Kiwi rescue

"I think its days are over" ... "eeeeew, not a happy chappy" .... "needs a bigger pot" .... These were just some of the perfectly accurate comments my sad-looking potted New Zealand Christmas bush attracted two years ago. It was thin, bedraggled, its leaves dull and sparse. It was a wreck and it was, I am ashamed to admit, all due to my prolonged neglect. But now, two years later, it's back in good health, like it should have been all along.

The only thing my NZ Christmas bush now lacks is good timing. It always flowers in spring, rather than at Christmas, but there's nothing I can do about that. It lives down the side of our house, and one of its main jobs is to hide the view of our garbage wheelie bins from passers-by. It's not alone in that task, as there are also some large cane begonias in pots doing a similarly good screening job.

Rescuing Mr Sad & Bedraggled was a fairly simple task. First step, get out the secateurs and cut off everything that is spindly and unhealthy. So that meant cutting off a lot of stuff. One simple technique I use is to keep on cutting stems until I can see green wood. If a cut reveals dry and dodgy looking wood, cut some more. Once you see green signs of life, there is hope.

The second technique is to give the potted plant lots and lots of seaweed solution. I just made up a watering can of it (here in Australia my shed has two containers of seaweed product in two major brand names: Seasol and eco seaweed — but there are others). Seasol is already a liquid, while eco seaweed is a dry flaky powder. Both products are diluted in water. I kept on applying a 9-litre can of seaweed solution every week for the first month or two, and scaled back to monthly when it started to show some new growth.

This pot and plant has got to the stage that it's too big and heavy for me to lift any more, so I couldn't use the alternative method, which is to soak the whole plant, pot and all in a very large trug of seaweed solution for an hour or three. Ideally, try have the liquid covering the top of the soil level. This totally re-wets ultra-dry soil, which is why it's the ideal treatment option.

This might be the best option, but it's not practical with this big pot and my dodgy old back. If you are thinking it might work for your sick plant, and you can manage lifting the pot, etc, the best product to use is Seasol Super Soil Wetter and Conditioner. Just follow the packet directions in mixing it up, but here's a tip: don't add the product before you add the water, as it foams up like dishwashing detergent. Add the product to the water, towards the end of filling. I've recommended this treatment to friends with sick potted plants, and the success rate has been very good.

So, while I've been rabbiting on about products and watering cans and trugs, I've also been showing you some photos of how worthwhile the whole project has been. NZ Christmas bush (Metrosideros) are beautiful, tough and well worth growing in the ground, if you have space, or in pots if you don't have enough space. 

I feel a bit guilty about neglecting it and letting it get bedraggled, but as it is now one of my star patients in the hospital ward of my garden, I hereby promise never to neglect it again!


PS: Note to Auto-Correct Spell Checker Software Thingy ... When I type in the word "trug" please do not auto-correct it to "drug"! It gives my readers a totally misleading impression about me, and my methods. Thank you.

Signs of recovery

"It's not a garden, it's a hospital ward." That's how one friend described her garden full of sick plants, and I have thought of her during the last few months while I have been nursing our sick Pieris japonica back to health. Beneath my veneer of seeming to be an organic goody two-shoes, I tend to be quite a ruthless gardener. Sure, I'll tend to unwell plants for a while, but if they seem like a hopeless case, then out they go.

But not the Pieris. It's one of "Pammy's plants" and so I am duty-bound to do my best with it. She brought it home one day, from a local florist's shop, and handed it to me to add to our garden. Nice plant, but deep down I suspected it'd be trouble ... 

Here's the patient in full bloom this morning. The glossy green leaves look pretty healthy, too, so what's the problem?

The other half of the plant is dead. In fact a few months ago I cut off the whole back half of the plant as it was dying rapidly. This left us with an ugly, lop-sided patient to care for, but the good news is that there are signs of hope!

Here's the lush bronze hope-inspiring foliage sprouting all over the back half of our Pieris.

The great thing is that there's not just one or two new sprouts — the whole plant is covered in new baby growth. The acid test will be how the plant goes through the next Sydney summer, which I suspect will be a hot and dry one.

When Pammy brought the Pieris home last year I knew I was in for a challenge to keep this plant happy. You will occasionally see healthy Pieris growing in Sydney gardens, so it's not impossible, but my starting point was knowing that this plant prefers cooler climates than Sydney's. Pieris does better further south and up in the mountains.

So I decided to keep it in a biggish pot, and place the pot in a warmer spot in winter, but a cooler spot in summer. Whatever I did was wrong, as half the plant died off over the summer. I cut out all the dead bits, then moved the pot to a sunnier spot for the winter, and plied the plant with seaweed solution every four weeks. The seaweed (eco-seaweed) is not a fertiliser. It's a plant tonic that encourages roots to grow, and generally lowers stress in sick plants. 

I also kept up the water to the pot, without water logging it, and finally it started to show some growth as the spring warmth arrived.

One tip with sick plants is NOT to feed them if they are not showing any signs of growth. Just keep adding seaweed solution. Once you see some positive signs, like new foliage, then start a gentle feeding program, and only then.

So I've given the pot a single dose of liquid organic-based feed (Powerfeed, mixed up and watered in via a watering can), and have followed that up with some slow-release fertiliser pellets that will trickle down food over the next three months. Once the summer comes on, I'm looking for a spot that gets morning sun but shade for the rest of the day.

Wish me luck. As it's Pammy's plant I am trying extra-hard to keep it happy. I feel like I'm a doctor with a tricky patient. This is not a good space for a gardener to occupy but sometimes you have to nurse plants back to health. 

I'm trying everything. Pam's mum, Val, says she talks to her plants and she's a green-thumb with two verandahs full of happy plants. So I'm going to start talking to the Pieris, just in case Val is right.