Advice. Ideas.

Inspiration

Anita’s Garden
Volume 4, Issue 42 22 July 2022

Useful Links Editorial

Webpage

Blog Welcome to the forty second issue
of my newsletter for Volume 4.
Newsletter back issues
I hope you have all had a good week.
Facebook
Mine has been very busy as usual.
Instagram Here is what I have done.
2. Pruning back our raspberries
and brambles
This is best done in winter when they
are dormant.
3. Planting broad beans

Twitter 1. Planting another new rose We had so many that it took me the
entire long weekend to plant them out.
Pinterest Last week, I added Cappucino to our
rose garden. Earlier in the week, I 4. Saving chilli seeds
planted A Gardener’s Dream, which I
Contact me requested from Palmers in Remuera. I removed some fruit from our plants
and will extract the seeds after they dry
 Feedback a bit
 Newsletter input Things to do
(tips, recipes, gar-
den photos etc)  Planting leek seedlings I raised
from seed in autumn
 To be added to my
mailing list  Planting more brassicas I raised
from seed
anitakundu.nz@gmail.com
Blog

You can read my gardening blog here.

Inside this issue: My latest post is about my winter gar-
dening activity.

Social media
P ot te r ing aro u nd 2
Anita’s Garden I have a Facebook page called Anita’s
Garden and maintain an active Insta-
gram account, too.
Top 5 gardening tasks 2 Collaborations
for the week
I have the following collaborations:

 Italian Seeds Pronto

Collaboration news 2
 Awapuni

 Bulbs Direct

If you are interested in collaborating

Anita’s guide to growing 3
dahlias: Part II with me, please get in touch by email.

Have a great weekend.

Anita Kundu
PAGE 2
Pottering around Anita’s Garden
I picked this bunch of jonquils
over the weekend. We have been
lucky to have a continuous supply
of jonquils since May. As you can
see, we have had the odd yellow
one, which brings a bit of colour to
the bouquet. Some of our snow-
flakes (lecojums) have started to
flower too, which is nice. I am
looking forward to our daffodils
flowering later on this season.
Top 5 gardening tasks for the week
1. Plant new roses
They are available in garden cen-
tres now.
2. Plant lily bulbs
Bulbs Direct have a great range.
3. Weeding
It’s a good idea to keep on top of
weeds.
Collaboration news
Italian Seeds Pronto stock a lovely
range of eggplants seeds. There is
Tonda Bianca, Prosperosa and Vio-
letta Lunga. All of them are cur-
rently in stock on the website.
Gillian kindly gave me one packet
of each last year, which I safely
put away for sowing this spring. I
find that eggplants do very well in
35 litre containers in full sun.
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
This is the rose Absolutely Fabu-
lous. As you can see, it really lives
up to its name. It is nice to see so
much colour in the garden at this
time of the year
4. Spray roses and fruit
trees with lime sulphur
I personally find this a highly ef-
fective way to combat fungal dis-
eases later on in the year, when
the weather warms up. I always
make sure to spray our passion-
fruit vine too, as that is very prone
to brown spot in summer. The fruit
becomes discoloured and falls off
the vine prematurely.
Bulbs Direct will be launching
their range of dahlias on 1st July.
Kayne told me that they have
brought a new supplier from the
Netherlands on board this year so
he has added lots of popular and
highly sought after varieties to the
catalogue. I advise you to be quick
in making your purchase as some
varieties will sell out fast if previ-
ous seasons are anything to go by.
V O LU M E 4 , I S S U E 4 2
This is another yellow rose in
our garden called Golden
Gift. It was suggested to me
by Nick, who used to be the
assistant manager of Kings
Plant Barn in Botany.
5. Order dahlias
Bulbs Direct are taking preorders
on 1st July for delivery later in the
year. I have had a look at the new
catalogue, which Kayne is still in
the process of uploading. There are
so many lovely varieties available.
I covered some of the ones I recom-
mend from the new range in last
week’s newsletter on page 3.
Awapuni have all your favourite
winter veggie seedlings in stock,
including broad beans, broccoli,
broccolini, cabbage, cauliflower,
kale, lettuce, pak choy, peas, sil-
verbeet and spinach. They also
have a great range of herbs, in-
cluding catnip, coriander, dill,
mint, oregano, parsley (curly and
flat leaf), sage and thyme.
 V O LU M E 4 , I S S U E 4 2
Anita’s guide to growing dahlias: Part II
This is the second part in a series
about growing dahlias. I know it
is very early to be thinking about
growing dahlias. In fact, I only just
finished lifting mine last month.
What prompted me to write this
article was Bulbs Direct, who will
be releasing their dahlia catalogue
online on 1st July. Kayne and the
team have an even bigger selection
this year and there are tons of ex-
citing new varieties available.
Kayne told me that this is because
they have brought a new supplier
from the Netherlands on board to
help satisfy customer requests for
highly sought after varieties.
Last week I covered some highly
recommended varieties from the
new catalogue which I have grown
in our garden in previous years.
This week, it seems logical to dis-
cuss the issue of whether to lift
your dahlias or not if you haven’t
already done so, and provide some
tips for storage. There is a bit of a
debate about this among garden-
ers. Some do, others don’t. But be
warned that if you leave your tu-
bers in the ground and it rains
heavily in your area over winter
and the ground gets very cold, you
do run the risk of them rotting.
Lifting your dahlias also makes it
possible to divide them. Some peo-
ple like to do it immediately, oth-
ers prefer to wait until spring
when they start sprouting and it is
easier to see the “eyes”. Without a
visible eye, a dahlia will not grow.
But experts such as the owners of
mail order bulb suppliers know
how to do this when the tubers are
dormant. I myself prefer to wait
until spring so I can see where to
make the division. Lifting your
dahlias also allows you to inspect
them and assess whether any have
gall. You can also see whether you
lost any to rot in summer and au-
tumn, and whether you need to
reorder them when tuber sales
commence.
I recommend using a garden fork
rather than a spade to lift dahlias.
It’s best to start some distance
A NI T A ’ S G A R D E N
away from the tuber as you don’t
know how big it will be and you
don’t want to accidentally damage
it. You’ll know if you’re too far
away as you won’t see any sign of
the tuber as you dig. You can
slowly work your way in. This is
not something you want to do in a
hurry! Allow plenty of time for lift-
ing your dahlias as they are pre-
cious. Some varieties such as the
Labyrinth have become very rare
and cannot be easily replaced.
When I lifted our dahlias, I stored
them as I went along. This year, I
have used our greenhouse for stor-
ing last year’s tubers, as there is
no space in our garage. I filled
some plastic Sistema crates with
old potting mix and sawdust. I
then placed the tubers inside and
covered them with sawdust. Each
tuber was already labelled at the
time of planting and the labels
remain on them in storage. I wrote
the name of each variety on some
pink flagging tape (available from
Bunnings) and tied it to the base of
the plant as it grew.
Some of our dahlias in storage
Dahlia tubers need to be misted
with a spray bottle filled with wa-
ter regularly otherwise they risk
drying out. If this happens, they
won’t be viable. Check on the tu-
bers regularly for any sign of rot or
disease (including gall). I don’t
cover the crates with lids but if you
live in a very cold region you might
want to consider doing this.
As the weather warms up, your
tubers will wake up and start
sprouting. Don’t be concerned if it
takes awhile for this to happen.
PAGE 3
Some of my dahlias only started
sprouting in November. Last year
I stored my tubers in our garage as
we didn’t have that many, and it
was quite cool so that might be
why it took such a long time for
them to start sprouting. Because
the greenhouse is much warmer, I
wouldn’t be surprised if they start
waking up earlier this year.
Once your tubers start sprouting,
you can divide them if there is
more than one eye on the tuber.
To do this, I use a paring knife. I
got mine from Mitre 10. I think it
was around $10. Now is the per-
fect time to swap and share tubers
with other gardeners.
From here, you have two options.
When it warms up sufficiently
(usually this is around Labour
Weekend in NZ), you can either
plant your tubers direct to the
ground or put them in pots to grow
first and then transplant them
into the garden. The latter reduc-
es the likelihood of rot. We had a
lot of rain in early November last
year so I wanted to wait until it
had ceased before planting out my
tubers. Doing this also gives you
the opportunity to inspect your
tubers prior to planting incase any
have gall, in which case you would
want to throw them away.
Some gardeners prefer potting up
their dahlias as they feel that it
gives them a head start versus
planting the tubers direct to the
ground. I potted up all my tubers
last year and will do so again this
year. It worked really well. There
were one or two that looked like
they had gall or another disease so
I safely discarded them without
them coming into contact with the
ground and spreading the disease.
If it is in a pot, it is at least con-
tained.
Next week I will cover tips for
planting dahlias.
Happy gardening!
Have a great weekend