Tag Archives: Mark and Abbie Jury

Grow it Yourself: Rhubarb

Rhubarb is one of the few long term plants in the vegetable garden. A clump can last anything up to 10 years, though if you are a rhubarb fan, you are more likely to be renewing your patch more regularly than that to ensure uninterrupted supply. Think of it like a clumping perennial – it grows from a crown below the surface of the ground and makes its own offshoots. Like most perennials, it likes to be planted in ground that has been well dug over with plenty of humus or compost added in. Beyond that, it does not want wet feet in winter (which will kill it) and it is fine in half to full sun. Just feed it or mulch with compost once a year – spring is a good time. An established plant is going to take anything up to a round metre is space (that is, as opposed to a square metre).

Usually the pinker the stem, the nicer they are to eat but apparently there are varieties that stay green so you may be waiting forever with them. The leaves and roots are poisonous because they contain oxalic acid so you do not want to eat them or to eat the closest stem parts. However it is an urban myth that it is not safe to put them in the compost heap. I have yet to meet anyone who eats their compost and the natural toxins break down in the composting process.

It is easy to grow rhubarb but it is only worth the effort if you like its taste and are prepared to cook with it. I like to add a little gelatine to my stewed rhubarb, being a jelly fan. Adding a little grated fresh ginger while cooking takes it up more than one notch and I found the children ate it quite happily when it was cooked with some sago added (check out Alison Holst’s recipes).

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

Grow It Yourself – capsicums

I have just been told He Who Grows the Veg here that he is not planting capsicums this year. He suggests I go and buy a plant or two if I feel I must have them. The problem is that capsicums need a long growing season in order to get a good harvest. That means a good four months of continual warmth. Even cold nights will set them back. You can hurry them along by planting them into black plastic or using a cloche but the resident veg gardener does not like them enough to lavish the same level of care that the rock melons get. Best guess is that most of the lovely big red, yellow and orange capsicums you see in the supermarket are grown in glasshouse conditions.

It is too late to start them from seed now, so if you want to grow them you will have to buy plants. Seed has to be started under cover in late August or early September. Capsicums are in the same family as tomatoes (solanum), but require more heat. They like similar conditions – full sun, plenty of warmth, friable soil full of humus and a position where they don’t dry out. Plant them about 50cm apart. Room for good air circulation can help reduce leaf diseases. You will get larger fruit if you thin the crop. Most capsicums start off green and can be picked at that stage. As they ripen, they can change through to yellows, reds and oranges. It is because these are riper that they taste sweeter and milder.

Paprika is, of course, ground mild capsicums – presumably at the point where they have ripened to red. Chilli and cayenne pepper are ground hot capsicums which we normally call chillis. Some chilli varieties are just hot selections of the same species as capsicums (C. annuum) while some are different species. They grow in the same way with the same heat requirements. If you like fresh chillis, they make a decorative container plant but you need to be reliable with summer watering.

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

Tikorangi Notes: Friday November 25, 2011

It is rhodohypoxis time

It is rhodohypoxis time

Latest Posts: Friday November 25, 2011
1) Why would gardening be exempt from fashion? Abbie’s column. It never has been before, but in keeping with modern times, the cycles of fashion are moving ever faster.
2) Yet another lightweight NZ gardening book. Even indexes are expendable these days, apparently.
3) Plant Collector this week: Dracophyllum latifolium or neinei, a seriously cool small tree and a native at that.
4) 100 Gardens by Jamie Durie (Australia’s pin-up boy of landscaping). More about ideas for outdoor spaces than gardening as such.
5) Grow it Yourself – melonsthis week. Preferably rock but water will do at a pinch.

Rhododendron Elizabeth Titcomb to the left, Blue Pacific to the right and R. lindleyi (Ludlow and Sherriff form) caught in their cleavage, as Mark describes it – though nearly strangled might be a better description.

Our unusually cool spring is continuing here, which does at least mean that the spring flowering has been extended way past the usual time. At least the roses have finally opened. We are not the greatest of climates for roses – they don’t appreciate our high humidity – so the first spring blooms are all the more welcome as the bushes are still full of healthy, lush foliage. As the season progresses and black spot strikes, the plants start to look ever more sparse. One can spray roses, of course (and many do) but we choose not to. If a rose plant can not survive and perform without spraying, it ends up in the incinerator.


From left: Caroline Allbrook, Olin O. Dobbs, Elizabeth Titcomb, R. lindleyi and Blue Pacific – a swathe of pink and purple across one side of our carpark.

Plant Collector: Dracophyllum latifolium (or neinei)

This is a seriously cool small tree to have in the garden. What is more, it is a native. It is often referred to as a grass tree because the long, thin leaves grow in tufts at the tips of branches but Mark has always thought of them as being like the trees from a Dr Seuss picture book with their wavy candelabra branch structure.

D. latifolium is reasonably widespread across the upper half of the North Island, occurring naturally as far south as North Taranaki but you don’t see a lot of them in the wild. They are an under canopy tree but not in dense forest as they prefer more light and less competition. In a garden situation, this tends to translate to woodland conditions – never too wet but never drying out and with filtered light. They are happier in company, so even though they are curious enough to warrant pride of place, they don’t want to be specimen trees standing alone. Apparently they have been recorded up to 10m high in the wild but our specimens have never got much over 2.5m in several decades.

The particularly curious Dracophyllum latifolium
The particularly curious Dracophyllum latifolium

It is now thought that our dracophyllums originated in Australia and arrived here (presumably by wind blown seed) a mere few million years ago, since when they have evolved into 40 different species. They have alkaloids in the foliage which make them unpleasant to browsing animals and these also inhibit fungal growth so the fallen leaves don’t break down but instead form long lived carpets beneath the tree.

The trick to gathering seed is all in the timing. Gather it too early and the seed will not be ripe. If you leave it too late, the seed pod will have dehisced – cracked open on the tree and released the seed. If you do gather seed, sow them immediately in seed trays and be patient. We do not get seedlings sprouting up naturally in our garden, despite having several trees.

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

Grow it Yourself – melons

The melons offer an annual challenge here because timing is of the essence. All melons like a hot summer so the further north you are, the more successful you will be. They also have a relatively long growing season of at least 3 months and you need heat at the end of the season to get sweet fruit. The trick is getting them out at the optimum time – early enough to get well established but not so early that they get checked in growth by inclement spring weather.

Melons grow on a vine, similar to a pumpkin or a courgette, each plant taking up at least a square metre. If you want to grow them vertically up a trellis, you will probably have to construct little hammocks for each fruit to support the weight. Because of the long growing season requirements, it is usual to put them out as small plants rather than starting from seed. You can try and hasten the initial settling in process by using a cloche or by planting into black plastic (which helps the ground to heat up more quickly). Mark has tried a new approach this year of building fresh compost beds in mounds for the melons, using grass clippings to generate initial heat. Ever the vigilant gardener, he has measured the temperatures and the mounds are sitting at around 35 degrees during the day, dropping to 18 degrees at night. He is hoping this is enough to really kick start the crop this year. It also has the advantage of supplying plenty of nutritious, organic material which the plants require.

Plants need to be well established and running profusely by Christmas if you are to have any hope of a decent harvest and even then, you are relying on a warm, dry autumn. So do not delay planting if you want to try growing them.

Water melons are a little more successful in marginal climates, though many of us may think they are a poor second to a good rockmelon.

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