A ‘normal’ week

We have had two weeks of public holidays, and one week of storms.. this week we had decent weather alongside no interruptions and I feel fantastic. I thought it was Wednesday on Friday. Next week we are doing some exceptionally fun jobs. I have a backlog of things to share with you!

Troubleshooting lawns

The offending lawn

We have a few lawns which are coming up like this, post-mow. While to many people a mown lawn is a good lawn, this is way under standard.

I know we need to flatten out the lawn a bit by adding new lawn soil to the dips, but the advice I got (thanks, lawn contractor mates!) is that the dips aren’t the problem- the deck of our ride on mower is a bit wonky and needs adjusting. On top of that, to mow a good lawn you need to mow it twice- once in one direction, then turn 90 degrees and mow the whole thing again in another direction.

Other really helpful tips, if your lawn doesn’t come up well when you mow-

• Mow more frequently (this mow is fortnightly, but some of our lawns are consistently long year round and really need a year round weekly mow, which horrifies me);

• Mow on a higher setting (it conceals all sorts of issues);

• Don’t mow if the grass is wet;

• Sharpen your mower blades;

• Don’t worry about it, because it is a lawn, which only exists because people want to run all over it.

Cutting back ornamental grasses

While we’re on the subject, your ornamental grasses often seem super long this time of year. They are full of seed heads, and those lengths are much longer than the grass usually is, so just pull them out.

Cutting back an ornamental grass is, in my opinion, absolute blasphemy. It looks awful. They need to be cute, bobbing, round things, not things with a sharp flat edge on one side. If your grass is encroaching on a path or similar, move it further into the garden bed or replace it with a smaller variety. Don’t cut it, it will look awful.

However, Lomandra, a really tough Aussie native, will start to spread out from the base, and there is not a lot to do about it. I have tried dividing them by chopping them in half with a spade, and that works ok (although half of the time they take a lot of trimming to look ok again, sometimes they ‘remember’ and retain a flat bit on one side no matter how hard you try).

A lot of people, to stunt their slow expansion, cut them down to the ground with a hedge trimmer once a year. And we have given it a go. Here we are, two months on-

We had to do something and I couldn’t get it out of the pot without breaking the very old pot. So I will be hedge trimming this guy annually till it breaks the pot itself.

So I guess if you are ok with them looking bad for what, let’s estimate, 3-4 months of the year, then cut them down? I suppose we wait that long with herbaceous perennials (the plants that you cut right back down to the ground after flowering)…

Cutting back storm damage

We developed some quick and easy rules for staff this week, who were scratching their heads looking at situations like this-

It’s a fuchsia, if you couldn’t tell!

Our rule, essentially, is-

• If it is a tree, leave it be.

• If it is a bush or shrub, take the opportunity to shape it early (thus removing much of the dead)

• If it is something you cut back in Winter anyway, prune it early

• If you think it may have died, discreetly snip a bit and see if there is any green inside. If it is green, it will come back. If it is dry brown, (at least that part) is dead.

• If you can bear it, leave the dead/dieback on frost sensitive plants, and cut it back in Summer instead, because those dead bits will protect the plant from any new cold/wind damage.

Most of what we have seen is surface leaf damage, and damage to new shoots of plants. I have pruned back roses, corokia, hedges… I have ignored a large number of ake ake, which are trees, for whatever reason they were all absolutely destroyed by the wind and many have turned up their toes and died- they are typically extremely hardy plants so this was a blow to some gardens.

Tasks for this time of year

If your garden looks bad, I suggest putting down some nice, thick, bark mulch. It makes everything look better.

I am cutting back all of my dead flower heads, cutting those plants quite low for their annual prune, and giving everything a huge feed of sheep pellets, seaweed and bits of compost and vermicast from my bins.

If you want to grow garlic this year, hoard up some good compost and soil additives- tonnes- and dig them into where you want to grow the garlic. Garlic is a heavy feeder and wants it all! I’ll do a blog on Garlic in the next few weeks.

Have a great weekend everybody!