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Here is a summary of some interesting things that I have noticed in the past three years since I started growing dahlias.
I thought that it might be nice to compile a photo album of all of the different dahlias that we grew in our garden last summer. I have written the name of each variety on the caption, which is visible if you hover over the photo.
Dahlias have become so popular in recent years that the phenomenon has been described as dahlia mania. I’m not quite sure why there is suddenly so much fuss about them, because dahlias have been around for ages. Part of the reason why they have suddenly taken off is perhaps because you can get so many more varieties these days, which are even more beautiful and exotic than what was available in the past. The last time mum and I went to our bach (the New Zealand term for holiday home by the seaside), we gave a calendar comprising images of our garden to our neighbour, whose husband used to mow our lawn and keep the property tidy while we weren’t there. Mary is in her 90s and she couldn’t get over the picture of Peaches n’ Cream on the cover, as well as some of the varieties pictured inside. She is actually the one that introduced me to dahlias soon after I discovered gardening. I was very interested to look around their property to see what plants they grew. She always had cactus varieties in her garden. Mary had never seen anything like the dahlias in Floret’s range and was quite amazed by how the plant has evolved over the years. I am nowhere near as old as her, but even when I first started gardening a decade ago, we didn’t have the range we now have, at least not in this country. On one hand, this is a great thing because we have access to so many new, exciting plants. The flipside is that the sharp increase in imported tubers due to dahlia mania has meant that the bacterial disease gall is much more prevalent in New Zealand gardens than it was in the past.
Why dahlias are so fascinating and worth growing
Downsides to growing dahlias
I have recently started reflecting on where the plants in our garden are originally from, because people often ask me the same question about myself. Most of our flowers, fruits, veggies and herbs in the garden are from other countries. I have started writing a series of blog posts to explore some of our favourite flowers and edibles we have grown over the years which are from overseas. In this post, I will focus on some of our favourite plants which come from Mexico. I have never been to Mexico, but the first thing that comes to mind is the fabulous cuisine which is simply bursting with flavour. I love international cuisine and Mexican is one of my favourites, along with Italian and Thai. The high quality of Mexican dishes no doubt relies heavily upon the abundance of fresh local produce, much of which is native to Mexico. Because I like to try and keep my blog posts short as well as quick and easy to read, I will cover our favourite veggies from Mexico that we grow in our potager in a separate post. There are so many, starting with avocados which are of course essential for making guacamole, a favourite Mexican dish of mine. I will focus on my favourite flowers from Mexico in this post, which I also love and includes dahlias and zinnias. Dahlias Since the dahlia is the national flower of Mexico, it makes sense to start here. My interest in dahlias was initially ignited by Kayne from the NZ mail order bulbs supplier Bulbs Direct, who kindly gave me a Café au Lait tuber to plant in the garden a few years ago. I have had a collaboration with Bulbs Direct for a number of years now and he has generously and thoughtfully provided me with many beautiful and interesting flowers to grow in the garden, including the 49 different tulip varieties which were part of a growing trial which I covered in previous blog posts. Kayne’s kind gesture of gifting me a single CAL (as it is abbreviated in dahlia circles) tuber which produced such beautiful flowers in delicate shades of cream, pink and apricot on the same plant prompted me to do some research into dahlias. I discovered an American flower farmer called Erin Benzakein, who lives in the Skagit Valley region of Washington, about an hour out of Seattle and has a flower farm known as Floret. They supply flowers to the upmarket organic grocery chain Whole Foods in the US. After reading her book Discovering Dahlias, I caught the dahlia bug and I’m not the only one. There is a worldwide craze in flower growing circles known as dahlia mania. While dahlias have been around for ages, they have suddenly become incredibly popular and there are so many different varieties on the market these days which were not available in the past, at least not in this country. I do enjoy growing other flowers and edibles, but I have become absolutely fascinated by dahlias and have been adding more varieties to our garden every year. If you would like to see more dahlia pictures from our garden, please have a look at my Instagram account. You might have to scroll back a bit, now that we are in winter in New Zealand. Zinnias Every summer, I look forward to growing zinnias. They are very bright and colourful. Zinnias look great planted en masse. Some gardeners can get away with scattering seeds direct to the ground. That used to work for me many years ago, but in recent years I have found that I have to propagate them from seeds and transplant the seedlings, which requires a lot of work. I start zinnia seedlings on my heat pad in egg trays filled with seed raising mix (I prefer using the lid part) in late November/early December. Once they have grown a bit, I move them to the greenhouse, where they develop leaves. Once they are large enough, I carefully transplant each seedling into an individual cell in a six-cell punnet. As the weather is still quite temperamental in December, I leave the plants in our greenhouse to grow a bit more before moving them to our patio so they can be hardened off and exposed to the outdoors before finally being planted outside in early January, so it’s not such a shock to their system. While I plant zinnias in mid-summer, they tend to start flowering in March, which is the beginning of autumn and the display lasts until May, the end of autumn for us. I have included photos of some formal beds containing zinnias from the summer before last. Unfortunately last year was not a good season for growing zinnias due to the floods and cyclones in Auckland. The best variety for cutting is Benary’s Giant, which is used by commercial flower growers in NZ. It produces high quality flowers on incredibly long stems which are perfect for arrangements. This variety also lasts a long time in a vase. The seeds are quite expensive though compared to other varieties. But as you can see below, cheaper varieties such as the Dahlia Flowered Gold Medal Mix still make a nice, cheerful display. Marigolds I love growing marigolds and have recently written a blog post with some tips for growing them from seed, so I won’t write much about them here. One of our favourite varieties is called Durango Flame, which is a traditional orange-red marigold variety. Gladioli
When I checked where gladioli originates from, I found conflicting information. According to some sources, the gladioli is native to South Africa and I covered them in my previous blog post. But when I was researching flowers native to Mexico (just to check that things were actually where I thought they were from), the gladioli was often listed so I decided to cover it here, too. The gladioli is also known as the sword lily. Last summer, I planted a lot of gladioli bulbs as we didn’t have many in the garden. I am looking forward to them flowering again this summer. As noted in my previous post, I have started reflecting on where the plants in our garden are originally from, because people often ask me the same question about myself. Most of our flowers, fruits, veggies and herbs in the garden are from other countries. In this series of blog posts, I will explore some of them. In this post, I will focus on some of our favourite plants which come from South Africa, where mum is from. Although I have never been there, when I think of South Africa as a country, its fabulous and diverse flora and fauna immediately come to mind (among many other things, including rugby, the springbok, boerewors, koeksisters, melktert, De Beers, Krugerrands, the Blue Train, Table Mountain and Robben Island). It also reminds me of a very well-known South African flower farmer, Adene Nieuwoudt, who I follow on Instagram and who I deeply respect and admire. While Adene has specialized in growing flowers, she is also very knowledgeable about veggie gardening. I once read that when she first started gardening, her husband created a veggie garden for her which was the size of a rugby field. There are so many different plants that come from South Africa, but really large gerberas with long stems always come to mind first. This is probably because I’m not able to get my hands on them and we always want what we can’t have. Due to royalty issues they are only made available to commercial flower growers in New Zealand and not to home gardeners such as myself. Incidentally, a commercial grower recently told me that these gerberas have fallen victim to a virus and they are not sure if they will be able to grow them anymore. Although I try my best to keep my blog posts short so they are quick and easy to read, this post ended up getting very long as we have a lot of plants from South Africa in our garden. It is very difficult to cherry pick when they are all equally wonderful to me, so I ended up covering all of them. One of my cousins from South Africa visited us last year and we had lunch together. He is a couple of years younger than me. He doesn’t do any gardening himself, so I was amazed that he correctly named not only all of these plants as we walked around the garden, but also all of our other plants with the exception of our feijoa trees, which is fair enough as they are not found in that part of the world to my knowledge. Protea Since the King Protea is the national flower of South Africa, it makes sense to start here. I have planted a few different proteas over the years but they always ended up dying. I don’t think our conditions are ideal. I have noticed that they do very well in coastal areas in NZ, maybe because they like sandy soil. They also seem to thrive in warmer conditions. I have seen a few large plants in gardens where our bach is, which is 40 minutes north of Kerikeri and on the coast. Because I am an eternal optimist, I couldn’t help but try again and planted a King Protea in our garden last year. So far it is still alive so fingers crossed! Penhill Watermelon dahlia While dahlias are native to Mexico, breeders could technically come from any country in the world and they can name the varieties they breed anything they want. My favourite name is the dahlia known as the Zundert Mystery Fox, which was bred by a German. The dinnerplate variety Penhill Watermelon is very well-known and highly sought after. It was bred by a South African. PW (as it is abbreviated in dahlia circles) is extremely hardy and tends to produce very large clumps at the end of the growing season which divide well. Not all dahlia varieties are that robust and some are very prone to rot. I don’t want to mention any varieties I have had trouble with incase I deter other gardeners from growing them. While they might not perform well in our garden and sometimes in NZ generally according to other dahlia growers I have conversed with, that doesn’t mean that they won’t thrive elsewhere. Calla lilies We have lots of callas in our garden. I used to grow them in containers but the stems were always on the short side, so I moved them to a garden bed a few months ago to see if that helps them develop long stems which are suitable for cutting. Callas are extremely hardy and multiply prolifically. I am very grateful to Kayne from the leading NZ mail order bulbs supplier Bulbs Direct for giving me a mixture of calla bulbs as a gift one year with my order. A couple of years ago, he also kindly sent me a bunch of fresh callas which were beautifully packaged in a box, exactly as they are exported to Japan by their family’s business in Northland. Lachenalias I find these flowers rather charming. They are bulbs that can be grown in garden beds (which is how they were planted at our home in Whangarei when I was a child) or in containers (as they are planted in our Auckland garden). They multiply prolifically if left undisturbed for a few seasons. We have the traditional orange/yellow variety commonly found here. Last year, I added the Turquoise lachenalia Viridiflora to the garden which is native to the Cape Province and is nearly extinct. I hope to do my best to keep this precious species alive and share the bulbs with other gardeners as they multiply. Gladioli Gladioli makes an excellent cut flower as it has long stems and lasts well in a vase. The flowers open from the bottom. I usually pick them when the first flower or two have started opening. In addition to traditional gladioli that flower in summer, we also grow Nanus gladioli, which flower in winter and spring. Freesias Both mum and I love freesias as they are beautiful and highly fragrant. We had hardly any in our garden as they disappeared over the years, so I planted some fresh bulbs in May. Amaryllis Belladonna Amaryllis Belladonna flower in February and March in our garden, which is late summer/early autumn for us. These are extremely hardy bulbs that are usually found in a few different shades of pink and white. White Amaryllis Belladonna can be hard to find in New Zealand and I was very lucky that my cousin in Whangarei gave me a spare bulb, as a colleague gave her two for her garden. It’s a good thing she did that because when she moved house, she lost it and I was able to give her one of mine to help her get started again. They are more commonly known as Naked Ladies because the bulbs don’t have any foliage when they flower. The flowers produce seed heads containing large seeds at the end of the season, which you can collect and replant. Apparently they don’t come true to type, so this is how you could go about breeding a new variety, which is an exciting and interesting thing to do as a passionate gardener. Someone on my gardening page on Facebook advised me to replant the seeds immediately as they lose their viability rapidly. Gloriosa lily I recently added this fascinating plant to the garden last year and it flowered in December. I ordered the bulbs online through Bulbs Direct. I have kept them in large containers as I read that it can potentially become invasive in certain environments, but don’t let that put you off as there are ways around this problem, if there is one at all. Clivia I have found that clivia do best in a shady site. We have several orange varieties and a yellow one in our garden. At one stage, yellow clivia were extremely rare and plants fetched as much as $1,000 each. Years ago I posted a picture of one of our plants in flower on my personal Facebook page. One of my friends who I met through work and has settled in London commented, saying that her family back in Sydney have a lot of them in their garden. They are originally from South Africa. My friend didn’t know what they were, nor did she realise they were native to South Africa, but neither did I until I started gardening a decade ago. Gem squash
When I first started gardening, mum begged me to grow gem squash for her. Luckily a major seed supplier in New Zealand stocks it and it is very easy to grow. You can sometimes find them in the produce department at Countdown in season if you want to buy them, but they tend to be very large and hard, with thick skin. We personally prefer harvesting the fruits when they are young and the skin is tender. We think the flavour is better at this stage but that is a matter of opinion, not fact. Last summer I decided to have a go at breeding my own dahlias for the first time. I had been growing named varieties for two seasons and saved seeds from my plants towards the end of autumn last year.
The flowers were open pollinated by bees. I didn't cover them with organza bags and hand-pollinate them. The advantage of doing it that way is that you can choose just two varieties you want to cross and the organza bags prevent the bees from interfering with that and continuing to cross-pollinate from other plants. The way I did it is more of a lucky dip but the advantage is you might get something even more interesting! The other way you could do it is to plant the varieties that you want to cross next to each other but not use organza bags. Let the bees do their work and hope for the best! This year I let mother nature do its work but if I am able to save seeds from my dahlias this season (and that's a pretty big if because there has been so much rain in Auckland that I'm not sure if the pods will contain viable seeds as they ideally need to be very dry when harvested) I might use organza bags and hand-pollinate varieties I'm keen on crossing. It's a lot of work but I won't be doing an edible garden next season which frees up some of my time. After a decade of gardening so intensively, I'm having a sabbatical! I would love a bit more time to myself to spend on my other hobbies, namely the gym, swimming and running. I won't be downing tools entirely though as I want to keep the garden tidy, which is always challenging as it has expanded so much over the years. It also enables me to concentrate on just a couple of activities, namely the daffodils in winter and dahlias in summer. I might even try to breed daffodils, which another gardener once suggested to me. Gardening certainly isn't boring and there are always new ways you can challenge yourself once you have learnt the basics. As for these seedlings, towards the end of autumn I will be lifting the tubers and storing them carefully over winter. All going well (ie no rotting and gall), I will plant them in late spring. I need to grow these on for three years to allow the characteristics of the plant to stabilise. If they're keepers, then I will give them a name which will be very exciting! I wasn't going to keep all my dahlia seedlings in the breeding programme as there are many of them and it's a lot of work storing and caring for dahlias over winter plus I do have lots of named varieties as well but I don't have the heart to cull them at this stage. But in time I will have to be more ruthless otherwise I'm going to run out of space in the garden! It has ashamedly been a very long time since my last blog post and I do apologise for this. There was actually a good reason for my long silence. I was very busy photographing and writing notes about all the different tulip varieties I grew in the garden over winter and early spring as part of my collaboration with Bulbs Direct. I hope to turn my findings into some interesting blog posts and/or newsletter articles for people to read when they have some down time. I am very grateful to Kayne and his family for all the lovely tulip bulbs that they gave me to plant in the garden in autumn and hope what I share is useful to others who also want to grow tulips in their garden. I would also like to make up a photo book of all the tulips I grew this year so we can look back on an epic season in print. I may also make a few copies available in the shop on my website incase anyone is interested in purchasing it. I am currently in the process of going through all my photos (of which there are so many!) and putting the best ones in a folder with subfolders for each variety that I grew. This will take awhile but I try and chip away at it every day and really enjoy reflecting on our tulips as we had a very good season. Here is a round up of recent developments around Anita’s Garden. Shop on website I have added a shopping facility to my website! Anita’s Garden merchandise is now available for sale for international shipping and free local pick up. So far, I have created a calendar containing images of our garden and also a calendar containing images of our cat Ginger around the garden. We are not exploiting the cat for our own financial gain! I am donating $10 from the sale of each cat calendar to the SPCA in New Zealand. I also designed a spiral bound notebook containing some images of Anita’s Garden, including the Labyrinth dahlia and my bed of zinnias, which were very popular on my Instagram page. In the background you can see the beautiful blanket that my cousin Shireen crocheted me and gave me as a gift last Christmas, for which I am most thankful. I think Ginger likes lying on it even more than me! Selling cut flowers commercially As some of you will be aware, I intend to start selling cut flowers from the garden soon. Flower prices have risen astronomically since the pandemic and multiple lockdowns in Auckland over the past two years. I am committed to making high quality cut flowers affordable to as many people as possible, especially because I live in South Auckland, which is the lowest socio-economic area in Auckland. Over the past few months, I have done a lot of due diligence to try and generate options which enable me to sell cut flowers commercially and work out the best way(s). About a month ago, on my birthday no less, I had a business meeting in the city with a potential supplier who is interested in purchasing flowers from me to stock in their stores. Last Monday, mum and I went to Mt Wellington, which is right at the very heart of the cut flower industry in Auckland. This is where the UFG Flower auction is. That is the main way that cut flowers are sold en masse in New Zealand and there are a few auction centres in the larger cities around the country. I had a lovely chat with Lynette, the auction manager, who was very friendly and helpful. She said that I am welcome to attend an auction so I get an idea of what price flowers fetch (bearing in mind that it is always fluctuating) and that I am most welcome to sell not only flowers but also produce (ie fruit and veggies) from Anita’s Garden at the flower auction!! Apparently boxes of veggies do sneak in from time to time. Maybe it first started as a little joke at the auction. Without humour, life would be very dull and I do love jokes. But Lynette was very straight faced when I jokingly asked if I could slip in some veggies and she said most definitely because people had done that in the past. Two of the wholesalers who are in the same building as the auction are also keen to purchase flowers from me, which is really exciting! I am doing a bit more research and reflecting on my options and will keep everyone updated with any developments. The next lot of bulk flowers that I hope to sell will be my Vincent's Choice Orange with Dark Disc sunflowers, which are progressing very nicely as you can see from the picture below. I sowed a packet containing 1,000 seeds direct to the ground on the 1st of September. I didn't add any compost to the ground as I noticed flowers tend not to do well if the soil is too rich. I did however dig an 8kg bag of general garden fertiliser into the soil prior to sowing the seeds. They are admittedly sown quite close together but I find that it works perfectly for the specialized cut flower sunflower varieties that I have been growing over the past few years. Bear in mind that they only produce a single stem, unlike the taller branching ornamental sunflowers which I used to grow for attracting bees when I first started gardening. Although the cutflower varieties are supposedly pollenless, the bees are still very drawn to them! Vincent's Choice is an extra early sunflower which can be sown much earlier than other varieties. It usually flowers in early to mid December if sown in early September like I did this year. There is a lot more space in this garden bed, which is cut out of the picture. Later this month when it's a bit warmer, I am going to sow some other sunflower varieties that are suitable for picking and selling as cut flowers. They are Premier Light Yellow, Procut Horizon, Procut Orange, Sunbright Supreme, Sunrich Orange DMR and Sunrich Provence. Floret online cut flower workshop scholarship Some of the flower enthusiasts among you will have heard of Floret Flower Farm, which was created by Erin Benzakein and is in the Skagit Valley region, about an hour out of Seattle in Washington state in the USA. I have read two of Erin’s books, Discovering Dahlias and the Cut Flower Garden, which have helped me develop our flower garden with a view to selling cut flowers commercially. Every year in January, Erin holds a six week online workshop which teaches you how to grow and sell cut flowers. The course is just under USD$2,000. In September, Erin invites applications for scholarships which fully cover the cost of tuition. I submitted an application a couple of weeks ago for the first time ever. The two essays that I had to write were very short (just 250 words each) but that of course made it even harder because there was so much that I wanted to say and I had to be very concise. Erin is going to notify the winners this Thursday 13 October 2022 but as it is Pacific Time and we are 19 hours ahead, I may not know the outcome until Friday or Saturday here. I will of course keep you all posted if there are any positive developments. It is extremely competitive. Last year there were over 6,000 applications from all around the world and this year there are 23 scholarships, some of which were donated by Erin and others were funded by other generous donors. I am very inspired by what Erin has achieved from scratch through sheer determination and hard work with her husband Chris and what has now evolved into a growing, hands on team at Floret. Wish me luck! Breeding dahlias I have started potting up my dahlia seedlings grown from seeds saved from my own plants from last summer. I sowed the seeds on my heat pad back in July and the plants have grown a lot in the greenhouse since then. I potted them up twice, once from small multi-cell trays into a bigger seedling tray with bigger cells and now each plant is in an individual pot. These seedlings will look different to the parent plant as they will not come true to type. I can't wait to plant these out and take photos and notes about each one when they flower. I will also have to name each one too! Or at least anything special that I think is worth saving and growing on for a couple more seasons to see how it behaves. I am fairly new to growing dahlias from seeds. Last year, I did grow a few from seeds kindly given to me for free by one of my dahlia suppliers, Petal Plants. There were some beautiful specimen and it motivated me to give it a try with my own plants. I am very grateful to Melanie of Petal Plants for inspiring me to start breeding my own dahlias! This is basically level one of dahlia breeding for me. All of my seedlings were open-pollinated by bees. Next summer, I hope to continue to grow as a gardener and become a bit more technical. I have seen some dahlia growers such as Preyanka, a gardener in Cornwall in the UK that I follow on Instagram, cover her blooms with organza bags and carefully cross-pollinate with a brush. Preyanka has given me a lot of support and encouragement and directed me to a blog she has written on this subject. Last night I read the section on dahlia breeding in Erin benzakein’s book Discovering Dahlias. I also follow Santa Cruz Dahlias who stand out as a leader in dahlia breeding. Preyanka directed me to a book that Kristine Albrecht of Santa Cruz Dahlias has written on breeding dahlias and I have added it to my reading list. I need to devote some time to reading everything carefully and getting my head around it all before summer. This is a really good thing to do on a very rainy day when I can’t be outdoors. Kirsty’s visit On Sunday, Kirsty, my dearest and oldest friend of 25 years, visited me. We had a cuppa and a lovely chat. No one ever leaves Anita's Garden empty handed and I gave her the things in the picture. The box contains some tomato plants for her parents who are visiting her from Putaruru in the southern Waikato region on Thursday. There are two grafted plants (Sweet 100, a prolific cherry tomato and Beefsteak, which is great for sandwiches), as well as a Brandywine Pink and Supersteak tomato plant. There are also two bunches of flowers for Kirsty, some dutch iris which are tight budded but will open in the next day or so and some Iceland poppies. Kirsty and I met at secondary school in sixth form. We had just moved to Auckland from Whangarei (a small town about 2 1/2 hours north of Auckland, at least it was small at that time) and I was the new girl in a scary big new city. Not everyone is willing to befriend someone new and alter their existing friendship circles or cliques, but Kirsty was very warm and welcoming and we quickly became good friends. We attended uni together - her a Bachelor of Science followed by Honours and me a conjoint Law and Arts degree with Honours. We used to catch the bus together and enjoyed catching up. After uni we went our separate ways in the workforce. Kirsty stayed in NZ and I moved overseas to England and France, but she visited me in Paris with her best friend Pip in December 2007. Showing them around Paris was one of the highlights of my time there. Kirsty recently showed me a map of the city that I drew for them which I had long forgotten about! Since returning to NZ in 2010, we have remained close friends and she has been there for me through my struggles with schizophrenia and depression. Kirsty is a secondary school Science teacher, which was always my weakest subject! And I probably drive her nuts with my former lawyer like ways. I told her that if she thinks she can never win an argument with me, the partners I used to work for are much worse. There are so many things that I admire about her and try to emulate in my own life. In particular, I am so grateful to her for helping me realise that there are more important things in life than coming first all the time, the most important being to try to be a kind and caring person towards others. Plant nursery I have been receiving messages asking me if I am planning to sell plants this year and I do hope so after a long hiatus for a few years due to watering restrictions and the lockdowns. Keep an eye on my Facebook page for announcements as to when they become available and what stock I have. Thank you for supporting me and I look forward to seeing old and new customers at Anita’s Garden. Free weekly newsletter
Don’t forget that I write a free weekly newsletter called Anita’s Garden, filled with advice, ideas and inspiration to help you with your garden. All my newsletters are stored on my website for you to read. You can also receive a pdf copy by email. If you wish to subscribe, please email me at anitakundu.nz@gmail.com and write “subscribe” in the subject field. I have been very busy in the garden this month. The shortest day is actually my favourite time of the year, as it marks when I plant strawberries, onions and garlic, which I really enjoy growing in our garden. Did you know that once the shortest day (21st June) has passed, every day is lighter by one minute more? I think this is what seems to trigger growth for some veggies, including alliums. Onions do really well if planted as seedlings around this time of the year. Here is a round up of what I have been doing so far this month. Spring bulbs A week ago, I planted out the last of my spring bulbs. I was a bit late in receiving my tulips and hyacinths from Bulbs Direct this year because the owner had Covid and had to self-isolate. I somehow managed to plant everything out in two days. I also sent my cousin Shireen who lives in Whangarei a package which included some tulips and daffodils (from another bulb order which arrived in mid-May). Bulbs Direct usually upload their spring bulb catalogue on the website in mid-January and it does pay to get in quick with your order as popular varieties sell out fast. In addition to offering a fantastic range of spring bulbs at very reasonable prices and great customer service, Bulbs Direct is also happy to pre-chill your tulip and hyacinth bulbs if you live in a climate with mild winters, like Auckland. This ensures that your flowers have long stems and are suitable for picking. I have grown tulips and hyacinths which were not pre-chilled in the past and I noticed that the plants were considerably stunted by comparison. Lifting dahlias Towards the end of May I started the process of lifting our dahlia tubers and carried on with this task into June. We have had quite a bit of rain recently and I was concerned that I might lose the tubers to rot if I left them in the ground over winter. I have stored all our dahlia tubers in plastic Sistema crates filled with some potting mix and saw dust. Mum sprays them with water every day to keep the tubers alive. Here is a picture of how I have stored them in our greenhouse, as there is no available space in our garage. Strawberries I didn’t need to order any new strawberry plants as my plants from last year went absolutely wild and produced so many runners! Most of my plants were given to me by Awapuni last year and are the variety Camarosa. It took me awhile to tidy up our patch. It looked like a complete jungle to begin with. I wasn’t sure where to start so I enlisted the advice of a fellow gardener called Candy, who goes by the Insta handle @nzgardener. Candy is an expert on growing strawberries and grew over 26kg of fruit last summer. Candy advised me not to dig up and replant all my plants, which is what she is doing in her own garden. She said that I just needed to remove the runners that had appeared in the pathways between rows and replant them elsewhere, so we would have little pathways to walk between rows to pick the berries as they ripen. I created three new rows of strawberries with the additional runners, so we now have a total of seven rows of strawberries. I did not count how many plants we have in total but a rough guesstimate is 300 plants. Here are some photos of what our strawberry patch looks like now. Onions Over the past fortnight, I planted eight punnets of Pukekohe Longkeeper brown onions and five punnets of Californian red onions. I found four punnets of brown onions and the five punnets of red onions on clearance at the Warehouse and it made sense to purchase them at $1 and $1.50 per punnet. I got the remaining four punnets of brown onions for free by redeeming a $10 voucher at Kings Plant Barn. They have a loyalty card and I had accrued enough points over time to redeem a reward. I received a very pleasant surprise when I went to pay at the checkout! What is a shame is that this year I had every intention of ordering onion seedlings from Awapuni, who stock both brown and red onions but I have more than enough and don’t need to do this. Nor do I need to bother raising any onions from seed in spring, as I did last year. I find onions incredibly easy to grow. Other than keeping the weeds down, they need little care until they are harvested in mid-summer. Garlic I wasn’t intending to grow garlic this year after struggling with rust for the past few seasons. Like a lot of gardeners, I lost all of my good seed stock and had to keep purchasing new seed garlic. It is becoming very difficult to source and is very expensive. The quality of what you get these days isn’t that great, either. A picture of an amazing garlic harvest popped up on my Facebook feed and belonged to a gardener in one of the many gardening Facebook groups I belong to. I happened to comment on what an incredible crop it was and mentioned that I had given up because of my on-going battle with rust. The author of the post responded with some advice – to spray the foliage with apple cider vinegar. She was kind enough to let me in on her secret and that is to mix 1 cup of apple cider vinegar (she uses the Countdown Homebrand one which is around $4 for a bottle) with 5 litres of water. I have planted four varieties: Printanor, Red Russian, Ajo Rojo and Elephant. I was very fortunate that a fellow Auckland gardener gave me some spare elephant garlic cloves as I had been having problems sourcing them this year. I gave some of each garlic variety to my cousin in Whangarei, along with some strawberry runners and dianthus Diana Blueberry plants that I raised from seed in autumn. Ornamental kale
The two garden beds that I planted with ornamental kale seedlings when I returned home from our bach in mid-May are shaping up nicely. I grew three varieties from seed, Crane Pink, Crane White and Crane Bicolour. |
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