Friday 3rd June, 2016
Hi
Fingers are only numb for a few minutes.
After all these years, I know that I couldn't work inside. I know that the inside team look out on those gorgeous days and think that perhaps that they would like to be out there but I can tell you they are not so keen on those shabby wet days.. On those frosty morns that we had prior to and over Queens birthday they have been more than happy inside with the heaters and heat pumps going.
LOL your fingers are only numb for a short time and then you are all warm...I tell the outside team that they should go for a quick jog around the place. Think that I mentioned that to Barb last year when we were potting the roses but she didn't take me up on the offer.... I think that its pretty good advice.!!!
Whilst we're on about Jack frost, as I'm sure that we will get some more as usually the coldest weather happens after the shortest day, we have moved all the really frost tender plants that we have from the nursery to under our big olive tree as we don't have the crop cover or plastic roof protection that the other garden centres have. It's amazing but all gardens including my nursery have micro climates where you can put plants that would otherwise not cope in a different position in the garden. Plants under the olive tree are quite protected and I also sprayed them with Vaporgard to see if we could avoid frost marks.
I also get out the
Vaporgard to spray all the plants left in the nursery that whilst are frost hardy and more so when they are bigger so that there leaves won't mark with the frost. For example I spray all the citrus as whilst their mature leaves are not affected by the frost their new leaves will certainly burn or mark, but hey that goes for any new foliage.
A couple of years back a grower told me that they used vaporgard and they did two applications approx a couple of weeks apart. This will help protect from frost to -3 and for the remainder of the winter.
Micronet,
Frostguard cloth are also physical barrier materials that also help by keeping the air underneath warmer. We also use these in the nursery to help prevent marks on the foliage on plants that are otherwise frost hardy once they are established.
I always think that frost in the Waikato is quite hard on plants because we have such a warm climate mostly and then all of a sudden we will get a -3 frost. This season is a prime example with such warm wet temps all autumn and then bingo we get three quite hard frost in a row and then back to warm weather. pretty hard on the ole plants.
Blueberry twin packs, pick from
Rabbiteye or
Highbush packs. There are 2 of each type of twin pack. Rabbiteye choose from Powder Blue with Tif Blue or Powder Blue with Centurion and Highbush choose from Elliott and Reka or Elliott and Dixie. These combinations have been selected by the growers for their ability to pollinate each other.
Proteas
Proteas are not only flowers that you just want to stroke or at least touch but they are just awesome as cut flowers. They form quite shrubby bush that does benefit from being cut back after flowering to keep the shrub in good form and not become to straggly and rangy. They prefer a sunny disposition and well drained soil. These are awesome bushy plants with many of them coming up to flower
Most of these we have had previously but we also have some new to us varieties..... Burgundy Nipple, Jazz, Frosted Fire,
Lavender Sweet Romance... an English type, or angustifolia form if you want to be correct.... brand new to us and lovely plants. Remember that Lavenders like to be in the full sun and have perfect drainage. There is a whole range of lavenders here at the moment.. take a minute and check them out or follow this link to all the plants that have arrived this week.
Dogwood ... an unusual common name for such a cool tree
I was out in the trees the other day sweeping up all the leaves and generally doing Autumn clean up and found that we have some really nice grades of these Dogwood
Cornus CloudNine,
Doubloon and
National and it made me think to show you what a fabulous tree these are. We have Cornus National planted on the side of the road and they are just stunning and you get many cool phases. Layers of gorgeous white bract flowers are followed by a mass of fleshy red strawberry fruits that attract the birds and finally nice Autumn colours. Plant as a trio or as a lawn feature.
I was reading on google that there are several theories about how this handsome tree got its common name, one theory is that dogwood is derived from old English of Dagwood. Another earlier name of the dogwood is whipple tree.. a 'Whippletree' is an element of the horse drawn cart linking the draw-pole of the cart to the harness of horses in file. The dogwood also used to have a secondary name of Hounds tree whilst the fruits were known as dogberries or houndberries. These names must be way before my time LOL as I have only know Cornus as Dogwood tree.
I found some pics on my phone of the trees that we have out on the roadside in full flower and then another of the
fruits or should I call them houndberries and posted them up on
FB.. Check them out
Christchurch Remembers
We are so lucky to be able to offer this new floribunda rose from Rob Somerfield. Named in honour of the people who died or have been affected by the terrible Christchurch earthquakes. Christchurch Remembers was Named as
Winner of New Zealand's top rose award the "Gold Star of the South Pacific" in the New Zealand Rose Society international trials. Rob tells me that this is a high health, disease resistant bush producing masses of scarlet red roses. You can see it in our
Facebook post. You may have noticed that we have peen posting some of our favourite roses in Facebook as they get potted, and will continue to showcase different ones over the next few weeks.
Rose stuff with the Rose society....
What do you want to know about roses???? How to prune? Where to cut? When to feed? What and when to spray? What are really good doers... or what does it take to grow a winning bloom? The fabulous team from the Rose Society are going to be in the nursery to take care of any questions that you may have...
Sat 25/6 11am to 1pm Sun 26/6 1pm- 3pm
Thurs 7/7 11am to 1pm
Sat 16/7 1pm to 3pm Sun 17/7 11am to 1pm
Register your interest by emailing me at lloyd@wairere.co.nz so that we have some idea of how many could be coming. These session will be on whether its frost, rain hail or sunshine.
Three weeks since we started the roses and the bulk of them are all now done. Its just a matter of getting them into strict alphabetical order and some space between them. If you had roses on order and haven't heard from us them please contact Rose on backorders@wairere.co.nz
We even got a few stone fruit trees in this week. Because its been such a warm Autumn it hasn't been cold enough to lift trees but the ornamentals and fruits trees are meant to be starting from next week so things will be busy again getting plants into bags.
Not sure that we are going to get too much rain and dare I say that some could be good as the frost seems to dry things out. The weekend is nearly here again and its meant to be fine, so have fun in the garden.
Have a great weekend,
Lloyd, Harry and the Wairere Team
Make it a Wairere weekend where even
GNOMES know that gardening's not a drag
