Finding the perfect ground cover
HIGH-RISE CONTAINERS
Magnificent pots of what I thought were heucheras were in several Taranaki Festival gardens. I grow heucheras as ground covers in shady, damp spots where they can be overlooked. I resolved to copy the idea and lift some plants into the limelight.
After a little research I found the container show-offs were actually heucherellas, crosses between tiarellas and heucheras. The leaves are amazing – so many colours, patterns and intricate, lobed, incised shapes. View the full range at livingfashion.co.nz. Plants are available at garden centres.
Heucherellas need to be protected from the harshest afternoon sun and they need welldrained but moist soils with plenty of added compost. I’ve planted ‘Happy Hour Lime’ and ‘Alabama Sunrise’ (pictured right) in tall blue pots. The burgundy-leafed maple matches the veins of Alabama’s leaves which will apparently change colour with the seasons. I can’t wait to see what happens next.
CHECK COURGETTE PLANTS EVERY DAY
Finger-sized baby fruit turn to monster marrows in the blink of an eye.
I grew two plants from one Little Garden peat pot given away by New World. The variety is ‘Black Beauty’ which I haven’t grown before. Both plants are large, healthy and extremely productive.
There’s no sign of powdery mildew yet (fingers crossed) but in humid Auckland it’s just a matter of time. I don’t usually bother to spray – plants with a dandruff dusting of mildew still manage to produce crops. By the time the plants succumb to an ugly full-scale infection I’m tired of eating courgettes and I’m ready
to rip out the plants in favour of autumn and winter veges.
But this year I’m suffocating thrips on my vireyas with Grosafe Enspray 99 and using the leftovers of each sprayer load to give the courgettes a preventive spray. Grosafe Enspray 99 is a highpurity BioGro-certified organic spraying oil that can be used to control many sap-sucking insects and as a fungicide to target powdery mildew. The withholding period is nil which is essential for courgettes as harvesting is a daily event.
Everyone who grows courgettes needs a selection of glut-buster recipes. This pickle is a new favourite. It is delicious with cheese and crackers – in fact it is so delicious that I caught someone (you know who you are!) standing by the open fridge eating it by the spoonful straight out of the jar.
Use baby courgettes so you get neat little circular slices in the finished pickle. Don’t overdo the soaking and standing time as the veges lose their crunch.
MEMORY BANK TO CURE A MEMORY BLANK
When a friend visited my garden last month we did a slow tour, inspecting every plant. Often when she asked the names I’d have a brain fade and have to say, ‘‘I’ll look up the label – I think I’ve got it somewhere.’’
I record what I plant in my garden diary and sometimes staple in the label too. It’s not a great system because I have to remember when I planted something in order to find the name. After 13 years here, that’s a lot of pages to flick through. I don’t like the look of tags on every plant and some labels have a lot of information I want to keep.
Time for a new strategy. I’m going to staple labels onto loose pages in a ringbinder and use dividers to group the pages according to where the plant is in the garden. Loose pages will allow me to move the record from place to place if the plant gets moved or dies – both regular occurrences with a multitude of pots. A record of flowering times and when things were last pruned and fertilised would be handy too. I’d love to know how other memory -challenged gardeners cope. Email inbox@getgrowing.co.nz with your systems and ideas.