23 May 2018

Autumn gardening with Xanthe White

From Nine To Noon, 11:17 am on 23 May 2018

Autumn in the garden is a cathartic time, says landscape designer and gardener Xanthe White.

You can start over again, pull out things you weren’t happy with and trim everything back.

But when you’re pruning and trimming and raking leaves, think about the value of the organic material you’re removing, she says.

All the growth of the summer season needs to go back into the earth, otherwise we’re slowly depleting our soil. “It’s looking after the cycle of our gardens.”

Cutting a tree branch

Photo: 123RF

Pruning trees

The first thing is to take all dead, diseased and twiggy material out, Xanthe says.

“That has little value to the tree and those are the parts that will drop off in storms when you get big winds”.

Then look at what shape you want for your space; consider the light, any views you want to block or reveal.

Prune back to a node – a little bump – on the branch where the new shoots will come from.

“You want to prune it back to a point where the new growth will grow in the direction you want it to.

“If you have an ugly garden shed you wanted to cover, you can look down the branch for the little node that’s pointing in the direction that’s going to cover the shed, and cut it down to just above that.”

For fruit trees especially, aim to open the canopy by cutting out tangled branches to let light through.

“As they get older you’ll find a lot of the fruit starts to grow at the top of the tree,’ Xanthe says. By having an open canopy with evenly spaced branches across the crown, sunshine gets to more of the tree, and it'll produce more fruit on the lower levels.

Fruitsof a Stanley prune plum (Prunus domestica) ripen in the late summer sun on a tree in a home orchard.

Plums ripening in summer - but wait until winter when the trees have lost their leaves before pruning. Photo: 123RF

Plum, Feijoa, Olive

Plum: wait until it’s lost all its leaves and the weather is really cold, and thin to get an open shape.

Feijoa: They fruit on last year’s growth, so prune them just after they’ve fruited - which is now.

If you cut them in summer, Xanthe says, you’d  take off the fruiting wood.

Olive: These grow from hardwood, so you could cut it down to the ground and it would regrow, Xanthe says.

Gardner with a handful of mulch planting a shrub.

Photo: 123RF

The soil

Everything grown in the ground has valuable nutrients to go back into the soil.

You can just “cut and drop” the trimmings to make a mulch - the lazy gardener approach – or tidy it away onto a compost pile.

“Layer it up like lasagne”, Xanthe says, alternating woody material with green waste (that includes kitchen peelings), and add a sprinkling of line to help get the balance of acidity right.

Too much kitchen or green waste and the pile can become sludgy and airless, but if it’s too woody it’ll take ages to break down.

“Anything is going to work, but the woody stuff goes slower and the green stuff goes faster so by layering the two one after the other you’re trying to get a nice even rate of decomposition, and also good aerated soil.”      

Brussels sprout plant

Brussels sprouts are for gardens where the winters are cold. Photo: 123RF

Brassicas

This is the time to plant brassicas – the members of the cabbage family that will grow through the winter.

Brussels sprouts are the hardest brassica to grow, Xanthe says. “Really you need to be in the deep South with really lovely deep cold”.

Cauliflower “Most gardeners say they have variable results”.

Broccoli “A bit easier”.

Cabbages “We can all grow a good cabbage”.

Kale “If you’re a beginner gardener just go with the kale”.

“If you can get those in now, you should get some crops through the winter season,” Xanthe says.