Outcomes from some experiments this season

It is HOT! I hope you are surviving! My inbox has a poor friend whose indoor ficus has dropped all of its leaves and may be dead- they hate environmental changes at the best of times but I think the heat may have been too substantial of a change…

What I am (still) obsessed with this week

Well, I am midway through my trials of vinegar spray onto weeds, specifically on concrete, and I am a happy camper. I have two before/after photos for you.

I chose this because I think it is the most indicative of when vinegar is successful- a lot of leafy but not big weeds have all gone kaput.

And this one.

It’s all very touch and go. It works, but you need the right amount of green- not too much- and while some plants die back incredibly quickly, some are just mildly bothered- if it has stolons (roots and shoots which run horizontally along the ground), it doesn’t seem to care. If it has a taproot, it REALLY cares. Vinegar spraying doesn’t seem to be very affected by rain, which is fantastic as long as it doesn’t rain within a few hours either side of it being put on. But it does seem heavily impacted by sun- get a tiny amount of sun on the weeds and they’re history. I do not have a foolproof way to successfully spray vinegar yet, but if you want to try this at home, I am buying 49% acidity vinegar from trademe and diluting it down at the moment. Put a drop of soap into the sprayer for better effectiveness.

High acidity vinegar is often made in a problematic way (using a lot of fossil fuel), so my next task is to see if I can make it more ethically at home, or if I can source one which is made in a more sustainable way- the foodsafe strong vinegars seem to go up to 10% and no more- I can also look at making some acid of a similar strength in other ways. My… lets keep it vague and call him a tradie acquaintance… has offered me a vat of sulfuric acid, which I politely declined!

Portuguese Laurels

We trimmed a row of these this week and while I am happy with the result, because they were left for too long we had to spend a lot of time carefully trimming them back and lopping off larger shoots lower so they would bush out at about the right height. These ones were planted relatively recently as mature trees, from now on I think I will make a rule that they should be trimmed 3x a year while growing and then 2x a year when trained into the right shape. We were cutting easily 30cm off each shoot, and because the trees were so close together some had dwarfed others (leaving a few skinny, anaemic looking trees jammed between beefy ones).

Portuguese laurels are beautiful, but they are a bit of a commitment! This took about 6.5hrs in the end. I would expect them to take substantially less next time, but to get them perfect you need to constantly trim the things.

You can see that the last 3 are a bit smaller, they were actually the biggest ones, but because we had to cut the big middle shoots down lower they will look a bit smaller for a while.

Some tips for trimming standards (lollipop shaped plants)-

Start by either cutting down the height or the most relevant side. In this case, we cut them back off the driveway in a straight line.

While rounding them, keep asking yourself if they are egg shaped (in which case reduce the top more) or like squished balls (reduce the sides).

You will always try to leave the back a bit higher because it is hard to reach. If you can get around to trim both sides you will do a much better job.

Stand back and look at them from different angles a LOT, and give yourself three different trimming ‘events’- every time you walk past them, bring the clippers and snip off bits as you see them.

The way to get a good finish is to obsessively take the time (and have a ladder which is slightly taller than you think you need).

More Cosmos dwarfing the beds again

I have a rule that whenever we landscape a property, we have a ‘potted colour’ budget because we are almost always planting things which are smaller than we want them to end up, leaving space (and a bit of underwhelm).

Because this bed is designed to be full of a huge number of flowering plants, we put in a lot- a lot- of small multi-pack flowers already. And then some cosmos, to fill in the spaces while everything grows-

Sorry/not sorry

While this is WAY too much, the client pointed out that these guys have kept the soil cool and prevented the new, more valuable plants from getting crispy in this heat. I think I would feel better about it if they were all flowering, but there have only been a handful of flowers thus far.

Sigh.

Have a fantastic week everyone. I hope you are managing to both enjoy and evade this heat!