Gardening in Waitaki July 30th 2024

Brrrrr, A very wintery week to start the new month, the soaking rain can only be good in the long run for North Otago before spring.Bulbs that shot up during those warmer days will continue to head for an early spring display but the cold temperatures now will hold buds and have a noticeable effect on soft new growth. However rhododendron Christmas cheer and prunus autumnalis are in full flower and the fragrance from winter sweet, witch hazel, Daphne, boronia and violets wafting about gardens make them a joy to work in, cold fingers and all.    This is a time to plan a spring, early summer picking garden and shift and feed existing plants. I am liquid-feeding annuals and perennials that have been nursed through winter, folia feeding will help all new leaf, budding, and flowering plants as roots are starting to take in nutrients to plump up buds. This week I have noticed nice fat buds opening on the stems of my hydrangeas so I have pruned the more sheltered bushes but left the more exposed a little longer. Prune only those stems that have flowered, cut at an outward-facing bud at the second bud from the bottom, and leave all other stems because these are the flowers for this year. Spread old stable manure around the drip line and once again a reminder, it is a dressing of lime for pink flowers and aluminum sulphate for blue, White never changes, but are best planted in light shade. The use of coffee grinds, grass clippings, or pine needles spread around the drip line can help to lower the PH of pink hydrangeas and encourage them into shades of purple. I have found I can pull rooted branches from the base of big old gnarly hydrangea bushes, these take a few years to bush up but it is a sure way to replicate a special one.  While raking out the last of autumn leaves that had blown under shrubs I come across branches from shrubs laid down in soil-forming roots, viburnum, choisya, camellia, and hydrangeas. This can also be purposely done at the beginning of spring by pegging branches down into the soil, roots should develop at the point covered with soil. Making a small wound on the portion of the stem that is to be buried will help stimulate root development. Remove rain-filled saucers from the bottom of plant pots for drainage and to stop roots from freezing. Cut the old growth from peony roses now and destroy them, disease can winter over on last year's stems but be careful not to knock the new pink shoots emerging from the tubers. Cut the old growth from dahlias now as well, if thick and tubular bend the cut stalk over to prevent rainwater from building up inside which will lead to rot in a tuber.Remove soil from bearded iris rhizomes, they need to be partially exposed to give the best flowering. With roses making a move to budding up they will be taking in food, powdered rose food needs watered in around the drip line, slow-release fertiliser will work each time it rains, keeping manure away from rose crowns. Trees and Roses are still available in Garden Centres, If you think your garden is too small for trees, I have seen dwarf Peach and Nectarine Trees on offer, if you need a little tree growing to a width and height of 1.5 meters to add height to a part of your garden why not have one that blossoms beautifully and then gives you fruit. Vegetables: The veg I have in are holding well despite the weather extremes, frosty areas inland can make a start now by adding some compost and a little lime in readiness for when you plant out later this month. Fruit: Prune newly planted fruit trees, this is probably the hardest cut you’ll make, but the most important. Cut a new tree at about hip height, do this whether you want a vase shape or a single leader. If the main branches start here they’ll be reachable when fully grown. Let's hope we don't get too many dull overcast days by the time fruit trees blossom, we need those wonderful bees to come out and set to work pollinating. Cheers, Linda

Dwarf fruit trees.

Gardening in Waitaki July 24th 2024

New low maintenance garden

Dull damp days and then one out of the box on Tuesday but the days are beginning to lengthen slowly and with increased daylight plant roots begin to stir. During the rainy days, I have been busy with Garden design work and the fine days have been perfect for spending some time repotting plants that will burst with growth again in spring. My design work has changed dramatically from when I first started creating new Gardens for Clients back in the '80s and '90s. Back then it was all about pushing fences out to create more gardens and planting roses, trees, and wide borders filled with shrubs and perennials. Today homeowners are kept busy with other activities and require limited outdoor maintenance so growers have become obliged to grow large numbers of structured plants to fit this need. I like to encourage Clients to include a small flower-picking garden along with a low-maintenance look. The picking garden can be planted out with perennials, bulbs, and annuals to fill vases while introducing prettiness and perfume to the garden while also attracting beneficial insects and bees. Where space is available in new or existing gardens large trees can be introduced to give privacy and shade but when planting along a neighboring fence thought must go into the choice of trees. In my new town garden, I have planted the large trees I value in grow bags for Simi Bonsaing. The grow bags contain tap roots and restrict spreading roots. Feeder roots will still be nourished when fed and mulched to retain moisture. I have planted maples, birches, elm, and natives this way and almost 3 years on they are growing smaller and doing fine, the grow bags I use are locally made and distributed by https://www.evergroworchard.nz/evergrow-bags. We still have weeks of cold weather to come but I see so much spring plant growth happening here on the coast, tulips and all other spring bulbs are well up, and rhododendrons, camellias, azaleas, and magnolias are pushing out fat buds to introduce the beginning of a new growing season. Roses: Apply a thick layer of mulch on and around your roses to keep moisture there, this also protects the root zone and enables bushes to concentrate on root movement. In early spring an application of Rose Fertiliser high in potassium will enhance the healthy growth of roses being the nutrient responsible for promoting large, vibrant, healthy blooms. For established roses apply 200 g (1 cup) per square metre and water in. Apply again in mid-December for an autumn flush of blooms. Fruit: There will never be a better time to choose and plant ornamental and fruiting trees than right now! Each tree will have an informative label to tell you exactly what you will be buying with instructions on how and where to plant. All fruit trees need to grow in an open sunny position. Vegetable garden: To have Christmas new potatoes you need to start thinking about them from now on, all varieties are available in shops now. Potatoes have a natural dormancy from the time they are harvested to when they begin to sprout and start their next growth cycle. This can only be modified slightly by storage conditions. I set them out in a box on damp newspaper and pop them in a dark place in the warmth of the house. Some leave them in a warm well-lit place, whatever works for you, I go with the theory that it is very dark down in the soil where they eventually end up. FIRST EARLY VARIETIES: Cliffs Kidney, Jersey Bennes, Maris Anchor, Rocket. SECOND EARLY Ilam Hardy, Karaka, Red King. MAIN CROP: Desiree, Agria Mondial, Nadine, Pentland Dell, Red Rascal and Rua. Sow vegetable seeds in trays for planting out later, cauliflower and Cabbage seedlings on offer can be planted now undercover to keep birds off. In warmer garden areas silverbeet and Broccoli seedlings can go in. Asparagus crowns should now be available to be planted out in a well-composted bed, (no animal manure for asparagus) Cheers Linda.

Cherry trees in evergrow bags.

Gardening in Waitaki July 17th 2024

Only a few fine days were allotted for the School holidays this July making it hard for Mums, Dads, and Grandparents. With low cloud and rain keeping frosts away the ground and plants benefit from the softness for new root development but it also benefits slugs, snails, and other annoying pests so it is important to rake out all garden litter, dry leaves, twigs, and past plant foliage and stalks. It's time to tidy up the dieback from dahlias, peony rose leaves and catmint, any plant that has gone through the winter die-back, leaving no coverage to pests. However frosts will be back after the rain so it's frost cloth on plants like bougainvillea, hibiscus, pelargonium, and young daisy bushes, established Margarette daisy bushes will take a knock from the frosts, leaving any frost-affected growth on the outside will protect the new growth beneath. Inland, further up the valley, gardeners will need to take cuttings of daisy bushes, geranium, and pelargoniums and protect them until spring. I always felt very fortunate to have help once a week from Gardener Stan in my former large garden as there was compost and pea straw to spread while the gardens slept. Although not all plants sleep during winter, bulbs push through, pansies, polyanthus, violas, poppies, and primulas are tough little plants that stand up to frosts and give spots of colour. Leggy rhododendrons with leaves and buds on the top of long woody branches can be reduced in height, cut them all right back to a healthy bulging nodule, and then mulch with compost, it will take several years for them to bush up again but new growth is better to look at than stalky growth. More rose pruning this week, I had to invest in some new secateurs as the pair I have been using did not cut clean and rips on a rose prune will not allow the cut to seal well which will then result in die back, this can sometimes claim the whole branch. Winter is the time you will find the best selection of deciduous trees in garden centers, it may be cold and miserable outside but it's the time to buy these trees for planting. They arrive as grafted stock from growers, if you have bought bare-rooted trees identify where the graft section is as it should stay above the dirt line. If the tree has been bagged, plant to where planted in the bag, and remember to include a stake at planting time to protect against root movement by wind. Fruit: A tip I have used works to eradicate codling moths attacking apple trees. Quarter fill a tin or plastic milk container with treacle and hang it in the tree to attract male grubs, the treacle is said to smell like the female codling moth pheromone, so male grubs come to a sticky end. A double bonus is that the treacle will attract grub-eating birds. Tidy up fruit bushes now they are bare, black currants can be pruned now until late winter, they fruit best on younger wood so aim to remove older wood to retain a basic structure of 6 to 10 healthy shoots. For red and white currants cut out only diseased or very old branches in winter then prune new growth back to two buds in early summer by pruning leaders to outward-facing buds but if branches are bending cut to upward-facing buds. Vegetable garden: Time to start preparing the soil for spring planting, cultivate vacant spaces, and dig in green crops sown earlier. Add compost, and lime if you feel the ground is sour. Compost mixed with sawdust can be spread on wet, boggy soils. Sow seeds of broccoli, cabbage, broad beans, cauliflower, peas, (butter crunch) lettuce, onions, radish, spinach, and silverbeet into trays filled with potting mix and a layer of seed-raising mix on top, sit trays in a well-lit protected place to germinate. Asparagus crowns are now available and can be planted out in a well-composted bed. (no animal manure ) Cheers, Linda.

Gardening in Waitaki July 10th 2024

Some good frost this week to harden wood but with the mild weather we have been getting there are definite signs of spring around coastal gardens, once plants have moved into the first stages of budding they should continue to bud up during the sunny winter days. Camellias and rhododendrons are budding well, Christmas cheer rhodo is flowering as it should now, and spring bulbs are well up. Daphne bholua is in flower now wafting a lovely fragrance around the garden, this daphne will never let you down and has the bonus of winter flowering. Having derived from Nepal's high altitude regions Daphne bholua is a must for cold inland gardens but unfortunately resents exposed coastal conditions. Dahlias, gladioli, and peonies are in Garden centres this month and can be planted now in good draining soil, if you think there is a chance they would sit in wet soggy soil over winter they may rot. If young trees or shrubs need transplanting now is a good time to do it whilst they are at their most dormant stage. If in a severe frost area continue protecting plants like Margarete daisies, pelargoniums and seedlings from frosts with frost cloth. If you are still finding leaves to rake up like me, why not fill large black rubbish bags, add a little water, and then leave to rot? Leaf mulch is such a natural benefit to soil, we tend to remove them all at the leaf fall stage because they look untidy, rotting leaves down in this way when put back in the garden they will not be noticed, and worms will take leaf mulch down onto the soil. Pruning of trees and woody shrubs would still be going on at this time in my former garden, as well as some older roses and sheltered hydrangeas would be getting cut back, hydrangea canes that have flowered can be cut at the second bud from the bottom, leaving all canes that did not flower because these will be the new season's flowers. In colder areas, I would leave hydrangeas until they start bursting buds. Garden borders do not need to be wide to give a colourful display, wide borders mean digging and unnecessary work and expense filling them. This is a good time to reduce the width of gardens, I find trimming grass edges with a line trimmer gardens tend to increase in width slightly each year, to the point where after several years I needed to reduce the width by filling the front in, back to the original line with sifted soil, then resow grass in spring. If you have borders getting choked with clumps of bulbs, leaving little room for other plantings, put a sharp spade through the clumps now and remove half before the bulbs put on too much growth. At this time of the year, I make a few trips to the Waireaka Valley Lions Club sawdust and sheep manure stand. Thanks to volunteers cleaning out calving sheds and under-shearing sheds to keep the stand topped up for keen gardeners. I use the sawdust on some garden pathways. Sawdust can also be used in wet gardens as a weed suppressant and help to absorb excess moisture, but never in dry gardens. I use sheep manure on the compost heaps, the vegetable garden, and around the roses when horse manure or pig manure is not at hand. Vegetables: In cold areas start raising vegetable seeds for spring planting in glass houses or under glass or plastic with ventilation spaces to circulate air and stop seeds going mouldy. On the coast plant seedlings that are now on offer in Garden centers along with garlic cloves. I planted a green crop with grain and veg seeds I had stored for probably too long, if they all germinate I will let them grow and then dig them in while still young and soft. Comfrey I have long known the advantages of growing comfrey, but have been reading up on it again, it is such a useful plant and if you can get your hands on some I suggest you plant some root sections in an area of your garden where you can allow it to spread and send its roots very deep down into the soil to tap into much-needed nutrients. Comfrey is fast-growing, high in potassium, and can be cut back again and again. I have listed below some uses for comfrey around the garden. 1. Compost activator, add to your compost bin to heat the decomposing materials and enrich the compost. 2. Put a handful of comfrey leaves into a bucket of rainwater and let them rot down for around 6 weeks to give you a rich liquid fertilizer for plants. 3. Lay comfrey leaves in a potato trench and leave for 3 days before planting seed potatoes to give them a potassium-rich boost of fertiliser. 4. Use as a Comfrey leaf mulch around plants, by layering leaves around the stems of plants, potassium will slowly be released to the plants as the leaves break down – Great for tomatoes, beans and fruit bushes. 5. Use wilted leaves as a nutrient-rich Chicken feed. Cheers, Linda

Gardening in Waitaki July 2nd 2024

Prunning a bush rose:

We are well into winter now but spring bulbs are being encouraged to burst through the ground on milder days. I noticed jonquils flowering this week. In my former garden, I always had a big job about now on milder winter days cutting back deciduous shrubs, and dealing with convolvulus roots while I could still see where the top growth had been. In one smallish patch of garden where convolvulus was growing up and smothering shrubs, I dug out a wheelbarrow full of roots, I kid you not!!, long white roots that crisscrossed a patch of ground had spread through plant roots and along fence wire. It is so satisfying to start at one end of a convolvulus root and remove it without a break. Because I never use weed spray in the garden, digging and pulling it out was the only way to beat it. Pruning: Understanding how something grows is helpful before pruning, does it flower on new or old wood, There is a right time to prune any plant for it to respond and produce new flowers, fruit, and foliage. But sometimes it is best just to do it, the worst that can happen is that you will lose a season's flowering and learn a useful lesson simultaneously. Rose pruning: Rosewood will have hardened now so getting stuck into giving roses a good hard prune now will produce nice new growth come spring. In cold areas rosewood will still be too soft, the time by which rose pruning should be completed varies by several weeks from the warmest to coldest gardens, pruning should be done and dusted by the time buds break. Bush roses, concentrate on clearing the bush's center, remove all inward-facing branches at an outward-facing bud, prune height back by two-thirds always at an outward-facing bud, and remove any old and damaged branches. Brush old gnarly rose centers with a wire brush to stimulate and encourage new budding. Floribunda bush roses have several blooms on one stem and need a few older branches taken right back each year to encourage new strong branching and newer branches taken back by two-thirds. Hybrid tea roses the roses that grow a single exhibition bloom on a stem, they can be pruned back quite hard to an outward-facing bud. Standard bush roses: Same as bush roses. Climbing roses flower at their best when the branches are trained horizontally along a fence or wall, they will then develop small branches along the length to carry flowers. After several years a main horizontal branch will become unproductive and need to be removed, and replaced with a new branch to be trained to take its place. Pillar roses are the best type to climb up and be trained over an arch or pergola. I cut the old growth back from these with a hedge trimmer Fairy rose and flower carpet roses: can also be cut back with a hedge trimmer but opened them up by removing branches from the middle with secateurs. Hydrangeas and lavender are best left now with old growth remaining to protect new growth. Bare-rooted trees: The bulk of new season's bare-rooted deciduous trees are arriving at retail shops now, plant when the soil is soft and moist, and avoid times when the ground is frozen or excessively wet. Don't be in a hurry to plant Evergreen trees and shrubs at this coldest time of the year because you will not gain any new growth until spring, so choose and buy now but keep them in their bags or pots outside in a sheltered place to acclimatise through winter. If planting trees or large shrubs along the side of a house, ask for advice, and read labels to know how high and wide a shrub/tree will grow, I have seen some plantings that will create problems if left to grow full size. Vegetable garden: Rain will have made veg gardens a bit soggy to work in, young veg will sit now without growing because they dislike cold wet ground. I plan to spread aged pig manure over the vacant ground in my raised gardens for worms to work down into the soil in readiness for spring planting. Early seed potatoes can be left in the dark to sprout long translucent sprouts but put them in a frost-free brightly lit place and they slowly develop knobbly green-purple shoots that are ready to grow quickly when placed in the soil, this is called chitting. Fruit: Plant deciduous fruit trees and bushes in a sunny site, avoid frosty hollows for early starters such as plums and pears. Prune. early to Late Spring Peach and nectarine trees to maintain an open center (only if needed), in early spring the wounds will close as growth begins. Cherries need summer pruning as well for the first 5 years and only on a sunny day to avoid silver leaf. I have found If I prune an apple tree hard each winter it will make a mass of new growth but no blossom, hence no fruit. So now any tree or shrub that is growing too vigorously I wait until summer to prune hard, when leaves are fully grown and before roots start to store food for winter, cuts heal over without pushing out new growth. This is a good rule of thumb for cordons (espaliered trees) only cut back any weak growth in winter to encourage vigorous new shoots in spring and leave the removal of thick branches until summer. Cheers, Linda.

Chitting early potatoes gives them a head start.