Tui HQ

The tui are back!

Unfortunately, this isn’t a  very good photo of a tui in a large banksia tree. The trees are full of these marvellous birds, a real sign for us that autumn is here. They stay until the end of spring and then head off to goodness knows where before returning in late autumn for the banksia flowers.

A tui in a banksia tree. Photo: Sandra Simpson

I’m sure they know when I’ve arrived with my camera and keep high in the trees, laughing their heads off!

Tui are well known to have “dialects” and ours are pretty raucous – coughing, wheezing, rattling, rusty gate – without too much melody, but I wouldn’t have them any other way.

They chase each other at speed through the trees, someone once described them to me as “boy racers”, saying they were like teenagers trying out their speed and skill – and they’ll gang up on other birds too.

Read more about tui, Prosthermadera novaeseelandiae, and hear some of their song, here.

Last week I heard an unusual call from our oak tree – sort of like a rosella (which we’ve got used to now as they’ve setlled in) but not really. I wandered around under the tree for a bit trying to spot it, but couldn’t. And then a couple of tui arrived and sent it packing and gave me a glorious view of the orange underwings of a kaka (Nestor meridionalis).

About 10 years ago we had kaka coming across from Mayor Island each winter but they haven’t been in our garden or street for about five years, so it was exciting to see one back, even if just for a short time.

In fact, when I took the photo of the tui yesterday, the street’s sky was full of swallows darting all about, honey bees, bumblebees, tui and monarch butterflies. Lovely.

Flowering now

My Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera) was given to me years ago by an elderly cousin but I haven’t treated it very well over the years (pleased to say I have treated the cousin better).

A couple of years ago I got organised and gave everything in pots fresh mix. My reward has been seeing everything pep up – and this plant is back in to flowering.

Christmas cactus in the Southern Hemisphere flower in winter. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Through the summer I was given some pieces of Zygocactus, which are part of the same family but have much bigger flowers. They’ve been growing well so fingers crossed for flowers towards the end of winter or into spring.

Although these plants are called “cactus”, they’re not desert plants but instead come from the humid jungles of Brazil (and they sometimes have just a few spines at the very base of the plant – more noticeable as they age).

Zygocactus flowers coming into bloom. Photo: Sandra Simpson

This pink and red flower is a stunner. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Here & there

Been out to McLaren Falls Park this morning, beautiful blue sky, sunshine and gorgeous autumn colours. Now it’s clouded over and feeling like there’s rain in the air.

Autumn seems to have sneaked up on me this year – the still-hot days are confusing, but the trees know what they’re doing and the colours are stunning. Some trees have already turned and shed, others have yet to colour up. The red maple beside the lake at Cherry Bay, a favourite of photographers, isn’t quite at its peak yet, but it’s only a matter of days.

I glimpsed a burst of colour up on Pin-oak Flat when I stopped to look at a claret ash (dashed hard to photograph those trees) so followed a sheep track and went closer. A Liquidamber that was a real picture, and low enough for me to photograph.

Park ranger Gary Borman says it’s a “magic” tree and despite the fact that it’s partly fallen over he’s kept it because of its colour.

The photogenic Liquidamber. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Sorry that you didn’t go to the Melbourne Garden Show this year? Well, Sydney is staging its first major garden show – just announced and taking place in early September so they haven’t given themselves much time.

The Australian Garden Show Sydney (shades of the  New Zealand Garden and Artfest, held in Tauranga) will be in Centennial Park “less than 5km from the city centre”. Wny do people have to give their events such grandiose names? Everyone will call it the Sydney Garden Show so why not go with that from the start?

Flowering now

The garden is a strange mixture of things at the moment – some stubbornly holding on from summer (eggplants), some flowering out of season (clivia) and some saying, yes, winter’s almost here.

The gardenia is flowering as well now as it did through the summer. Photo: Sandra Simpson

The gardenia came with the house, has been shifted a couple of times (in and out of the same spot) and at the beginning of summer was covered in yellow leaves. Years ago I was told that people used to bury iron chains when planting gardenias to stop the leaves yellowing and since than have also been advised that Epsom salts does the trick.

So, being a belt and braces kind of girl, I dosed it with both – iron chelates in case it was iron deficiency and Epsom salts in case it was magnesium deficiency. Whichever it was, or maybe both, it has worked and a bush that was starting to look past its best has regenerated beautifully.

It coped without much water through the summer, although flowering was limited, but has burst into bloom again after the recent rains.

Here’s another “at risk” plant, a sweet pink-flowered camellia. Why? Because the Vege Grower wants it gone.

Finally able to show off its charms, Camellia Apple Blossom. Photo: Sandra Simpson

The poor thing was only ever “temporarily” planted by a big, white-flowered, late-flowering camellia. Well, you know how that goes. It’s now a small tree that for too long has been hidden behind a big tree (taken out late last year). This year it’s flowering its little heart out. The pale pink blooms have an intriguing spicy fragrance.

I’m always slightly disappointed by Haemanthus albliflos. I’ve seen photos of much bigger flowerheads so may need to pay attention to cultivation. Bulbs for New Zealand Gardeners by Jack Hobbs and Terry Hatch (Godwit, 1994) recommends a light dressing of sulphate of potash to enhance the quality of the flowers. However, the bulbs are multiplying nicely and I do have a number of flowers this year.

Haemanthus albiflos, an autumn-flowering bulb. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Haemanthus coccineus is far more striking – red flowers that come up before the leaves. The white version has its wide strappy leaves and flowers at the same time.

And finally, this flower – not sure what it is, except that it looks like an iris. The flowers are on very short stems and sit beneath the foliage, which is quite grass-like. This is another clump of something that’s been put in a spot “temporarily”. The poor thing does quite well, regardless.

It would be nice beside a path so passersby can look down on the flowers.

Any ideas?

Update: The plant has been identified as  Iris unguicularis, possibly Mary Barnard

Adela’s Simple Life

I see that Athenree Homestead is doing Devonshire Teas for Mothers’ Day (Sunday, May 12, in case you’ve missed the advertising) and have posted details on the Events page.

So it’s a good chance to share some garden-related excerpts from My Simple Life in New Zealand by Adela Stewart,the homestead’s first resident. The book was published in England in 1908.

1880: I got from an old friend in Auckland a present of cuttings and plants, which Agnes and I had a busy time putting in – geraniums, pelargoniums, heliotropes, penstemons, ageratums, hydrangeas, escallonias, deutzias, mesembryanthemums, guelder roses, laurels, oxalis, roses, arums, ixias, agapanthus – a splendid contribution, most of which grew well and helped to convert our wilderness into a garden.

[I had to look up mesembryanthemum – ice plants; guelder rose is another name for Viburnum opulus.]

1881: Some of our garden experiences were very successful, others quite the reverse; but we learnt to bear our disappointments philosophically, though perhaps not quite calmly, when we found that our newly purchased calves had broken through the post and wire fence and had eaten all the garden cabbages, etc. Hugh, seeing my grief, immediately repaired the fence, so we had peace, but not plenty, for a time.

In those early years we had wonderful crops of tomatoes, far better than in later years with more care and cultivation. For instance, on September 23rd, 1880, I sowed in a drill in the garden one ounce of Carter’s large red tomato seed; began transplanting them from October 20th to November 17th, on the latter date putting in 700 plants in the cropping-field which … grew at their own sweet will, without pruning or staking … and beginning in February continued till April to yield such a crop that they were brought home in wheelbarrows, sometimes in a dray, and I made many gallons of tomato sauce (selling some of it at 1s. 6d. a quart bottle), chutneys and jams, the latter flavoured with lemon or ginger.

A few pages further on Adela records making 287lbs of strawberry jam, 407lbs of peach jam “in that hottest of months” (February) and 760lbs of tomato and pumpkin jam. “Thus I was prepared for a siege and stood it.”

A 2011 reprint of the book is available from the Mural Centre and Craft Shop, Main Rd, Katikati with proceeds going to the project to restore Athenree Homestead, built by Hugh and Adela and their son Mervyn after arriving in New Zealand with a group of Ulster Irish settlers in 1878. The group was led by George Vesey Stewart, Adela’s brother-in-law. Hugh and Adela named their new home after his home village in Ireland (Athenrey)

Hugh and Adela lived at Athenree from 1878 to 1906, then returning to England. Hugh died in 1909 and Adela returned to Katikati for a visit the following year. A ball was held to mark her return to the area – she left early, feeling unwell, and returned to her sister-in-law’s home (Twickenham Homestead, currently for sale), dying shortly after. She is buried in Katikati Cemetery.

See a photograph of Hugh and Adela here and the murals in Katikati that show Adela and Athenree Homestead.

Pesky pests II

Autumn is when we set to and tidy up the left-overs of summer, and what a summer it’s been with dry weather and hot days extending right into April, notwithstanding two days of torrential downpours in the middle of the month.

And while we’re out cutting back, pruning, weeding and so on, keep an eye out for these little blighters, the eggs of the passionvine hopper (Scolypopa australis).

Photo: Sandra Simpson

These eggs have been laid to overwinter and hatch as those madly hopping “fuyffybums” in spring which then turn into “lace-wing moths”, except they’re not moths at all, but double-whammy bugs – they suck ferociously at both stages and the hoppers excrete honeydew which attracts sooty mould, as well as ants and bees.

The egg stage is their weak link (as anyone who has tried to spray them or squash them knows) – by cutting them out now you’ll have fewer pests to contend with in spring and summer.

The eggs are laid in a straight line in twiggy material of all sorts – old daylily and alstroemeria stems (and the like), fuchsias, roses, hydrangeas. I’ve even found some in a decaying rhubarb stalk. Once you’ve spotted a couple of infested twigs, you’ll see them all over the garden.

The twigs must be destroyed (burned), not composted.

I have seen the passionvine hopper mentioned in connection with the disease that started killing cabbage trees in the North Island in 1987 so they can clearly carry problems with them too.

Go forth, seek and destroy! Good hunting, comrades …

Pesky pests I

Funny how one thing leads to another …

I posted a comment on the Garden Dum website (based in Australia) to the effect that the yellow and black ladybirds (Illeis galbula) we find on cucurbit leaves and that are thought to control powdery mildew, actually spread it, don’t they?

The article author, Jennifer Stackhouse, politely queried where I might have got such an odd notion from, so I linked to this Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture article about powdery mildew by Jane Wrigglesworth that says: “But if you think these beetles will help control powdery mildew, think again. They actually carry spores of the disease under their wings from plant to plant.”

I also quoted from the 2005 book, Backyard Battlefield (Random House), by entomologist Ruud Kleinpaste who says, “Sadly, observing these elegant creatures in my veggie garden I think I have gathered enough evidence to accuse them of spreading the fungus from leaf to leaf and plant to plant.”

Illeis galbula on a courgette leaf. Photo: Sandra Simpson

So far, so good. Jennifer double-checked my information against that available in Australia and came back with information from Denis Crawford, an insect photographer and garden writer.

“I have heard this story before,” Denis says, “but it is not supported by any scientific literature I can find.” He quotes an excerpt from a paper (one of the few, he says) which examines the biology and behaviour of the fungus-eating ladybird Illeis galbula:

“Feeding behaviour is remarkably uniform, both larvae and adults graze fungal spores and hyphae from surfaces of leaves. When Oidium sp. is dense, they feed on a front and visibly clear large areas of the leaf’s white fungal covering; if infestation is light, both larvae and adults search leaf surfaces at random and if nothing is found, adults fly off.”

Denis suggests it may be possible that the beetles spread the fungus as would any other insect which walks over the spores and moves to another leaf, as would water drops, wind, etc. “The ladybirds almost certainly do more good than harm.”

So I contacted Murray Dawson, RNZIH webmaster, to share this information and wonder if he knew any more … and Murray was kind enough to let me know that Denis who, it turns out, is writing a book on garden insects had also been in touch seeking clarification.

I wonder if it’s one of those things that has been said often enough that people now accept that the ladybirds spread the fungus, and repeat it as a truth to other gardeners. If any readers have any ideas or knowledge, I’d be pleased to hear them. Just click on the “reply” tag underneath this post.

PS (May 5): In the latest edition of the weekly Get Growing email newsletter I find Lynda Hallinan also repeating the story that the ladybirds are pests.