Tag Archives: gardening

Grow it Yourself Fruit and Nuts by Andrew Steen

There is a clear gap in the market for an authoritative modern reference book on growing fruits and nuts in this country, so does this new book fill the niche? Hmm. It is like the curate’s egg – good in parts. It is worth buying for the fertiliser chart on page 111 – the best representation of this information we have seen. The chart on common pesticides is also very good as is the attention to pest and disease management, giving different approaches and addressing the issues. At last we are not seeing everything dumbed down and made simple when it is not, based on the assumption that the average home gardener has a mental age of about eight. If you want to be successful at growing these plants, you do need to get to grips with some of the details regarding pests and diseases. The range of fruits covered is appropriate and the information on recommended varieties is up to date, appears to be comprehensive and very useful. The author is credible. You may know his name from the Weekend Gardener – he is a keen gardener, backed up with professional qualifications and experience.

So what lets it down? The photography is not good enough. Amateur photography is not a suitable replacement for good diagrams when it comes to pruning and shaping and too many of the photographs fail to tell any story at all, let alone save words. The text is too wordy and would have benefited from tighter editing. Magazine writing is different to books. It is much more transient by nature and a looser organisation of ideas is acceptable because it’s all in shorter pieces. Much of the information is here but it is a little too loose and wordy, ranging rather too freely at times without a clear sequence. A greater use of tables and charts would have helped reduce the verbiage. Peer review prior to publication might have plugged a few of the gaps where the author was beyond his own areas of expertise.

For all its faults, it is a better reference than other recent offerings on the topic.

Grow it Yourself Fruit and Nuts by Andrew Steen (David Bateman; ISBN: 978 1 86953 789 0) reviewed by Abbie Jury.

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

"It is natural and plant-based so it must be safer and healthier, mustn't it?"

The call went out to UK gardeners for yew clippings. Yew snowman from Helmingham Hall

The call went out to UK gardeners for yew clippings. Yew snowman from Helmingham Hall

I keep waging war on what I see as very sloppy thinking and pseudo science. The sort of thinking that says natural = good, chemical = bad, synthetic = even worse, modern medicine = corrupt multi national pharmaceutical hijack, herbalism and natural medicines = healthy alternatives. Often there’s a sort of Luddite sentimentality, a belief that the wise women and healers of long ago knew better.

Ahem. Life expectancy was much shorter, by decades in fact. And for every natural plant-based cure that worked, there were probably many more that didn’t. Poisonings went unrecorded, as did misidentification of plants. Medical misadventure was not exactly a matter of record.

The binomial plant naming system devised by Linnaeus in the mid 1700s has stood the test of time, though it is now under siege from the dumb-it-down brigade of Make Gardening Easy persuasion. Linnaeus’s plant classification system was incredibly important when it came to medicine. Until that time, there was no standard identification, naming and recording system for plants. Doctors and healers were often at the mercy of those who went out collecting the wild plants, many of whom would have had little idea of what they were harvesting. The same plant could be given many different names and vice versa – the same name could be applied to many different plants. It still happens.

Marigolds. But which one?

Marigolds. But which one?

Take marigolds. Yes do take them. They are not my favourite plant at all. But how many readers understand the difference between calendulas and tagetes? They are entirely different plant families and we commonly refer to both as marigolds. Both are used quite extensively for their natural compounds but they are not interchangeable. If anybody is going to treat me either internally or externally with marigold extracts, I would like to think they know the difference between, for example, Calendula officinalis and Tagetes minuta, let along the various other plants entirely which are often referred to as marsh marigolds, corn marigolds or marigolds of various other persuasions. I prefer my medicine a little more exact and for that, I thank Linnaeus.

A large proportion of modern pharmaceuticals continue to be derived from plants. Aspirin originated from willow. Much work has been done on the cancer fighting properties of yew. Valerian has long been recognised for its special properties – but false valerian is a different plant family altogether.

The yew is an interesting case study for those who think synthetic copies are all bad. In the early days of cancer research into the curative properties of taxus, British gardeners were encouraged to gather all their trimmings when they clipped their yew hedges and topiary and to deliver them to collection points. If you had sufficient volume of high quality trimmings, you could even get paid for it. They responded with enthusiasm but it took an awful lot of yew trimmings to yield a very small amount of the relevant compounds used in chemotherapy. Even more problematic was the one which derived from the bark of the Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia). You cannot continually harvest tree bark in large quantities. Clearly it would never be viable unless the researchers were able to reproduce the compounds efficiently in a laboratory. It is called synthetic organic chemistry because it is about reproducing a natural compound by synthesis. I know a small amount about this on account of having a daughter study it to a very advanced level (by which I mean post doctoral fellowship, working as part of a team isolating the active ingredients from a Thai plant with huge potential). It is not all bad. In some cases it may save the natural environment, not having to harvest huge volumes of natural products. It can even out seasonal and geographic variations in the strength of active compounds in plants. It can certainly deal to the problems of misidentification.

Most of our poisons are also plant-based. Many people know about laburnum seeds. Fewer realise the toxicity of daphne seeds. Cyanide has its origin as a plant product. So indeed does strychnine. Euphorbias exude a sticky sap which is renowned as a skin irritant. Rhus trees are problematic – so much so that after one bad encounter with some sawdust while chainsawing a fallen branch, Mark refuses to approach our rhus tree without donning protective gear similar to a beekeeper. Derris dust is seen as natural and organic – and it is because it comes from roots of certain plants but that doesn’t make it safe. Rotenone (which is sold as Derris dust) is linked to Parkinson’s Disease and is very toxic indeed.

It is a dangerous natural world out there. It’s a miracle we gardeners survive really. Which is why I am deeply suspicious of ill-informed enthusiasts rushing out to promote the use of plant remedies on the grounds that they are natural and therefore safer. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Until herbalists and natural healers are as strong on botany and chemistry as they are on traditional “wisdom”, I will err on the side of caution.

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

Grow it yourself: onions

Is it worth growing onions when the product is so cheap to buy with consistent quality? Possibly not if your vegetable gardening is suburban dabbling and you have access to a good farmers’ market or another reliable source. We grow them because we aim at self sufficiency (even though we don’t always make it) and we like to know where our food comes from. If you grow your own, you can also go beyond the usual brown, red or spring onions. Kings Seeds have at least 10 different types listed. If you want the range, you will have to grow from seed. Alternatively you can buy bundles of seedlings which look like baby spring onions, at the garden centre.

Onions don’t like heavy soils. They do well in light, sandy soils but you need to build up the soil fertility by using manure, a green crop, compost or fertiliser. They don’t have big root systems. In fact they don’t have a lot of top either so you have to make sure they don’t get swamped and shaded by competitive weeds. Onions get planted any time between autumn and spring though you won’t be harvesting until next summer and autumn. However, different varieties of onions have different planting requirements in that time span so check the instructions.

Spacings depend entirely on the variety. Some are small so can be grown close together while others need room to develop. While commercial production uses a non bulbous variety (Allium fistulosum) for spring onions, home gardeners know that any thinnings and surplus juvenile plants will fit the bill.

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

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 9 March, 2012

Latest posts:

1) Big white, scented punctuation marks through the summer woodland – Crinum moorei variegated.

2) Lobelia lore, lest you are in search of a cure for syphilis. Or maybe good summer perennials are more to your taste. I adore blue flowers.

3) Personally, I am far from a fan of the traditional cabbage but should you be more enthusiastic, Grow It Yourself looks at the genre of cabbage this week (and yes, I did mean genre, not genus).

The low tech approach to flushing the stream bed

The low tech approach to flushing the stream bed

Tikorangi Notes

We have given up waiting for the summer which is clearly never going to arrive in full strength. At least the autumn bulbs bring some seasonal cheer. The exercise of cleaning out the stream continues in a very low tech manner. Mark has lifted the water level and channels it through a small opening in a purpose built corrugated iron barrier. The current generated is sufficient to flush the mud downstream as long as he stirs it up with the rake, to get the mud particles back in suspension mode. How far he can get it cleaned by this method remains to be seen – the ponds will represent a challenge to span with the barrier. A pontoon, he says he needs. I just can not quite visualise how he will manage a pontoon but all this saves the exercise of having to hire a sludge pump.

The disappointment this week is our yew tree which is looking alarmingly as if it is in decline. Fungal root disease is the verdict – a casualty of an unusually wet summer. As it is about 60 years old and a shapely, clipped feature defying the laws of gravity to lean on an angle, we would be sorry to lose it. We don’t spray much at all these days, but this tree warrants a dose of heavy duty fungicide to see if we can halt its rapid decline.

Felix the Kiwi, our clipped yew, may be succumbing

Felix the Kiwi, our clipped yew, may be succumbing

Plant Collector: Crinum moorei variegated

Fragrant Crinum moorei var.

Fragrant Crinum moorei var.

Crinums are a large family, belonging to the amaryllidaceae group so having some botanical connection to the likes of belladonnas and nerines. But despite there being over 130 different crinum species, not a lot make good garden subjects in this country. Sometimes you will see different crinums being grown in the tropics but the common form in this country is C. moorei which is a South African plant. It has big strappy green leaves, largely evergreen so it can get a bit scruffy, and big, strong spikes of scented flowers in shades of pink. It is a very easy plant, tolerant of woodland shade and near total neglect.

Tall, white punctuation marks in summer along a woodland walk - Crinum moorei var

Tall, white punctuation marks in summer along a woodland walk - Crinum moorei var

This is a variegated form and rather more desirable. It is deciduous which solves the scruffy problems. When the fresh growth comes in mid spring, it lights up a dark area with its bold pale gold and green striping. By mid summer, the variegation has toned down considerably to green which gives a splendid foil for the lovely tall spires of predominantly white scented blooms. These are around 150cm high but so strong, they don’t need staking. They are a wonderful late summer accent plant for shade gardens. The bulbs can reach extremely large proportions and are relatively slow to increase. As with a number of the amaryllis family, the bulbs sit half in the ground with necks exposed. We have never seen this variegated form set seed though the usual green moorei can be grown easily from fresh seed. We have to wait for our plants to form offsets on the bulbs in order to increase them, though enthusiasts could increase them by twin scaling.

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