Tag Archives: Abbie Jury

Grow it yourself: feijoas

The ubiquitous feijoa

The ubiquitous feijoa

There are a number of plants we have embraced with such gusto in this country that we have all but made them our own – Pinus radiata, yams, kumara, kiwifruit… and feijoas from South America. Every family should have at least one feijoa tree. They are wonderfully easy to grow, requiring no special care at all once established. Find a position in full sun and preferably not in the full blast of the prevailing wind for best cropping.

It is usual to harvest feijoas as windfalls

When it comes to buying a feijoa, choose a named cultivar (“Unique” is probably the most widely available). If you buy a range of different varieties, you can extend the fruiting season and solve pollination issues. “Unique” is self fertile but most others need a pollinator, though feijoas are so widely grown that often a neighbour’s tree will do the job. Don’t fall for cheap seedlings, even for hedging. They may never fruit well, or indeed at all. Breeding and selection has given much larger fruit and better cropping. If you are going to give garden space, you might as well grow a good variety. The other important thing to know is that the advice sometimes given that you can use feijoa as a clipped hedge plant (I have even seen it suggested as a replacement for buxus) is particularly ill-informed if you want a harvest. You are likely to cut off most fruiting shoots. When it comes to pruning, it is better to thin the canopy, cutting branches off right back at the trunk, rather than trying to clip all over. Generally, a feijoa does not need pruning but allow for them to reach about four metres in height. Keep the ground beneath clear if possible, to allow for easy collection of fruit as it falls.

Feijoas are not particularly easy to strike from cutting but if you have a home propagation unit, it is worth a try. Use new season’s growth which has hardened off – in other words, the branch tips.

First published in the Waikato Times and reproduced here with their permission.

Outdoor Classroom: digging out large, clumping plants.

1) Huge, clumping plants which have outgrown their space can be a challenge because it is not always easy to know where to start and they have to be dug out, as opposed to cutting off woody plants. This is an unusual plant called Curculigo recurvata which has grown enormous but many home gardeners may have large clumps of flax or astelia. (The dog is Zephyr.)

2) A reasonably fit and strong person is necessary, armed with a sharp spade. Don’t try it with a blunt spade because it requires a combination of cutting and digging. Sometimes an axe is helpful to cut through big masses of crown. (The suitably strong person is our Lloyd.)

3) Sort out if you have any underground wires or pipes before you start. We didn’t this time. Fortunately the pipe supplying water to our house was alkathene so it was easy to repair.

4) Clear a space around the plant. You need room to move so lift anything precious close by. Starting from the outside perimeter of the clump, take off the sections piece by piece. Don’t try and dig the whole plant at once.

5) Taking it off in sections makes the process manageable. Because this is a relatively rare plant, we will be using some divisions elsewhere in the garden and potting some for sale.

6) We left three small clumps to grow again in the original position. If you are removing the entire plant, the critical part is to get all the foliage and the growth shoots from the base of the clump cut off and removed. It doesn’t usually matter if some of the fibrous roots remain because few plants will grow away again from severed roots. Leaves such as flax or astelia take a very long time to rot down and don’t compost well so we chew them up in the mulcher. You may need to take them for green waste recycling or put them in a discreet place to rot down over the next few years.

Plant Collector: Sasanqua camellia Crimson King

Crimson King - harbinger of autumn

Crimson King - harbinger of autumn


Crimson King forms a graceful, open shrub when mature

Crimson King forms a graceful, open shrub when mature

Crimson King heralds the arrival of autumn. It is a sasanqua, one of the autumn flowering camellia family from Japan. Too many people seem to think that sasanqua is synonymous with Setsugekka (how clichéd is the Setsugekka screen planting?) and only comes in white. In fact there are a relatively large number of family members, including Crimson King. It has the usual sasanqua attributes of finer foliage and a graceful, open habit of growth as it matures. In addition to that, the exceptionally long flowering season means it will last well in winter.

Single flowers have just one row of petals and exposed yellow stamens in the centre. The birds and the bees, and indeed the butterflies, need these stamens exposed to be able to feed from the flower. Big full forms or sterile formal flowers are not a source of pollen and nectar. Most sasanquas lack the highly refined flower forms so prized in japonica camellias but single flowers like this shatter and dissipate without ever leaving a sludgy mess below. There is also a simple charm in such a simple flower.

Sasanquas are renowned for being one of the most sun and wind tolerant types of camellias. They also flower early enough in the season to avoid the dreaded camellia petal blight. Overseas reports say that they can suffer from this dreaded fungal ailment but we have never seen it in our sasanquas here. Crimson King has a pleasant scent if you stick your nose right in the flower but I think that the faint waft of fragrance in camellias is rather over-hyped.

First published in the Waikato Times and reproduced here with their permission.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday April 13, 2012.

The Cyclamen hederafolium are a delight

The Cyclamen hederafolium are a delight

Latest Posts:

1) Those who shun all of the vast oxalis family because of the abominable habits of a few miss out on the autumn delights like Oxalis massoniana.

2) Raised beds and to dig or not to dig – that is the question. It seems these days that the rage is for raised beds, irrespective of whether they are needed.

3) GIY broad beans – we are very partial to this crop in our household.

4) Common wisdom is that you should only grow plants well suited to your area and conditions but Real Gardeners know this is a fallacy. It is wonderfully rewarding to succeed with marginal plants. My latest garden diary from Weekend Gardener magazine.

5) Secrets of a Lazy French Cook – nothing whatever to do with gardening, this one. But one of my other activities is book reviewing – mostly recipe books and children’s books (in addition to the gardening ones I receive.) This one is an entertaining read and a handy starting point for classic French dishes.

There has not been a whole lot of gardening going on here in the last week or two – too much energy and time required to renovate our one and only rental house on our property across the road. I think the role of property owner and landlord is much over-rated. But I did finally get to visit New Plymouth’s much loved and awarded new bridge on its coastal walkway. And it is a sensation, evoking the rolling waves so close by. It is wonderful to see a bridge that goes way beyond utilitarian and is dedicated entirely to pedestrians and cyclists. On a gloriously sunny and calm autumn day, it was a magical scene which left me in awe at the beauty of the district where we live.

Plant Collector – Oxalis massoniana

Oxalis massoniana

Oxalis massoniana

Envy the gardener who has not had to battle invasive oxalis. Most of us know only too well how difficult it is to eradicate the weedy ones. But there are only a few villains in a very large family and unfortunately, most people shun the lot because of those few. We wouldn’t be without the decorative oxalis and O. massoniana is just one putting on a splendid display at this time.

I think we must have around 30 different oxalis in pots and in the garden here and they are just a drop in the bucket of the many hundreds of different species. Flower colour ranges from white, through the gamut of pinks, lilacs and lavenders, crimson red, yellows and oranges. The foliage is also varied from the clover type leaves to fine and feathery, trailing and even miniature palm leaves. We must have them flowering for six to eight months of the year. I should comment that some have a flowering season lasting a long time, while others are a bit of a flash in the pan.

Some oxalis are garden safe but if in doubt, keep them in pots where they are wonderfully forgiving of benign neglect. The flowers only open in the sun so the pots make a lovely seasonal feature on a sunny doorstep. I have tried massoniana in the garden but it seems to be happier and showier in a big, shallow container.

The apricot and soft yellow two-tone colouring is very pretty and the flowering season lasts a good length of time. As with most of the autumn and early winter flowering oxalis, it is native to the bulb wonderland of South Africa. If you can’t bear the thought of growing oxalis, just call it by its more romantic sounding common name overseas – wood sorrel.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.