Friday 1st July, 2016
Hi
When that container of trees arrives and you first open the doors ... well it does look a tad daunting. All those plants that need to be bagged up and you have to keep their roots moist during the process. haha......not that that's been too much of a problem with this incessant rain that we have been having. We have had another awesome team on the go this year with Bev and Barb, who came back to help this year. Always makes it easier when we have some staff that have done it the year before.
We also had an Aussie/Swedish couple who were having a working holiday in NZ and the balance of the team came from the nursery. Its quite a process to sort the trees out of the container, root prune, label, scan them into stock and hand them onto the guys who bag them. This year it seemed to go like clock work and we even had two tables going with four of us potting.
Its even a bit tricky to put them down onto the ground in some sort of logical order like pears with pears and apples with apples. The reason for this difficulty is that we stock such an
extensive range of tree varieties.
Yesterday was the last day of potting the stock from the container, just had a few
Hydrangeas to complete. Now is the task of getting all the trees into alphabetical order especially the ones that we have large numbers of cultivars of... apple, pears, plums etc otherwise they are just too hard to find.
Magnolias and
Dogwoods are another good example as we must just about have every cultivar available in NZ. To give you an idea of the extensiveness of our range we have just potted 118
apple varieties which includes all the double &triple grafts and all the different rootstock variations, 39 different
plums, 36 different
pears, 29
peach varieties and that is just some of the fruit trees.
Planting a new seasons tree or shrub.
All new seasons trees that have just been potted will be loose in their bags meaning that they won't have grown new roots which would normally hold all the potting mix together. Over the next few weeks however, new fine white feeder roots will start to develop in the potting mix and this does happen quite quickly because the potting mix used is perfect for growth. I will also mention that being in a black polythene bag above the ground means that this is warmer than the ground temperature so new growth happens very quickly.
Its important to take care with a new tree/plant as you don't want to break all those new feeder roots off so at this time of year it may be relevant to cut the bag away. The potting mix we use is full of nutrients and so I recommend mixing what falls away into the planting hole with the soil. Plant immediately so that those new feeder roots don't dry out as they will dry and shrivel very quickly.
When determining how deep to plant take note of the stem and look to the colours of the stem or trunk, different colourations will indicate where the plant has previously been in the soil and often we can't bag to the correct depth as the bags are simply not deep enough. Standard roses are a good example of this as often growers grow plants on slightly different length stocks and of course insert to differing lengths in the soil and we often can't quite pot to where it was in the soil. If you look at a standard rose stem its very easy to tell where they have been in the soil previously. It is also wise to pick up your newly potted plants by the bag, rather than by the trunk at present, to ensure as little root disturbance as possible. See our facebook post for more information on the
colouration variances.
Its early but you could be sprouting those tatties
Potatoes, Spuds, Tatties... its early but these have arrived in for those that want to get an early crop in. if you put these seed potatoes in a nice light and warm position and get them to sprout prior to planting... just remember that you don't want to have a frost over their new growth not that we are looking like having any
Ang has organised a good selection. Most of the early cropping varieties are shown below, you can see all available potatoes by clicking
here.
New To Us
We have put in a '
New to Us' section on the website. You may have seen our new to us section for the roses but it will now include any new to us products as they come in. You will be able to watch this section for the NEW...Peach and Nectarine varieties coming soon....
Dig This Peach is on the market for the first time for NZ home gardeners. It is a Golden Queen look alike which has outstanding flavour, excellent fruit quality produced from a very hardy tree. Can be harvested before Golden queen. The stone is only semi cling and it is said the fruit is extremely juicy, sweet and delicious.
Maylis Nectarine is new to the market also, bought in from a French Nursery this Nectarine offers a firm white fleshed, red skined, delicious fruit. We are very privileged to be the first nursery to be offered these varieties to sell.
Strawberries are still available and we now also have sourced some Strawberry
Straw to make it easier for you to keep your strawberries free of fungus and clean so you can pick and eat. Don't forget to
feed your strawberry plants as they grow, they love their food and it will enhance the flavour of your strawberries.
Garlic is all sold out now but it was pointed out to us that the current
bulb food we have in store is great for garlic too so if you need some food to feed your garlic this is just the thing.
Rose stuff with the Rose society....
Next
Thurs at 11 a.m. we kick off with another of The Rose Society's demonstrations being held here at the nursery and everyone is welcome. The last couple have been well attended and enjoyed by all. If you haven't registered your interest please don't let that stop you coming. This is a great opportunity to find out the answers to any questions you might have on how to care for your roses.
Thurs 7/7 11am to 1pm
Sat 16/7 1pm to 3pm Sun 17/7 11am to 1pm
You can register your interest by emailing lloyd@wairere.co.nz so that we have some idea of how many could be coming. Alternatively you can indicate that you are coming to the first session by clicking the '
Going' button on the appropriate event which you can find on our
facebook page. These session will be on whether its frost, rain hail or sunshine.
There have been lots of lovely comments coming back to us about our rose posts on facebook, if you haven't seen them then give yourself a treat and check them out, they look gorgeous and it is a great place to see them all in the same
album.
We will be featuring camellias next so stay tuned and....
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.
