This is the second post in a series about all of the different roses in our garden. In this blog post, I would like to cover the remaining Austin varieties I have planted over the years. Charlotte Unfortunately I lost this rose recently. I hope I am able to find a replacement as it is absolutely beautiful. Golden Celebration As the name suggests, this is a very golden yellow rose. Lady of Shalott
I planted this rose last year and it has flourished in our garden.
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I haven’t covered all of the roses we have in our garden yet. I thought it might be nice to share some photos of the different varieties we have and make a few comments about each. I only have standard roses in our garden. My aunt, who incidentally lives across the road, has a row of standard roses next to their carport. They look very elegant planted in a row. I have always admired them, so that’s why I decided to plant those too. It’s a shame because having only standard roses limits you. There are so many more varieties that are sold as bush roses, especially David Austin varieties which are very beautiful and sometimes quite hard to source in New Zealand. I try and keep my posts on the short side so they are easy and quick to read, so I will cover all of the roses in our garden in a series of posts, starting with David Austin and then moving on to our New Zealand roses. I just wanted to make one point. While I adore David Austin roses, I don’t think they perform quite as well in our garden as they would in England, where they were bred. Standard roses are sometimes referred to as “tree roses”. I never seem to be able to achieve a true “tree” shape that you would typically see in England. It might be due to the way I prune them, so I’m not sure whether that is the reason or if the shape is different if they are grown in a different country. In any event, they don’t flower as profusely as they would if grown in their home country. The shape of Austin rose flowers is very distinctive and I can’t help but be attracted to them, which is why we have quite a few different varieties in our garden. Another thing. Sometimes people ask me which ones are scented and which ones aren’t, and what their fragrance is like. I’m embarrassed to say that I honestly don’t know. I am so busy working in the garden every day that I don’t have time to smell the roses! Finally, while I have planted one of each of the different varieties that have appealed to me over the years and were available in NZ, a row of the same colour can look quite stunning. My dentist loves gardening too (you can read a bit more about this here) and he has a row of white Iceberg roses in a garden bed outside his practice. Iceberg isn’t an Austin variety but you could achieve a similar effect with Winchester Cathedral, for example, which we have in our garden and is covered below. Sharifa Asma I purchased this variety from a specialist mail order rose supplier called D & S Nurseries a number of years ago. The couple have since retired and closed the business which is a shame because they had an excellent range of Austin roses which can be difficult to source in New Zealand as I have mentioned above. Winchester Cathedral Winchester Cathedral also came from D & S Nurseries. I purchased it at the same time as Sharifa Asma and planted them next to each other. The Ambridge Rose This variety also came from D & S Nurseries. The Alnwick Rose A friend that I went to law school with absolutely loves this rose. She has only seen pictures of it so far but I hope to have her around when it is flowering so she can see it in person. Her favourite Austin variety is called Sweet Juliet which looks really beautiful. The problem is that it isn’t available as a standard rose in New Zealand. I am so keen to expand my collection of Austin roses beyond the limited selection offered as standard varieties that I am actually considering planting a row of bush roses in our garden, including Sweet Juliet if I am able to source it. Abraham Darby This is a very reliable performer in our garden. There are almost always flowers on Abraham Darby year round. Grace This would have to be one of my all-time favourite roses and the name captures it perfectly. Evelyn I planted this rose two years ago to replace Margaret Merrill, which died. It came from a specialist rose nursery called Tasman Bay Roses in Motueka. Princess Alexandra of Kent This is the only really pink Austin rose in our garden. The Lady Gardener I added this rose to our garden in winter. It comes from Wairere Nurseries. I have wanted it for ages as it is beautiful and the name sums me up perfectly. For many years it was unavailable but I didn’t give up hope. I kept requesting it on a back order and eventually Wairere contacted me and said that it had finally become available. It hasn’t flowered yet so I have shared a picture of the rose after I planted it. In my next blog post, I will cover all of the yellow and golden Austin roses in our garden.
Today is the last day of Labour Weekend, a long weekend in New Zealand which falls towards the end of October. It is significant for gardeners as it marks the time of the year when people start planting their summer garden. The seasons have shifted due to climate change, so I’m a bit cautious about planting my seedlings outdoors just yet. But there is plenty to do outside and I have been very busy harvesting our remaining winter veggies in order to create space for our summer garden. Reflecting on Anita’s Garden Put it down to middle age, but I have been feeling quite nostalgic about the past. I have been gardening for a decade now. It is hard to believe that our sprawling garden on a suburban section in South Auckland grew from the simple act of planting an oriental lily called Hot Spot in my father’s memory after he passed away in June 2012. It is even harder to believe that once upon a time, I was very academic and not at all inclined towards practical activities like gardening. I also spent most of my time indoors. I just can’t believe that I spent five years at uni studying to become a lawyer and worked overseas for a further five years. It really does feel like that all took place in a former life. I’m very content with my outdoorsy life now. Working outside is excellent therapy for my mental health, which you can read more about here. Patio In the early part of the long weekend, I created this container garden in our patio. The two rows on the right contain herbs (chives, Italian parsley, curly parsley, thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary and coriander). To the left of that are lavender plants that I grew from cuttings I took last spring, which I repotted into larger pots. To the left of the lavender are a number of special petunias I managed to purchase on special from Kings Plant Barn and that were heavily discounted at Mitre10 MEGA Manukau. I used small terracotta pots that I managed to get on clearance at Bunnings last year for $5 each. Finally on the left-hand side are the 14 tropical impatien plants which I grew from seed last spring and looked after in our greenhouse over winter. They all survived and I repotted them into larger pots. I also planted ten cherry tomatoes I purchased from the garden centre a few weeks ago into containers. Cherry tomatoes can be grown in the ground too, but these ones are varieties that are suitable for growing in containers which is great if you’re short on ground space like me, or don’t want to create a garden bed. They are also ideal for people that live in a town house or apartment. Brassica harvest Yesterday, mum harvested these veggies from our brassica patch. I didn’t raise these plants from seed as I normally do. They were planted as seedlings which came from Awapuni, a mail order plant supplier in New Zealand. Awapuni very kindly and generously gave me a voucher to spend online as part of our on-going collaboration. We go back a long way and have been working together for six years now, since I started my small business Anita’s Garden in 2017. A year ago, I wanted to give up veggie gardening and start a flower farm on our front lawn. I blame dahlia mania. I got a bit carried away by all of the beautiful and interesting dahlia varieties that became available in New Zealand in recent years thanks to the hard work on the part of the large mail order bulbs suppliers in the country, as well as a few dedicated dahlia suppliers who were prepared to brave the red tape associated with importing plant material into NZ, not to mention it being a very costly and time consuming process. But ironically it was actually an established flower farmer in Otago that I became very close to after purchasing some dahlia tubers from her a few years ago that discouraged me from giving up edible gardening altogether. Even long before veggies reached extortionately high prices this year due to our terrible summer last season, Jenny firmly felt that being self-sufficient was something that was worth striving for and wanted to head in that direction herself. She was very interested in my focus on homesteading and self-sufficiency, which is what I was doing before I became interested in growing cut flowers. I’m so glad I listened to Jenny as dahlias have proven more trouble than they’re worth, which you can read about in my previous post if you wish. A couple of months ago, I sent her an assortment of veggie seeds to help her get started with her own potager. Harvesting more Liseta potatoes I harvested the last of our Liseta early potatoes in order to make room for my dahlias. Some of them are ready to be planted in the ground so the timing was perfect. Planting dahlias So far I have planted a row and a half of the famous variety Café au Lait (CAL). I purchased quite a few tubers from Garden Post last year as my plan at that time was to have a flower farm and they had them heavily discounted at the end of the season for just $6 each. I’m really glad I purchased 9 tubers as this year the price was $23 each. They were also XXL tubers which I have never seen before. When you purchase dahlias, usually the tuber they send you is very small. When my order arrived, I was shocked that the tubers were large enough to be divided into several plants, which I didn’t do as I’m quite cautious. It was the right thing to do though as we had a very wet summer in Auckland, with floods and cyclones. I lost a lot of small tubers to rot, but CAL performed very well and I had large clumps at the end of the season when I lifted my tubers. Had I divided the tubers into small pieces when they arrived, I might have lost the lot to rot. Dahlia breeding programme
Since purchasing dahlias has become so difficult and expensive, I have decided not to add any more varieties to our garden and focus on edible gardening again. However, I am very keen to continue my dahlia breeding programme, which I started last year and you can read about here. Again, I owe a huge thank you to Jenny, the florist-flower farmer in Otago who I referred to above, for encouraging me to do this, as she has been doing the same thing over the past few years. She has even started selling varieties she has bred and given them a name. Jenny’s business is called Studio 24 Botanicals. She focuses on growing and arranging flowers for weddings. She lives in Wanaka, which is a very touristy part of the country and a popular location for weddings in summer. In winter, Jenny divides her dahlia tubers and sells the excess on her website, which is how I got to know her as I purchased some a few years ago. I was very impressed not only with the quality of her tubers but also her hard work ethic. Normally, a person would be either a florist or a flower farmer and just one of those alone involves a lot of work. But Jenny didn’t mind putting in the extra effort and wanted to be both! I have always admired people that are very driven and determined to go the extra mile to try and achieve something in life. There is nothing that I love more than an interesting conversation (except maybe a joke) and we have had plenty of them. I think we can all learn from each other. I have learnt a lot about growing flowers from Jenny, which I was not so knowledgeable about before and in turn, Jenny became inspired to start an edible garden and work towards becoming self-sufficient. Jenny featured in a podcast series called Dish the Dirt on Spotify. Here is the link if you are interested in learning more about what she does. Unfortunately I still have the virus with the annoying cough that never goes away, that has been going around during winter. I don’t know about other countries but it has been going around Australia as I’m doing Weight Watchers to try and help me maintain a healthy weight and look after my health. My personal coach is in Sydney and when I asked, she said it was going around there, too. I’ve had it for six weeks now. For the first four weeks, I remained in bed all day because I was so determined to recover completely so I could get back into the garden. But that didn’t happen and it got worse. In the end, I was so fed up that I decided to just get on with it, even though I think you’re supposed to rest when you’re sick. A friend told me that her father had the same virus the entire winter. If everything comes to a standstill simply because I’m sick, I won’t be able to have a summer garden. I was really looking forward to having one, even if it’s on a smaller scale than previous years to make things easier for me to manage. New veggie seedlings Because I was sick with the virus, I was unable to start sowing seeds early in August and September, in order to avoid buying plants which has become very expensive these days. Sowing seeds then means that my plants will be large enough to plant outside when it is warm enough and not too late as the plants need enough time to grow and develop before they crop. If you leave it too late, you risk them not maturing in time, especially since our summers have been getting shorter in previous years. I was therefore in the unfortunate position of having to purchase veggie seedlings, which I did last weekend as Kings Plant Barn had a 25% off sale. Even with the discount (which I was grateful for), it was pretty expensive. These days, 6-cell punnets are $4-5 each. Potted veggies range between $3-5 each, sometimes more if they are special varieties or large grade plants. Most of the plants are being kept in our greenhouse until it is warmer, after which time I will move them into our patio to harden off (become exposed to outdoor temperatures) before being planted outside. Here is a picture of the herbs and spring onions I have planted in containers in our patio, which is outside our kitchen, for convenience. I planted Italian parsley, curly parsley, chives, thyme, oregano, sage and rosemary. Seedlings I raised from seed About a fortnight ago, I sowed some seeds and I have just started potting them up. The plants I purchased will give me a head start and these ones will follow. I like to stagger my sowings and plantings so I have back ups incase the plants I put in early die. It also helps to have a continuous supply of crops during the summer. Bananas A week ago, I harvested these bananas from our tree that had been growing on top of the roof! I had to saw the branch down, which was a really hard job and I had to be careful not to get injured in the process. The hardest part was sawing it down into small pieces so they could be disposed of in our garden waste bin. Although it was only an hour's work, it was incredibly labour intensive. More potatoes I have been busy harvesting more early Liseta potatoes. This is what I dug up by using my hands and feeling around the base of the plants the other day. I left the plants in the ground and will harvest the rest by the end of the month. Liseta is my favourite early variety. It has waxy skin and is best used for boiling rather than baking. It’s better to use main crop varieties such as Agria which are floury in texture for that. Our Agria potatoes are developing nicely and I look forward to harvesting them towards the end of November. I will use the space to plant my dahlia tubers, which have started sprouting in the greenhouse. As you can see from the photo, our cat Ginger adores sleeping there amongst my tubers. Awapuni veggies We have been busy harvesting veggies from the garden bed that I planted my seedlings from Awapuni in back in June. Awapuni kindly gave me a voucher as part of our collaboration. I highly recommend their high quality and large grade seedlings. Their service is excellent and they deliver on the overnight courier. Keep an eye out for specials on their website. You can sign up to email notifications so you don’t miss out. Website traffic
I signed up to Google analytics so I can see where my readers are from and what blog posts and articles get the most views, so I get a sense of what people find interesting. At first, I was very surprised that my audience was so diverse and global, as I thought my readers were mostly in New Zealand. Don’t worry, I don’t know who you are! I don’t think you can find out nor do I want to know. People are entitled to privacy and should be able to browse my gardening blogs and newsletters in peace. When I checked today, I had visitors from the following countries (in the order of number of visitors): India, NZ, US, Australia, UK, France, Sweden, Ireland, Nepal, Pakistan, UAE, Canada, Argentina, Bangladesh, Singapore, Thailand, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, French Polynesia, Germany, Greece, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Oman, Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka. I didn’t expect to have a global audience so I try and bear this in mind when creating content. Kuipers Family Farm A girl called Sheree who used to be a PT at the gym I go to and is now a nutritionist is spending three months in the US with her clients and friends there. She went to this really cool place in Illinois called Kuipers Family Farm. It's really interesting because I don't think there are places in NZ like this that are open to the public, at least not to my knowledge. They have fields with sunflowers and zinnias and they also grow pumpkins which they turn into an event in the harvesting season. I am going to catch up with Sheree via Zoom to follow up on some advice she gave at a health seminar held at the gym. I look forward to hearing about where she is now and what she is doing. To be perfectly honest, I’ve had enough of flower farming. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, this summer I will focus on growing edibles. Part of the reason is the astronomically high price of fresh produce in New Zealand these days. Buying all our veggies is getting too expensive. Growing your own definitely helps to put food on the table, due to the ever-rising cost of living, which seems to be a problem everywhere, not just in NZ.
But there’s a little bit more to my move away from flower farming than simply that. Last summer was the worst I can ever remember. Temperatures were chilly and Auckland was affected by cyclones and floods. It really hurt me as I wanted to have a flower farm on our front lawn and invite customers to take a tour of the garden with me and choose their own flowers, which I would arrange for them. We get very strong winds here (southerlies being perhaps the worst of them) and they completely destroyed my sunflowers and dahlias. Even when conditions improved, they never bounced back and looked quite the same again. On the other hand, the potager didn’t fare quite as badly and you can read about my mixed success growing edibles last summer here. Being brutally honest (and I’m sorry if this upsets or offends some gardeners), I’ve gone off growing dahlias. I plan to look after what I have, but I won’t buy any more tubers from now on and I really mean it. Despite being swept away with dahlia mania like a lot of passionate flower gardeners all over the world, I was always in two minds about them, as you can see from my blog post which sets out what I think are the pros and cons of growing them. My most serious concern is that dahlias are prone to developing a bacterial disease called gall. Once the ground is contaminated, it can take years to cleanse the soil and sometimes it can’t be completely eradicated. The situation is so serious that the NZ government actually placed a ban on imported tubers this year in an attempt to control the spread of the disease. The other thing that has killed all the joy of growing dahlias for me is the stressful process for ordering dahlias nowadays and how it has caused consumers to behave. It is a fact of life that demand sometimes exceeds supply and some people miss out. But this does not justify customers being abusive towards suppliers, which sadly often happens. I know all about this because I have gotten to know many dahlia suppliers well over the years and have even become good friends with some of them. There used to be a list of reputable dahlia suppliers in New Zealand in a dahlia group I belong to on Facebook, which the admin created and pinned to the top of the page. But that list is long gone, probably because all of the dahlia suppliers in NZ have at some point had their reputation publicly trashed for some reason or other (selection, price of tubers and shipping, quality, mislabels, gall, missing out due to limited stock etc) as well as being abused privately so there is apparently no such thing as a reputable dahlia supplier in this country anymore. I have received many requests from people wanting to purchase dahlias from me via Instagram. Yet these varieties were originally purchased from the very NZ suppliers that people have publicly humiliated on social media! I think people need to cut NZ dahlia suppliers some slack. They are doing the best they can under very challenging circumstances and that includes having to grow their own stock this year due to the government’s ban on imported tubers. This is much more labour intensive than simply importing and on-selling tubers. I feel so sorry for one flower farmer that I’m actually going to send them some of my extras once I’ve divided my tubers. I’m certainly not going to sell them to the public and have my name dragged through the mud which I have seen happen to so many dahlia suppliers in recent times who I’ve never had any issues with. Even before the government’s ban on imported tubers this year, the process of importing tubers isn’t easy and from what I understand from talking to a major bulbs supplier in NZ, there are only a couple of Dutch suppliers that are prepared to ship to NZ as our market is so small. Customers need to bear in mind that when you import tubers from overseas, you have to buy in bulk. You can’t just purchase one of each variety as you would for a home garden. When suppliers on-sell tubers, they are usually sold individually, especially now that dahlias are in shorter supply. Many growers lost a lot or nearly all of their stock due to the floods and cyclones last summer. A lot of people have been complaining about the high cost of shipping, but it’s not the suppliers’ fault that postage and courier is so expensive in NZ. They are simply passing on costs they incur in sending out orders. It isn’t exactly fun and games for them either. In turn, dahlia suppliers have to pay extortionate international shipping which has risen considerably since the pandemic due to rising fuel prices. Suppliers also have to pay for tests carried out by MPI (Ministry for Primary Industries), who check that any imported plant material is safe and doesn’t carry any pests and diseases. This explains why tuber prices have risen a lot in recent times and it really aggravates me when people complain so much without understanding all of this. If you want to start growing your own food (which I highly encourage because the price of fresh produce has reached an all-time high), remember that even a small potager can be extremely productive as you don’t need a lot of room. You definitely don’t need a lifestyle block, but if you have one, that’s great. It is possible to be nearly or completely self-sufficient on a suburban or small section and many people have done so, including ourselves in the past. Don’t lose sight of the fact that you’re looking to feed your family, not the entire nation! But having surplus isn’t necessarily such a bad thing as tinned and frozen goods have increased in price, too. Tinned beetroot, a favourite in NZ as people like to put it on hamburgers, was even unavailable on the shelves at supermarkets in autumn due to the poor summer. For a long time, bags of English spinach were unavailable. People used to laugh at homesteaders for bottling and preserving their harvests as it’s a very old-fashioned thing to do, but it’s not funny anymore and is actually a really good idea. Last season has shown that we can’t always rely on the supermarket supplying us with produce as growers may not be able to produce it in the first place if weather conditions are terrible. For incentive, here are current prices of some common veggies at Countdown, one of the large supermarket chains in NZ. I am not joking nor am I lying. I’m not even merely exaggerating. You’re welcome to check on the website (feel free to do so even if you live overseas). These were the prices in the early morning on Friday 13 October 2023. They are not organic either. If that’s important to you, expect to pay even more!
Another idea is to look into having your own chickens so you have a fresh supply of eggs at home. This is something that Cheryl, a lady I met in a gardening group does. She lives in a nearby suburb and told me that the council permits you to keep up to five chickens. That was many years ago, so I don’t know if things have changed since then. She visited me once to swap seeds and brought some free-range eggs from her garden. They were lovely, but it seemed like a lot of work on top of maintaining a large garden and at that time, eggs were plentiful and not that expensive. But things have changed since then. Eggs have become astronomically expensive and for a long time, they were scarce or even unavailable during the transition period when the government was phasing out the sale of caged eggs. A dozen eggs costs over $10 these days. Cheryl is laughing all the way to the bank and I told her that she could smugly tell me “I told you so!”. Because I haven’t considered keeping chickens, I can’t offer any advice, but I’m sure there are plenty of homesteading blogs and YouTube videos you could read and watch if this is something that you wish to look into. When I first started gardening a decade ago, I grew more edibles than ornamentals (ie flowers) but in recent years my passion for growing veggies gave way to a newfound love and appreciation for flowers. I discovered that you can grow certain varieties that are commonly used in the cut flower industry and are suitable for arrangements as they have, among other qualities, long stems and often last well in a vase. Just before I started growing and selling cut flowers, I became very fascinated by mass flower displays similar to what you would see in gardens and parks managed by the council. I was very determined to recreate what I had seen in public green spaces in our own private garden at home. As a side note, it's interesting because I have actually swung back the other way and will be focusing on growing veggies this summer. I won’t be creating any of these displays, which is a shame. That is why it’s really nice to have photos so I can reminisce on past seasons and the joy gardening has brought me over the years. We had a terrible summer last season. There were even floods and cyclones in some parts of the country, including Auckland, where I live. As a consequence, the price of fresh produce has sky rocketed. When pumpkins are in season (normally at the start of autumn for us), they are usually $2 or $3 each. This year they were $14 each at Countdown (one of the large supermarket chains in NZ) and the price hasn’t fallen much during the year. Kumara (sweet potato) has been around $14 kg the whole year as well. Now that produce prices have reached such high levels, I can’t see them dropping much even if the weather improves because growers need to recoup their losses. Also, bear in mind that there has never been a lot of money in commercial growing in NZ, for both veggies and flowers. Given that growers were selling their goods for a song for a very long time, I don't blame them for really resenting it and revolting by charging much more from now on. That’s why I’m very intent on creating a large veggie garden again so we can be self-sufficient. There are only so many hours in a day and I won’t be able to create these kinds of flower displays as well as raise veggie seedlings en masse and tend to the plants once they are outside. That’s not to say that I’ll never try to create these kinds of gardens again in the future. For now though, I really want to focus on homesteading so we can be self-sufficient (or as close to it as possible) again. Also, if I don’t grow veggies for a long time I may even forget how to do it! I have planted the following flowers en masse in our garden beds two years ago. I propagated all of these flowers from seed except for the Iceland poppies, as I found lots of punnets of them heavily discounted at the garden centre so it wasn’t worth the expense and effort of raising seedlings. I have included photos of each display. Autumn Asters – King Sized in the following colours: Appleblossom, Apricot, White, Rose, Blue and Red Winter Ornamental Kale - Crane White, Pink and Bicolour Spring Iceland poppies – Springsong Mixed Summer Sunflowers – Vincent’s Choice Zinnias – Benary’s Giant and Dahlia Flowered Gold Medal Mix Here are some tips which I hope you find helpful if you wish to do the same thing.
Last spring, I grew petunias from seed for the first time and was very pleased with the results. They can be a bit tricky to germinate so I thought it might be helpful if I shared some tips to help other gardeners that would also like to give it a go.
I sowed the following varieties, which I purchased from the Egmont Seeds Commercial Catalogue (available from the company upon request as it is different to the home gardeners catalogue on their website).
As temperatures in spring can be very temperamental and drop dramatically at night, plus the fact that petunia seeds require warmth to germinate, I highly recommend using a heat pad. If you don’t have one, you can always try using your hot water cupboard. I highly recommend using 198 or 230 multi cell seedling trays for germinating petunia seeds in as the seeds are small and it helps the plants to form a plug once they grow, making it easier to repot them. I try and sow one seed in each cell so the plants don’t get cramped later on, making it difficult separate the roots. Petunia seeds are often pelleted, making them easier to handle. Do not cover the seeds with seed raising mix, which is what you would ordinarily do when sowing most other seeds. Instead, cover the seeds lightly with vermiculite and water well. I use a spray bottle to mist my seedlings. As it gets warmer, you might need to do this twice a day to prevent the seeds from drying out. Once your seedlings germinate and grow a bit, you can move the tray(s) to your greenhouse. If you don’t have one, you could try using a cold frame or another protected environment. When the seedlings are large enough, they can be carefully pricked out and repotted into a 60 or 72 cell seedling tray, which has larger cells making it suitable for the next stage of growth. Once your seedlings have grown and it is warm enough, they are ready to be planted outside. Don’t forget to harden off your plants first by gradually exposing them to outdoor temperatures otherwise they might end up shocked and die if there is no transition period between a warm and protected greenhouse and the great outdoors. You can plant petunias in the ground but I prefer growing mine in containers. For the first time last summer I planted our petunias in terracotta pots and they performed really well, as you can see in the pictures. Now that we are well and truly into spring (and have been blessed with some lovely sunny days which is very unusual for Auckland), I thought it might be nice to share an update on what I have been doing around the garden. New rose Back in July I added a new rose to the garden appropriately named the Lady Gardener. It is a David Austin variety which are not easy to source in New Zealand due to royalty issues from what I have gathered. Here is a picture of the rose after I planted it. Potatoes The Liseta potatoes that I planted on 21st June (the day before the shortest day for us in New Zealand as we’re in the Southern Hemisphere) have recently become ready. This is my all-time favourite early variety as it’s a high yielder and has a lovely flavour. Like most early potatoes, it’s best boiled rather than baked as the skin is waxy rather than floury in texture. The downside is that early potatoes don’t store well, so it’s best to try and get through them as quickly as possible. I staggered my planting so I need to harvest the second lot in about a week’s time. I did plant Agria too, but in August so they probably won’t be ready until sometime in November. I ended up planting 12 kg of Agria seed potatoes, which is twice as much as I originally intended. I had ordered 6kg from Newton Seeds, the same supplier that I sourced Liseta from. Not long after that, a NZ hardware chain called Mitre 10 who run excellent “Cheap As” deals over the weekend advertised 1.5 kg bags of Agria seed potatoes for just $6, which is a very good buy as they are normally $13. I ended up getting four bags; a further 6kg. My thinking was that the surplus harvest will make excellent Christmas presents for close friends. What better than a box of homegrown potatoes right before Christmas, which often feature on the table for the meal. Also, because we had such a terrible summer produce prices have sky rocketed and potatoes are incredibly expensive. I haven’t even seen any 10kg bags of potatoes at the supermarket, which you would normally find in the produce section. Not only have the bags become smaller, but the price has also risen. Agria are a main potato variety. They are ideal for baking and roasting as they are floury in texture. This is the variety that is commonly used to make chips and wedges. Unlike early varieties, Agria stores really well. Last year, our Agria potatoes stored right up until autumn, at which time they started sprouting. I have written a blog post with some tips for growing potatoes, which you can read here. Polyanthus Back in January, I sowed two polyanthus varieties from seed and my plants recently started flowering. You can read all about it and view photos in my previous blog post. New plants I have recently added a couple of new plants to our garden, which I am really excited about. The first is three new lavender varieties in the Ruffles series: Razzleberry, Blueberry and Vanillaberry. Lavender is a wonderful fragrant plant with beautiful flowers which attract bees to the garden. This is extremely beneficial to the environment and to aid the pollination of early spring flowers on deciduous fruit trees, including stone fruit. I have written a guide with tips for growing lavender, which you can read here. I also purchased the petunia Splash Dance Bolero Blue using a voucher that Kings Plant Barn kindly gave me for my birthday, which is currently in our greenhouse until it gets a bit warmer and I can move it outside to our patio. It has grown quite a bit since I purchased it and I will need to repot it soon, as well as the lavender plants. A bit of fun
A few months ago, I was so fed up with civilisation that I wished I could live alone on an island with no government (an election is coming up soon in New Zealand and there is very heavy media coverage, door-to-door campaigning and even being accosted in the street, so no wonder it’s working on my nerves even more than usual), no legal system, no economy, no currency, no roads, no cars (walking is very good for you!) and a few packets of seeds so I can grow my own food. Not long after that, the link to an article appeared in my newsfeed on Facebook. Somebody actually did exactly that. He is a Brit who somehow managed to purchase an island quite cheaply in the Seychelles. I can't help but feel jealous, even though I know it's wrong to feel that way. That place looks so good to me. Ever since I was little, I have been absolutely fascinated by islands and always wanted to live on one. I know NZ comprises a couple of islands, but I mean inhabiting a little island, navigable by foot. I would really miss Spotify though as I love music. But you can't always have everything and sometimes something has to give. This year, I propagated polyanthus plants from seed for the first time. Normally, I buy polyanthus as established seedlings in 6-cell punnets. Since I have been gardening for over a decade, I enjoy finding new ways to challenge myself. In my humble opinion, polyanthus are not difficult to grow from seed but they take a long time to develop, so lots of patience is required. The trick is to get the germination method right. In my case it was second time lucky, because I was lucky to receive some very helpful advice from John McCullough, the owner of Egmont Seeds, the company I purchased the seeds from. Without the right techniques, you might struggle to achieve a good germination rate, which is why I thought it might be helpful for me to share my top tips for growing polyanthus from seed. I sowed two varieties, CA Woods Mix and Supernova Mix on 9th January. I purchased the seeds from the Egmont Seeds Commercial Catalogue, which is available upon request from the company. It is different to the home gardener’s catalogue which is on their website and is mailed out annually to customers. Sowing the seeds
Be patient! Polyanthus are slow to grow. Eventually your seedlings will start to look like this Caring for the seedlings
Here are the same plants awhile later after they had grown quite a bit. Planting out the seedlings
Images of my flowering plants are at the top of the blog post.
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