Spring is knocking on winter’s door so it’s time to do a bit of soil prep, pruning and veggie planting in anticipation of the warmer months
Chores to consider for August gardening
The last month of winter is often the most brutal but it is also when the new season is tantalisingly within our sights. Unlike September, August is still a month when such activities as ordering seeds and organising seed trays and seed-raising mix can be done without any sense of pressure or haste.
What should you sow in August?
Some seeds may be germinated under cover for planting out later, including beetroot, celery, leeks, lettuce, rocket and spring onions; and lobelia and alyssum flowers. Unless the ground is sodden, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, onions, peas, silverbeet and spinach may be sown in most areas – the further south, the later into the month this can happen.
August is the perfect time to sow our broccoli, beetroot and carrots.
Feed me, Seymour
A squirt or dash of fertiliser won’t go amiss around fruit trees and other deciduous trees, setting them up for the season ahead.
What to prune in August
Roses may be pruned now to reduce the risk of diseases by allowing more sunlight in and increasing airflow – and to shape the bush, should you so wish.
As a rule, cut back diseased, dying, crowded or crossing-over branches, and to just above an outward-facing bud – at an angle sloping down from the bud. Pruning is best done on a dry day. While you’re in the zone, check out fruit trees and other deciduous trees for a similar cut.
Spuds to sprout
Chit, aka sprout, potatoes in a dry place till the sprouts reach about 1cm. This can take a good month or so. Then plant about 25cm apart in a sunny spot in free-draining soil in furrows, with spare soil mounded up between rows. Cover with 5cm soil and water well. Use soil between rows to continue mounding as foliage grows.
As their names suggest, early potatoes, such as Rocket and Swift, are the fastest to mature, taking between 12 to 15 weeks. Maincrop varieties are usually planted in November for harvest in late March. In colder districts avoid planting too early in spring. In frost-prone areas, keep protection at the ready.
Consider this: mini chainsaw
Greenworks Mini Chainsaw, $169, at Trade Tested
We are loving these battery-operated mini chainsaws. (They are also known as pruning saws, which doesn’t sound half as exciting.) Light and manoeuvrable, they are just the thing for the do-it-yourself gardener; the one who can’t wait for others to get around to it.
Faster, of course, than handsaws, they make light work of pruning and felling, of cutting it up for firewood, even for sawing up timber for garden beds.
How to make hypertufa pots
Productive fun for rainy winters is making hypertufa pots, planters, pavers – whatever the creative mood leads you. These pots which look like concrete but weigh much less make great gifts for fellow gardeners, too.
Mix in a large plastic tub 3 parts cement, 3 parts coconut coir, 2 parts perlite and 2 parts water. The coconut coir is best if hydrated, and then dried before use. These ingredients are variable, some prefer to add sand or vermiculite instead of perlite, and sphagnum moss instead of coconut.
Add water slowly until the mixture is firm enough to hold its shape. Then, press it around or inside the chosen shape which has first been lined with plastic. Bubble wrap will leave an interesting finish on the outside. Once you get the knack the sky’s the limit regarding design and effects.
Landscape 101: Chelsea Flower Show
Flowers were for the frocks and not so much the plants at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. The foliage was very much in vogue. Lest you think it dull, infinite variety can be found in the interplay of leaves’ shapes, sizes and textures.
Remember too, in small spaces a predominance of green is less fussy than a mix of colours. And on a hot day, with or without shade, it lends a refreshing coolness to a garden. Not that flowers were absent from the gardens, more they took a back seat; and when in abundance they were predominantly white (not always the best single colour for the harsher New Zealand light in which they can make a garden look washed out). Flowers, too, tended to be smaller, sprinkled about and in more refined shades of purples, blues and lemons.
The most stunning of Chelsea’s prize-winning gardens featured woodland (hence light shade-loving) plants. Those more unusual ones worth seeking out for their foliage include the deciduous perennial Aralia cordata; Farfugium japonicum, with its glossy, dark-green leaves; Maianthemum racemosum; another perennial Kirengeshoma palmata noted for its pretty leaves and Tellima grandiflora, whose delicate racemes host lime green flowers.
The range of smaller sun-loving or sun-tolerant foliage plants is narrower, but includes Carex oshimensis, a bi-coloured grass; the lush Hakonechloa macra (Japanese forest grass); Acacia ‘Bower Beauty’, a low shrub; the shimmering Briza media quaking grass; the pretty Alchemilla mollis; and nasturtium, whose layers of round leaves add great depth to a bed.
Steal this look
Garden beds are built into a deck, breaking up and softening the expanse of wood and providing privacy and spaces for plants in a precipitous, uneven and rocky site. The insertion of a bed or beds into and on such decks and terraces is a useful technique anywhere hard landscaping threatens to dominate.
In the above case, one bed is a planter box sitting on top. It’s deep enough to support a handful of small trees. While smaller trees are the best option, the volume of the box will limit the eventual sizes of larger trees similar to bonsai. However, the weight of the trees needs to be factored in when placing them on a built structure.
The second bed is set flush with the deck timbers resulting in a more natural look. Spaces dug into the ground really have no limits on what can be planted. Here, though the range of plants is constrained by the depth of the bed, itself limited by the terrain below. Large trees would not be suitable; smaller shrubs might be; while grasses, many climbers, perennials, bulbs and annuals would be perfect.
Text: Mary Lovell-Smith
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