Gardening in North Otago July 29th 2014

The start of another new month!! and what a lovely warm day we had here in North Otago on Tuesday, so good to have dry washing and be able to work with the warm sun on my back.

Roses:
I noticed while pruning that roses are beginning to bud burst with the odd warm day pushing them on. If your roses have not had compost or manure now is the time to give them fertiliser, watered in well if it is powered fertiliser, not so important for slow release fertilisers designed to feed each time it rains or water is applied.
My roses will also get a dose of liquid donkey manure when I get around to it because when they start to shoot it means their roots are feeding.

The wisteria is next to be pruned, All the long slim leaders growing out in all directions will be removed.
Once your wisteria has reached the length you require with a chosen leader, or maybe two going in opposite directions all other leaders can be removed. If allowed to grow, a wispy new leader will eventually become as thick as a tree branch, and too many of theses become a tangled mess and very heavy if being trained along a balcony. Don't prune any other part of a wisteria at this time of the year because you will remove the flower buds forming right now. Reduce the size of large established wisterias once flowering has finished.

As I mentioned last week hellebore's are looking fantastic in our garden right now, once pollinated the center of the flower changes to form seed pods, when this has taken place the stems become firmer and will last in water when picked. Hellebore's seed down very readily growing masses of baby plants beneath the mother plants. These seedlings can be transplanted or potted up in the second year when they have developed two strong leaves, but will not flower until around the forth year.

I notice some shrubs and my bouganvillea have been badly damaged by frost, I will leave the damaged growth on top to protect the growth below then cut damage off when frosts have finished. However I have not had to cover my borgenvilla so far this winter, last year it was very frost damaged even with frost cloth covering, but came away and flowered as well as ever come summer. Only this month to go then we will roll head first into spring and leave these cold months behind us.

Vegetables & Fruit
The warmer North Otago mid-winter days, are perfect for planting at a time when we usually don't. There are edibles that can go into the ground when it is cold and damp. But none of these will survive in boggy soils so good drainage is essential with early plantings, if weeds are growing plants are growing.
Garlic and Shallots are available to plant - dig compost through soil that has been resting from the last busy growing season or fill a container and plant separated cloves of garlic approximately twice the depth of the clove. Take care not to damage cloves when separating out the bulb and you could get up to 20 cloves per bulb!

Strawberries are easy to plant in all kinds of containers or straight into sunny / raised garden beds along with slow release fertiliser. I enlarged my strawberry bed last year to twice the size, leaving year before plants to fruit again in one half and planted the other half out in new runners.Strawberries also seem to do very well in hanging strawberry bags with an abundance of slow release food, but it would pay to wrap it with bird netting once the fruit starts turning red.

I got really stuck into my gooseberry bushes this week, cleaned the middle out of cross over branches and took off the branches skirting the ground which lifted the bushes up enough for picking underneath, many of these lower branches had grown roots into the ground so I have potted these sections up, they will develop into good size bushes after a couple of growing seasons.

Cheers, Linda