Tag Archives: gardening

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 23 September, 2011

Looking a little like a froth of pink candy floss this week - our magnificent Iolanthe (again)

Looking a little like a froth of pink candy floss this week - our magnificent Iolanthe (again)

Latest posts: Friday 23 September, 2011

1) Tropaeolum tricolorum, a distinctly refined member of the nasturtium family in Plant Collector this week.
2) Yates Vegetable Garden – yet another NZ gardening book in that folksy-wolksy vein that NZ publishers think is all we can cope with these days.
3) Managing bulb meadows and drifts – Abbie’s column
4) GIY Peas A little introduction to growing peas in warmer climates.
5) Even we can lower our sights – the first of our clearance specials. First up a splendid hedging line of Camellia Jury’s Yellow.

No apologies for continuing to lead with Magnolia Iolanthe this week. In a season which will not rank as memorable for magnolias, Iolanthe has not wavered or faltered and is simply beautiful. The first flowers on Serene are just opening – she is always the last of the season to flower for us. The magnolias will be drawing to a close in a matter of weeks, but the rhododendrons are coming into their own. The camellias battle on, badly affected by petal blight but doing their best. Mark uses the blower vac on them to blast away the blighted blooms which otherwise refuse to fall. It is such a disappointment, is camellia petal blight, but there is no point in railing against something we can not alter.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 16 September, 2011

Magnolia Athene in our park this week

Magnolia Athene in our park this week


Latest posts:
1) The yellow Camellia chrysantha – looking rather more spectacular in the photo than on the bush. Plant Collector.
2) Trees for small gardens – Abbie’s column.
3) In praise of Bok Choy (aka Pak Choi) (this weeks GIY).
4) Tikorangi Diary with effusive praise for Magnolia Iolanthe and a plaintive complaint about people who can not read the important notes on our website explaining repeatedly that we do not mailorder or courier plants.

Magnolia Iolanthe in all her magnificence this week

Magnolia Iolanthe in all her magnificence this week

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 16 September, 2011

While much of the country is in the grip of rugby world cup fever (save us should the All Blacks fail to deliver the silverware. Elections have been lost on less and the country may plunge into deep depression), it is magnolia time here. I read a colleague advocating planting magnolias at the bottom of a slope so you can look down on them but I disagree. I love looking up through them from below and I prefer my magnolias displayed against a blue sky rather than framed by other greenery. With some of our trees around 60 years old now, they have considerable stature. In fact the original plant of Iolanthe has a diameter of about 10 metres – that is a lot of Iolanthe on show. The other mid season magnolias – Athene, Lotus, Milky Way, Atlas and the like- are all opening and the coming week will be one of the highlights of our gardening year.

Grow it yourself: Bok Choy or Pak Choi

Mark, the vegetable-growing husband here, comments that we have been a bit slow to wise up to the fact that the Chinese know a great deal about food production and we should have been looking to their crops a long time ago. Bok Choy, also known as Pak Choi, is a case in point. In the world of leafy greens, it is a great deal faster and easier to grow than the likes of spinach. It can also be grown throughout most of the year and deserves to be a staple crop, though you are best to avoid sowing in mid summer when it is more likely to get stressed and bolt to seed rather than to leaf. It is so easy to grow from seed that there is not a lot of point in buying baby plants.

Sow into the usual vegetable garden conditions – full sun and well cultivated soil with plenty of compost or humus added. Water if it gets too dry. Within a few weeks, the seeds will have germinated and you can start thinning the row and eating those baby thinnings as micro greens, raw in salads or lightly cooked in stirfries. Bok choy only takes about six weeks to reach maturity so you can be harvesting for as much as four weeks of that time, at various stages of growth. As with many crops, sowing a few seed every three weeks ensures a steady supply but it really comes into its own as a winter green when the more common crops basically stop growing and fresh veg are expensive to buy. There is a lot to be said for a quick maturing green vegetable which grows all year round and is not silver beet.

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

Tikorangi Diary: Thursday 16 September 2011

The original Iolanthe is a wondrous sight this week

The original Iolanthe is a wondrous sight this week


Veltheimia bracteata "Rosalba"

Veltheimia bracteata "Rosalba"

It is not easy to convey the full impact of the original Magnolia Iolanthe in flower. It is a wondrous event. Mind you, at about 50 years old, the canopy does measure around 10 metres across so there is rather a lot of Iolanthe to be wondrous. As somebody commented to us, what will Felix Jury be like in full flower when it achieves the same age and similar stature? Possibly even more astounding. We never tire of magnolia time here.

We advertise that we are open for plant sales on Fridays and Saturdays which means that we will definitely be here in attendance. In fact we are here most of the time and the garden is open every day (there is an honesty box if we are not around) but we just don’t guarantee our availability on other days. You can ring first to check if you want to come on other days. Details on what we have available are listed in Plant Sales. I have to comment though that despite every page on Plant Sales explaining that we do not courier or mail order plants, (sales are to personal customers only), every single day brings enquiries from people who have either failed to read that header comment or who hope that we will make an exception for them. If it was easy to pack and courier plants, we would still be doing it but it isn’t, so we don’t. End of story, I am afraid. We will however hold plants out the back while you arrange for somebody else to pick them up for you or until you can get here.

The dainty delight of the erythronium

The dainty delight of the erythronium

The highly sought after lemon and pink variant of veltheimia (bracteata Rosalba) is just coming into flower but we only have a few plants left so be in quickly if you want it. We have plenty of the more common pink (bracteata). And just as a complete contrast to the opulent magnolias, we have plants of one of the daintiest and most ephemeral seasonal delights – dogs tooth violets or erythroniums. Spring here is all about the big pictures and the tiny treasures. Why would anybody want an evergreen garden which looks the same all year round?

Grow it Yourself – Florence fennel or finocchio

In this country we have been a bit slow to catch on to the European favourite of finocchio or Florence fennel and it is only very recently that it has sometimes become available at the fruit and veg counter. But we rate it very highly as a crop to grow at home and regard it somewhat like celery to eat (which is not at all easy to grow well). It can be finely sliced or grated and eaten raw in salads, it is delicious roasted whole like a parsnip or used in stirfries. It is genuinely versatile and has a good crisp texture raw or lightly cooked without the strong aniseed aroma of the seeding fennel (which is foeniculum vulgare). Florence fennel is foeniculum vulgare azoricum and it produces a fleshy, bulbous base to the stems. This is the section that is eaten.

It is not difficult to grow and it holds well in the garden. As with most vegetables, it needs to be sown into well cultivated soil in full sun. As it germinates, thin out the baby plants to about 20cm spacings. The thinnings can be eaten as fresh greens. Seed sown now will be ready to harvest in summer. We usually sow again between the end of January to early March for winter harvest. It is pretty forgiving as a crop so timing is not critical but seeds sown from late October onwards will tend to bolt too quickly in summer, before they have formed the edible bulb. However, if those plants are cut back and left, they will come again and be edible the following winter. The fluffy green tops look similar to ordinary fennel but lack its flavour so are really only good for a garnish. If you can’t find seed at your garden centre, try Kings Seeds or Italian Seeds Pronto who both have websites for on line ordering.

(first published in the Waikato Times and reproduced here with their permission)