Preparing for garden's spring

Ruapehu Bulletin, 10 August 1990, Page 8

Preparing for garden's spring

How nice it was to see the sun again for a day or two last week, and what a difference it made to our dreary winter gardens. The ground started to dry out after all the wet weather and signs of new growth appeared.

The buds on the flowering plum 'Prunus Blieriana' are showing a deep rose pink and are thick along the length of all the branches. It will be a glorious sight this year. Buds are swelling on the magnolias and the first flowers opening on the camellia 'Donation'. 'Barbara Clark' and 'Spring Fes-

tival' will not be far behind. Such days make one long to abandon everything else and spend long hours in the garden clearing away the ravages of witer and replanting for the spring. Now is a good time to give camellias, rhododendrons, azaleas, and other acid loving plants

by Bea Barnes a dressing of a balanced acid plant food. If your camellias and daphne are showing a yellowing of the leaves this may help to restore the rich green of healthy foliage and promote flowering. The polyanthus are making such a brave show now. A feed of dried blood or well dried cow manure will help to keep those flowers coming along. Pick off

the dead heads of the spent flowers and give the emerging buds a chance to open. Lilacs will appreciate a light sprinkle of lime around the roots but take care if you have any lime-hat-ing plants nearby. Compost If your garden is anything like ours there will be barrow loads of weeds to clear after all the rain. Hard weeds

such as dock and sorrel, also any of the invasive rooting variety, should be discarded and preferably burned but soft weeds such as chickweed and groundsel and all the little shallow rooted kinds will serve to make excellent compost. With well chopped vegetable waste, small amounts of used straw (not too much as straw takes a long time to

break down) and spreading of superphosphate to every few layers of new material to help the speed of breakdown process. Every few weeks turn the heap over thoroughly with the garden fork and it is advisable to cover the top with a sheet of plastic or anything which will keep out the rain. The material needs to be damp but not water - logged. A little effort now will give some good rich compost for use later in the year. As the ground is cleared and lightly forked or hoed over to let in the sun and air, a good dressing of a general garden fertilizer will help to put back some of the nourishment leached away by the winter rains. If you have access to well dried animal manure it will make a good dressing with the additon of a few handfuls of Blood and Bone or, we often use the pelletised 'Garden Galore'. Be careful when clearing around the camellias. They send up feeder roots quite close to the surface of the soil and hate having their roots disturbed. Empty spaces Having done all the necessary clearing we come to all those lovely empty spaces. In a week or two as the ground

warms up a little these can be filled with all the summer annuals which give such a wonderful display of colour later on. I hope I can unearth some nice large empty spaces. I have my eye on one or two lovely flowering shrubs or small trees I should love to plant if I can find room for them. Cercis chinensis 'Avondale' is one described in the catalogue as "a selected form of the Chinese rosebud." It flowers in October with magenta pea-shaped blossom in great profusion. It is very hardy, grows to about three metres tall with a spread of about two metres. The other is a shrub I mentioned the other week 'Prunus Glandulosa Rosea Plena'. A lovely little shrub growing only 1-1. 5m in height with a similar spread and dainty rose pink blossoms cover the bush in spring. Another I would dearly love to have is the autumn flowering cherry 'Prunus Subhertella Autumnalis Rosea'. A small tree with dainty blush pink flowers which appear intermittently through the winter in milder periods finishing with a good display in the spring. Marvellous for cut flowers for indoor decoration.