Saturday 1st February, 2025
Hi
Welcome Back !!!!
Christmas, New years, school and summer holidays...let's face it, most of January here in good ole NZ is all about summer, sun and just having a great break. To that end, most of my team have also had some time away as it is good fun and important to have a break, rest, recharge and reflect on the coming year ahead. There always has to be a challenge, and a project, and so we are currently doing some planning to make 2025 a fabulous year.
Right now we have the time and opportunity to clean, waterblast and repaint all the tables and fences and do all the maintenance projects so that we head into the new year looking amazing. Of course there is always plenty of upkeep for the
roses and
trees which incudes feeding, dead heading and just sweeping the paths after all the winds that we have had. Not to mention watering, which is a constant over the summer months...after all the entire nursery is in pots.
Prior to Christmas we had a new shade house built so that we can add to our product range, particularly more
ferns and plants that like a semi-shaded environment. That started me thinking "What other specialty or plant niches could we be offering to our clients? What is coming back into fashion? Maybe it's time to have a fresh look at our website?" There literally is no end to ideas.
There is a fair amount of work that goes into the organization of forward ordering all our new season's
roses,
shrubs and
trees and this all began prior to Christmas. Our Winter indent stock of
roses,
fruit and
ornamental trees will all arrive here bare-rooted, ready for potting, in approx June and July respectively. Autumn, which isn't that far away now, will be the main season for the
Camellias,
Rhodos,
Azaleas and
Pieris. It's getting harder and harder to source good quality plants of all descriptions so jump onto the web site, see what could be available, and add them to your waitlist. If they don't appear there then send us an email to backorders@wairere.co.nz and we will search to see if they are available.
Over the next few weeks Plums, Peaches, Nectarines, Apples and Pears are all coming ripe. Bottle, preserve, make jams or just eat fresh from the tree
I love my home orchard, though I do have a few issues with possums and peacocks... I have this small dwarf
Belle de Jumet which was coming along nicely with a reasonable number of fruit and the next minute I looked there were none. When I say none, there were literally none, they were completely gone. I did spy some peacock feathers lying in the area and so concluded that they were the culprits. They had eaten the complete fruit compared to possums that tend to gnaw at the fruit, often leaving the remnants on the tree, and break branches.
Having said that, I managed to harvest a good crop of
Santa Rosa plums, with which I made gingered plum jam from Rowan Bishop's book and Oh it is so good that I made another batch... Have to share the recipe as it's too easy.
Ginger plum Conserve by Rowan Bishop 3kg plums, 1.5 kg of sugar, and 1/2 cup minced ginger (I used bottled). Slice up the plums and discard the stones. Put plums into a large pot and put on a low heat until they start to break down. My plums were quite juicy and so there was no need to add any water. Note you can use frozen plums: so if you don't have time to make this now then freeze your plums and make it when you do. It takes around 30 to 40 minutes for the plums to break down, then add the sugar and ginger and then cook quite quickly on a medium heat for approx. another 20 mins stirring regularly. Then, this is the part with which I'm not so experienced, find the setting point when the jam/conserve wrinkles on a cold plate. Finally, fill hot sterilised jars with the conserve and screw on metal lids tightly.
Black Doris plums are suggested but I imagine that any plum will give good results, though will vary in intensity of colour, texture and tang.
I have a decent crop of
Haweras coming on, and the plan is too make plum sauce again, but last year I bought a dehydrator so that I could trial making dried fruit. I'm still at the learner phase and the
Hawera plums ended up a tad wet, but another 4 hours of drying solved that. They are quite small and tangy but I thought chopped up they make make a good substitute for dried cranberries in salads.
My
Luisa plum is just laden and just coming ripe right now. Next year I think that I may have to thin the crop so that I can get bigger fruit.
Luisa is up there for me as a plum that can be eaten straight from the tree... so delicious and sweet... One for the Waitlist perhaps, so we can let you know when the new season's trees come in July. If you want one of the plums that dries to become a prune, then that's another one for the waitlist as we expect new stock of both the
Stanley and
Italian Prune Plums in Winter.
There is also fruit on my
Starkrimson Pear and they look beautiful on the tree. Sadly, they were slowly disappearing and so on principle I had to strip the tree to end up with some fruit. I think that the possums must prefer that to the apples that are coming on, though I have no doubt that these nocturnal thieves will be into these next... Moral is: in a country garden grow more than you need so you can share with the wildlife lol.
Apples are still some time away yet thank goodness, gives me some time to deal to the other fruits that are ready like the plums. Last year I successfully dehydrated apples by peeling them and thinly slicing them. One of my trees is a
Baujade, which is similar to a
Granny Smith, and the dried fruit had quite a tang and made for a great snack.
New plantings, summer watering
It's dry our there, well in the Waikato anyway, and so it's relevant to write about watering and being observant. Many plants will go into conservation mode when it gets dry, which I kind of think of as summer dormancy, and you don't need to water as you would if the plant was actively growing: you just need to give it enough to keep it ticking along until the Autumn, which isn't that far away now.
Watch out for the plantings that you may have done last Autumn, particularly if you are in a dry or drought area. Even though they were planted a while ago, they still may not have the established reserves they would need to get through a dry summer. I planted several
Liriodendrons as paddock trees and noticed that they were already getting that Autumn look, so I decided once a week to throw them a couple of buckets of water. They won't grow or change, but it should hold them until the autumn.
Then we changed our mind about our driveway trees and planted
Liquidamber Gumball and of course, being planted in summer, we do have to water them. My tips for summer watering of trees is simple. Make sure that the tree's rootball is well wet...do this by immersing in a bucket of water and waiting for the air bubbles to stop before removing and draining. Plant as normal and water the surrounding ground. That will probably last the tree at least a week without more water, unless you notice the leaves drooping. With a newly planted tree at this time of year the root mass is what usually runs out of water as it hasn't grown into the surrounding soil, so make sure that you water close to the tree and get that root ball wet again.
You can water too often and keeping constantly wet is not good either, rule of thumb perhaps a good water once a week or 10 days and know that in around 6 to 8 weeks that Autumn weather patterns should start to kick in. Off course if it rains then you may need to modify the water, but know that we need at least 20 mls to perhaps not water.
Whew it's pretty warm out there today. The ute thermo told me that it was 27 degrees out there and my phone suggests a high of 25 that feels like 26, but I reckon anything in the Waikato feels like 30 plus due to our humidity. Add to that the fact that we have made the nursery very sheltered and all the plants sit on black weed cloth and you can see we have a very warm place here in the summer. Happily, the plants don't mind the heat and we still have a good range available, including all sorts of edibles (see pictures below for examples).
Short week for some again this week, with Waitangi day on Thursday, but we will be open on Waitangi day from 8.30 to 5pm (i.e. usual hours: we need to be here to water!).
There is plenty to do this time of year in the garden. We are still getting all the hedges back into shape and the summer grasses and weeds just seem to grow at the rate of knots. I imagine that the lawns are all on a go slow and that saves one task...otherwise I imagine that most are back into a normal routine for the year.
Have a great summer weekend.
All the best from Lloyd, Tony and the Wairere team.
.jpg?t=1738284606 "Pear Starkrimson dwf (QuC)")
