In the garden this fortnight: Thursday February 9, 2012
A fortnightly series first published in the Weekend Gardener and reproduced here with their permission.
The only justification for growing seeding campanulata cherries - feeding the scores of tui in late winter
A rash of germinating campanulata cherries
We are very cautious about invasive plants here. I know there is an old cliché that says a weed is just a plant in the wrong place but in a large garden, we can’t afford to have out of control triffids. If a plant starts to look dangerous, it probably is. If it is a prolific seeder and the seed is dispersed by birds, it is even more problematic. The campanulata cherries fall into this category and if it weren’t for the scores of tui they attract to the garden each spring, we would do away with them. The seeding bangalow palm (Archontophoenix cunninghamiana) is also a source of angst. The same goes for the Himalayan Daphne bholua which doesn’t just seed. It also suckers below ground. If we lived near a national park or adjacent to a native reserve, we would feel morally obliged to review our hospitality to these ornamental plants.
We are nowhere near as tolerant of wayward perennials and annuals. Forget-me-not may be pretty but it is aptly named. We have been weeding it out for years here and still it stages a comeback. The orangeberry (Rubus pentalobus) had to go when it formed an impenetrable mat after just one year then started climbing and leaping to extend its territory – but never fruited. Some of the ornamental tradescantias (wandering willies) are also invasive. We have a very pretty blue flowered form but it sets prodigious quantities of seed and is popping up in thickets many metres away. The remains of the arum lily Green Goddess still require regular attention to get rid of the last remnants of tiny rhizomes out of the ground.
Where we have plants which set miles too much seed, like the granny bonnets (aquilegias) and the sweet williams (dianthus), we try and deadhead straight into a bucket. From there, they either go to the bottom of a hot compost heap, out with the rubbish or on the burning heap. Composting alone does not kill seeds unless you manage your compost in a way that generates considerable heat. While we don’t mind a certain amount of seeding down of pretty plants, we like to keep them confined to particular areas and don’t want to spread them everywhere when we use the compost as mulch.
I am very fond of eryngiums
Top tasks:
1) Persuade Mark to head out with the chainsaw and cut down some of the self seeded pongas. We don’t regard these as weeds because they are native, but we end up with too many of them. We have them as raised beds in the rimu avenue, where some are now 50 years old. I want to extend the constructions along further and feature more bromeliads. I have never learned to use a chainsaw and am terrified of them. Mark is equally worried by what I could do with one if I became confident so has never encouraged me to learn.
2) Mark has been raising perennials from seed in the nursery and I need to get onto planting these out. I was particularly pleased to see a tray of eryngiums – blue sea holly. It is a little bit prickly but so very pretty. Blue flowers are my absolute favourite. It would have been better had we got onto planting these out earlier but they are perennial so should grow on to star next summer.
Ponga (tree fern) trunks, used to make raised beds andwhich have lasted for five decades already
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
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
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.
In the Garden: Friday December 16
A fortnightly series first published in the Weekend Gardener and reproduced here with their permission.
The antique stone mill wheels are fine as garden decoration
Ours is a garden that is very light on ornamentation and we prefer it that way. The last thing I want for Christmas is a garden ornament or colourful display pot. The three stone antique millwheels are fine, but generally we like to feature glimpsed views or plants as focal points rather than statuary or any type of installation. We are lucky that we garden on a sufficiently large scale to be able to use the glimpsed view, even the odd borrowed vista. It is a bit more problematic in a tiny, town garden with a view of next door’s washing line. But using plants as a feature point is possible no matter what size the garden.
Before....
One of the delights of having a mature garden with old plants is that there is plenty of raw material for clipping and shaping. We don’t want to follow the Italian example and clip and shape everything, but the occasional large, cloud pruned specimen can be as strong as any man-made focal point. Camellias are wonderful for clipping and shaping because they will sprout again if you make a mistake and they grow densely if you clip every year. Some of the michelias also clip well when they are well established, as does loropetalum and the classic yews. The skill is in making
... and immediately after
sure that not everything is turned into a lollipop (the easiest shape to clip), or a cake stand (which is just a vertical stack of lollipops). Mark favours the flatter topped mushroom shape or layers of clouds. We had four standard lollipops flanking our sunken garden but they had become too dense and rounded. Some radical cutting has seen them become much lighter mushrooms instead, giving a visual accent rather than completely dominating the area. He doesn’t rely on doing it all by eye, instead using lengths of bamboo to measure height and width. We don’t mind a bit of variation – these are living plants not artificial structures that can be like identical soldiers – but we want a sense of overall unity.
Top tasks:
1) Summer prune the wisterias. Turn your back for a moment and they can make a bid for world domination, or so it seems. I just tidy up the long, wayward tendrils at this time of the year and do a structural and shaping prune in winter.
2) Continue deadheading and light summer pruning of the roses. Because we never spray our roses here, I prune frequently to encourage fresh growth. They get a traditional winter prune so the summer effort is more like a nip and tuck. I rely on keeping the roses growing strongly and pushing out fresh leaf buds to keep enough foliage coming to replace what succumbs to black spot. I try and remove all spent blooms and damaged foliage to the wheelie bin, to avoid them harbouring pests and diseases on the ground at the base of the roses.
A large cloud pruned specimen of Camellia sasanqua Mine No Yuki
In The Garden: November 18, 2011
A fortnightly series first published in the Weekend Gardener and reproduced here with their permission.
Planting out hostas now
With our annual garden festival (now the Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacular) over, it is back into the garden with a vengeance. The festival is incredibly important to us but standing on concrete all day every day for ten days on end, meeting and greeting visitors is far more tiring than a hard day in the garden. Unless we have a very wet spell, it is late for planting out woody trees and shrubs. Large plants will now be heeled into the vegetable garden because it has very well cultivated soil and offers easy planting and growing conditions, to be relocated next autumn. Any planting now requires wetting the root ball thoroughly. We plunge the plant, pot and all, into a bucket (or a drum for large plants) until the bubbles stop rising which means the root ball is saturated. This can take anything up to 30 minutes. Once a root ball has dried out, it is very hard to get it to take up water again without soaking.
We will continue planting out perennials, particularly hostas and bromeliads. Perennials in full growth can be divided now, as long as they are well watered and planted into well dug soil where they can get their roots out easily. We mulch with compost as a matter of routine, to enrich the soil and to keep moisture levels up in the soil before summer arrives. It also controls weeds, as long as you make a hot compost mix which kills any seeds in the composting process.
Top tasks:
1) The daffodils in the lawn need to be lifted and separated. I will only replant the large bulbs. They have been there for many years and the flowering is now greatly reduced which means that either they need dividing or we have a problem with narcissi fly in them. If I leave it any longer, I won’t remember exactly where the bulbs are because the grass will cover them.
2) Narcissi fly are on the wing. They look like a small blowfly but with a yellow abdomen. Removing all foliage from narcissi bulbs will reduce problems as long as I cover the bulbs with dirt so the narcissi fly can’t lay its eggs in the hole left from the foliage. Mark also stalks the flies individually with a little sprayer of Decis, which is a synthetic pyrethroid.
3) Label overcrowded patches of spring bulbs which need lifting and dividing when they are dormant over summer.
In the Garden: November 4, 2011
The start of a new fortnightly series first published in the Weekend Gardener and reproduced here with their permission.
An easy method of killing unwanted moss
With our garden festival currently in full swing (now styled the Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacular), all our efforts in the garden have been on presentation for the most important days of our garden visitor year. We call this garden grooming – a bit like giving your car a valet treatment. It doesn’t last long but it looks great in the meantime. When it comes to the lawns, we have made a deliberate decision to avoid chemical use where possible, both for weed control and fertilising. We use a mulcher mower, an edger and we hand dig flat weeds. As long as the rest is comprised of small, fine leafed green plants which mow well, we are willing to live with a mixed colony rather than just rye grass and fescue. At least our lawns are not toxic.
We don’t worry too much about moss in the lawns – it occurs most in shade where the grasses struggle. And if we were Japanese, we would revere the moss. But with our high rainfalls and humid conditions, we get a lot of moss growth on paths, brickwork and stonework. Often I will sprinkle soda ash (which is simply powdered washing soda crystals available from bulk bins) which kills the moss overnight. Indeed, cold water washing powders work equally well though I have found the leading brands are better than the budget brands – perhaps they have more water softener in them. Our chemist daughter reassures me that there should not be any problems of toxicity in using soda ash or washing powder to kill moss though if you get too carried away over time, you will be altering the pH of your soils because they are alkaline. I have experimented on grass and it kills moss without harming the grass. Do not do as someone I know – use so much that when it rained, his entire lawn foamed. The moss dies but does not disappear so you have to rake it out of lawns and brush it off hard surfaces.
Rhododendron seed head, missed from last year
Top tasks:
1) Deadheading rhododendrons. While conventional wisdom is that all rhododendrons including vireyas need deadheading, in fact only those that set seed need it. Setting too much seed can weaken a plant and even cause it to die over time. The others just look better for having it done.
2) Mulching garden beds. There is no point in mulching dry soils so we like to get it on before summer. We mulch frequently with homemade hot compost mix which means we rarely need to fertilise garden borders.
3) Getting the planting out of this season’s trees and shrubs completed. November is getting late for this but we soak all root balls thoroughly and can generally rely on regular rainfall here in North Taranaki.
Tikorangi Diary: Friday 8 July, 2011
Footprint in the frost
Today feels like the first blast of real winter. As it is now the second week of July, I guess we can hardly complain. Spring starts here in August. A visible frost earlier in the week had me out with the camera which is an indicator that they are not common events here. As Lloyd and I tramped across the lawn and I photographed the footprints, I did briefly ponder the advice not to walk on frosted grass. Sure enough, the footprints had turned black the next day.
The bananas are partially tucked up for winter, just in time
Fortunately, Mark had covered his bananas a few days earlier. This is one fruit which we have to nurse through the winter, though we did scoff a little at the advice in the local paper last week to cover your citrus in frost cloth. We have never worried about the citrus and it has never been a problem.
Lloyd does build a nice stone pillar when required
Lloyd finally finished the repairs to one of the stone walls – he does build a nice stone pillar when needed, does our Lloyd. This one was started from scratch. Since then, poor man, he has been out lifting the last of the open ground magnolia crops. We still have to sell some plants here to pay for the garden so the call of the nursery has taken him away from the garden. So too for Mark, who has been spent most of his time putting in cuttings (mostly michelias from his breeding programme as he conducts propagation trials). It is getting close to the end of the cuttings season now, though we only put in a shadow of what we used to when the nursery was in full production.
Mark is out and about most evenings after dark with the dogs in search of troublesome possums who may be developing a taste for magnolia buds. Every year without fail, we get asked about magnolia trees which are opening badly deformed flowers. In our experience, the culprit is always a possum, and usually only one. Magnolias are not possum magnets as the oranges or fresh growth on roses are, but one single minded critter can take out most of the buds on a single tree over a matter of nights. Because they chew down into the centre of the bud, the damage is not obvious until the tree tries to open the flower. Mark usually does autopsies on the possums he shoots (which is to say, he analyses the contents of their stomachs to see what they have been feeding on) and upon occasion he will find one chock-a-block with magnolia buds.
Besides doing a little fiddly-faddly potting of plants to sell during our annual garden festival at the end of October (a very important time for us), I have abandoned my efforts on the rose garden (I just don’t enjoy working in that area and I have not worked out yet what is wrong with it). I will have to return to it to finish, but it has been much more fun to work in an under-used area of the woodland. I have been planting drifts of bulbs – big bulbs like Scadoxus puniceus (given that we can sell each big bulb for about $25 because it is rare here, it felt wonderfully indulgent to plant a drift of about 30 of them), Scadoxus katherinae, Haemanthus albifloss and Haemanthus conccineus. I find bulbs much more rewarding than those wretched roses and I can live with their scruffy foliage when they start to go dormant – though H. albifloss is evergreen and the others have quite short dormancy periods. I am only just getting to grips with the fact that large clumps of bulbs need more regular lifting and dividing to stop them from falling apart when in full growth. We did the auratum lilies this time last year and most of them held themselves up in summer, without needing staking. Every three to four years seems to be about right for these types of large bulbs.
For a change from grubbing in the dirt, I have been pruning rhododendrons. These are a backbone plant in our garden and winter is the ideal time for hard pruning. They do look better when dead wood and wayward branches have been removed. A few get subjected to a really hard prune back to bare stems though this sacrifices this year’s floral display for a better long term outcome.
I was going to dig some of the huge clumps of yellow clivias today, replant the largest sections and pot some of the smaller divisions for sale but it was too cold for me to want to garden. It can wait. Clivias are tough, forgiving plants and the timing of lifting and dividing is not critical at all. In fact, they won’t turn a hair, as long as they are treated properly, no matter when it is done. It shouldn’t stay this cold for long. I even caught myself with the camera, starting a photo shoot on how to divide clivias for an Outdoor Classroom – old habits die hard.
The magnolias are coming into flower. At this stage, just M. campbelli and Vulcan but the buds are swelling fast and starting to show glimpses of colour on many others. It makes this time of year one of the most exciting for us.
Magnolia Vulcan is coming in to flower
Meet Hedwhig the Morepork
Hedwhig the New Zealand Morepork
Our New Zealand owl, morepork or ruru does not often make itself obvious during the day but the alarmed calls of the other birds alerted us to Hedwhig perched in a ponga tree. Alas his beautiful big golden eyes are not visible but he was keeping a very close eye on our dogs three metres below him. They are a familiar sound at night as they make their call (“More pork, more pork”, they call with a particular pitch) and from time to time we see the flash of feathers as one swoops in to pick the moths attracted to night time lights.
Hedwhig – a New Zealand joke, or maybe even a highly specific Whanganui reference.
Garden Diary – the first entry May 28, 2010
Mark covets the neighbour's wife's toy - her Bosch trimmer
Ha! I knew I loved writing, but I didn’t realise quite how much until I stopped the weekly routine. So herewith the first of a new series. Instead of casting around each week to dispense advice on what readers should be doing in their garden, I thought instead I would record what we have actually done.
Mark has been playing with a new toy which belongs to Lloyd’s wife (Lloyd being our neighbour, friend and one remaining staff member). I don’t think his wife knows they are over here but despite initial scepticism, these battery powered clippers by Bosch have proven to be so useful that I can see Mark needs a set for his birthday. He has spent hours cutting back the long grass from the bulbs he has naturalised in the park (dwarf cyclamen, dwarf narcissi, snowdrops – galanthus – lachenalias and more). The clippers are much faster to use than snips and have saved a major flare-up of his RSI. He is besotted with them and loves to demonstrate how easily they cut back spent perennials and seed heads as well. To me, they resemble hairdresser’s clippers. Not that I have anything against hairdressers.
Drying the maize crop for the pigeons
In the edible garden, which is entirely Mark’s domain here, he has been continuing his nightly rat and mouse bait round to combat the growing population. He gathered the maize which he grows to feed his pigeons (I call him the Jack Duckworth of Tikorangi) and has it spread out to dry. He continues to eat fresh sweet corn every day for lunch. The walnut harvest is being dried, the last of the tree-ripened apples were gathered this week but there is a major failure in the vegetable garden. He did not follow the advice we dispensed weekly a couple of months ago and there is a dearth of green vegetables. I have had to buy some – the first vegetables we have bought for close to a year.
Lloyd has spent much of the week weed-eating areas which we can not mow. If he times this autumn round well, grass growth slows so much that it does not need to be done again until we open the garden at magnolia time. An amazingly mild autumn may upset this routine. Grass growth continues unabated.
Our most reliable Friend of the Garden, Colin, has been up for the week. He likes to escape his retirement village (widely known in this country as a Home for the Bewildered) and spend an intensive four days in the garden at least once every six weeks. As a retired horticulturist, he is one of the few people we trust with areas full of treasures so he has done a major clean up of Mark’s cold border in the park – just in time as the trilliums are pushing through.
I am continuing my major revamp of the Avenue Gardens – this week a badly overgrown area of choking and choked perennials which has involved some pretty heavy digging. I have taken out the lot, divided them and discarded large quantities which are surplus to requirements before replanting in freshly dug ground. I have also been dividing and potting Soloman Seal (polygonatum multiflorum) to sell during our annual garden festival at the end of October and digging and dividing some large clumps of a particularly good variegated form of Crinum moorei. We know only too well that one of the drawcards here is our ability to offer plants for sale that can’t be found elsewhere.
For any local readers who noticed the article that replaced me in the Taranaki Daily News on Friday:
1) The unnamed vireya photographed was Golden Charm (one of ours, bred by Felix Jury).
2) The advice given to cut your luculia back to half a metre high after flowering only applies to Luculia gratissima (Early Dawn is the common sugar pink one in flower now). If you do that to Luculia pinceana types (Fragrant Cloud is the spectacular, heavily scented almond pink one most commonly available), you will kill them. We prefer to let Early Dawn grow. It forms a graceful under-storey large shrub.
In the garden this week: Friday 15, 2011
A little attention now will ensure a better winter display from hellebores
* It is time to give hellebores (winter roses) a little attention. We go through at this time and cut all the old leaves off, removing them to the compost heap. This gets rid of any aphid infestations, allows the flowers which will start emerging in a few weeks to be visible and the fresh foliage is much more attractive than tired old leaves. You can go through with a slasher if you wish. A weedeater is faster but tends to leave chewed looking stems. Feed and mulch the crowns.
* Most hellebores, particularly the common H.orientalis, are not the most amenable plants to divide. They take several years to build up to a good size so if you plan to divide a clump, make them large divisions. We prefer to go through and remove all the seedlings to prevent too much competition, leaving the large plants alone.
* Autumn is a good time for pruning and shaping most woody trees and shrubs.
* Sow lawns without delay while the weather is still mild. If you don’t do it straight away, you will have to wait until spring because grass seed won’t grow in winter.
* In response to phone calls, the pumpkin crop we grew for hull-less pumpkin seed was called Austrian Oil Seed and we bought it from Kings Seeds. Only the seeds are edible although the pumpkin may be suitable for stock food.
* In the curious world of vegetables, Sydney daughter reports that amongst the various bok choy/ pak choi variants at the market, she found a different veg called kang kong which she thought looked like a weed so she bought some to try. She says it was “quite nice”. Upon looking it up, she worked out why it looked like a weed. It is a convolvulus. I have yet to see kang kong offered here. Most Asian green leafy vegetables are quick maturing so ideal for a short term crop.
* While on the topic of seeds, the new autumn catalogue from Franchi Seeds is available on line at www.italianseedspronto.co.nz. These are predominantly summer crops but you may like to browse the traditional tastes of Italy in anticipation of sowing seed later in the year. Mark is planning to try some of the tomato crops and I am encouraging him in this because the most delicious tomatoes I have ever eaten were in the south of Italy. By no means are all tomatoes equal in the flavour stakes. Make the most of the pleasant autumnal weather which is brilliant for gardening. We frequently get the first wintery blast over Easter. No matter when Easter falls, the weather gods spy the event, not the date.
In the Garden: February 25, 2011
Impressed by the Japanese Black Trifele tomatoes
• There is not a whole lot you can be doing in the ornamental garden at this time of the year but history tells us that we will start cooling off within the next fortnight so enjoy the respite. Try at least to stop summer weeds from seeding to reduce next year’s crop. Snip the seed heads straight into a bucket and dispose of in the rubbish or burn them if you are in an area that allows fires.
• It is pretty much the last call for summer pruning of cherry trees. While you are about it, you may want to tidy up plums and peaches as they finish cropping.
• Mark has tried a relatively large assortment of tomato varieties this year but top of the popularity poll is Japanese Black Trifele. It is a curious dark tomato, more deep green and black than red so traditionalists may find it slightly disturbing but it more than makes up for that with good flavour, fleshy texture (rather than too juicy) and good production.
• You can save seed from most vegetables (we will be saving the tomato seed), confident that future crops will come true but with two provisos. Save the seed from the best specimen in the harvest, not some poor little weakling. The quality of future crops depends on the quality of the parent plant. And F1 hybrids will give very patchy results and don’t generally come true to the parent. F1 hybrid seed is the result of controlled pollination between two selected parents and was the origin of the super sweet corn we now take for granted and of some of the modern tomato cultivars. The only way of telling if you have F1 hybrids growing is from the original seed packet.
• Keep up the deadheading on summer flowering plants like dahlias and cosmos to extend the blooming season.
• Deadhead agapanthus by waterways and near native bush areas.
• Get the winter veg into the ground but plant brassicas in small numbers successively every month to avoid the common problem of a huge surplus of cabbages and cauliflowers all coming ready at the same time.
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