Tomatoes, trimming and lawns

Good morning!

It might be the red sky last night (shepherd’s delight) or the birds this morning but things are looking decidedly brighter today, after such a brutal week!

We had calamity after calamity, and some hard news to break to people. One was that Boston Ivy is not a great choice for a small narrow feature on a house-

I had contacted the client this time last year, saying “please please rethink this,” the developer? Architect? Landscaper? Has put a number of fenceposts beside the house and planted Boston Ivy beside them, and it’s also supposed to go up the brickwork. Well surprising exactly zero gardeners, it has gone 6m high, tangled in the gutters on some of the apartments, filled the garden beds and is spilling over the fences. The weird ornamental fence posts are somewhat covered too, but to what end? Now it is sitting on top, waving little runners in the breeze, trying to find something close enough to catch, while at the other end it has filled the bed and gone straight up the house as well….

And this is one of those crap times as a professional where you know it will only take about 20 minutes to remove from the houses, but 2-3 hours to get out of each bed, and we will need a cherry picker or enormous, terrifying ladder to get the top part- so what looks like an easy job (ripping it off the building) is going to be quite spendy for the housing complex, otherwise we will be battling it in the beds forever while it slowly eats all of the plants.

What we’re doing in the gardens

Getting rained on?

This has been a massive year for just weeding, because the heat, wet and occasional blistering sun has encouraged growth of fast growing plants. Mulching in Winter has saved our lives, as a lot of the jobs involve pulling weeds out of moist, friable, loose mulch, which is much faster Summer weeding can be (digging weeds out of rock hard clay).

When the weather is wet and muggy, it is a really bad time to do any sort of trimming of plants that are susceptible to fungal infections. Buxus and roses come to mind here! Any plant which is a little weaker is best trimmed after the heat of the sun has passed, on a dry day. So if you can, put off doing anything to-

• Griselinia

• Corokia (hard cutbacks- trimming new growth is fine)

• Roses

• Buxus

• Tomatoes

Until the weather is dry, and you know that it won’t rain for a few days so that the cuts can heal up.

Lawns

We have been asked to revamp some lawns, which I am looking forward to, but am dealing with Ohakune weed for the first time in ages (the invisible looking weed that’s prickly). I think we are going to try the flamethrower on it so the lawn isn’t hard and lumpy- new grass tends to start growing and get burnt to a crisp by the sun at this time of year so despite the weather I’m not too keen to risk it until March.

Right now I can recommend using a spade to dig out any big taprooted weeds, and using a lot of lawn soil to make sure the area is flat again after.

Mowing on the highest setting keeps weeds out of lawns quite well, and fertilising grass while stopping any weeds from setting seed (flower heads die back, seeds turn up) will stop new weeds from turning up.

If your lawn is already really weedy and full of flowering weeds, mow it on a really low setting (to cut off the flowers), but don’t let it dry out- the weeds tend to tolerate drying out more than grass does, don’t be afraid to water it.

But honestly, if your lawn is full of flowering weeds, consider just keeping them? Insects love them. They look pretty. It’s less work for you. It is very hard to keep weeds out of a lawn, and the easiest way is with lots of chemicals, which then poison our planet, kill the bees, weaken the grass and all of the plants around them…

Why aren’t my tomatoes ripening?

Well, mine are- albeit slowly, and yours will be too. Tomatoes need warm weather to ripen, and we have been pretty short of that in Wellington. They also take a long time to ripen if you are staring at them! Keep airflow around the plant (remove leaves and shoots if you have to) and let them do their thing.

I am also cutting new flowers off of my tomatoes, because they need 3 months or so to fruit from flowering stage, and in Wellington I don’t have 3 months of hot-enough weather for that to happen, so removing flowers means that the plants are putting all of their energy into the existing tomatoes.

That’s it for this week! Have a good weekend, everyone :)