Central’s Tips

June 2023

The fruit and vegetable garden

• Gather up fallen leaves or old fruit from beneath feijoas and pip and stone fruit trees to avoid overwintering pest and diseases. Add a layer of mulch around them to limit weed growth

• Don’t forget to harvest! Bok choy, broccoli and spinach and even leeks can run to seed quickly. If there’s plenty ready at once, distribute them round the neighbourhood, or make lots of soup

• Jack Frost can damage passionfruit vines, citrus and tamarillo trees if they’re in an exposed area. Try using liquid frost spray over their foliage or, newspaper or frost cloth are cheap and easy options on still, cold nights

• Order new season’s fruit trees such as apples, pears, plums, and peaches. If space is limited in the garden, check that your desired tree is self-fertile or source one that is grafted with two varieties to ensure it produces fruit

• Garlic is traditionally planted on the shortest day of the year –check that each clove is free of disease and intact before planting

The ornamental garden

• Order oriental or Asiatic lily bulbs – they’re an easy-to-grow investment for the garden. Smaller forms are excellent in pots and will re-flower around Christmas time for years and years.

fundraising bringing the final total to $8420. Other groups interested in fundraising are invited to contact the store for more information. The Warehouse will provide the BBQ and the gas bottles, as well as a few of its own Market Kitchen sauces.

Matakana School also benefitted from the opening celebration with a $1000 shopping spree for its school fundraising auction.

• Plants with blackened leaves – ferns, coastal astelias, pukas and renga renga lilies will have been burnt by frost. It’s best to leave damaged top leaves on the plant until spring, to protect the fresh foliage beneath

• Increasingly NZ gardeners are planting leucadendons and proteas from South Africa. Showy in winter, these plants can resist summer heat and seem to cope in wet clay over winter. They’re available from now on, just don’t fertilise, as they don’t like it

• Winter pruning of deciduous trees is best done once the leaves have fallen. Remove lower branches on the trunks if a formal specimen is required, and take out crowded, crossing branches in the centre of the tree.

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Lyn Hamilton-Hunter www.tossi.org.nz

Planting, planting and more planting!

It’s the time of year when community groups, parks and reserves are organising their planting days. The winter months are traditionally the preferred time of year because the ground is moist and the trees get a good start. Ironically, this year we could have been planting since the end of last planting season. However, the bountiful rainfall has meant that the Tāwharanui planting in swede paddock last year is looking amazing. Since its inception over 20 years ago, Tossi has been planting all manner of native of species. In our first year, seeds were collected from the park, propagated, raised, and then subsequently planted in 2003, and so it began. There is a vast array of natives that were raised from eco-sourced seeds. Large numbers of flax, cordylines, manuka and kanuka are easily seen. Then, in smaller pockets, on dunes or in wetlands you can find mahoe, five finger, karamu, puriri, pingao grasses, kahikatea and pohutukawa. Public planting days have been organised over the last 16 years – over 70 planting days with hundreds of volunteers. This probably conservatively represents the equivalent of 7000 planter days! The main species used are manuka, kanuka and flax, as these lend themselves very well as nursery crops. They encourage wildlife to come to the land, drop seeds from other species that then naturally germinate under cover of the nursery canopy. It also brings in the beneficial bugs to the soil that go on to create a permeable forest floor for sustaining life.

On asking a long-standing volunteer to comment on the number of trees planted in this time, the estimate is over 300,000, equivalent to 35 hectares or six per cent of the park. Quite something! In essence then, the more native species we can get in the ground and allow to bloom and grow, the more native wildlife we can support and attract. This year we are heading to the West End, and our public planting season is underway, with one down and two to go. If you, a group of you or your family feel like doing your part, check out who’s holding planting days in your area, or join us at Tāwharanui on July 2 or August 6. If you wish to find out more about being part of Tossi, contact news@tossi.org.nz

Dancing is a great way to socialise and keep fit at the same time.