Tag Archives: autumn bulbs

In the garden this fortnight: Thursday 29 March, 2012

A fortnightly series first published in the Weekend Gardener and reproduced here with their permission.

The little known Rhodophiala bifida

The little known Rhodophiala bifida

We keep talking about sustainable gardening here. For us, sustainable garden is twofold – both managing the maintenance of a large garden with a small labour input (wouldn’t we love legions of skilled gardening staff?) but also following garden practices which are not damaging to the environment. To this end we make our own compost, mulch heavily, use a mulcher mower, eradicate or control plants that threaten to become invasive, shun chemical fertilisers and hardly use sprays at all to keep plants healthy. We have a few plants of exceptional note that warrant a touch of insecticide, but generally, if a plant can’t grow well in good conditions, we will not persist with it. A few more roses are destined for the incinerator as I cull further. We do use glyphosate for weed control and Mark lives in fear that it may one day be ruled environmentally unacceptable because we would find it very hard to maintain standards without it.

The enormously useful leaf blower

The enormously useful leaf blower

But our biggest environmental footprint here is the internal combustion engine – the lawnmower, weed eater, mulcher, chainsaw, water blaster and motor blower (leaf blower). We console ourselves with the thought that we are only a one car household and that car often has only one outing a week so maybe that compensates for CO2 emissions. The motor blower is a huge timesaver for a big garden. We started with a cheap handheld one but progressed to a backpack model. It is possible to sweep and groom one’s way right around the garden at walking speed. That is an awful lot faster than doing it with a leaf rake, broom and barrow. As we hurtle at alarming speed from deeply disappointing summer into premature autumn, the blower comes into its own. Fine debris gets dispersed (it does generate dust) while larger leaves can be hustled into discreet areas to break down and rot.

The autumn bulbs are starting. At the moment the little known Rhodophiala bifida is looking terrific as are the red paintbrush blooms of Haemanthus coccineus (the plant many readers may know better as elephant ears). The lovely blue Moraea polystachya is coming into bloom, along with Cyclamen hederafolium and the early nerines are open. These seasonal delights offer some compensation for a summer which never really got going.

Top tasks:

1) As perennials pass over and many fall over, we need to do a tidy up round of the garden borders. Because our temperatures are mild here and we have soils which never stay waterlogged, we can and do lift and divide perennials most of the year. There is still time for plants to re-establish before winter temperatures stop growth.

2) Where repeated use of the blower has led to too much of a build up of debris (mostly in our hellebore border), I need to get through and rake off the surplus for the compost heap before we add this season’s leaf drop.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday March 2, 2012

Latest posts Friday March 2, 2012

1) Space limitations in the Waikato Times this week means there is only one new post from there at this time – Gardening with grasses. Shun the contrived use of dwarf grasses forced into an unnatural role as an edger but use them instead in mixed plantings with perennials with a debt to the prairie style of gardening.

2) Judging by the visitor statistics to my website this week, it seems unlikely that anyone has missed the piece on what looks mighty like plagiarism + Penguin + Sally Cameron + Tui garden guides Round Two – More bad Penguin. It resulted in an immediate recall of a second book in the series (Tui NZ Vegetable Garden). There seems to be a bit of debate about whether it is entirely the author’s fault or whether the publisher must also bear some of the blame. Frankly, I think Penguin has to take some of responsibility – at the very least for choosing such an ill equipped author in the first place. Too many corners cut in trying to get that series of books onto the market.

3) In the absence of other original posts all I can do is to recommend a YouTube clip which was the source of great delight to me this week. A lawnmower who learns to dream big. And in case you think that was computer generated trickery, we have the rather more mundane clip which shows it is … real. Remote controlled flying lawnmower.
We are not optimistic that our Walker mower has the capacity to fly.

Nerine filifolia

Nerine filifolia

Looking out the window this morning at the swimming pool, Mark commented that clearly the swimming season was over for the summer and at least I had had a swimming season whereas he had not even been in this year! The only consolation about the most disappointing summer we can ever recall is that we were not alone. Most of the country has been similarly afflicted and indeed, our daughters in Sydney and Canberra tell us the same thing! Shared disappointments are so much easier to cope with. And gardeners move on. Autumn is here. The autumn bulbs are starting – Haemanthus coccineus with its red paintbrush blooms, the lovely blue Moraea polystachya, cyclamen, Rhodophiala bifida and the first of the nerines. Nerine filifolia is evergreen with us and is simply the daintiest, most charming little rockery nerine you are likely to see. I potted some to sell a couple of years ago and not a soul wanted to buy them so these days we just keep them to delight ourselves.

Plant Collector: Oxalis purpurea alba

Oxalis purpurea alba - one of the very best forms

Oxalis purpurea alba - one of the very best forms

At this time every year, I embark on a crusade to win new converts to the world of oxalis. The whole oxalis family suffers from the bad habits of just two or three members and it means that many people miss out on the seasonal delights of some of the highly ornamental forms. Purpurea alba is one of the very best. It is not in the least bit invasive and I have no problem at all in recommending it for sunny spots in the garden where it forms a flat mat of slightly hairy, clover-like foliage topped with big white flowers with a yellow throat. Where it excels above most others is in the length of its flowering season. It is one of the first to flower and continues through to pretty much the end of the season in winter.

Oxalis purpurea is a highly variable species. The red leafed form with big pink flowers comes into growth much later and is invasive. Decorative but dangerous so keep it confined to a pot. The green leafed form with big pink flowers shares a long flowering season almost on a par with alba and does not appear to be invasive. There are apparently yellow forms of this species too. Overall, there are large numbers of different oxalis. They occur in both South America and South Africa but it is the African ones which give us most of the showy varieties for garden use. Most come into growth with the autumn rains and they have to be planted in full sun because they don’t open their flowers unless it is sunny. They make a wonderful show in shallow containers on a sunny doorstep and you can always refer to them euphemistically as wood sorrel, if you don’t want to own up to growing oxalis.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday, April 1, 2011

The blue autumn crocus - a fleeting seasonal delight

The blue autumn crocus - a fleeting seasonal delight

Nerines flowering in the rockery

Nerines flowering in the rockery

Latest posts:
1) Camellia sinensis is grown for harvesting, not for its floral display though its little pink flowers are charming if you look closely. The tea camellia in Plant Collector this week.

2) Garden tasks this week as we enter the second month of autumn.

3) Fifty Plants that Changed the Course of History – book review.

4) Outdoor Classroom this week looks at options for garden mulches in the first of a two part series. I was a little surprised to find that the dreaded scoria is still available.

Latest posts: While early spring is widely seen as the prime season for bulbs, autumn can be pretty rewarding too. The nerines are currently at their peak, the Moraea polystachya, zephyranthes and Spiloxene alba have particularly long flowering seasons, the Cyclamen hederafolium create carpets of pink and white, while the autumn crocus, colchicums and sternbergia are more fleeting delights. April heralds the start of our off season when we say the garden is closed, except by appointment. Mark stood in the rockery today, wondering why we advertise such an early closing date when there is still so much colour and interest.

In the Garden: January 7, 2011

• Now is the time to get straight on to dividing and replanting autumn bulbs because they will be starting to come into growth very soon. Belladonna lilies and nerines both get planted with their necks above ground level. Cyclamen hederafolium (I spotted the first flower this week), sit just nestled into the soil, like round discs. Their roots and their flowers both come from the top so it does help to get them the right way up. Ornamental oxalis and colchicums (autumn crocus) are other common autumn bulbs to divide now.

• Summer is the best cherry pruning time to avoid the dreaded silver blight getting in to the cut surfaces. If you have a flowering cherry with patches which did not flower last spring and the leaves are clustered much more densely, you have witches broom which needs to be cut out before it takes over the entire tree. Unfortunately the very popular Prunus Awanui is susceptible to witches broom, as are many other ornamental cherries of the Japanese type.

• You can cut most hybrid clematis off close to the ground if they have finished flowering or are looking mildewed (powdery white leaves). Feed them, keep them watered and they will grow again and flower in six weeks. This works for most of the large flowered types.

Arum lilies may be prized as cut flowers overseas but one look at the root system shows why they are a noxious weed on the banned list here

Arum lilies may be prized as cut flowers overseas but one look at the root system shows why they are a noxious weed on the banned list here

• If your New Year’s resolution was to start a vegetable garden, start preparing the ground now for planting winter vegetables soon. It needs to be in full sun. If you make the effort to get the soil right, it will pay dividends. If you are starting with lawn or grass, skim off the turf before you start digging and stack it to one side to rot down. Then start digging, and digging again to get the soil light and friable. Add in compost or manure and then leave it all to settle, push-hoeing off any germinating weed seeds as they appear.

• Garlic can be harvested now, but leave onions until the tops turn brown and bend down. To store garlic for the rest of the year, it will need drying – plaiting and hanging is the traditional method but you can also lay it out in a well ventilated area. Super fresh garlic is delicious to use in cooking.

• Arum lilies are a menace and on the banned list. I dug out a few remnant plants of the green and white flowered form called Green Goddess. You can see in the photograph how the roots are a rhizome with a multitude of little round babies ready to detach from the main body and to grow. These need to removed from the site too or they will continue to cause problems. We put them out in the rubbish, rather than trusting to the composting process and I will keep checking the area on the look out for babies germinating.