Your late summer gardening is a great time to plant seeds for the months ahead, as it’s traditionally the hottest time of the year
Apricot is one of the many stonefruits in full swing in February.
What to harvest in February
February is our month of fruitfulness; stone fruit production is in full swing and the early pip fruit ripe for picking. Try to avoid leaving fallen fruit on the ground where they can harbour pests and diseases over winter, only too ready to reappear with vengeance next season.
After harvest, stone fruit trees can be pruned for shape and size, removing any dead or diseased branches. Summer pruning slows the tree’s growth and keeps them a manageable size as energy is still being poured into the leaves rather than the root system. Many Continental orchardists keep trees surprisingly low, by New Zealand standards, for ease of cropping.
Get your bulbs ready for Spring
Start planting your favourite bulbs such freesias – their sweet scent and beautiful colour make for an instant impact in any garden
Spring bulb planting kicks off towards the end of the month. The first to go in are babiana, daffodils, freesias, irises, ixias, lachenalias and sparaxis. If you have your eye on special varieties, start scanning the catalogues and ordering now before they are all snapped up!
Vegetable station
- Beetroot, broccoli, carrots, leeks, lettuce and other salad greens and silver beet can be planted. Keep any seedlings well-watered until established. As they tend to bolt in the heat, coriander, lettuce and rocket are best sown in cooler parts of the garden.
- Regular applications of liquid fertiliser to vegetables throughout summer will encourage healthy growth and prolong fruit and leaf production.
- Pinch off ends of trailing pumpkin stems to enable the plant to concentrate on the existing fruit, usually preferable to lots of small fruit.
Lettuce seedlings are best planted in February
Herb attack
- Clip rosemary, bay and lavender to keep plants in shape.
- Harvest other herbs such as oregano, summer savoury, tarragon and thyme before they flower. This is when the leaves have the highest oil content and thus most flavoursome. To dry, tie together up to six sprigs and hang the bundles upside down in a dry, dark place.
Consider this: a compost tumbler
Compact turning barrels are excellent for small gardens. The relatively low volumes created compared with conventional heaps are compensated for by the speed at which the matter is broken down.
Compost tumbler 190L, $299, from Trade Tested
Double-chambered versions in which kitchen scraps and other waste are added to one, and the compost is formed in the other, provide both a constant supply of compost and somewhere to put scraps.
Turning the barrel every day or so – each time you add to it – mixes up the different materials in it and brings oxygen to the microorganisms that help speed decomposition. Just like conventional heaps, it will take the likes of kitchen waste, soft garden trimmings, lawn clippings, leaves and unbleached paper, then turn it into soft, brown, sweet-smelling soil.
How to propagate strawberries:
Strawberry plants reproduce by sending out runners over the soil surface. These will eventually root.
For the first two years of a plant’s life, remove the runners early on, as they require much energy from the mother plant to create – energy better spent on fruit production.
In the third year, a plant’s production drops, so this is the time to let runners form tiny plants and root. This can be aided by pegging down the runners firmly into the soil. The optimum number of runners left on a plant is five. After a month or so, the plantlets will have started to grow new leaves, at which stage they can be cut from the parent plant and replanted.
Landscape 101
While we may know that size doesn’t matter and big is not necessarily better, smaller urban gardens can often do with a green helping hand to make them seem larger and to stop them feeling hemmed in by neighbours. And we are not talking mirrors.
One of the oldest and most effective tricks in a landscaper’s book to imbue an illusion of space through distance is by planting larger specimens in the foreground and smaller ones towards the back. Similarly, larger leafed plants are planted closer in than small-leafed one. To compound this trick on the senses, place more blue-hued and lighter coloured toward the back to emulate the effect the Earth’s atmosphere has on distance – think mountain ranges.
Layering plants is another technique to heighten depth and dimension. Rather than planting in a row, such as against a fence, bring some shrubs and trees forward and push some back. Let some partially obscure others. This will also help obscure the boundaries, confounding any sense of limitation. Leaving long sight lines through planting reduces feelings of claustrophobia, which can occur in small, heavily planted gardens.
Position larger leafed specimens more to the front and smaller leafed plants at the back to give the illusion of space. Blue coloured blooms also help trick the senses.
Think not only laterally, but also vertically. The sheer movement of the eye by drawing it up with tall trees and climbers will be informing the brain, even misguidedly, that the area is bigger than first impressions or reality would have it.
Paths can also be employed to trick the brain. While any path tends to lead the eye on, curved ones do it more effectively. However, a straight path that subtly narrows as it proceeds down the garden will give an illusion of distance; and one fading away into a shrubbery will also add a sense of mystery of the unknown – of uncharted territory.
Steal this look
The stark lines of the sharp and rather stylish deck intruding into the garden are offset by the sinuous trunks of young trees, around some of which the deck has been built.
The lower reaches of the slender tree trunks have been scraped clear of any branches, letting their form shine, complementing the strong vertical lines of the fence. Fairy lights wrapping around the trunks highlight this form at night. The raised canopy filters the harsh summer sunlight; and being deciduous trees, any winter sun is allowed to flood in.
Again, in juxtaposition to the strong contours of manmade structures, the deck and fence, the ground around the trees is deliberately left rough, rural almost; the bright green groundcover growing in billowing clumps. The result is simple yet effortlessly stylish.
Words: Mary Lovell-Smith
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