Tag Archives: gardening

In the Garden this Fortnight: January 26, 2012

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

The dreaded Onehunga weed needs active management

The dreaded Onehunga weed needs active management

Onehunga weed is that innocent looking but prickly interloper to the lawn which makes walking in bare feet a misery. It is an annual weed and the prickles are part of its seed setting cycle. We had an invasion of it in some areas and rather than spraying, we tried scalping the lawn just before Christmas. By scalping, I mean cutting on a very low level and removing all the clippings to the compost heap. We normally mulch the clippings back in to the lawn. The lawn looked patchy for the next few weeks but the Onehunga weed was gone – including the new crop of seed heads. There is a risk element to this approach. Had we then struck a prolonged period of high temperatures and sun, we would have had to have started watering the lawn or watched a dust bowl develop. Scalping a lawn in early to mid summer is not usually recommended. As it happened, we had plenty of torrential rain to green up the lawn again.

You can spray for Onehunga weed (though you need to do it earlier in the season before the plants flower and set prickles) but we are increasingly reluctant to use lawn sprays, leaning to the view that maintaining one’s lawn chemically is getting close to environmental vandalism. Recent research from Massey has found a new strain of Onehunga weed which is resistant to the usual lawn sprays -another warning, perhaps, about gardening strategies that depend on chemical intervention. The weed generally germinates in autumn and grows through winter to flower and die in summer. If you have a lush, healthy lawn, it will find it harder to get going in competition with established grasses. Lifting the mower a notch or two higher can help keep a lawn in better condition (a scalped or shaved lawn is never a healthy lawn) and we are big advocates of using a mulcher mower, thereby avoiding having to feed the lawn. Where we need to over sow or renovate areas, we use homemade compost rather than proprietary fertiliser. Our lawns don’t look like bowling greens but they are generally healthy and green.

Onehunga weed is shallow rooted so if you only have a small area of grass, you can hand weed it. It is always better to get in early before it spreads – which it will do at alarming speed if you ignore it.

This one is auratum Flossie - all the lilies are opening now
This one is auratum Flossie – all the lilies are opening now

Top tasks:
1) An emergency staking round on some of the top heavy auratum lilies. We grow a lot of these for summer fragrance and blooms. Because they are garden plants and not show blooms, we support the flower heads on neighbouring plants where possible, but some just have to be staked. Home harvested, fresh green bamboo stakes are less visually intrusive than bought bamboos stakes. We shun plastic stakes but will use rusty old steel on occasion.

2) The rose garden is looking tired. I have major plans for a renovation of this area in winter but will start by lifting and dividing some of the stronger perennials, potting them to planter bags and keeping them out of sight and under irrigation while they recover. It takes many more plants than anyone ever expects to furnish a garden which has been gutted out. I need to start now to have sufficient plants to do a major rework and replant in winter.

Plant Collector: Cyanella capensis

Cyanella capensis - described by Mark as appearing like a blue gypsohila in the garden

Cyanella capensis - described by Mark as appearing like a blue gypsohila in the garden

There is some debate as to whether this plant is accurately named as Cyanella capensis and whether that is in fact synonymous with Cyanella hyacinthoides, but there is no doubt that it has been a quiet star in the rockery for nigh on two months now. Many bulbs are a wonderful, quick, seasonal flash. Plants like the cyanella which just keep going week after week are considerably rarer.

The “capensis” part of the name gives a clue – South African again, from the Cape Province. It is not a big show-stopper. Like some of the species gladiolus and the ixias, the foliage starts to die off and look scruffy as the flowers open but in this case, the flowers have continued long after the foliage has withered away and disappeared. Each six petalled flower is about 15mm across, lilac blue with golden stamens and masses of them just dance on the leafless branch structure, reminiscent of a blue gypsophila.

We have had this cyanella in the rockery for many years now. I have ferreted around looking for the bulbs to spread further afield but clearly they are of the type which can find its own depth and in this case, that is deep. I have failed to find them. Apparently they are edible and somewhat oniony in flavour, also used in times past as a poultice, so they must be a reasonable size. I may have to have another dig to see. The flowers are pollinated by bees and can set viable seed.

There are different species of cyanella – about seven in fact – and we were given the yellow form, Cyanella lutea but it failed to last the distance with us.

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

The Weird and Wonderful World of Show Vegetables

We are never going to get show vegetables out of our garden

We are never going to get show vegetables out of our garden

There is something wonderfully compelling about the bizarre, the obsessive and the freaky which may explain why even our daughter joined us on the sofa to shriek with laughter at the programme on the Living Channel last Sunday. It was all about growing and showing vegetables in the United Kingdom. Before any readers get defensive, I hasten to add that we have the utmost respect for the skills required and the proud tradition of competing for prizes in various vegetable classes. It is just a tradition which has largely bypassed us in New Zealand so we are bound to find the proud woman holder of the title of World’s Best Potato Grower faintly amusing.

Growing vegetables for show does not have a lot to do with eating them. In fact eating them was never mentioned. Growing 900 onions in the quest for the best sets of five perfectly matched specimens, each weighing 250 grams, does leave one with a rather eyewateringly large excess of produce for ahome grower. And what exactly are you going to do with the other 85 heads of celery which did not make the cut when you selected the best five to show? These are celery plants which have been grown entirely under cover, nursed, mollycoddled, blanched and fussed over until they can reach a massive 150 cm high or even more. They are hardly going to fit in the fridge. But once you have seen them being lovingly washed in a large bath of soapy water and gently groomed with a soft toothbrush, you realise this has nothing to do with home vegetable gardening. It is more akin the vegetable equivalent of the prestigious Crufts Dog Show but without the social pretensions.

There are rigid rules as to what is acceptable and what is not. Immaculate, matched onions are presented with a neat tie of raffia to hold the trimmed top tidily (which sparked a comment from the show host along the lines of: “Nothing finishes a perfect onion like a sheaf of raffia,”) but woe betide anybody who steps over the line to flamboyance. A modest knot may be required, a bow is enough to get you disqualified – or so the husband tells me from another show he watched.

Carrots and parsnips are popular crops but growing them takes special techniques and even then you may not get specimens with precision tapering, let alone perfectly matched sets of three identical specimens. Don’t be thinking that you can win with garden specimens grown in soils. These are grown in drums. First these drums are packed with coarse sand. A tube is then used to extract a perfectly straight column in the sand which is filled with the highest quality, fine garden mix. It has to be sieved garden mix because any untoward chunks could cause the plant’s roots to kink or bend. This is a serious business where timing, technique and crop management is critical. Carrots should have a nicely rounded base and are exhibited without their roots. Parsnips should be perfectly tapered and are measured and exhibited with the long tap root attached in its entirety.

We were riveted, as only holiday-makers on a bleak and windy summer Sunday afternoon can be, to learn that in order to clean and present your carrots or parsnips, you have to gently sponge them in a circular motion. If you rub them up and down, you will scratch the outer skin and cause blemishes. That is a piece of new information which just may or may not be useful at some point in my life.

Presumably it is the exhibitionists who grow the freaks. There was an earlier series on growing extreme vegetables – the parsnip, I was told, grew in a length of downpipe which ran three stories high. In this country, the giant pumpkin growing competitions are relatively common and most of us realise that said competitive pumpkins are not destined for the dining table, being of value only as stock food. Size and weight are everything in the freak classes. Beauty, uniformity and perfection count for nought.

Prize money does not count either. It is fame, glory and recognition. Most of the vegetable competitions in the UK (and there are legions of them) carry prizes of a few pounds only. The costs of competing are hugely greater than any financial reward – best grade seed only, packets of potting mix, washed sand, peat, special fertilisers and sprays and that is just for starters. Mark was a little put out to see that the competitive celery grower had a state of the art glasshouse which left anything we have here completely in the shade despite the fact that we have been professional growers of plants for the last few decades.

This is not to say that we don’t have competitions here. Mark recalls judging the vegetables at some gathering in Otorohanga where he was a guest speaker some years ago. I am sure I must have done it for the local Country Women’s Institute here at some stage. Maybe we are just of more pragmatic stock in this country. I am pretty sure that the vegetables I have seen exhibited here were actually edible and were grown in gardens. This is a very different kettle of fish to show vegetables.

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

Grow it Yourself – parsnips

Parsnips are not the most glamorous of vegetables, even less so when old and woody which is usually a sign of being dug too late. But I am very partial to a bit of roast parsnip and they add welcome variety in winter when veg can get a bit repetitive. We are doing a late sowing parsnip seed now for winter harvest. Others will have sown as early as last spring though they are not likely to harvest before winter. They will have considerably larger specimens by then, as long as they do not bolt to seed. From this you can take it that the timing is not critical. They take about four and half months to reach maturity so you can be eating them from July onwards if planting now. It is usual to leave them in the ground and dig as required. They go dormant over winter and frosts are said to enhance the flavour considerably.

The two critical issues are to use fresh seed (parsnip seed does not store well) and to avoid additional fertilisers. Nitrogenous fertilisers will encourage too much top, leafy growth and not enough root development. Fresh manures will cause forked and misshapen roots. Parsnips are a good option where you have taken out a heavily fertilised crop like leafy greens or even potatoes. Don’t add anything extra – there should be plenty of goodness left in the soil. Make sure the soil is well tilled and friable to allow the roots to grow straight. Seed is sown close to the surface and covered lightly. Once it has germinated and is growing away strongly, thin to at least 10cm apart in every direction to allow room to develop. Diseases are not usually an issue and while a few pests can attack parsnips (carrot fly, greenfly and wireworm), this is not usually a big problem.

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

In the Garden: January 5, 2012

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

I am very selective about container plants these days

I am very selective about container plants these days

As summer takes hold, I am grateful that I have dramatically reduced the number of plants I grow in containers. I am not particularly reliable at hand watering and there is nothing worse than feature plants in pots, troughs or containers that stand out because they are gasping for water, drooping and defoliating badly. It is also very difficult to get water into potting mixes which have dried out completely because the water just flows straight through. A squirt of detergent can act as a surfactant and help water absorption. Because I only grow bulbs, the odd large bonsai or choice shrubs in pots, I never add water retention crystals. With our high rainfall, these products keep the potting mix too wet, rotting out the roots and the bulbs. This is particularly so in winter when plants don’t want to live with their roots sogging in cold, wet conditions. The only time I have used water retention crystals was in my hanging basket phase (it passed quickly) and when I tried seasonal pots of annuals – which also passed quickly. We went on holiday leaving lovely big pots of blooming pink petunias and blue ageratum and came back to pots of withered, dead plants. The water retention crystals were not enough. I decided then and there that I preferred a more permanent and sustainable style of gardening.

In issue 323 of the Weekend Gardener, I wrote about plunging pots to reduce watering requirements while still keeping individual plants featured. It only works if the pots are porous (I keep to terracotta) and they still need the occasional water but they are much easier to maintain over summer. I have found I need to keep an eye out for slug infestations around the plunged pots. They like the damp, dark conditions and can take up residence on the outside surfaces of the pots. I found an entire slug convention on one pot recently but at least it encourages them into one area for easy eradication.

The peaceful, neverending task of hoicking out flat weeds

The peaceful, neverending task of hoicking out flat weeds

Top tasks:
1) Weeding is never ending. At this time of year, some of it can be done quickly by push hoe. If any weeds get away on us and set seed heads, we try and remove them from the area but the aim is always to get them before that stage so they can be left to wither and die in the summer sun.
2) The autumn bulbs will be starting to move very soon, putting out fresh roots. I need to thin the Cyclamen hederafolium, Colchicum autumnale (the autumn crocus) and check over the clumps of nerines (mostly sarniensis hybrids) before they are growing.
3) When I feel the need to do something quiet and mindless, I head out with the lawn tool to dig out flat weeds in the grassy areas of our park. It is a bit like King Canute holding back the sea but it makes me feel more virtuous than spraying and it is a soothing summer occupation.