The last few things before Spring kicks into gear
Good morning! I hope everyone has been enjoying our few non-rainy days. Spring is definitely here- the freezing cold mornings, the warm afternoons… the random massive rainstorms…
I had the absolute pleasure of presenting to Brooklyn Garden Club on Wednesday, on how to make your garden lower maintenance. It was a lot of fun, and presenting is always fantastic with groups that will confidently shout out their 2c or questions.
I have started growing the various things that I have hung onto over Winter, in preparation for Summer. I know it feels like a bit early, but as always, I can’t help myself and never learn from the last year.
What I am obsessed with this week
My poor Choko plant. I don’t know how many of you know about choko, but it has the texture of a seedless cucumber, and works perfectly in place of zucchini and cucumber in cooking. Some people even make ‘poor man’s pears,’ I do too, and use them in place of apples and pears in baking (which in my case means I add one choko per apple crumble and hope noone notices)!
Anyway, a choko vine gets enormous, about 5m square if you let it, and you need space. In return you get more choko than you could ever want to eat, which in a household with a teenager and two tradies, is incredibly helpful.
About a month ago I bought a choko which had started to sprout, so I planted it, knowing well that I would somehow have to care for it until October indoors, yet I did it anyway…
New sprout on a choko
As you could expect, though, I have no plan, and this choko vine is swinging around desperately, day and night, trying to find something to hang onto, and I am in over my head.
I am trying to think back, desperately, to when I was researching all of the different ways to manipulate plants into speeding up or slowing growth. In this case, I have moved it to a colder room but given it the same amount of sun (because if I restrict its sunlight even more than I am already, the plant will be really weak).
But. Grow a choko! They are a lot of fun. More fun is trying to think of a spot in your garden where a choko can grow to its full size of 5m square. A few people I know grow them over dead trees, or old enormous satellite dishes. I have no plan right now. As mentioned, I have not learned a thing from every Spring before this one.
Tasks for the next few weeks
Well we are doing our last lot of planting. I know that it feels obscenely early to plant for the Summer, and it is also difficult to plant many things because it is too cold, but in landscape gardening we are often battling against the reality of only visiting a property once a month or so. Because we can’t provide enough follow up care (ie watering), we have to get our plants in really early so that their roots are developed enough to tolerate bouts of dry heat in Summer. We stop planting in gardens that are not regularly watered in mid September.
If you can make it out into your garden over the next few weeks, it is helpful to mulch everything, deeply. Seeds haven’t germinated yet and the weeds haven’t turned back up- with a thick layer of mulch you will stop them in their tracks.
In August we-
Plant everything we are able to get into the ground;
Mulch all beds that we can, using arborist chip or shredded bark (which knits together and doesn’t fly around as much from birds/wind);
Prune roses as well as anything we have missed thus far;
Copper or Sulfur spray fruit trees and anything with substantial fungal issues, this has to be done before the buds open.
A client is having a go at sulfur spraying her buxus, which has just shown the first signs of blight. Sulfur dries white which always gives me a bit of a shock! I took lots of photos so we could track progress.
I have to say this is one of the most vital months in the garden for us professionally, because if we can’t lock down full areas and make sure the weeds stay away, we play catch up all Summer. Let me know if you have any different garden goals for this August.
Have a fantastic week everyone!