Gardening in North Otago July 28th 2015

The start of another new month!! and with frosts easing here on the coast there is defiantly some growth happening. My tulips are up and all other spring bulbs are moving fast toward budding.  Only this month to go then we will roll head first into spring and leave these cold months behind us.

Tree planting should be happening in many gardens, heaps of choice available right now. I bought a well grown maple and a tall weeping white mulberry last week to enhance a couple of spots in my garden. Tree's take a number of years to reach a saleable stage and then many more years to become mature. Eight years after planting a tree will display the promise it's mature shape, planting a tree is planting life for future generations.

Roses:
I noticed while pruning that roses are budding well 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, not so important for slow release fertilisers designed to feed each time it rains or water is applied. when roses bud up it means roots are feeding.  If weeds are growing plants are growing.

The wisteria is next to be pruned, All the long slim leaders growing out in all directions will be removed.
Once wisterias have reached the length require with one 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 heavy mess 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. 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.

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 the damaged growth off when frosts have finished. hopefully they will all came away again come summer.

Vegetables and Fruit
The warmer North Otago mid-winter days, are perfect for planting at a time when we usually don't.  Edibles can go into the ground when it is cold and damp but none will survive in continually boggy soils, good drainage is essential with early plantings.
Garlic and Shallots are still available to plant - dig compost through soil that has been resting after 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 garlic cloves when separating from the bulb and you could get up to 20 cloves per bulb!

Strawberries are easily planted into all kinds of containers or straight into sunny / raised garden beds. Strawberries also seem to do very well in hanging strawberry bags with an abundance of slow release food, but it would pay to wrap with bird netting once the fruit starts turning red. I enlarged my strawberry bed last year to twice the size, leaving year old plants to fruit again in one half and new runners planted into the other. However once they stopped fruiting I neglected the bed and now need to dig them all out to get rid of weeds. Once weed free I intend to add manure enriched compost, cover the bed in polythene, replant into it and fingers crossed there will never be a weed problem again!

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 potted these sections up, they will develop into good size bushes after a couple of growing seasons.

Cheers, Linda