Tag Archives: gardening

Plant Collector : Persimmons (Diospyros kaki, probably “Hachiya”)

The persimmon - worth growing as an ornamental even if the fruit is not to one's taste

The persimmon – worth growing as an ornamental even if the fruit is not to one’s taste

As autumn draws into winter, our old persimmon tree looks mighty spectacular, even if we aren’t huge fans of the fruit. The large leaves turn golden before falling and the fruit hang on like big orange-gold orbs for a long time. The tree itself is smallish at about 4 metres and never receives any care or attention.

The diospyros family is a large one, best known for giving us both persimmons and the heavy dark timber often called ebony wood. D. kaki is native to China but now grown in many other areas of the world. The commercial cultivars often originate from Japan although Israel has also adopted it as the Sharon fruit.

Being an old tree, ours is an astringent variety. A high tannin content means that any fruit less than very ripe indeed will pucker the mouth. The best parts are the gelatinous segments in the centre. The surrounding flesh can be a bit cloying but no doubt would make an excellent sherbet or sorbet. Nowadays most people plant the modern, non astringent varieties which can be eaten before reaching the soft stage of ripeness. “Fuyu” is the most common non astringent variety here and there is now a small commercial orchard industry. You can buy the fruit in the supermarkets and eat them while still crisp, somewhat like an apple.

Persimmon fruit must be a taste I have yet to acquire despite its international popularity. No matter. The tree fully justifies its place as an ornamental at this time of the year.

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

Our world of azaleas here

Our sky carpet of Kurume azaleas in September

Our sky carpet of Kurume azaleas in September

I have never tracked the flowering season of our evergreen azaleas. Generally we would say they are spring flowering and the peak is in September. But this year, I have become aware of them coming into flower already and I have been snapping a few photos for several weeks. When I looked around, plenty have blooms out.

I googled and found references to them having a flowering season of a week or two in spring. Not here, is all I can say. For us, they are unsung heroes in the background of our garden. We have lots of evergreen azaleas and they are rarely foreground stars. But they are such an obliging plant because they grow in semi shade to shaded areas (of which we have plenty), they never get too large, they are wonderfully unfussy, don’t need deadheading and they gently flower on… and on… and on.

The evergreen azaleas are gently flowering already and will continue through til spring

The evergreen azaleas are gently flowering already and will continue through til spring

You can make them stars. You can turn them into bright, colourful clipped mounds of bloom if that is what you want in your garden. You can tastefully plant the same cultivar (to keep uniformity) as an edger alongside a driveway or path. You can colour tone for variation and mass plant out a gentle incline. Or you can ignore fashion and plant a mismatched collection as a vibrant statement of mushroom shaped mounds out in the open. With any of those options, you will probably get peak flowering for a couple of weeks and have relatively anonymous, small leafed green shrubs for the other 50 weeks of the year.

We have plenty of star plants in our garden, so we lean more to using the evergreen azaleas as understated support plants throughout. They are so obliging by nature. Even if you cut them back very hard, most will just come again. You can raise your own plants from seed if you are a patient gardener. They are widely available for sale and generally you decide what you want by leaf and flower size – some are much smaller in both than others – and by colour rather than searching out particular named cultivars.
???????????????????????????????Colours are from white through the whole gamut of pinks to pure reds. The closest to blue is lilac and the closest to orange is more coral in tone. Nor are there pure yellows. Just white with a green or yellow toned throat.

We have plantings of the fine leafed Kurume azaleas from Japan which are now over 60 years old. At about 45 years of age, Mark decided they needed some attention and rather than cutting them back hard to rejuvenate them, he set upon a course of limbing them up. It is a constant task but we take out all the lower growth and have them as an undulating carpet of blooms just above head height.

A garden visitor from Kurume came a few years ago. He spoke no English and we speak no Japanese but he managed to convey the information to us that our Kurumes were simply astounding for their age. But, and there is always a but, we should be taking better care of them. I have spent a prodigious amount of time grooming out dead twiggy bits and an excess of lichen ever since. Some gardeners choose to use copper sprays or lime sulphur to combat lichen build up on older plants.

All azaleas are rhododendrons but not all rhododendrons are azaleas. In other words, azaleas are a separate section of the rhododendron family. They then divide further into the deciduous azaleas (botanically Pentanthera) and the evergreen azaleas (at least mostly evergreen, the Tsutsuji or Tsustusti azaleas originating from Japan).

Vibrant colour in late October from deciduous azaleas

Vibrant colour in late October from deciduous azaleas

Deciduous azaleas are a different branch of the family altogether and many look more like rhododendrons with their full trusses. They are often referred to as Azalea mollis or Ilam azaleas in this country. Some bring the most wonderfully vibrant colour into the spring garden, bordering on vulgar if not placed well. You don’t get the same bright oranges in any rhododendron that I know of and the intense yellows, tangerines and reds make a big statement. For those of more refined sensibility, there are also pastels and whites. Many are strongly scented.

Deciduous azaleas are more tolerant of heavy, wet soils – even occasional flooding – and of full sun than their rhododendron cousins. Surround them with lots of green is my advice, and let them have their time to star in all their glory.

The problem with deciduous azaleas is that when they are not in flower in mid spring, they tend to be pretty anonymous plants. And in humid climates, they are inclined to get mildewed foliage by the end of summer so are not plants of great beauty in small gardens.

Nor are they always easy to source. Garden centres really only have a three week selling time on them when they are in flower because few will impulse buy outside that show time. So buy plants when you see them on offer, is my advice, rather than waiting until the precise moment you are ready to plant them.

Our garden might look a bit sad and empty without the strong showing from the azaleas.

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

Garden lore

“… the truly formal garden is all about showing off your ability to groom and control. The more attention you pay to detail and maintenance, the better your garden will look, so don’t go there if you take a casual approach to chores. Consider rethinking the way you mow. The perfectionist will always mow lawns in straight lines parallel to the main axis.”

Xanthe White , NZ Gardener (May 2013).

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Pine bark
Pine trees produce a prodigious amount of loose bark and given the number of pine trees we grow in this country, pine bark has become a garden staple. Ground up and composted, it is now the major source of potting mix. As a renewable resource, it has done a great deal to save the peat and sphagnum bogs formerly raided for this purpose. Chipped to various grades, it is widely used as garden mulch. But, you need to understand that the reason pine bark is so useful is because it is remarkably inert and stable. It takes years to rot down so it does next to nothing to condition the soil even though it is an organic product. When a whole branch or trunk is chipped or mulched, it will break down quickly and add carbon content, but not straight bark.

So stable is pine bark that we use large flakes from our trees as an informal garden edging, stacked as you might stack thin pieces of old concrete. It lasts for years. If you are buying bark mulch, the mixes of bark and pine fibre will look more natural (and the fibre will break down faster, adding some nutrient to the soils). The chunkier bark nuggets look a little… clunky but will last for ages. The finer screened bark mulches will look smart in that urban landscaped look but can wash away in heavy rains. I have not seen the horror of died bark mulches that are favoured in Australia. Don’t go there. Your garden will not look better for being mulched in red, tan, blue or green pine bark.

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

Gardening crimes against nature

The banks of waterways should not be sprayed

The banks of waterways should not be sprayed

There is a wonderfully self-satisfied confidence in many gardeners that their hobby is good for the environment and that they are working with nature. On the contrary, too often gardening is in direct opposition to nature and many gardeners are guilty of environmental crimes. This has probably escalated considerably since the 1960s when all manner of nasties became available to the home gardener in order to control the excesses of nature.

Lawns are arguably the greatest gardening crime against the environment. Edwin Budding would have had no idea of what he was unleashing on the world in 1827 when he invented the lawnmower. It took until much later in the century before a motor mower appeared. Until then, all grass was cut by scythe and would have been grass, not lawn as we know it. Now we prize lawns that resemble lush bowling greens, but at what cost?

Take a demerit point if you remove all clippings from your lawn but then turn around and fertilise it regularly to compensate. At least buy a mulcher mower next time you replace your machine. If you mulch your clippings back into the lawn, you don’t need to buy fertiliser to give it a boost.

Take three demerit points if you put your lawn clippings out with the green waste or in your wheelie bin. There can be no justification for the public sector having to dispose of domestic lawn clippings.

More demerit points can be added if you insist on spraying your lawn with hormone sprays (which of course means you cannot remove the clippings to the compost heap but must find some other way of getting rid of them for the next six months). The most common spring time enquiry we receive about distorted leaf growth on deciduous trees, particular magnolias, is directly attributable to the use of hormone sprays on lawns. Quadruple your demerit points if you are one of the environmental vandals who insists on spraying your lawn to kill the earthworms beneath so they cannot spoil the effect with their worm casts. Shame.

Not taking responsibility for plants you may be growing which have the capacity to escape beyond your patch is a crime against nature. Too many of our weeds in this country are garden escapes – erigeron daisies, self seeding campanulata cherries, old man’s beard (Clematis vitalba), wild gingers, to name a few. Without ripping out every seeding or suckering exotic plant, gardeners have a moral responsibility to make sure they keep such things under control. Potting them up to sell at your local school gala or a car boot sale is not acceptable. Not at all. You are merely dispersing plants with weed potential.

Using plastic coated bubble slow release fertilisers in the garden warrants demerit points, no matter what your garden retailer may tell you. These were developed for container plant growing, not for general garden usage and, believe me, those plastic bubble coatings last for many years in the environment. If you are going to use bought fertilisers, then make sure you are using ones which are fully biodegradable. Better still, make your own compost.

Growing plants that you have to drench regularly with fungicide, insecticide or even simple copper sprays in order to keep them alive and healthy needs review. Get the message – these plants are not happy in your conditions. It is only a triumph to grow something difficult or different if you can give it conditions that make it relatively happy and healthy. Regular human intervention with a chemical arsenal is not good gardening practice. Once a year is neither here nor there but more often than that, and you should be asking yourself questions. I include copper in that list. While relatively benign, there is evidence that repeated applications over time kill earthworms, bacteria and other soil organisms which are part of the natural environment.

An array of edging tools - preferable to spraying garden edges

An array of edging tools – preferable to spraying garden edges

While on chemical sprays, I acknowledge we are growing increasingly conservative about their usage. In our gardening opinion, they are best as a last resort rather than a routine management tool. As such, I rail against the sight of sprayed edges. Invest in a repertoire of edging tools and get rid of the nasty brown sprayed look which is a crime against both nature and aesthetics. And when you routinely apply herbicide, you create a vacuum which nature will invade. In sunny areas, this will be with weeds and in shady areas, it is likely to be liverwort.

The same goes for banks on waterways. We should be avoiding all man-made chemical usage near waterways so err on the conservative side. A line trimmer or a scythe can be used to cut back and will leave cover rather than dead brown vegetation and then bare soil to erode. Pioneer farmers knew to plant trees along waterways to shade out weed growth.

Fortunately the horror that was the minimalist garden died out quickly after its heyday in the 1990s. That was the three large rocks, white pebble mulch with one sanseveria (unkindly known as mother-in-law’s tongue) and three green mounds of hummocky scleranthus. Contribution to nature? Less than zero. Demerit points? Top of the scale.

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

Plant Collector: Astelia solandri

The quiet charm of self sown Astelia solandri

The quiet charm of self sown Astelia solandri

While we don’t have the global monopoly on all astelia species, most New Zealand gardeners don’t think beyond Astelia chathamica (with its big silver leaves) and bronze ‘Astelia Westland’. A. solandri is not usually available commercially, although I see Oratia Native Plants sell it if you want to have it. Ours are all seedlings, dispersed by birds and most grow as epiphytes perched on the big old trees in our woodland areas. Its common name is the perching lily, no doubt because of this ephiphytic inclination, and its Maori name is kowharawhara.

When it is not in flower, it is just a green leafy plant, akin to a softer, narrow leafed flax in appearance, with leaves over a metre long arching outwards, somewhat silvery beneath. Essentially it acts as green furnishing detail in the garden. But when the flowers come, there is a delightful twisted tangle of stems and foliage. The flowers come out creamy yellow and age to this soft pinky colour.

I hope the ignorant claim that our native plants are all boring is dying out. A. solandri may not be spectacular and showy, but it brings a quiet charm to the autumn woodland.

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