Plant Spotting

Regal Lily

Christmas Lily in New Zealand as it flowers right on Christmas day each year.

Lettuce.

This summer mainstay of new Zealand meals is a must to grow in every garden.

Today of course there are many many varieties to chose from, especially if we include all the “modern” varieties that make up a very wide group of similar but different plants.

Flavours are also different from spicy peppery flavours to the typical traditional crunch lettuce flavour.

Different varieties grow better at different times of the year. The traditional method of telling apart winter and summer lettuce was  by colour of the seed. Black seed were winter lettuce and white seed summer lettuce.

Whatever varieties you choose there are some simple growing tips.

As a leafy vegetable it requires a higher nitrogen component of soil fertility and they are best grown in ground previously used for legumes such as peas and beans. Soil should also be friable and easily cultivated. The addition of natural products like compost and blood and bone will provide extra nitrogen.

If growing from seed only sow a few seeds each week or two or else there will be more than enough plants for the whole neighbourhood. Grow on until a reasonable size to plant out.

Plant them 300 to 400mm apart in rows. The use of double rows with plants staggered saves garden space. Some experimental work in England showed quite close planting will result in more volume of lettuce per squre metre even if the plants were smaller when picked.

Water the lettuce really well during is growth.

Unfortunately there are a number of pests  that affect them. Slugs love lettuce therefore keep weeds at bay and allow the ground to dry a little before watering. In the last few years our lettuce have become infected with aphids. If this si a problem experiment with planting different varieties to identify those that are less palatable to aphids and grow them.

Pick straight from the garden wash, cool in the fridge and serve with your meal.

Courgettes and Zucchinis

It is suggested that this group of plants originated from a wild plant called Cucurbita pepo. In our gardens today we know it as Courgettes, zucchinis or marrow. They come in various sizes and shapes and colours.

While they can come in trailing or bush types the main ones grown today are the bush type. They are practical and fit well in the modern small garden. While there are different colours, mainly green and yellow, it is the green ones that are the best known.

People get confused about what to call these things that all come off the same bush. Simply the small ones cut very early, say up to 125mm long, are Courgettes, and up to half grown they are zucchinis and full grown are marrows. However zucchinis that grow up to about 250mm are the best. Any larger they are starting to turn into marrows. It is easy to tell when they are turning to marrows as the centre of the fruit starts to get pithy and the immature seeds are quite visible. Location and sunlight may dictate earlier maturity in some locations.

Regular picking, often daily, will encourage further fruiting. Letting some fruits grow into marrows will slow down fruit production.

Plant out up to six plants for a family and if there is only tow of you 3-4 plants is sufficient. Choose a sunny well drained space and plant quite a distance apart as these plants can get quite big, say up to 600mm across. Once growing well they should fruit quickly and regularly.

Pick the fruit daily if needed and if not used place in the cool part of your fridge for later use.

Courgettes and zucchinis make a great summer vegetable. Wash and cook in a little butter in a fry pan. Or cook with chopped onions and if needed add some tomato pieces. It is versatile and easy.

Dealing with excess fruit is a bit more difficult depending upon your taste. Frozen pieces of zucchini are in my view quite tasteless and go watery very quickly. One solution when you have excess tomatoes and zucchinis is to boil up the tomatoes, pulp them and re heat adding grated zucchini and cook quickly.  When cooler place the mixture of tomato and zucchini in pots and freeze. It makes a great base for soup and stir fry or mince dishes in winter.

The new century is 10 years old.

As we move into the 10 year of the new century it is timely to look back to where we have come from and into the future and where we would like to be.  Horticulturally speaking that may be interesting.

Looking back Christchurch has bought the Ellerslie Garden Show and the first one has been held in Hagley Park. The CHS won a Gold medal. Also we have seen an upsurge in home gardening mainly in the vegetable production area as people cope with the recession. Biodiversity was a catch cry to win the hearts and minds of people to help retain our natural heritage and recently the term sustainability has been on everyone’s lips. Climate change and global warming have provided some interesting dialogue with some predicting disaster and others suggesting a warmer climate will be great for gardeners.

Garden centres have closed and big box retailing has increased their presence selling trees shrubs and plants. The Christchurch Botanic gardens announced a $10m build for a new visitor centre and nursery complex. The Festival of Flowers is 20 years old. Public trees in Christchurch have been subject to a removal system as they are getting “to old” and there has been a rise in the number of people requesting trees to be removed.

For the future we need to think about what we would like Christchurch to look like, what kinds of plants we want to grow in our gardens and how we enjoy our gardens.

We do know that there are a lot of people going t retire in the next 10 years – baby boomers. They are well educated, reasonably well off, very healthy and may have a green ethic. So what may happen in 10 years time? Ellerslie Garden Show may still be around but not in the form that we see it now and with a name change. Home gardens will flourish and we will continue to see an increase in the amount of vegetables, fruits and salads growing in our gardens. Unfortunately the variety of ornamental plants will narrow in choice as the big box retailing continue to sell easy to propagate, easy and fast to grow plants for a quick turnaround and fast profit to the detriment of all NZ gardens.

With the removal and replanting of urban trees we may see these trees better looked after only if the Council and is advisors rethink a tree  planting and management policy and procedure or we will see a further demise in our trees.

The Botanic gardens will have its new visitor centre and we hope it may be a stimulus for the further development of gardening, horticulture and community pride in Christchurch.

Sustainability, Climate Change and Global Warming

Fresh water is vital to humans as well as to all plants, animals, insects, birds and freshwater creatures. It is one of the major international, national and local issues of the world. Fresh water for drinking  is vital for human survival as it is also vital for the growth of our food crops, meat and poultry. The higher quality the water the better the end product. Retention of our fresh water sources and resources must take top priority for the future of our civilisation.

Energy in all its forms are essential for us to continue to live in the manner in which we want to become accustomed with access to all the mod cons, entertainment and communication devices we can afford. Unfortunately global warming is a result of the  consumption of oil, coal, wood and other combustible products which have led to global warming and climate change which is now a main stream school of thought however the public discussion is still limited to those who want action and those who do not want action.

Population growth has continued to change the way in which we live. More people, more land for housing etc, more food, more  consumer products all adds up to more production, imports/exports and waste. Consumerism is still with us and getting stronger as technology develops faster than we can wear out our  purchases.

Collectively we all wish to see ourselves, our children and others in the world living a “better” life. Yet the would globally is facing huge challenges about how to deal with all these global happenings. Additionally people are trying to tackle these one at a time which only gets traction from time to time when politicians are listening.

This week a number of the worlds most powerful business leaders suggested that some of these are the biggest issues in the world to be resolved and they are important to business and to the world.

A recent spotlight on Denmark shows that as a country they have set about tackling a few of these issues like transport and energy with the bicycle now being one of the most preferred forms of transport and wind power a major source of energy.

The answer is not just one thing it is a variety of things that are all interrelated into the way in which we have developed our lifestyle. As some say there is no “silver bullet”. If fact it is more likely to be many small and larger changes that will enable us to develop ways to conserve this world for ourselves and our future generations.

When thinking about dams being created to store water, large tracts of good quality land being carved up for housing or  new form of waste disposal taking a larger tract of land, to more roads being created I think about a few words my Uncle used to say “You know Alan, they are not making any more land”. How true.

Here in New Zealand we still take an old fashioned approach to storing water by suggesting we create dams across rivers and valley entrance ways to create artificial lakes. Rivers, riverbeds and their valleys are a supreme source of biodiversity. Damming them is like killing nature.

We build more roads because we want to get more people some where faster even when there is a clear body of evidence that alternate transport  options are much better.

We build more subdivisions because it appears to be the only way we know to design living spaces rather than taking a community led approach we take a developer led approach and we get the housing a developer thinks we should have rather than something better.

We buy more stuff because we are told it is good for you yet in many cases we know it is not. Imported stuff costs something to make and something to get it to NZ all the time using energy resources.

 Lets just take the water issue. So what is the answer? There is no one big answer but there are a lot of little answers. Conservationists have for years argued that damming rivers is wrong because of the very high biodiversity social and cultural values. Using ground water at increasing rates  of extraction is likely to see a reduction in underground water stores in the very near future and if we are lucky it will not be contaminated.

We do need to think about this differently. Maybe the newly proposed Water Resources Strategy will help. The only problem with that is will it be accepted, will it provide the frame work for good decisions, can it change direction or stop things when the evidence is clear there is a problem or will we use it  as a tool to continue doing the same thing. Plans are OK but people make decisions based on those plans. If the decisions are wrong because we ignore a good plan we have a problem.

As my uncle said “they are not making any more land” lets take that a step further and say “they are not making any more land, rivers, forests, birds, animals and nature”. We have to work together to get it right now.