are feeling generous, give the recipient a couple of pairs. We own a smaller and lightweight pair of secateurs bearing the brand ARS which Mark and I both treasure as being easy to use and keeping a good sharp edge. We bought them years ago for taking cuttings and they have remained firm favourites for ease of use.. I did have a handy secateur sharpener given to me by friends, until I mislaid it (quite possibly with various secateurs and trowels in the compost heap). It doesn’t do anywhere near as good a job as a proper sharpening stone but for a quick-fix sharpen, it works well enough to get by. They are cheap enough and I need to buy another one but I am still waiting for my missing one to reappear.

Pruning saws are not cheap, at least not for a quality brand, but are worth their weight in gold. My preference is for a straight blade, not a curved one.

Every gardener needs more than one wheelbarrow and here, too, you really do get the quality you pay for. The last barrow I purchased was dirt cheap but alas something went wrong in its design and if you put anything in the tray at the handle end, it tips back. If you are going to go for a really cheap option, at least look at an assembled model and try putting a couple of unbreakable items in it before you buy, to check for stability. I recall inheriting a dreadful barrow from my mother with the same design flaw. The big chunky contractor’s barrows are sturdy, but most women will find them too heavy and the handles too thick to use comfortably. Plastic trays don’t rust out if you leave them out in the rain or filled with debris.

Trowels are another item which every gardener needs in multiples. Even with the best of intentions, they go missing on regular occasions, sometimes never to reappear. I am sure that trowels take themselves off to some secret gathering place, there to commune with other wayward trowels, forever safe from discovery. Either that, or they are imbued with some deluded desire to grow up and become spades and they are hiding out in the interim, awaiting their metamorphosis. Mark’s advice is that blue is the easiest colour to find in the garden so he prefers bright blue handles. But many of us can testify that even secateurs and trowels with high viz handles can disappear when your attention is momentarily distracted.

I really prefer not to be given garden ornaments or decorations. These are a matter of personal taste and being rather pernickety in the matter, I would rather chose my own (or have none).

If you are looking for books to give for Christmas, it is hard to go past The Artful Gardener (reviewed on this page last week), by Rose Thodey and Gil Hanly. It is a very good book and would be welcomed by most serious gardeners. In the classics, Hilliers Manual of Trees and Shrubs is a good standby for every bookcase. If you are feeling really generous, Audrey Eagles massive tome on New Zealand plants would be welcomed by most enthusiasts. Botanical art prints are also a safe option, well liked by most people who enjoy plants and gardening. You can often find these reproduced on quality greetings cards and picture frames are so cheap now that it could make a thoughtful gift within even a child’s budget. Botanical art, by the way, shows the botanical detail of the plant being painted – the stamens, petals, seedheads and other parts of the plant anatomy. They are not just chocolate box pictures of pretty flowers which may fall into the same category as garden ornaments and decorations.

Ours is a household which never gives gift vouchers or money in any shape or form. Second hand books are acceptable because they show thought, but gift vouchers are utility and take no thought at all and it is perfectly obvious to the recipient how high a dollar value you place on them. But, as a friend pointed out, others view vouchers differently and gardening vouchers are often well received when other inspiration is lacking.

Another friend suggested sun hat and sun block as a thoughtful gift. I would add that littlies who need help buying small gifts for gardening parents, relatives or grandies could do much worse than giving a new nail brush and hand cream!

The final suggestion over morning coffee for a welcome Christmas gift was a gardener. Although it is more likely that a willing garden labourer is what many of us would prefer. I am not sure that Santa himself fits the bill on this one. A younger, leaner and fitter model would be better to have at one’s beck and call. Preferably one that is amenable, obedient, has a little initiative but not too much and is easy on the eye. Thanks, Santa.

December 5, 2008 Weekly Garden Guide

  • Potted colour (flowering annuals which are sold in larger pots rather than in small punnets) are often ridiculously cheap and can give instant flowering oomph to gardens, but it pays to be severe and cut off all flowers, flower buds and any spent flowers as you plant them if you want them to be more than a one week wonder. They can then recover from the stress of being planted out before putting their energies into flowering and setting seed.
  • Be very cautious from here on about planting out woody trees and shrubs which can suffer from terminal stress over summer. If in doubt, heeling the plant into well cultivated soil such as the vegetable garden over summer may be wise. You can then relocate to its permanent position when autumn arrives.
  • The really successful harvests here at the moment are the strawberries and the broad beans. Shame about the missing lettuces… Mark blames the rabbits but I think it would have helped to have planted them in the first place.
  • We make no apology for offering our annual advice to deal to convolvulus and wandering jew now. If you are not organic, Woody Weedkiller or Banvine is an effective option for the former and Shortcut, Amitrol or Grazon for the latter. Glyphosate does not touch wandering jew and is not particularly easy to use on convolvulus because it kills the host plant as well as the vine. If you are organic, you are probably going to have to hand pull these weeds and then place them in black plastic rubbish bags to cook in the sun. Every piece of wandering jew that you do not cook will grow again.
  • Our first crop of peas has now finished but if you continue to sow them, you can still get in one or two more crops before the heat of summer. Make sure your main crop potatoes are in and Mark is planting kumara runners now. It is the last chance for kumara. Yams and pumpkins should be planted by now but you can still get a crop if you plant them now. Use plants, not seed.

Beverley Nicholls (so-named before the feminisation of his Christian name) wrote in 1932: I had never “taken a cutting” before….

Do you not realize that the whole thing is miraculous? It is exactly as though you were to cut off your wife’s leg, stick it in the lawn, and be greeted on the following day by an entirely new woman, sprung from the leg, advancing across the lawn to meet you.

Writing as ones who have taken many hundreds of thousands of cuttings in our time, the magic of such activity has long ago escaped us but it would be safe to say that Mr Nicholls’ perspective is not one which has ever struck us before. However, Mark lives in hope. And a neighbour has given a new perspective on this. He put his hydrangea prunings through the mulcher, spread the mulch and now has hundreds of budding young hydrangeas in his garden. Micro propagation? Who needs to try cuttings when you have a mulcher?