Gardening in Greece

Greek gardening. Now there is an oxymoron. Combine arid, poor, stony soils, six months with no rain at all during very hot summers and some islands with no fresh water – the range of plants that can be grown is pretty limited. That is not to say that people do not surround themselves with some foliage and flowers but it hardly warrants the term “gardening”.

In late September, the flowers were almost exclusively oleanders (I recall admiring these in flower in Gisborne one January), bougainvillea (I hadn’t seen the golden orange form before but I remain unconvinced that it is of great merit), hibiscus, jasmine and geraniums (99% the common red one). Second Daughter, who was travelling with me, commented that she had never liked the red geranium before she went to Italy and now Greece, but it is wonderfully evocative of Continental summertime. If my memory serves me right, prominent Taranaki gardener, Gwyn Masters, used red geraniums in terracotta pots in her Italianate garden created in a disused swimming pool. It helps to have the panache of Mrs Masters to avoid it merely looking cliched or tatty in our gardening environment.
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This week 6 Oct 2006

  • If you are on the case with slugs and snails, remember that it only takes one bait to kill several and you do not need to use bait like fertiliser. Slug bait is not particular pleasant material. Wash your hands after handling it.
  • It is a good time to fertilise vireyas now.
  • If you have rhododendrons (or indeed camellias though it is less common) with silver leaves, the culprit is a little sucking thrip. You can’t turn the silver leaves green again but you can stop the fresh spring growth from going the same way by the use of insecticide a little later in spring (we will advise when). In the meantime, opening up around the plant to increase air movement and to reduce heavy shading will also assist but if the plant is totally silver and sick, it may be best to take it out and replace it with a higher health variety. There are selections which are a great deal more resistant to thrips.
  • Keep an eye out for bitter cress, a small weed which can germinate, grow alarmingly fast and pop its seeds everywhere if you are too late removing it. It appears with a small flat rosette of leaves and can take as little as three weeks from germination to ensuring its immortality with its first explosion of seed.
  • Dwarf beans and runner beans can be direct sown into the garden now.
  • Melons (rock and water) can still be started now in containers. The annual challenge for Mark here is to get a good melon crop through. Timing is important because melons need a long growing season and we are only hot enough for a relatively short period of time. They need to be established in containers and planted out in to black polythene around Labour Day. The black poly is to get extra heat and to keep the foliage clean and reduce disease.
  • With the warming weather, if we get a dry spell keep an eye on container plants and start watering before they get too dry. It is difficult to get water absorbed once the root ball has dried out too much.

This week 29 Sept 2006

  • Evergreen azaleas are a shrub which will take heavy pruning, almost back to ground level, yet still come again. The time to do this is as they finish flowering because they will then put on their growth spurt.
  • Vireya rhododendrons can get very leggy. Where they have put on a single shoot, if you cut that back, the plant will usually respond by putting out three new shoots which gives a bushier shape. As they are just starting to put on new growth, now is a good time to go around and rub out single leaf shoots. You can prune back vireyas hard but it will set back flowering for the following year.
  • Like evergreen azaleas, most camellias will accept cutting back to ground level and shoot away again. If you have an ugly old bush and feel the need to rejuvenate it, you can resort to this drastic action at this time of the year. However, do not cut back to ground level with a grafted plant, a very weak plant or with reticulata camellias (the ones with blooms the size of a lunch plate). Roundup does not touch camellias so you can spray right up to them, but you can’t kill out an unwanted camellia stump with it unless you use it undiluted.
  • Ideally, September is the last month for planting trees and shrubs. We know most of you will ignore this and continue planting well into summer and we are lucky in Taranaki that we don’t dry out too quickly and you can get away with late planting. But the sooner you can get them in, the better.
  • If you have a really warm and sheltered spot, you can plant out tomatoes and courgettes which have been started under glass.
  • Corn can be started in pots under cover to be planted out at the traditional time of Labour Weekend. (When we lived in Dunedin, Mark did this and it snowed two days later. We put the house on the market and moved back north).
  • If your broad beans are well established and setting, take the tips out to stop them getting too leggy. The tips are delicious to eat when treated like fresh spinach or used in stir fries. Those who live in nice sheltered places will no doubt be starting to pick their first broad beans. Homegrown fresh broad beans bear no resemblance to the tough specimens you may buy at the supermarket or the frozen varieties. They are simply delicious when young and tender.
  • Now is the time to start sprouting kumara plants if you want to start your own. They can be sprouted in damp sawdust in a sunny, warm room.

From London

The gardening instinct is a curious phenomenon. Gardeners will grow plants and create their own environment no matter where and how they live. While I am writing this column on Patmos, a Greek Island (ain’t email just one of life’s modern wonders?) you will have to wait, dear Reader, for my next column to receive yours truly’s impressions of Greek gardening. Today my thinking is on a late London summer.

I have been to London a number of times in recent years, but it is a long time since I have visited in summer when the trees are in leaf. And goodness, we could learn a thing or two from the greenery of parts of London. The city would be a cheerless brick and concrete jungle were it not for the trees. Big trees lots of them. I am dreadful at estimating heights but there are countless trees which measure three or four stories high against the multi-story houses. Trees which are even permitted to take up the entire pavement so that the pedestrian has to step onto the road to get around them. Street trees where the roots lift the pavement and tilt the front boundary fences of residences. Can you imagine the hue and cry and the pressure on the Council were a street tree to dislodge a concrete block boundary fence at home? These are all deciduous trees (oaks, alders, sycamores and the like) so leaf drop in Autumn will be a huge issue. Garden waste collection in Maida Vale, where I stayed, is on Wednesdays. Continue reading →

This week 22 Sept 2006

  • If you have any luculias in your garden, now is the time to prune them as they are preparing to burst into spring growth. Usually you can see little leaf buds down the stems. If you prune back to these, it spurs them into growth. Even a light prune will encourage bushiness instead of legginess.
  • Stay on top of the freshly germinating weeds at this time of the year and we make no apology for the fact that we will remind you of this often. Remember the old adage “one year’s seeding, seven years weeding”. Good gardens need vigilant weed control and weeds are easier to kill when they are young and small.
  • As you give the garden its spring clean up, consider laying mulch wherever you can. Compost is best because it feeds the plants as well as adding texture to the soil and being a barrier to weeds. Other alternatives are pea straw (expensive because we don’t grow peas here commercially and it has to be shipped in), bark, sawdust or shavings.
  • If you have patches of spring bulbs which are looking very congested, put a plant label beside them now to remind yourself to lift and divide them when they become dormant. While you think you will remember where they are and what they are, it is not so easy to remember when they have returned below the ground.
  • If you have citrus trees with fruit going rotten and leaves falling off, a copper spray can help even if you are too late to save this year’s crop. Remember to get it on earlier next year. The good news is that now is the optimal time to get a copper spray on to deciduous fruit trees which will all be poised to break into growth. The copper deals to a whole range of bacterial problems which will affect plant health and fruit yield.
  • Continue with early sowings of vegetable seed such as carrots and peas and even onions will still produce a crop if put in now. Don’t delay on the onions now as it is nearly too late for these slow growers.
  • All but the coldest areas should be safe for potatoes now but it is still much too early for kumara.