Gardening in North Otago September 25th 2015

Still experiencing hard frosts here in North Otago which means cold morning starts but it soon warms up and becomes pleasant working conditions. However the cold nights and mornings are holding spring back and because of this I have had time to give trees and plants a ride in the wheel barrow to be settled in a more suitable spot and after Wednesday's soft rain everything in the garden will be happy. 

I have spent a good few hours over the past two weeks digging out acanthus mollis, (bears breeches, oyster plant) from a garden that always looked ok with the dramatic leaves of acanthus but having removed the three mop top's it was under planting this garden needed to change. Acanthus mollis has invasive thick roots which filled my wheel barrow many times and I am sure the evidence of roots I missed will still be popping up.This garden now features a tall standard weeping white mulberry in the center, an edge of hellebore's for early winter interest and lupins filling the rest of the space for a spring display before the mulberry puts out leaf.  

Also during the week I potted on lavender and hedge cuttings taken at the end of last summer. Hedges are not for everyone because of the trimming, I love a nice hedge separating areas in a garden and because a lot of plants are required to grow a hedge I like to put in cuttings. Also in early spring I pot up fast growing gap fillers to use in my long perennial boarders once spring and early summer flowering plants have finished. I plant them now so good roots establish, then cut them back and let them regrow to take them right through until the beginning of next winter. Plants I use for this are mignoette, geranium, fuschia, geranium, cineraria silver dust and anthriscus sylvestris ,I call it bronze Queen Anns lace, spreads from seed profusely but pulls out easily and is a wonderful gap filler with its large feathery bronze leaves and clusters of small white flowers.

I absolutely love sweet peas, I have had groups sitting over winter for an early flowering and today have planted more to scramble up behind lower plantings in the boarders. Sweet peas are gross feeders so a trench filled with well rotted animal manure below the soil they are sown in is beneficial.

This is usually the time to take tubular begonias out of dry storage, as they begin to sprout but with it still being so cold there is time enough to do this. The showy edging flamboyant begonias become nice big tubas in time and by cutting sections off them each year you will achieve a boarder in no time. It's best to lift them at the end of their growing season each year because like dahlias they can rot in wet ground during winter, All begonias love any fertiliser with a seaweed of fish content.

All of this month is the time to layer any shrubs that lay their branches close to the ground like azaleas and rhododendrons and low growing magnolias. Pin low growing slim branch's down into the soil and firm in with compost and soil a section of bent wire is good for pinning. Hopefully by the end of this growing season these branch's will have developed strong roots, leave growing like this on the Mother plant for another year then cut free and pot up to grow on as a new bush.

Ponds will be warming up now, mine started to grow green slim on sunny days, the addition of un sprayed straw weighted down with rocks will help in keeping water clear, barley straw is said to be the most efficient, It takes a couple of weeks after the straw is introduced to get the pond water working as it should. My pond is still not warm enough for the oxygen weed to put on new growth but I see the water lillies are starting to move. Keep fertiliser from drifting into ponds, slime growth is encouraged by added nitrogen. 

Lawns,

New lawns sown now on the coast will strike as soon as we have a few nice sunny days in a row to warm the ground up, as I have mentioned before seed must be sown thickly in spring and kept moist to beat annual weeds. 

Keep the mower blades up when cutting spring grass to allow it to thicken up and feed a little each time it rains and they will stay lush..

Fruit: 

Blue berries are a popular fruit and a health benifit, Blue berry bushes need to be growing in an acid soil with consistent moisture. I have watered my bush well and mulched with pine needles which will gently make the soil beneath acid.

Vegetables:

Still no white butterfly's about (in my garden) keep planting out green and root veg.Get the sprouted seed potatoes in and mounded if already in and up.

Too early and cold for beans right now.

All the veg seeds I planted at the same time are up and doing well lettuce, carrot, corn (protected from frost) and silverbeet that I grow year round for my chooks and birds.

Cheers, Linda.