Pruning Up High, Growing Fruit Trees, and Gifting Gerberas

What’s On The Show Today?

How to prune in high places, part 1, in Tool Time, growing fruits from seed in Vegetable Heroes; continuing the series on mass planting with Garden Designer Peter Nixon in Design elements, and talking about one of the top 5 cut  flowers, the Gerbera in Talking Flowers.

TOOL TIME

High Reach Pruning Part 1

Now’s a good time of the year to do a bit of pruning, wherever you live in Australia.
Sometimes though our garden gets away from us because we all lead busy lives, and can’t fit enough things in the day.

The problem is, there are some branches of either a shrub or a tree, that are quite high up.
So how do we prune this safely, and if possible, without getting up on a ladder.
Let’s find out…

I'm talking with Tony Mattson General Manager of www.cutabovetools.com.au

Just in case you’re thinking of getting up on a ladder, is a couple of information from Staysafe NSW, which I’m sure will apply to all states.
Only use ladders for simple access jobs, or for a short duration.
It’s best to work from ground level whenever possible.
If you must use a ladder:
Always maintain three point of contact with the ladder. This means two hands and one foot, or two feet and one hand on the ladder at all times.
Never lean or reach away from the ladder while using it. 

Tony suggests that tie the ladder to the tree so that it won't move.
The staysafe link:

http://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/health-and-safety/safety-topics-a-z/ladders

Instead of ladders consider the different types of pole pruners.

Keep in mind that you'll be holding it up for a period of time so choose one that suits your strength capability.
If you have any questions about high reach pruning why not email us realworldgardener@gmail.com or write in to 2RRR PO Box 644 Gladesville NSW 1675

VEGETABLE HEROES

Growing Fruit Trees From Seed

Is growing fruit trees from seed just something for kids or is it something that we can do ourselves?

But if we grow it ourselves from seed, is it going to be useful?
That’s a good question and something that is hard to answer because it all depends on what seed you’re trying to grow.

The thing to remember is that most of the time, you will be getting a chance seedlings of perhaps the mother plant or perhaps something a bit weaker.

What Are The Drawbacks?
Then there’s the drawback of when growing from seed, it takes a lot longer before the tree starts to fruit.

But there’s even one more drawback.
A lot of fruit trees are grafted onto understock.
The reason for this is because the understock is more hardy and a stronger grower than the scion.
The scion is that bit of the tree that is the actual tree that you want.

Of course the disadvantage of grafted trees is that when the tree graft gets damaged or the top part of the tree dies for whatever reason, the understock takes over.
Quite often the understock is not a great fruiting tree.
Think those rough or bush lemons with the thick yellow nobbly skin and inside, the fruit is most probably not very juicy.

So do you still want to give growing a fruit tree from seed a try? Why not then?

Let’s start with growing a lime tree from seed.
Lime trees are great because you can use them in cooking, especially Thai food or with your gin and tonic.

Since the lime seeds you’re going to use is from fruit that you buy from the shops, they’re most likely hybrids.

Therefore, planting lime seeds from these fruits often won’t produce identical limes. Polyembryonic seeds, or true seeds, will generally produce identical plant.

I’ve never heard of these types of seeds being available in Australia.

Keep in mind that other contributing factors, like climate and soil, also affect the overall production and taste of lime tree fruit.

You can plant the seed directly in a pot using potting mix or place it in a plastic bag. Before planting lime seeds, however, be sure to wash them and you may even want to allow them to dry for a couple days, then plant them as soon as possible.

Plant seeds 1 cm deep in containers in potting mix

Germination usually happens within a couple of weeks.

As I mentioned before the downside to growing lime trees from seed is that it can take anywhere from four to ten years before they produce fruit, if at all.

Nectarines from seed
Let’s go for something bigger like a Nectarine seed.

Fruit trees are most often likely to be hybrids as well so that the new plant will be the same kind of plant, but its fruit and vegetative portions may not look the same as the parent, because the plant is "heterozygous."

There’s a good word.

The genetics term heterozygous refers to a pair of genes where one is dominant and one is recessive — they're different.

This means that all fruit trees must be vegetatively propagated by either grafting or budding methods.

The seeds of all common tree fruits (apple, pear, peach, and cherry) require a chilling period before they’ll germinate and grow into plants.

What you need to do know is put the seeds through a cold treatment.

·         First take out the seed from the fruit and clean off any fruit the is sticking to the seed and allow the seeds to air dry.

·         Then place them in a glass jar with a loosely fitted lid or cover.

·         Set the seeds aside June of next year.

·         Mix the seeds (in mid-June) with either moist (but not wet) sphagnum peat moss, sand or shredded paper towels.

·         Put the mixture to the jar and replace the lid.

·         Place the jar with the seeds in the fridge.

·         The seeds should stay in the fridge for at least 60 days.

·         Early in Spring plant the seeds out.

But before you rush outside to plant your seeds, there’s one more thing that you need to do.

Special Note

·         Stone fruits have a hard covering over the embryo.

·         It’s a really good idea to crack the hard covering slightly using a nutcracker just before planting so you’ll have a better chance of germination.

·         Be careful not to crush the embryo inside the covering.

·         The new seedlings will develop a tap root.

·         You can also improve the rate of germination by soaking the seeds in water for 12 to 24 hours before planting.

·         Keep the soil moist but don’t fertilise at this time. 

Once the seedlings have gotten going, you can plant them out into the garden or a larger pot.
If you’ve started your seeds in the ground first up, then to make transplanting easier,
You need to cut the taproot by pushing a spade under each plant.
Of course now what you can do is learn the art of budding or grafting, but that’s for another day.
THAT WAS YOUR VEGETABLE HERO FOR TODAY?

DESIGN ELEMENTS

Mass Planting For a Mediterranean Climate
You may have heard that some parts of Australia experience what’s called a Mediterranean climate.
That’s where you can have moist mild to very cold winters and warm to hot and mostly dry summers.
Sometimes the winters are a bit harsh and cold so how do you plant out a garden that has harsh freezing cold frosts but warm to blazing hot summers with little rain?
Do you stick to just having a desert style garden or one with succulents, but that has limited appeal really.

Perhaps you would like a garden with lots of mass planting instead and plants of different heights and flowers?
So what can you really plant in this climate.
Let’s find out about. I'm talking with Peter Nixon, landscape designer and Director of Paradisus garden design.

Peter mentioned plants like Chinese plumbago, Grevillea rhyolitica and Cistus species which do well in mass plantings and definitely work in a Mediterranean style climate.
If you have any questions about mass planting for Mediterranean climates, why not email us realworldgardener@gmail.com

TALKING FLOWERS

Gerberas as Cut Flowers

Did you know that Gerbera flowers were named after Trauggott Gerber, a botanist and physician from the 1700s?
Another fascinating fact is that supposedly, many people place gerberas by their bed to enjoy a better sleep!
Gerberas emit oxygen and absorb toxins and carbon monoxide at night instead of during the day like most flowers.
I’ve heard that they’re the longest lasting cut flowers in a vase.

The Gerbera is the birth month flower for April.

If you look at gerbera flower, you would think that it’s just one big flower head with lots of small petals. In fact, the flower head is a huge cluster of hundreds of flowers.
Gerbera seeds are expensive because each flower only produces a few seeds that are only viable for 1 year.
Plus the large fluffy seeds don’t fit into automatic seeding machines so need to be hand sown, maybe still today?
They are native to South Africa, but a lot of breeding has gone into developing the large daisy-like flowers we see today.
Listen to the podcast here

Watch the video of Mercedes Sarmini talking with me (host) on Real World Gardener radio show.
We're talking about how best to look after Gerberas in the Vase.



How to grow a Gerbera-
Gerberas are perennials and do best in full sun, in well-drained soil.
They’ll grow in most parts of Australia but are happiest in a warm climate.
In cool or moist areas plants need excellent drainage and shelter from the cold. I
If your soil is poorly drained, grow the plants in a raised garden bed.If you experience wet autumns and winters plant gerberas where they will keep dry during the colder months.
If you have any questions for Mercedes, why not write in to realworldgardener@gmail.com

Bird Watching 101

REAL WORLD GARDENER Wed. 5pm 2RRR 88.5fm Sydney, streaming live at www.2rrr.org.au and Across Australia on the Community Radio Network. www.realworldgardener.com
Real World Gardener is funded by the Community Broadcasting Foundation
REALWORLD GARDENER NOW ON FACEBOOK
The complete CRN edition of RWG is available on http://www.cpod.org.au/ , just click on 2RRR to find this week’s edition. The new theme is sung by Harry Hughes from his album Songs of the Garden. You can hear samples of the album from the website www.songsofthegarden.com

Wildlife in Focus

with ecologist Sue Stevens.
Have you wondered what is that bird, that you’ve just spotted in your garden or on your daily walk?
Birds are active, and energetic and you need practise to develop a quick eye that helps you with identification.
The obstacles are many—the light may be dim, you could have the sun in your eyes, or the bird may dive into a bush.
So to stand the best chance of landing a name for a bird, you'll want to know what to look for—what matters most and how to spend your precious viewing time.
But is that all there is to it?

Click here to
Listen to this episode
                    
Identifying a bird can be quite difficult if not a bit of a challenge and now you have a bit more to go on.
Next time you spot an unknown bird, keep a close eye on it, because you’ll need to absorb some of its details like markings, what it sounded like, size and what it was feeding on, what shape was its bill, colour of its eyes.
If you have a camera handy or your mobile phone camera if it’s close, that’s good, otherwise jot down the details on a notepad.
Then consult your handy bird field guide of Australia.
If you have any questions about a bird you want identified, why not drop us a line. Or send in a photo to realworldgardener@gmail.com or by post to 2RRR P.O. Box 644 Gladesville NSW 1675, and I’ll send you a copy of the Garden Guardians in return..

Vegetable Heroes:

Cinderella thought that the best way to travel to a ball was in one. They also make great scones or candle holders.

 

Pumpkins of course!

In some countries you can get a pumpkin variety called Rouge Vif d' Etampes". roughly translated "Red Life of the Times.

 As they grow and mature, these particular pumpkins become a very deep red.

Rumour has it that the illustrator for the Cinderella Fairytale used this variety of pumpkin for Cinderella's coach, so that today this pumpkin is better known as a "Cinderella".

The fact is that they look just like the pumpkin that Cinderella's fairy godmother transformed into a carriage.

Pumpkins (Cucurbita spp.)  (could be Cucurbita pepo, or C maxima and so on)are members of the Cucurbitaceae family along with zucchini, gourd, squash, melons and cucumber.

The name “pumpkin” originated from the Greek word, “pepon,” which means, “large melon

Technically a fruit, pumpkins have been in cultivation for more than 5,000 years.

Seems like Halloween is catching on around the world,  but it was the Irish that first carved turnips and swedes, lit them with embers and used them to ward off evil spirits.

Some say Americans chose Pumpkins because they were easier to carve!

• Pumpkin is considered an annual, and comes in all sorts of shapes, sizes, colours and patterns.
•   Pumpkins are slightly different from other in the same family.
• For instance, Pumpkins are normally hard-skinned, but squashes and zucchinis, have softer skin, but there are exceptions.
• Honestly, for those of us who have a compost heap, one of the most often things to grow out of the heap other than tomatoes, is the pumpkin. Usually a Butternut or Queensland Blue.
• Just as well that Pumpkins like compost heaps because the vines need fertile, compost-rich, well-drained soil in full sun, and are most easily grown as ground-cover plants.
• There is a bush variety called Golden Nugget, that can be grown in a pot but all the rest grow way too big for pots.
• Vines can be trained over frames provided they can support the weight of the heavy fruit.
• Start early, with your pumpkin seed planting, because, before you know it, summer is here and you’ve run out of time to grow it to maturity.

When to Sow

• In temperate zones, plant your pumpkin seeds from September until the end of December.
• Arid zones have from September until February.
• Sub-tropical regions have between August and February.
• Cool temperate districts have between October and December.
• Tropical areas you can grow them all year round.

Varieties

There are as many different varieties of pumpkins as there are of tomatoes, except you can’t get the Cinderella pumpkin in Australia.

Golden Nugget is best for small gardens, for a medium sized pumpkin, try Hybrid Grey Crown or Queensland Blue.

Turk’s Turban is an exotic-looking pumpkin (although its flavour is a little dry).

You might prefer the stronger taste of Jarrahdale, from Western Australia.

For those who like something unusual, why not try Pumpkin Marina di Chioggia, with its thick knobbly grey-blue skin, and a rich deep yellow-orange inside.  This one takes 100 days to maturity but keeps well.

Pumpkin Galeux Deysines is another unusual pumpkin with whitish salmon-pink skin covered with peanut shell like warts. These warts are caused by the sugar in the skin as it ripens.

Don’t be put off by that, because the orange inside flesh, is sweet, and moist.

Available from www.diggers.com.au

Pumpkin seed needs a soil temperature of 20˚C for germination.

You can either sow them individually in 10cm pots and plant them out when the pots are filled with roots.

Or, sow seed or plant seedlings into mounds of rich compost, with lots and lots of chook poo, made over loosened soil.

The seeds are large so sow them about 1 cm deep.

Plants take 70–120 days to mature. That’s 10 17 weeks or 2-4 months!

 

Looking After Your Pumpkins-

• Pumpkins are shallow-rooted so they need regular watering in dry or windy weather.
• It’s not good watering every other day in warm weather because your pumpkin will end up splitting.
• Pinch out growing tips of those rambling stems to keep the plants in check, otherwise they may take over you whole backyard!

HOT TIP: Pollination and Fertilisation of Pumpkin flowers.

When I worked at Yates, getting those pumpkins to fertilise was the bane of quite a number of people’s veggie growing.
• The complaint was lots of leaves and few flowers or that the embryo fruits and flowers fall off.
• Pumpkins produce short-lived male and female flowers that can close by mid-morning. Female flowers open above the swollen, distinctive embryo fruit and male flowers produce pollen.
• If the embryo fruit falls off, that usually means it didn’t get pollinated.
• Native and honey bees are normally able to complete pollination, but sometimes ants harvest pollen before this occurs.
• High temperatures can affect fruit formation over 30˚C, and here you may need to try hand pollination to improve fruit set.
• To hand pollinate, pick male flowers, remove the petals then dab pollen on the stigma of female flowers.
• Squeezing female flowers aids pollination in wet weather.
• Remember,, sometimes female flowers take two weeks or longer before they start appearing.
• This is because the pumpkin vine has to grow to a decent size where it can support fruit, before the female flowers appear.

Harvesting and storing

Your pumpkin is ready to pick when it’s finished swelling which is when the vine is dying off,  and they sound hollow when you tap on the shell.

This is when you remove them with as much of the stalk as possible. Ripe pumpkins with unbroken skin store very well if kept in a cool, dry, well-ventilated space.

For the seed savers out there, seed can be saved one month after harvesting them.

Scoop seed from the flesh, wash, dry and store in a cool, dry spot away from sunlight.

To ensure seed-grown progeny comes true, save seed from one variety grown in isolation.

Why are they good for you?

The bright orange colour of pumpkin is a dead giveaway that pumpkin is loaded with the antioxidant, beta-carotene.

.

They’re also a good source of vitamin C, with Queensland Blue coming top of the pumpkin class for this vitamin.

Pumpkins are a source of dietary fibre and supply (especially Golden nugget and Butternut) a good source of potassium.

One cup of cooked pumpkin has 2 g of protein, 3 g of dietary fibre.

Pumpkins are 90% water and a great for those watching their waist-line

Why not make mashed pumpkin instead of mashed potato because Pumpkins don’t have a lot of carbs- just 12 g from 1 cup, but some of it is present as natural sugars, which is why they  taste sweet.

Like Zucchini flowers, pumpkin flowers are also edible.

Try some  seeds from these guys as well.

www.newgipps.com.au-

 

Happy Pumpkin growing everyone!

Design Elements

with Landscape Designer, Louise McDaid
Have you ever travelled a long way to see some great gardens?
Just by chance have you stumbled on one of the world’s best for that particular style?
Seeing lots of gardens up close and personal is something we gardeners like to do and should do.
Plus you learn so much about planting styles that you can reflect on and adapt to your own garden.
Here is one such inspirational garden, the Japanese Garden within Tatton Park in Cheshire, England.

CLICK HERE TO Listen to this episode
This Japanese inspirational garden doesn’t sound too hard to emulate does it?
Some rocks, some maples of different colours and leaf shapes, a tea house, and a bit of clipped Buxus or Azaleas, and hey presto, transformation!
If you have any questions about this week’s Design Elements, send it our email address, or just post it.

Plant of the Week:

 When I worked for Yates, I was often asked why Gerbera seed was so expensive, or Rudbeckia seed?

The reason was that some seed has to be hand collected and hand packed because it’s too large and irregular for seed packing machines.

Another reason is that seed is hard to come by of a particular species, or perhaps that year, it was contaminated by weevils, or the seed grower’s crop experienced fungal problems and failed.

Whatever the reason, the plant that’s featured today isn’t sold by seed anyway, because it’s a new release and a fantastic variety of Gerbera.

Florist Holland, a Gerbera breeding company started the breeding program over ten years ago.

 

 

 

How to grow Garvinea

Garvineas are Gerberas but smaller and branch more on the one plant.

They cope with light frosts, grow in full sun and part shade positions.

One plant grows 30 – 40 cm high but spreads out to 40 or 50 cm.

That’s something your other Gerberas never did!

These Garvinea Gerberas flower all the way through Spring, until next Autumn.

And if you’re wondering will they grow in my district, how about this?

Plants will thrive in temperatures from -5º to +35ºC

Garvinea prefer good drainage but can grow in most soils except permanently boggy. Before planting make sure you have added some good quality compost which will help retain moisture during dry periods.  A surface mulch will also help to conserve moisture. If the leaves have drooped at the end of a dry day give them some water and they quickly stand up.

Regular applications of fertiliser during their growing period will promote strong healthy plants.

To encourage flowering regularly deadhead the flowers by breaking them off at the base.  The blooms can also be brought inside and put in your favourite vase for some home grown colour and they are very long lasting.

Garvineas make beautiful cut flowers. Only don't cut the flowers off, give them a gentle twist and fold so that the stem breaks off right down at the growing point at the base of the plant. Pick the flowers often it encourages fresh growth and prevents the spent flowers getting tatty.

 

 

 

Colours-G. Sylvan, white, yellow centre, G Fleurie, crimson, with crimson red centre, G. Lisa, Deep pink or cerise pink with golden centre, G Cindy-bright red, with yellow centre, G, orangina is orange, G. Sunny is yellow, G. Pam is light pink. And G. Nikki is palest pink.

It’s always fun to try something new and buy a plant that you don’t know much about.

 

 

Can’t wait to get my hands on some Garvinea Gerberas as I’m sure some of you are too.

If you have any questions about Garvina, drop us a line.