A bit of resilience
Good morning lovelies! I have decided that this is perhaps the best week of the year- I saw a tree dahlia flowering, Gerri’s incredible tree is still going great guns (see below) and I was allowed to pick half a trees worth of apples which tasted delicious. On top of that, our readership doubled this week when I announced Grow along with Me, a new blog section where I walk you through growing a different plant, and take a photo every week, helping you to troubleshoot and grow fantastic veges. For the first round, we are doing broad beans, and paid subscribers can learn to grow garlic. If you are a gardening client of ours we are happy to set you up for Grow along with Me- I have extra seeds and cloves- it’s just so exciting to see people keen on gardening. Once again if you want to join us, the link is here. I hope you have had similarly good weeks!
JUST LOOK AT IT! What a beautiful thing. We haven’t had to prune it in years- it is at its max size living its best life. Mwah! Chefs kiss!
What I’m obsessing over this week
I’m not sure if there are any foragers here, but the ongoing quest for Porcini is a big one. I live in Wellington Central so am now wondering things like, how many places in Wellington do people never visit <that might have Porcini>? How likely is it that we will ever find our own ‘spot’ that no one else already empties? The answer to both is “unlikely that Zoe will succeed,” because I am a lazy tart and don’t enjoy bush walks, so I never walk far enough into the bush!
We do find a lot of oyster mushrooms and slippery jacks, which are two quite yummy mushrooms, and I slice them thinly, dehydrate and then blitz them into powder to make mushroom stock. This is sometimes added to powdered celery and powdered onion weed to make a fairly good faux beef stock. I really hope that my household gets into soups this winter because we have a lot of mushroom stock now…
What staff learnt about this week
Our weekly focus was on cutting back and dividing perennials. This has been a funny season, the salvia are flowering quite late, and the japanese aenenomes are looking pretty miserable with an extremely short season. Cutting down the previous season’s growth and looking at all of the fresh new growth at the bottom is quite nice, although some gardens are looking a touch bare going into Winter.
This is a shasta daisy- we cut all of the tall bits down to the ground, weed it and if we want more clumps somewhere else we divide it with a spade and move half of it on.
Highlights: Everyone knew how to do this already! So we dug deeper and talked about the difference between cutting off dead, and ripping out tall bits. Supposedly pulling the dead out stimulates growth for next year, so you can adjust your technique depending on what you want the plant to do.
Lowlights: Weeding in a clump of hard roots is no fun and there’s no trick to doing it better.
Plants currently in flower
Salvias, rosemary, lavender grosso, carpet roses. If you want flowers soon, plant bulbs, hellebores, camellias. There are some ace dwarf camellia varieties out there- I am a fan of Camellia Apple Blossom.
An interview with a gardening legend
I’ve started interviewing one Famous To Me person a week, someone who either informs my gardening practice directly, or parasocially! If you know someone who you would like to see interviewed, get in touch by popping a comment in this post, or email wellington.gardener@gmail.com.
This week: Linda Stopforth. Linda is well known amongst the gardening community, partly for being generous with her spare plants and fruit. Her orchard boasts one edible plant for every letter in the alphabet, if you want an idea of it’s size and scope. She is an all round fantastic person.
What are you known for?
Probably wearing many hats (or, depending who you talk to, doing too much).
I’m a librarian, owned by a couple of greyhounds, gardener, traveller, charity founder/administrator for YETI Nepal, and, along with my partner, developing our retirement project – a small orchard on the outskirts of Levin (Running Dog Orchard). Until recently I had run my own small business for 15 years and last summer we became Trail Angels , hosting people, mainly internationals, who are walking the Te Araroa (length of Aotearoa).
What are you working on/moving towards?
It’s that time of year when I looooovvee to prune things. Nothing like a nice fine autumn day and a sharp pair of loppers (Thank you Zoe – I now have sharp loppers). Followed by a good bonfire! As the sun gets lower I become very aware of how the trees that provide shade in the summer, block light and sunshine in the winter months, so I get stuck in and trim and thin.
Once upon a time I worked in a garden centre for a number of years. My manager always said in response to the question “How big does it grow?” that plants only grow as tall as your clippers are sharp.
Seeing overgrown vegetation, where people have planted things, then left them to grow wild, fills me with horror. Not that I like topiaried things, I don’t, but you control the plants in your garden, not the other way around and plants should be trimmed to give maximum light to a house and garden.
Every summer when we have a fruit and veg glut I mean to compile a recipe book (mainly for my own benefit) called Garden gluts. It will contain all my go to recipes for when there’s surplus zucchini, tomatoes, plums, apples etc.
What gardening thing is occupying your mind lately?
This is a biggie - I think gardeners, and society generally, have not yet grasped the significant impact climate change and severe weather events will have on our food (particularly fruit and vege) supply. We got an indication of what it might be like after the cyclone storms last summer and how they impacted crops in Northland and throughout the eastern part of the country down to Hawkes Bay. But we’re still not thinking about preparing for it and building up food resilience as individuals or communities.
We grumble about the price of fruit and veg yet could be doing more to grow our own, preserve and share our surplus with others.
I’m also concerned – as the owner of an orchard – that the current cutbacks in important government services like biosecurity will lead to the introduction and spread of new diseases that will impact the horticultural industry.
What are you waiting for?
Spring. I hate winter even though it’s a necessary season for gardens. I love seeing the first spring bulbs coming up and the days starting to get a little lighter. My favourite time in the garden would have to be around November when there’s lots of things to plant for the coming summer months and the new growth is coming in green and lush.
I’m also waiting, with some frustration, for the day any one of my three finger limes finally produces a fruit!
We’re all waiting for our finger limes to fruit. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Linda started hers years earlier, so I suppose patience is a muscle that we need to exercise.. I’m ending with a photo of Wellington from Kilbirnie that I took on Wednesday, because the colours are out of this world. How lucky we are to live here. Have a great week, everyone.
