One Magic Square

Author: Lolo Houbein
Publisher: (Wakefield Press)
ISBN 978 1 86254 764 3 (pbk)

The whole principle of this book is that you can grow your own food on one square metre of garden. “My goodness,” said a friend. “If your garden is only one square metre, you could take it on holiday with you.”

If you are only going to have a garden which measures one metre by one metre, it is a bit of a moot point as to whether you need a book which runs to about 350 pages to tell you how to do it. Yes there are planting diagrams. There is the soup plot. There is the Aztec Plot (that is the one with a marigold in the centre). Then there is the plan for the pasta/pizza plot. How about the curry plot? Maybe you fancy the stir fry plot or the anti-oxidant plot.

If you have the gardening skills to work to this level, odds on you will want to expand beyond one square metre. There is quite a bit of additional information (but nothing that I have not seen before in other how-to guides) and it is written by a woman who is clearly enthusiastic about her topic and has a love of home grown vegetables. But honestly, I need a lot of convincing that it is possible to achieve self sufficiency and stave off famine on a mere square metre of vegetable garden. This book may appeal more to eccentrics rather than the target audience of novices.

November 14, 2008 Weekly Garden Guide

The sudden arrival of sunshine, heat and dry this week was slightly surprising after the severe cold of the previous week but we have been warning readers for some time about the need to get woody trees and shrubs into the ground as soon as possible. Make sure you soak plants in a bucket of water until the bubbles stop rising before planting, to ensure that the root ball is wet right through. If you are planting into full sun, you may need to acclimatise plants to the bright light by spending a few days having them in full sun for a couple of hours only. Many plants are grown in shady conditions (or under shade cloth) and can burn quickly in our bright sun.

  • You can keep on planting out perennials and annuals in the ornamental garden as long as you are willing to water regularly while they settle in. Perennials can be lifted and divided while they are in full growth.
  • Autumn flowering bulbs are generally going dormant now so you can lift them and fluff over them from now on if they looked as if they needed some attention earlier this year.
  • It is probably safe to mow off your daffodil foliage now even if they have not yet died down. Removing the foliage a little early reduces infestation by the dreaded narcissi fly which lays its eggs in the crown of the bulb so the larvae can hatch and eat it out.
  • Top priority this week should be getting mulch onto your garden if you have not yet done so. Bare earth is not good earth. Cover it with compost or some layer of humus to condition the soil and to reduce moisture loss.
  • Absolutely last chance to sow seed of delights such as melons, aubergines, tomatoes and capsicums if you hope to get a full crop through. Buying plants is a better option now because they need as long a growing season as possible.
  • Continue sowing corn, green beans and main crop potatoes.
  • Get a copper spray onto tomatoes to prevent blight.
  • Stay on top of the weeds. The push hoe is more friendly to the environment than glyphosate.
  • Monarch butterfly enthusiasts will need to keep an eye on over wintered swan plants. The yellow aphid is invading the plants and needs to be destroyed because they do not disappear on their own like other aphids. Digital control (squashing them between your fingers) is the first line of defence as the first of your monarch caterpillars will be coming through and spraying with pyrethrum will kill them as well as the aphids.

If it is all too much for male readers, heed the advice of one T.H. Everett (whoever he may have been): A man should never plant a garden larger than his wife can take care of.

The view of the washing in the garden

I am of the clothes line generation. A clothes drier is extremely rarely used here. I have been known to take pride in the fact that I raised three children in cloth nappies and never owned a drier. I bought one cheaply in a garage sale some years ago but old habits die hard and it is banished to an outside shed where it is used maybe once or twice a year, and not at all in the last twelve months. Years of relative poverty taught me to conserve power and old habits die hard.

But I find clothes lines reasonably fascinating and it is an ongoing issue to which many garden openers will relate. The bottom line is that it is not okay for garden visitors to be greeted by the sight of your smalls flapping in the wind. Some things are best kept private. We figured some years ago that we could no longer peg the washing on the line during peak garden visiting times. In our case it is exacerbated by the fact that our washing line is a genuine old fashioned model (none of the new fangled rotary types here) which consists of a long wire strung between two trees in a relatively conspicuous position close to the back door with good air movement for optimum drying and all held up by a bamboo prop which we cut as required from our giant bamboo stand down in the park. I like it. It is old fashioned and suits our situation and has served the house inhabitants here well for coming up to 60 years.

We had an elderly friend visited recently and her companion stayed in the car near my washing line (acquaintances and strangers tend to use the car park which is some way distant) while we made our greetings and she asked if they could look around the garden. The companion hopped out of the car and commented that she had been studying my washing on the line. I looked. Being an old school type of person in some ways, I still wash my whites and pales separately and it was a white and pale day. But arthritic fingers (not great for a gardener) mean that I have delegated the task of pegging out the washing on cold days to the other half and I must say that we agreed he had done a splendid job of it and his pegging out was most creditable.

This is not always the case with many men. Back in my earlier days, I used to do some facilitation (goodness knows what it is called in modern parlance) of women’s discussion groups and one of the most successful icebreakers in my repertoire was to get each participant to talk about pegging out the washing. It probably wouldn’t work these days as the clothes drier has replaced the washing line in many households and maybe domestic tasks are shared more equitably, but 20 years ago women used to light up and talk readily about this routine task that we all performed on a daily basis.

Every group would have participants who bemoaned the dreadful job their husbands did if they pegged out the washing. Untidy, misaligned, disordered, tee shirts stretched and all the rest of a multitude of crimes against laundry. All the participants had their own particular style. Some still adhered to that wonderful suburban value that underwear must always be pegged on the inside rows of a rotary clothesline so that it is not visible to anybody who visited during the day. It is difficult to know what to do with bras and knickers if your line is the classic one wire between trees. I met women who had to colour tone their pegs. Ah, pegs. That is a whole new topic of great concern. What sort of peg you like can be very personal. I recall one whose favoured peg was not available in Taranaki. In fact you had to get up to the King Country to find them so every time she travelled north, she would buy a spare packet.

I don’t recall that I was an isolated case in that I could ignore pegs and groups of like items, but I would often (not always) colour tone the arrangement. I still do on occasion. All the blue items adjacent to the striped or spotted green and blue items leading into the greens, the browns, yellows, reds and so to the blacks at the end. A truly multi coloured item could be a source of angst as to where it best fitted in the chain of colour.

This would never suit the perfectionist who wants to group items by use – all tea towels together, all socks in a row matched in pairs and all tee shirts followed by skirts and trousers.

As he has gained more practice in routine pegging out, I notice my other half tends towards that orderly approach and he has mastered skills which are equal to mine in the pegging stakes. Not only that, but he usually brings the washing in and what is more, he folds it as he takes it off the line. I never fail to be impressed.

With only two of us left at home these days, it is a great deal easier to manage staying up to date with the laundry while hiding all evidence from garden visitors over the busy garden open season. Clothes horses do a fine job and I still don’t use the drier. But it may come as no surprise to those who know the Govett Brewster Art Gallery’s permanent collection to hear that Christine Hellyer’s blue washing line installation is a favourite of mine.

I have seen garden designers struggle with placing washing lines in gardens, banishing them to areas around the back, screened from view. The problem is that around the back is often south facing and lacking in adequate sunshine or air movement so it is not an effective solution for drying. The retractable clothes lines which tuck back neatly into a box attached to a wall look to be a tidy solution if you have a suitable building to anchor them but I doubt that many are large enough for family use. And they are not suitable in our situation where the only location would see it stretched over the driveway. Besides, I am fond of my historic one wire with bamboo prop.

But this issue has been around for a fair while. Readers who knew Mark’s late mother may remember her as a woman not lacking in a sense of humour but definitely strong on propriety. I can recall being here about thirty years ago to help her and Felix with hosting an international coach tour. We farewelled them all after a longish visit and walked back to the house where Mimosa was absolutely mortified to see her washing basket sitting on the door step with her lace and nylon bloomers draped out to dry for all the world to see. She had forgotten to move them out of sight. She did have the grace to laugh at herself.

November 7, 2008 Weekly Garden Guide

We had a minor triumph here with the first bowl of home grown strawberries this week. It is necessary to cover your strawberries with netting if you want a harvest. The birds are willing to eat them as soon as a small amount of red shows so will beat you to the fruit pretty well every time. We need a little more warmth and sun to bring up the sugar levels but the first fruit of the season are pretty special when you grow them yourself.
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  • Limes have a much shorter season than lemons but are excellent to use if, like ours, they are thin skinned and full of juice. A gin drinking friend tells me that you can freeze slices of fresh lime and use them instead of ice cubes in your G & T. A Chinese garden visitor told us it is common practice in Asia to freeze fresh lime slices for use in cooking. And the fresh new leaves are excellent to use in Asian cooking over the next couple of months. They are tender and very aromatic at this time of the year. If you have the space and are in a warmish area, it is worth growing both a lime and a lemon tree.
  • We grow quite a bit of citrus fruit in our garden and have fresh oranges all year round. Mark’s parents discovered 40 years ago that having citrus grafted onto trifoliata stock is the secret to growing them successfully this far south.
  • This is the worst time of the year for weed growth. Stop this first crop of weeds going to seed or you will rue your failure for years to come. Push hoeing is very effective on a sunny day when the sun will frazzle the weeds but you have to push hoe before the seed heads have formed or rake up the weeds to prevent spreading the seeds.
  • Do not delay any longer on getting woody trees and shrubs into the ground so they can get settled in before drier and warmer conditions come (which they will). If you are in an area which dries out quickly (coastal areas like Pukearuhe and Patea), you can heel plants into the vegetable garden for summer and relocate to their final position in autumn.
  • Getting the vegetable garden producing for summer and autumn should be a priority. Aubergines, melons, tomatoes, all the members of the cucurbit family (cucumbers, courgettes, pumpkins and the like), main crop potatoes, sweetcorn and kumara can go in now.
  • For a fun activity with children, plant sunflower seeds. There is little to rival a giant sunflower for a sense of achievement though you do need to think ahead on how you plan to stake a 2 to 3 metre triffid because the achievement is equalled by the disappointment when littlies find their giant has fallen over or bent and snapped. Dwarf sunflowers are for adults. Give children the real McCoy at least once in their life.
  • Start deadheading rhodos as they finish flowering. Apparently if you oil your fingers (olive oil is fine), you don’t get the sticky residue on your fingers.

October 31, 2008 Weekly Garden Guide

To be honest, we won’t be doing much in the garden this week beyond talking to visitors and whipping around with the blower vac and lawnmower. Like many others, we are entering our single biggest open garden week of the year. If you don’t have your own garden open, then get out and visit some who do. Even vegetable garden fans have a selection this year in an innovative move (check out the Rhododendron Festival programme for these). What is more, the veg gardens are free or donation only. There is no excuse for staying at home this week.

  • If you are tempted to buy plants (and Festival week is a big retail week) get them into the ground as soon as possible because dry and warm weather will come soon. We do not recommend teasing out the roots at planting. The only time the roots should be touched is when you can see a pot-bound plant has resorted to growing its main roots around in circles. In this case you need to liberate the roots or cut them because the poor plant will just stay with spiralling roots. Otherwise, it tends to do more damage than good to tease them out. Make sure you cultivate the ground well so that the young roots can grow out further, plant to the same level as in the pot, firm it down but don’t stamp it down vigorously and mulch it. You can add fertiliser if it makes you happy but we tend to rely on home made compost to feed the plants. Rhododendrons perform best with good drainage (never plant in heavy wet conditions), good air circulation (reduces pests and disease) and reasonable light levels (or they may not set flower buds and can get leggy). Sun for half the day is ideal.
  • Now is the optimum time to fertilise most plants. They are in full growth and the uptake of the fertiliser will be most efficient. Read the instructions on quantity – more is not better and you can burn the roots by over fertilising which can result in leaf scorch.
  • Deadhead pieris (often called lily of the valley shrubs) if you want good flower set for next season.
  • The great vegetable plant out continues. Give priority to crops which need the longest growing season (tomatoes, melons, kumara etc) and to crops which you plant in succession to ensure ongoing harvests ( green beans, peas, corn and salad vegetables). It is important to keep your vegetable garden soils light and aerated. Quick maturing plants don’t like heavy, compacted soil. Avoid walking on beds where you can and make the push hoe your friend.
  • Pumpkins can be started on a mound comprised of layers of soil and lawn clippings. The decomposing grass generates heat which speeds up germination and initial growth considerably. Don’t make the heap too big or you may cook the seeds. A metre wide by 60cm high is about the right size.
  • Shun hormone spray at this time of the year if you have planted out your tomatoes or have grapevines. Hormone sprays are often used on lawns.

The quote from the week is a thought to ponder while out garden visiting and comes from American landscape architect Thomas Church:

Style is a matter of taste, design a matter of principles.