October 17, 2008 Weekly Garden Guide

When our good friend Tony Barnes was quoted on the gardening pages last week as saying that clivias are generally immune to slug and snail damage, he did not mean that these little critters shun the clivias… What he meant (we assume) is that they don’t eat them. However, if you have a slug and snail problem on nearby plants, you may find that they have taken up residence between the clivia leaves. A daytime search yielded up around 15 or 20 snails hiding in each clivia clump in one of our garden borders. As clivias are often companion planted with hostas, it pays to be aware that they may be daytime sleeping in the clivias and night-time feeding on the surrounding plants.

  • While on the subject of hostas, you can still lift and divide these as they come into leaf. Make sure you replant into well cultivated soil. Similarly, clivias can be lifted and divided even when they are in flower.
  • Mark the location of daffodil clumps which failed to flower well this spring because you will forget where they are when they go dormant. Dig and thin the patch to encourage flowering or relocate them all to a sunnier position.
  • Time is running out for the spring pruning of evergreens… We are starting to panic here so if you haven’t done yours, you are not alone but don’t delay.
  • If you have never seen a davidia involucrata (also known as the Dove Tree, Ghost Tree or Handkerchief Tree) in full flower, go and see the one at Tupare. They take a long time to flower but when they do, it can look as if somebody has pegged white hankies all over the tree.
  • You are running out of time to get summer crops such as melons, tomatoes, cucumbers and kumaras started – all the crops which need as long a growing season as possible. You can buy plants but it is much cheaper to do it from seed. Scarlet runner beans and green beans can be started now. These are heavy cropping, easy and reliable for home gardeners to grow and should be sown in fortnightly succession to ensure continued supply.
  • Earth up early potatoes as they grow. This is reputed to encourage better potato set and reduces competing weeds at the same time.
  • Now is the optimum time for getting your vegetable garden producing to maximum capacity for summer crops so don’t put it off any longer.
  • If you want big leeks, you can start them now from seed, either in trays or directly into the garden. Leek planting can continue through summer, depending on how large your like your leeks to be. However, it is getting late for onions but you can still get a good crop if you get the seed in now.
  • We have never had much success with growing celery and much prefer Florence fennel, but if you like the former, you can sow seed now to plant out in December. The Curious Gardener’s Almanac claims that eating celery results in negative calories. Apparently it burns up more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to start with. That is assuming you don’t fill the central cavity with peanut butter or cream cheese.

From Noxious Weeds to Garden Games via Hollandaise Sauce and Seeds

Mark groaned when he read the letter to the editor last week from a correspondent hoping that the newly formed Friends of the Te Henui Walkway would not be removing the flowering plants – such as the flowering onion weed. Dear oh dear. There is a world of difference between wildflowers and noxious weeds and onion weed falls fairly and squarely into the second category. The correspondent would be better occupied gathering up bulbs of the snowflake (leucojum) which naturalises well, has a long flowering season and is never going to invade the area rather than trying to preserve colonising thugs. Or white bluebells could be an acceptable alternative.

***

Readers who have their own asparagus patch or who enjoy this seasonal treat may like to try a recipe I saw on TV in Britain from the inimitable Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. HFW seems to be something of a darling of mainstream TV crossing freely between lifestyle, gardening and cooking programmes while embodying much of that which is charming about British eccentrics. Pitted in some cook-off competition against a professional chef, HFW watched him fiddling about making the usual Hollandaise Sauce and then proceeded to whip up his own version. Cook the asparagus spears lightly. Soft boil a three minute egg then cut its top off, pierce the yolk, place a small knob of butter on the egg and add a squeeze of lemon juice. Dip the asparagus spears in the egg mix and eat. Voila! Instant Hollandaise Sauce without the artery hardening properties of large quantities of butter, let alone the problems of curdling.

****

Keen gardeners generally know how to grow plants from seed and if you are of this ilk, you will want to have a look at Kings Seeds catalogue. I can honestly say that Mark has had hours of wholesome fun browsing this substantial listing and will have many more hours of fun when his thirty seven packets of seed turn up. It was actually meant to be forty five packets of seed but they seemed to be out of eight that he wanted. Considering I can blow $100 easily on a trip to town, his investment of $103.30 (plus the cost of the catalogue which I think was $7.50) is likely to be of much longer duration with more rewarding outcomes.

The beauty of Kings Seeds is that they don’t just offer the mainstream flower and vegetable selections (though they are here and at prices somewhat less than you will pay buying them off the shelf), there is a large range of less common selections – annuals, perennials, herbs and vegetable – and a growing selection of heirloom varieties. There are seven different types of zucchini, for example, and I counted fifty one different types of tomatoes.

You can find Kings Seeds on line at www.kingsseeds.co.nz or if you are the more old fashioned type who prefers to hold a catalogue in your hands, Mark obtained his copy from a local garden centre. Even if you have never tried growing seeds before, you may be inspired to start. There is quite a bit of information in the catalogue but my advice to absolute beginners is not to be too ambitious to start with. Five packets of different seeds are probably enough to cope with… You will need seed trays. We still use our polystyrene mushroom trays here which used to be widely available but are harder to source now. Ours are almost vintage. We puncture many holes in the base before filling with seed raising mix. Once you have sown your seeds, it does pay to keep the trays off the ground if you can, to afford some protection from marauding slugs and snails which can demolish all the tender shoots overnight. If you resort to using your outdoor dining table to hold the seed trays, cover it with plastic first to give some protection to the table. The rest of the seed raising process you can learn by trial and error and it is a wonderful activity to do with children.

****

I don’t usually review garden books as part of this column, but a reprint of a 1936 classic has had me chuckling this week. 100 Garden Games certainly harks back to an earlier era when people were more willing to participate in organised activities. Chapter one has twenty five games for one or two players. I worried a bit about whether Slippity was a form of jelly wrestling, but apparently not. But the one which took my fancy was Toe Ball. This is an amusing little game, we are told, which involves quite considerable energy. Briefly, it involves lying flat on your back on the ground. A large ball of a fair weight has a cord tied around it, secured at the other end to your toe. You then fling your leg upwards with as much force as possible so the ball flies upwards and backwards over your head, while the loop slips off your toe. What I particularly liked was the quote at the end: “This is an excellent little stunt for the lawn when you are sun-bathing in swim suits.” The mind boggles.

Going into games for small groups and larger parties, the instructions and equipment can become somewhat more complex, along with the scoring rules. Tether Tennis did not, as I initially feared, involve tying up your playing partner so that he or she could not escape. Neither did Human Croquet use shrunken heads, although some players are required to take on the role of being hoops while others are balls. Human croquet is more a case of Blind Man’s Buff meets croquet.

But it was the Games For Children chapter which made me think that times had changed considerably. It is difficult to imagine that the modern child would be encouraged to make their own blowpipes (the instructions on how to construct a blowpipe are very detailed) complete with darts from thin splinters of bamboo. Given that bullrush has fallen into disfavour, a number of the rough and tumble games, such as Tyre Wrestling, are likely to be deemed unsafe.

However Whip Sport is certainly attention grabbing in the games for children. The section opens with: “Plenty of fun can be had from a long-thonged whip.” This is followed by instructions on how to make a long thronged whip, even something resembling a cat-o’-nine-tails if you so wish. After making your whip, this handy little reference book tells you how to master using it and suggests various targets. Maybe children in 1936 were better mannered and kinder, as well as being tougher. The prospect of lining up a group of children of the new millennium armed with long thonged whips and expecting them to play harmoniously and co-operatively might be altogether too optimistic.

If you feel you need this nostalgic little book in your collection, it is by Sidney G Hedges, published by Hamlyn (ISBN 978 0 600 61840 9). It may generate lots of wholesome fun in your garden this summer, if you avoid the games which ACC would like to make illegal.

October 10, 2008 Weekly Garden Guide

It pays to deadhead hellebores (winter roses). The spent flowers provide a splendid nursery for aphids and the seed which eventually falls can germinate too freely and over time the seedlings will compete with established plants and all become choked. It is also a great deal easier to pull out freshly germinating seedlings rather than leaving them until later when you have to dig them, rather than pull them. Being promiscuous flowers, unless you have isolated your plant, the seedlings will not come true to their parent.

  • If you are saving hellebore seed, sow it while still very fresh. It does not like being kept and germination rates fall dramatically.
  • Trees and shrubs tend to follow a sequence where they flower and then go into growth, so optimum pruning time is often as flowering finishes. Tidy up daphne bushes now but the common odora types are best with light pruning, rather than radical hacking back. If you have a scruffy bholua (the Himalayan daphne), it can be subjected to heavy pruning though it can take a year or two to recover.
  • Moss growing on paths can be hazardous, making them slippery and is a common occurrence in our damp climate. There are various products you can buy, though if you price out common household bleach you may find it is cheaper. Heavily diluted swimming pool chlorine will also work. If you want to avoid using chemicals, including chlorine, where the moss is thick you can push hoe or scrape it off and then rake it up. The path will then dry out better and remaining moss spores are more likely to die. Or a water blaster will give a thorough clean up if the path surface is up to it. Be very cautious about laying paths out of old bricks, especially in shady or damp areas. They may look quaint and rustic but they can become veritable skating rinks quite quickly.
  • Gaps in perennial beds will be apparent by now and it is a good time to dig up clumps of plants to split up and spread into gaps.
  • It is still a little too cool to get too carried away planting out the vegetable garden, except for seeds such as peas and beans. Labour Weekend is the traditional D Day for getting baby plants and summer crops in because the risk of cold snaps is greatly reduced by then. As it is only 2 weeks to Labour Weekend, you need to ensure the garden is cleaned up, dug, raked, rested and ready to receive its crops.
  • If your deciduous fruit trees are at the green tip stage (new shoots showing but not yet in flower), you have time to get the critical copper and oil spray on. The oil is to deal to over wintering red spider eggs as well as other nasties, including codling moth. It is best done in winter, but a summer strength oil with copper is better than nothing.

October 3, 2008 Weekly Garden Guide

We are heading quickly towards mid spring and plants are romping into growth. This is the time to finish major pruning and shaping. You then follow up later with a light hair cut on the new growth if required.

  • As plants put on their new growth, it is the optimum time for feeding them. At a recent dinner party of a number of seasoned gardeners, we all agreed that the local product of BioBoost is as good as any and better and cheaper than most.
  • Slugs and snails are at their most active. If you use slug bait, remember that one bait can kill a number of offenders so do not use it like fertiliser. Slug bait is pretty nasty stuff so wear gloves and/or wash your hands thoroughly after handling it. If you don’t like slug bait, getting out at night with a good torch and digital control can effect a reasonably good hit rate, especially on damper nights though it is tricky to manage both torch and umbrella. Spreading gritty material such as sand, sawdust, crushed egg shells, pine or rimu needles discourages many slimy crawlers although they only head off to easier pastures. The old favourites of a buried beer can with a few centimetres of beer at the bottom (they are drawn by the scent and then get trapped or drown) or hollowed out orange skins can attract them until you do a killing round in the morning. It is not friendly to liberate captives into your neighbour’s property. Don’t be sentimental. Squash them.
  • The cold blast this week is a timely reminder of the value of cloches in establishing early vegetable crops. The usual modern cloche is a series of hoops with an opaque or clear plastic cover and allows you to cover a decent length but you can get cheaper alternatives for smaller areas. Even opaque plastic milk containers will act as a mini cloche for a single lettuce.
  • Plant climbing and dwarf beans, carrots, peas, cauli, broc, beetroot, spinach and salad veg. These can all go directly into the garden as seeds or plants…
  • If you didn’t do it last weekend, then get onto planting seeds of melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, aubergines and capsicums into containers as soon as possible. Keep them in a warm spot and you will be ready for planting out at the end of the month. If you have bought little plants of them already growing, don’t check their growth by putting them straight into the garden. It is still too cold in most areas. Pot them on to a larger container if needed and keep them warm and in growth.
  • Top dress garlic and strawberries with a light dusting of blood and bone if you haven’t done so already.

In 1939, Jens Jensen pontificated:

In the plan of human conduct there is a marked difference between the mind which sees beauty in a simple violet and which sees it in a pompous rose or dahlia. On the one hand we have a love for the free and untampered flowers of God’s creation and on the other hand for a flower of social ills, sophistication, and conceit.

Well dang me. And there I was thinking that indeed violets are lovely; it is just a shame they can be so invasive. But we had no concept that Mark’s plant breeding could be held responsible for social ills!