Engine failures all around

Welp, I managed to clear my garden for the impending Winter sowing, and got this far-

So that’s just great.

This has been a bit of A Week, as we finally got a new mower (we need one we can lift over our heads, so under 18kg, and not tiny- I found a Husqvarna 42cm cutting width + 17.5kg mower which the rep gave us a fantastic price on, thanks Aladdins in Lower Hutt!)

She’s pretty, too!

This doesn’t sound like a huge deal, but because we live in a city where most of our clients have lawns up at least one flight of steps, in order to mow the lawn well we need a lightweight mower, and this has been an ongoing issue for two years now- until we got this one, we were buying a discontinued model of Stihl lawn mowers second hand, as there is just nothing in the market for a company like ours.

THEN my beautiful Ford Courier ute blew up, and it’s the head gasket, which thankfully Ian at Headmaster and Sam at Brendon Motors Kilbirnie (two exceptional mechanics who manage all of our vehicles) are working out the details on (they are saying it is somehow fixable).

While all of that is going on, the campaign for ebike-based gardening services was resumed by three of our staff, who are adamant that it would be possible to service the south end of Wellington by ebike, so we are looking into sorting out an ebike and trailer to give it a go. Hmmmm. Watch this space!

Some tasks for the garden

I have taken to smothering parts of my garden densely in mulch, as they are poor soil, a bit weedy, and I don’t intend to plant in them for a little while. I was given a huge bag of sheeps wool (thanks, Zero Waste Wellington fb group) which has definitely hidden all sorts of sins. It looks awful but it isn’t full of weeds, and it’s in the corner of the garden, so if you were to snoop and see it, that’s your own fault!

If you are looking to do similar, consider using-

• Leaves

• Shredded paper

• Put down cardboard, with another mulchey thing on top

• Lawn clippings

• Removed weeds

• Empty out the compost bin/worm farm

• Trimmings from hedges etc.

At the end of the day, there are all sorts we can use on our gardens that are quite close to home.

Planting for Winter

I have probably harped on about this a lot, but I am going to put in some hellebores, bulbs, broad beans, spinach and parsnip. As the weather cools, brassicas will grow well without bolting, but I am still seeing cabbage white butterflies (who will leave you with relentless caterpillars…).

Clearing the edges

While the sun’s out, try walking along all of the paths at your property, and tie back or cut anything which will hit you when you are carrying the shopping into your house on a rainy day. I strongly recommend the ‘what if I was carrying shopping on a rainy day’ approach, as that is one of the more tiring times when you don’t want to be slapped in the face by an enormous leaf.

If the plants overgrowing your path are made up of lots of long, thin leaves-

The longer and thinner the leaf, the better it would be to move the plant permanently. If you can’t cut a few leaves off at the base of the plant to solve your problem, this will be an ongoing problem (and potential trip hazard). It simply never looks good when you cut back the entire side of a grass, iris or flax. It looks godawful. Move the plant! Put something smaller in.

If the plants overgrowing your path have quite large leaves-

Can you cut a few off, to solve your problem? Do you need to cut a branch off, can you tie it back (usually to the fence) to resolve this?

If the plants overgrowing your path are tall and thin with thin shoots-

We tie these, and if they look silly or struggle against the tie they need to be either dug up and moved further back or cut so that nothing is poking out into the path.

Remember that your garden should look, to the untrained eye, as if it miraculously looks perfect. The more chopbacks and tiebacks, the more likely it will look like you don’t know what you’re doing!

That’s it! Have a great week, everyone. And a fantastic long weekend!