Gardening in North Otago 30th March 2011

A good settled day or two this week to dry the sodden ground out a little.
With our wedding's now at an end for this season I have been taking stock of the garden and making plans for what gets trimmed, shifted, chopped out and nurtured over the soon to be here cold months.
Collecting seed and taking hard wood cuttings is top of the list because I need to get the seed when dry and the cuttings in while the days are still warm enough for them to settle and start to make roots.
Take advantage of the warm ground and cool mornings and nights to keep planting out shrubs, their roots really take off at this time of the year and settle themselves in well before the frosts. I have been finding runners on some of my low growing shrubs, branches that have grown down and rooted themselves into the ground. This is the time of year to cut them from the mother plant and pot them up and nurse them over the winter then plant them out when the pot is filled with roots and growth starts moving again. This applies to climbers as well, jasmine, honey suckle, clematis. Have a look around the garden and see what is there for the taking.

Lavatera's need a good cut back now if they are to look good and bushy through the winter, cut out all the old non producing wood and let it come fresh again before the frosts.
Same for geraniums, they have made a lot of growth over the summer months and need to be cleaned out in the middle where old leaves accumulate and white fly can be harboring, cut out old non productive stems and shorten back long lanky growth. Leave alone further inland cover when frosts come but first take cuttings and protect over winter just in case.
If you would like sweet-peas flowering in early spring plant them now, they will pop up and winter will hold them but as soon as the ground warms up a little they will take off and be there for picking in august. Sweet-peas are gross feeders, they do best in a different position each year. If you really want them planted in the same place dig a trench and fill with stable manure to keep them fed for their long flowering period.

Keep an eye on hellebore's ( Winter rose's) they dry out at this time of the year to the point where they die.They are one of the first plants to flower in late winter. Keep the water up to them and feed them, blood & bone, manure or slow release fertiliser. The baby plants growing around mother plants can be potted up now, they take about three years from seed to flower.

Fruit & Vegetables
Codling moth caterpillars can be trapped now as they are leaving the trees, Tie strips of corrugated cardboard (Corrugation inwards) around the trunks. Once the harvest is over remove and destroy the cardboard.
Keep sowing vegetable seeds onion, radish, spinach and planting seedlings, cabbage, celery, winter lettuce here on the coast. further inland broad beans, cabbage and spinach.
I like to sow and plant butter crunch lettuce now as it keeps growing well into the winter.
Cheers, Linda.