Our gardening expert, Chris Whitford, and Mel Bush receive a surprise from Terry Direen. He sent in a photo of a conjoined apple that he grew in Glenorchy and now plans to donate it to a museum.
Chris also addresses questions such as whether hazelnut shells can be used as mulch, the best methods for transferring proteas out of pots, and the reasons why clover lawns aren't as popular as they used to be.
Image Details
Terry Direen from Glenorchy found an interesting apple on his tree.(Supplied: Terry Direen)
Chris Whitford
Now we've had some decent frosts. If you want to lift or move anything, now's the time to get them up. So your raspberry canes that are crowding out, you need to move them, time to lift them up. Yep. Cut them back to about 30 centimetres and if you haven't got time to put them in this weekend, put them in some sawdust, damp sawdust to keep the roots nice and moist but not frozen. Right. And the fruit tree is the same thing. If you put that fruit tree a bit close to the house or a bit close to the fence and you think, I could move it out a bit, well, now's the time to do it.
Mel Bush
Okay. Get those done. What about, so you can put your spuds in?
Chris Whitford
I do. Oh, okay. I do. The only thing you've got to watch is if they've started to sucker, like the potatoes in the veggie basket, cover them up with some straw so they're not going to get a direct hit with frost. Yes. That's the main thing.
Mel Bush
We were talking about fruit trees a minute ago and, you know, talking about grafting and all manner of things. Where should they be at this time of year?
Chris Whitford
In terms of work, fruit trees, you really, they should have shut down fully by now. We've had a couple of weeks of getting really cold weather, so time for pruning, pruning from now on. I'm starting to think of going to the hardware store and buy my copper for my pre-foliage break time of the year in case I've got curly leaf or something like that. Now, the one thing I will say is I try and time my sprays to not coincide with heavy rain. So if we've got some heavy rain coming, leave it a while before you spray your copper because you don't want it to wash off the tree. If it does wash off, you're going to have to reapply it because what we want as soon as those green buds burst, we want that copper solution to basically mix with the bacteria that are sitting there waiting to do their nastiness and zap them before they get going.
Mel Bush
I want to get to this very, this came in early, Chris. Yep. Good morning. From the market in Deloraine, the frost is melting and the coffee is hot. We even have a Bogan Road whiskey distillery here for warming tastings, lots of nice stalls and outdoor stalls. Thanks, says Bodie and says, for interest, why isn't Deloraine usually mentioned in the morning weather forecast? It's Tassie's largest inland town, says Bodie. Now, not directly a gardening question, I know, and I bet it's chilly. So, Bodie, I apologise in advance, but it's a top of 11 degrees with morning frost and sunny in Deloraine. Very nice. There we go. I wanted to cover off on that, Chris. That's OK. We do. We aim to please. I know how they feel. Yes. OK. From Diana in way down south in Dover, Chris says, good morning. I was wondering if a sucker from a persimmon tree would grow and bear fruit. My tree is about eight years old and bearing lots of fruit. I keep it pruned to a reachable height, but I found several weeks back, several weeks back, about a metre from the tree what looks to be a sucker. It's spindly. It's about 50 centimetres high. There were three long branches, but the rabbits have nipped off two. I've Googled it, but I can't find anything. I have a friend who would love it. If it's any good, says Diana. OK. Google Chris Whitford.
Chris Whitford
OK. What you would do is I'd dig the sucker up now and try and see if it's got a root system. It probably will have. The problem with suckers is they're usually on what they call the root stock. It means it's the bit of the plant that provides really good nutrition to the top growing bit, but it's usually crap at producing fruit.
Mel Bush
Oh, OK.
Chris Whitford
So, yeah, most of the commercial fruit trees are grafted, so we use what we call a stock. It will be really good for growing, getting nutrients and water up to the plant, but it normally doesn't produce great fruit. So what you've got there is a stock, and you need to graft it with a piece from the persimmon that's growing above the graft, so in other words, the bit that's fruiting now. So take it out, put it in a pot, take some cuttings from your persimmon, and then you're going to have to put the two of them together with a graft, usually a whip and tongue or something like that.
Mel Bush
So if you graft it, it may produce fruit?
Chris Whitford
Yeah, you could turn it into a fruit tree. That's how you do it. Oh, magic. All that those suckers really are is that's actually how we get the stock for grafting fruit trees. We cut those off and put them in pots and graft them.
Mel Bush
But then that means from Diana's perspective, she can't give it away. Well, she can when she's grafted.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, and that's why I'd put it in a pot, because she can get it away from the rabbits, she can protect the graft because you don't want it knocked or bumped. It will take probably two or three months before it takes in this weather because it's sort of dormant now. Normally when I'm grafting, I'm grafting just at the point of spring when the sap's starting to flow. So I'm going to get nutrients into that top piece, which effectively is being cut off. So I want it to form some callusing material.
Mel Bush
There's just so many different options, ways.
Chris Whitford
Pruning, grafting. Yeah. Yeah. It all depends. It all depends. It all depends.
Mel Bush
Terry has got a question, which I think is about apples. Hello, Terry.
Talkback caller
G'day there. How are you going?
Mel Bush
I'm great, thanks very much. And yourself?
Talkback caller
I'm not too bad. It's a nice sunny day. It's gorgeous.
Mel Bush
Lovely. Yeah. What's happening with you? What's your question for Chris?
Talkback caller
Oh, well, I didn't really have a question. I just sent in some photos of an interesting...
Mel Bush
Did you? Let me find them. Oh, my goodness.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, they're fused together.
Mel Bush
So what we're looking at is two apples. What variety are they, Terry?
Talkback caller
They're pink ladies.
Mel Bush
And they're actually joined together.
Talkback caller
They're conjoined twins, yes.
Mel Bush
Yes, they are. And... It's a Siamese twin. It is. And something, you know, any lady could be proud of. Yeah, literally. The way they're looking at the moment.
Chris Whitford
The flowers are growing together. At a very young stage, those flowers are fused together.
Mel Bush
It's almost like a double yoker. Do you see those very often?
Chris Whitford
Not... No, you don't see a lot of them. You see them occasionally. Pretty rare, though.
Mel Bush
That's incredible.
Talkback caller
I Googled it and I couldn't find any others in... Well, in Tasmania, but they have had them on the mainland and there's quite a few pictures of them from England. But yeah, it was... I've been... I've had apples for 40 years and I've never seen one before.
Mel Bush
That's incredible, Terry. Thank you for sending that through.
Talkback caller
That's OK. I'm hoping to donate it to the Willie Smith Museum.
Mel Bush
I tell you what, they would love it.
Talkback caller
Yeah, I've already contacted them. They said I can drop it off to them, so...
Mel Bush
I would love to see that one on the wall.
Talkback caller
It's an interesting thing. It's just a quirk of nature, you know. You see these.
Mel Bush
Terry, thanks for sharing it. That's brilliant.
Talkback caller
No worries at all.
Mel Bush
You've never had any conjoined apples, did you say? I've never seen one before in my life other than Terry's. There you go. From Suzie says, Good morning, Mel. I thought I'd send an early gardening question. Good on you, Suzie. If that's OK, of course it is. We've just bought lots of topsoil, which we intend to spread and cover it with lawn seed. The question is, which is the best lawn seed to use? We live in Blackman's Bay.
Chris Whitford
OK, I did a bit of research on this a while ago about lawn seed, and there's a whole lot of new varieties out there. The thing with Blackman's Bay in Tasmania, anywhere in Tasmania, we get hot and we get cold. So you really want a variety of different grasses in your lawn seed. So you're going to get what they call a lawn seed mix. Now, the toughest grass in Australia is the old blue cooch, often a weed. The second one's probably kaikuyu, both of which are obnoxious if they get into your gardens. But in terms of growing, they will grow most of the year. I would be a bit reticent about planting a grass seed in the middle of winter with your top dressing. So I'd probably save that for a spring spread and then get some lawn seed around probably September, August, September and put it in so that they've actually got a bit of warmth to get the grass growing. Because the last thing you want is a very young seedling being hit with a nasty hard frost. And the way the weather's this year, we seem to be possibly heading for a few more frosts, even at Blackman's Bay. So, yeah, it's more a spring thing. But you can go to your local hardware stores or your produce stores and they have a variety of grass mixes. There's things like fescue, cooch, ryegrass. Normally they're the standard ones they put in mixes. So what will happen is all the seed will germinate, but some will dominate and then die off and then the other seed will start to dominate. And then in the middle of summer, your cooch will be looking lovely and blue. But in winter, you're probably looking more at ryegrass. So you've got that bright green in colours. Right. But yeah, single species lawns normally aren't the best if you don't want to do a lot of maintenance. Right. That's the issue.
Mel Bush
Now, I'm going to take the opportunity while I can. My lawn, and we're using that term exceedingly loosely, still it really didn't recover at all from the very dry summer that we had. And it's quite sandy where I am. How much work do you have to... I mean, so what's happened, of course, is, you know, weeds take over rather than lawn. So I'm mowing weeds, not lawn. I've popped a little bit in that's gone OK in one spot. So there are big, big patches where there's just nothing.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, there's a couple of products you can get to fill those areas. So it is a mix of lawn seed you're putting on, but they also have some other additives in them like wetters and those sort of things. And even green colouration to make it look not so bad. Look, the trick with anything with lawn is it's a grass, they're shallow rooted. They need a little bit of water often. And that's the biggest mistake we make. We water too heavily and then let it dry out. So we want the other way around. We water a little, little and often. And the other thing is don't put your topsoil on that too thickly because that can actually stop the seed from germinating. The first seven to 10 days of most lawns of the critical period is to get that germination coming up and that little tiny sheen of green and then nursing it along.
Mel Bush
Right. OK.
Chris Whitford
Whereas a lot of people just use concrete.
Mel Bush
True. I wish I'd asked that a long time ago. So I think I'm going to have to do it all over again.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, it's thin. And with the material you put on top, you want a bit of organic matter in it because that'll absorb the moisture and keep that lawn sort of damp as it's growing so it won't dry out in those winds that we get occasionally which are really hot and dry.
Mel Bush
Right. But wait till the weather warms up a tiny bit. I like this one from Regina in Gordon who asks, can hazelnut shells be used as mulch?
Chris Whitford
Definitely. Yep. Perfect.
Mel Bush
That's an... I wouldn't have thought they would break down.
Chris Whitford
That's what you want. You don't... I mean, it's the irony is you want organic matter in soil, but you actually want some of the organic matter to stay as organic matter and not break down because that's what binds the chemicals in the soil and the water. When your organic matter breaks down, it turns into nutrients and the plants either use them or they're lost to the bottom of the soil and the water washes it out. You want this residual material called humus. And humus is the thing that provides a surface on which everything can bond to and be held there until a plant needs it. So, yeah, stuff that doesn't break down is not a problem. But the only thing, of course, is you need to add a little bit extra nitrogen to your soils whenever you're using mulches.
Mel Bush
And I'm impressed that Regina has enough hazelnuts. Yeah, that's a lot of hazelnuts. As mulch. Good on you, Regina. That's fantastic. And from Myrtle, 1300 222 936 is the number for gardening talkback. From Myrtle in the Huon Valley. Hello, Myrtle. Hi, Mel and Chris. I've bought liquid copper and liquid lime sulphur, separate products to spray my stone fruits. Can I mix them together in my fancy new rechargeable sprayer? Good on you, Myrtle. Or will it blow up if I mix them together?
Chris Whitford
It won't blow up. But what you can do to check the compatibility of any chemicals, the simplest way is to have a small disposable container that you can put a, you know, equivalent of a teaspoon of each material in. Swirl it round. And if it doesn't form solid clumps or lumps, it's probably compatible. Okay. So what you want to, what you don't want to happen is for material to fall out of suspension and become a solid in the bottom of your sprayer. I can remember, I think I used to use copper and sulphur regularly in the pre-season spraying. So it should be okay. But that's the simple check. Just add a small bit to each other, swirl them around. And if it forms clumpy little coagulated gunk, don't do it.
Mel Bush
Okay. Because we, because this is a fancy new thing that Myrtle has, so we don't want to wreck it. No, no, don't wreck the sprayer. I think you might be, I think you're good to go, Myrtle. And Jude is in Lindisfarne. Hello, Jude.
Talkback caller
Hi, Chris. I've got, we've got quite a long patch of raspberries. And did I hear you at the beginning of the program say to prune them to 30 centimetres?
Chris Whitford
Only if you're lifting them up and moving them somewhere. And that's, yeah, it's only because what happens when you lift up the raspberries, you damage a lot of the roots. And if you leave the long canes on, it's more than likely that the canes won't be supported by the reduced root zone. Okay. So we're not lifting them? Otherwise what I do is I cut mine back to equivalent of about a pencil thickness at the end. So that could be a cane that's one to one and a half metres long. Okay. But yeah, I take the tips off. Usually the tips are fruited in autumn. Usually they put a flower out there. If they don't, they usually die back. And I just bring them back until I get thick enough material that I think is going to be running enough nutrients to feed that bunch of flowers on the top buds. So a thin pencil thickness at the end is what I work on. And so that can be a cane that's, you know, as I said, one to two metres long. Or it could be a cane that's only a metre long. It's about sort of giving enough thickness and material to feed the fruiting bodies as they come out.
Talkback caller
Great. And with sylvan berries and logan berries, what would you be doing to those? They're still quite, I've taken out all the old wood, but there's still quite a thicket of canes.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, I would probably apply the same sort of thing. They're probably a bit more vigorous than raspberries, those particular berries. So there's a couple of ways you can do it. You can either leave more canes or leave them longer if they're very, very vigorous. It's a matter of having enough sunlight getting in there to ripen the fruit that's going to come on.
Talkback caller
OK, well, thanks for that, Chris.
Mel Bush
OK. Have a lovely weekend, Jude. So we're getting some texts through, Mick has sent a text through, Chris saying, hi, Mel, is there any way you can post the picture of the amazing double apple so we can check it out, that conjoined apple of Terry's? Well, we'll ask Terry if we can, and maybe when we pop up Gardening Talkback online, as we do each week and pop up a picture, if it's OK by Terry, we might pop that up for you. Fruit of the week. Fruit of the week. That's it. It definitely is. Probably fruit of the year, that one. It's very odd and rare. Molly is in Sandford. Hello, Molly. Good morning. How are you? Marvellously well, thank you. How are you at lovely Sandford?
Talkback caller
Yeah, very well. It's nice and sunny here.
Mel Bush
Beautiful. What's your question for Chris? Molly?
Talkback caller
I wanted to ask about proteas. I've been growing them in some pots for a little while, trying to get them matured up while we're waiting for our house to be built. And now we're getting ready to move in. And I'm wondering whether I should pop them in the dirt now or if I should leave them in the pots a little bit longer, wait till spring, or when the best time would be to get them in the ground, get them established?
Chris Whitford
Yeah, look, you can do it now, but I'd wait until that house is built as much as possible because I don't trust builders and gardens. I think that of father as a builder. Yeah, look, when they're actively growing, there's always a better time for putting some plants in, particularly when they're not deciduous. If you put a plant, disturb it now and it's not deciduous, it's cold, it's not going to want to put a lot of new roots out. So I tend to put it out when they're a bit warmer. So I'd leave them in the pots another month or so, probably end of July, early August, and maybe look at planting them out then when the soil is a bit warmer and going to encourage some new root growth.
Talkback caller
Perfect, that's very helpful. Thank you, because I know they're kind of flowering now, so I didn't know if they maybe latched the cold weather. But that's very helpful.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, late flowering. The other thing I do when you plant them out, make sure you've removed those flowers before you do the transplanting. So trim them back. Yeah, and that'll take a little bit less stress off the plant as well.
Talkback caller
Brilliant. All right. Thank you very much for the advice.
Mel Bush
And congratulations on being able to move into your home. That's exciting.
Talkback caller
Thank you. Yes, very exciting.
Mel Bush
And Georgina is on the glorious north west coast. Hi, Georgina. Hi.
Talkback caller
I've just got a quick question about kiwifruit.
Mel Bush
Go right ahead.
Talkback caller
I just want to know, do kiwifruit have a rootstock?
Chris Whitford
Yeah, generally they do. That's why we get all the lovely varieties of haywoods and brunos and those sort of things is because they've been a grafted vine. So yeah, kiwifruit have been grafted for over 40 years, 50 years now. So it's most likely going to be a rootstock, which means the seed from the kiwifruit will not produce the same as the parent because it's cross pollinated. So if you grow them from seedlings, you'll find that you'll get a whole range of different types of kiwifruit plants, some which will have nice fruit and some which will have tiny bullets, which are absolutely useless because that's what happens when you cross pollinate.
Talkback caller
OK, that's lovely. That was my question. Just that they have rootstock.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, they're definitely rootstocks.
Mel Bush
Thank you. All the best. See you, Georgina. Bye bye. Kiwifruits. Yes, I'm still... Someone's got some ideas about some lovely stuff to do with kiwifruit. I'd really like to know.
Chris Whitford
It's getting it ripe. It's because we pick them green and hard and they rarely ever get to that ripeness. You know, by the time they're ripe enough to eat, you've forgotten them. Yeah. And then when you get to them, they're too ripe.
Mel Bush
Oh no, they have particular properties though, don't they? Oh, vitamin C, super, super source. But don't they also... Aren't they used for sort of, for want of a better word, cooking things as well? Yeah, tenderising. Tenderising, yes. Thank you.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, they have enzymes in them which break down the protein and make it softer. So yeah, it's a great plant. But you know, if you have them the first time and you don't have them at the right stage, it puts you off them for life, which is always a problem in marketing, you know, products that aren't harvested right.
Mel Bush
Maybe I'll give it another go. This one from Mal. Hi Mel and Chris, I've been looking for some new summer fruiting raspberry plants and all I can find is the chill cotton variety. Yeah. That's, that's okay. But do you think if I look hard, I could find any other varieties? Not naming any businesses, of course. But just if they're out there, I'd love to get, I'd love to get done more. Chilliwack.
Chris Whitford
Chilliwack, yep. Look, they're out there. It's time for a weekend drive past some of your favourite nurseries, but not that one at that hardware store because they only deal in a couple of varieties. Yeah, when I came down to Tassie a long time ago, I drove around looking for raspberry canes and different, different places have different varieties. And you know, I got some of the old fashioned ones. I think it was King Edward or Prince Edward ones, which are thorny and horrible. It allows you to get fruity, but hey, they're a variety that I wanted to see if they did anything. So yeah, they are around. It's just a matter of different nurseries will have different stocks. And obviously what happens is better varieties come out, and particularly now in Tassie with all the commercial varieties we were coming in. A lot of these older varieties do tend to disappear because they're not commercial anymore. There's better varieties out, so they tend to disappear off the market. But you'll find, you know, I'd check your local neighbourhood web and see if anyone's got any because they are around.
Mel Bush
And hey, who doesn't like just going trawling through nurseries? Yeah. You know, there's worse things to do in a week. That's right. There's your fun day or two out. Oh yes, from Mick again. Anyway, you can post that picture of the apples. We will get on to that. I promise. Now this is, I just want to quickly touch on this because this is a question from a week or so back from Marie. Hi Marie. And says, good morning. Recently on your show, someone asked about reusing potting mix, but I haven't been able to find the answer. When I go back over shows over the last couple of weeks, could Chris please tell us what to do? And I think from memory that was Greg Kerin and the question was, can I use potting mix? What do I do with old potting mix? Can I use it on my garden? To which Greg said, yes, you can. But, you know, do you have anything to add? Do you have to, would you add something?
Chris Whitford
Yeah, look, the trouble with potting mixes is they're designed for only a short term for most plants. So they break down. So you lose some of the organic matter. They become more acidic because the organic matter breaks down. So they lose some of their quality. So if you're going to reuse it as a potting mix, you need to revitalise it. So I would be adding some fresh organic matter, usually animal based manures. I might look at a teaspoon or something of lime to deacidify it. And what else might I look at? I'd make sure it's got some capability of wetting because sometimes they're losing their wetting ability. So I'd make sure when I make that mix up. I add a bit of moisture and it should feel like a nice damp, clumpy sort of material. So it's going to provide the food for the plants you want to put in it. The only caveat about this is if the plant in that pot died from some unknown disease and the potting mix might have some fungal pathogens in there, which I want to get rid of. If that's the case, then I would have to pasteurise it. And that's something that we don't do as a home gardener generally. But if you wanted to, you could put it under a piece of black plastic in the middle of summer and you could heat it up to about 60 degrees, 70 degrees under black plastic. Kill the pathogens. Kill the pathogens. Yeah. And that's what I used to work in a biological control place where we would recycle potting mix hundreds of times. And we used to sterilise it with steam. And we just because potting mix is very expensive. It's if you start throwing it out, it's very expensive for a commercial business. So we had a boiler and we used to run it in a steriliser trolley and do all sorts of things. And, you know, we would use this stuff for years.
Mel Bush
No wonder you said you can't do it as a home gardener.
Chris Whitford
No, not a home gardener generally. That's a bit of a set up. Yeah. So that's the thing. The only caveat is if it's had a nasty disease, you might rethink about just using it as a top dressing on the garden or something like that rather than as a potting mix.
Mel Bush
Anna is in Devonport. Hello, Anna.
Talkback caller
Oh, good morning. Yes. Hi, Chris. I have an avocado question. I have two. The hash is about 15 years old. It always has lots of fruit. But the bacon, that's probably about seven years old. It has never produced anything. They're close to one another. I have, you know, lots of bees around. So I'm just wondering why this particular one has not produced.
Chris Whitford
OK. I'm not an avocado aficionado apart from eating them, which I love. Most likely with things that aren't fruiting, it's something to do with when it's flowering and whether that's the temperature's right for pollination. So some varieties just you need another pollinator possibly if it's a cross pollinator, if it's self pollinated, as I don't know this, it could be just a condition that's just not suitable for your environment.
Talkback caller
Yes. OK.
Chris Whitford
The other thing is it's not in a lot of shade, is it?
Talkback caller
Oh, it gets full sun, afternoon sun. No, not full sun, but afternoon sun. And it's up against the house.
Chris Whitford
OK. You might be getting a bit hot for it. That's a possibility. Right. So you might be cooking the flowers rather than being warm enough for them. The commercial avocados, you know, they grow in large plantations, full sun. The trees are close and they're quite big. So they do have a bit of self shading them. But if you've got a very hot wall, it's not burning the leaves or anything. The leaves aren't burning at any stage?
Talkback caller
No, and there's a pond underneath it with frogs.
Chris Whitford
Yeah. OK. So it just may be a varietal thing that's just for whatever reason it's not suiting your place. Now, the only thing you can do in these situations is you can threaten it with the chop. OK.
Talkback caller
It's what my husband always gets me to do, chop it down.
Chris Whitford
Well, don't chop it too much, but just give it a bit of a touch up prune. Don't prune all of it. Just take some branches out and try and give it a bit of stimulation to produce fruit. Now, the other most radical thing you can do is a thing called girdling. In fruit trees, grow too vigorous and don't fruit. They stay in this vegetative phase. They used to actually do half a ring bark, if you like. They just take the bark out around half the circle of the tree.
Talkback caller
Right, as if you're threatening to cut it down.
Chris Whitford
And that's how the tree actually reacts. It reacts as though it's being threatened and will put out a lot of flowers. And this is what California fruit growers used to do this because they had such brilliant soil and so much water. Their trees would grow huge, but they wouldn't produce. So they actually girdled them. So if you look that up girdling on the internet, it'll give you an idea.
Talkback caller
Oh, well, thank you so much. Okay. Right. Well, give that a go.
Chris Whitford
And talk to us when you do it. So it's knows what's happening.
Mel Bush
That's right. Be kind.
Talkback caller
Thank you so much.
Mel Bush
See you, Anna. Bye bye. I've never heard of that. When you said girdling, I thought you might have meant, you know, tie something around it.
Chris Whitford
Well, it is. Yeah, it is. It's literally the girdling. You remove a bit of the bark and cuts the flow. And so the sap isn't, the tree just responds and say, well, I'm not getting enough nutrients, maybe I better put some flowers and fruit out because I'm being stressed.
Mel Bush
Sarah is in Huonville. Hello, Sarah.
Talkback caller
Hello, folks. I love the show. Thanks so much. So glad you do. Look, I think the lovely fellow that answered, I think I didn't pronounce myself well enough, but it's about cord, cordylines, cordylines. Yes. Not limes. Look, I've got two, Chris, I've got two huge cordylines out the front of the house that I want to dig out. But, and it's got lots, they've got lots of pups coming off them. How do I re-pot those pups, cut them off? And is that what they call?
Chris Whitford
Yeah, yeah. A lot of people call them pups. Yeah, they're pretty straightforward. You just literally, you can pull them.
Talkback caller
Oh, nothing straightforward with me, guys.
Chris Whitford
That's OK. We're into diversity. Look, with cordylines, you can pull them off and often that'll get enough root off. The thing is they're going to be, because they're pulled off from the mother plant, they're going to be a bit water stressed. So you can remove 50 per cent of the leaves just by running a secateurs across the top, like you're giving them a haircut and then put them into a good quality potting mix. Sort of because they're a grass, effectively, you don't want a heavy material.
Mel Bush
Could you use water just as a matter of interest? To grow their little legs?
Chris Whitford
Yes, sometimes you can, but some grasses actually rot in water. So that depends on how they respond to it. So I'd have a bit of a sandy mix, but keep them, you know, semi, semi sun with good watering. That's how I did my cordylines. So that's the pups. If you want to get rid of the big ones, I've got a couple of big ones I'm looking, going it's a mattock or it's a backhoe.
Mel Bush
Do you know what, though? We had somebody call in only a couple of weeks ago. Everything's a couple of weeks ago. I lose track of time. But it wasn't that long ago and was saying, where can I get cordylines? Because I can't get cordylines, you know, I mean, they're a gorgeous plant.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, I mean, they're in the major, you know, hardware stores. They have them always, but they don't always have the varieties you want. There's been a big push for red ones lately, but, you know, there's the green stripy ones and, you know, very plain ones.
Mel Bush
Because if you want to get them off your hands. I'm sorry I'm interrupting, but someone would take them, Sarah, I'd say.
Chris Whitford
Yeah. The other thing is, if you don't want to pull them off, you can cut them off. But usually the pulling, they'll break along a natural cleavage line, which is what they're going to do anyway when they're pups. That you tend to find that that does usually the least damage. But yeah, just remove 50 per cent of the leaves on the top, like a haircut, so that they're not water stressing out. That's the main thing I do with them.
Talkback caller
Terrific. All right. Yep. I'll give it a go. OK.
Mel Bush
Have a lovely weekend, Sarah. Rob is in beautiful Beauty Point. Hi, Rob. Good morning. What's going on with you? And how's the weather in Beauty Point this morning?
Talkback caller
It was about minus one, about a half an hour ago. Oh, good. Lovely big frost. But that's what we've had recently. So it's still lovely here, though.
Mel Bush
Bracing, refreshing. Let's call it refreshing. And you've moved from Queensland, is that right? Yes, I have. Oh, how has the acclimatisation gone?
Talkback caller
Well, I actually come from Western Queensland.
Mel Bush
Oh, you know all about it then.
Talkback caller
Yeah. Yeah. We didn't get... Our water was fresh. It froze until 10 o'clock in the morning.
Mel Bush
You're well acclimatised. Yeah. What's happening with you?
Talkback caller
OK. I was just ringing about the avocados. My wife's family had an avocado orchard on the Sunshine Coast. And most avocados, if grafted, don't fruit until about eight years of age.
Mel Bush
Wow. OK. That's interesting. That's a lot. That's a long wait to make any money out of your avocado orchard, isn't it?
Talkback caller
That's true. But our property on the Sunshine Coast, we live not far from them. We had four avocado trees. We were getting 250, 300 avocados off the four trees throughout the year because they'd fruit at different times.
Mel Bush
Wow. That's, yeah, that's a lot of avocados. And you would have a lot of friends, I would imagine. Yeah. Yeah. You can't get away up there. To give avocados away from. Well, I think the avocado farm that was in Tasmania that I don't know if it's in Tasmania now, I think was up in the north west.
Chris Whitford
Up near Penguin area.
Mel Bush
Yeah, back in the Meander Valley, somewhere like that. Well, thank you for that, Rob. Not a problem. Much appreciated. Have a great weekend. Well, yeah, I mean, so many people would think you can't grow avocados in Tasmania, but they do grow well in. Yeah.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, they're just coming on now that there's no supply. That's right. And that's the trouble. I mean, Rob's probably right. The eight years, as I said, I'm not an avocado aficionado, but yeah, with an eight year old tree, I would have pulled it out by now. Would you? As an orchardist. Given up? No, commercially we used to, we would grow a tree and then the third year we'd get fruit and after five years, there's actually too much of it on the market. We'd have to go for the next variety. That seems like such a shame. It does, but that's the way the fruit industry's gone. So avocados, you know, if you're waiting eight years, you've got to pick a winner because those trees are going to be around for 20, 30 years. They're different to the deciduous fruits that we used to grow, which are very trend pattern, you know. We like white peaches. We like yellow peaches. We like hairy peaches. We don't like hairy peaches. You know, we don't like the big ones. We don't like the small ones. So you're always chasing this market. So, yes, just a caveat there with some good advice from Rob that maybe leave it another year before you girdle that avocado.
Mel Bush
Yes, that's right. Hold on. Just 12 months more. And Jane has said the same thing. My bacon avocado, I actually wondered what, I didn't understand when I first heard the bacon part of it. Bacon avocado. Who would know about avocado and bacon? That's right. Didn't fruit for eight years. So there you go. It's another one. So, and it says now it's prolific. A question from Julie. Hi, Chris. Does moving plants now include small native shrubs?
Chris Whitford
Yeah. Again, depending upon where you are, the risk of doing something when it's really cold is the frost will damage anything that gets stressed. Right. OK, so that's what you're worried about. But definitely with a small native plant, I would be probably waiting a little bit. I'd certainly want to move it before spring starting to hit because that again, that's when it started rapidly growing. So you're trying to get that sweet spot where the plant's going to put new growth out. It's warm enough to do it and you've moved it. So it's going to arrive in its new home and be ready to rock and roll and get going. But yeah, there's a lot of myths about not being able to move plants. It's really a matter of how careful you are. A lot of plants that we wouldn't have moved in the past, now we can. Just because we do it more carefully. We don't shake all the soil off and dry the roots out and damage all the root system.
Mel Bush
That would be the case for most plants now, just before I move forward with the next question.
Chris Whitford
There's no real, there's a, the root plants that you often struggle with moving are things that have got deep tap roots where you remove that bit of the root, which is critical to the plant and it doesn't have enough hair roots to progress. So there are some plants you generally wouldn't move.
Mel Bush
Do you give the roots a haircut when you move plants?
Chris Whitford
A lot of people do. Depends upon how good the roots are. If they're not disturbed and damaged and they're actively growing, I probably don't take much off. If they're damaged, I remove any damaged roots. And if they've been restricted by say a pot growth, I would cut them again because often they'll stay in that ball, even though you put them in your free soil, they're just trained to going in circles. So yeah, it depends on the quality of the roots when you dig the plant up.
Mel Bush
There you go. And Marie in Sandy Bay, Chris says, Hi Mel and Chris. Hi there Marie. What the heck is a cordyline? Cordyline as in Richard the Lionheart. Cordyline, which sounds yummy and it produces pups. How do you spell it? And thanks for the terrific show, says Marie in Sandy Bay. Oh, gold Marie. Thank you for the text. Well, I can tell you how you spell it, but how do you describe a cordyline? I mean, I think they're gorgeous. Well, only because they don't die in my garden.
Chris Whitford
Okay. A broad-leaved grass tussock up to one to one and a half metres tall, producing a spiky floret when mature.
Mel Bush
Oh, gee, that sounds excellent. Just sounds like reading one of those cards you get at the nursery. And they do come in different colours, don't they? Oh yeah, a great variety of colours. They're beautiful.
Chris Whitford
And they're tough and they don't need a lot of water. That's one of the things. Which is... They're a great landscaping plant.
Mel Bush
So there you go, Marie. Do yourself a favour, go down to the nursery and see if you can find a cordyline or hunt down Sarah in the Huon Valley. She'll have plenty of them, plenty of the little pups. And that's the great thing too, because then you get your all your extra little plants.
Chris Whitford
And you can swap them and then get other colours from other people.
Mel Bush
Yeah, that's right. They are brilliant. Speaking of which, we're planning a plant swap, but more about that, I can't tell you everything right now. We're still in the planning stages. From Caroline. Hi, Caroline. Good morning. Just wondering if you may know why birds are attracted to one bird bath and not the other? It's not really a gardening question, but anyway, we'll roll with it. Is it the colour? And can anything be done to make the bath attractive? That's outside my reading.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, look, it could be that the bath is near something that birds can't see what's near the bath. They can't see what's under it. So they're worried about predation from something. True. The bird bath, we've got a normally out exposed area. The birds got free. They can see what's around the bird bath, so they're not going to be upset by a little kitty cat who's waiting underneath it. That's right. So it could be as simple as that. Just relocate it somewhere where it's visible.
Mel Bush
Visible and maybe not near shrubbery where things are hiding.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, that's what it could be. And that kind of thing. But if they're blackbirds, get rid of it. Yes. Don't want the blackbirds.
Mel Bush
No, no, not the blackbirds. We were talking about those the other day. That's where you go down to South Arm, where they're holding their scarecrow competition and have a yarn to the scarecrow makers and see if they might hand over one of their scarecrows for you. And speaking of, yes, little kitty cats and birds, it was mine was cat because my cat is on a run. Mine was cat versus wedge tail eagle. I managed to save the cat in the nick of time from the wedge tail. It was flying over 10 feet above. Another texter says, yes, avos take seven to nine years to reach full maturity, but still come in both male and female flags. So there you go. Okay. This might be, this is a bit of a long one from Molly. Hello, Molly. And thanks for your question. Good morning. I have recently invested in a greenhouse, which I have positioned north, north-south facing with the door at the southern end. Currently, I've only filled it with pot plants. I'd like to add some raised garden beds. We may have had this question and would be able to suggest what aspect is better for propagation. Would it be best toward the door on the eastern side? Not sure of the position. So I don't cook the seedlings or make the seedlings too leggy.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, I'd put the, my garden bed for growing on the north side of the thing. Opposite the door end, because that's going to be the most sun, most heat all the time. So that's probably where I'd be putting my growing stuff that's staying there. My vegetable seedlings propagation, I'd probably put on the left-hand side going, which is the door facing east. So southeast side for my seedlings, because they'll get a bit of shade, bit of a cooler part of the glass house and not direct sunlight. So that's probably better. And they'll get the warmth. On the western side, I'd put anything that I need to put in the glass house that's not too critical.
Mel Bush
Yeah, that's actually great advice because I think in terms of seasoning, I think I've killed everything in terms of seedlings. And I just thought automatically that it's a beautiful warm environment, just plonk them in there and they'll go nuts. But the opposite was the case.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, it's because our sun's so low here that it's not always easy to get all the lighting through the glass house. You can't use the full dimension of a glass house in Tasmania because you get cold spots in the bottom where it gets too cold. Even though it's a glass house, there's still cold spots in glass house and often too little light.
Mel Bush
And I wondered too in the summer if it was getting actually too hot and not enough airflow potentially.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, the good ones have a little door that you can open up on the top. And I have a thermometer I stick in mine just every so often I look and see what it's been getting to. And if I see it's gone to 40 degrees, I go, oh bugger. Oops-a-dais. Need to open the window. Yes, yes.
Mel Bush
Well, mine's sort of, it's a glass house, but it's only little and it's a homemade variety. So it does have a window. Yeah. You just open the little window, which is great. From Anne in Sandfly says, hi Chris, which fruit trees should be sprayed with lime sulfur and which should get copper sulfate sprays now?
Chris Whitford
Okay. Lime sulfur is generally your pome fruit, which is apples, pears, nashies. Okay. Apples, pears, nashies. Your copper sprays are more your stone fruits. So apricots, nectarines, cherries, all those sorts of ones. Okay. Because they get different diseases.
Mel Bush
But weren't we talking earlier about mixing those two together?
Chris Whitford
Yeah. A lot of people will put a copper spray on as well because they're worried about something that's been bacterial in the previous season. And that's, copper's for bacteria more than anything else. Whereas lime sulfur is more your fungal diseases. Oh, okay. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So it depends on what the history of the crop is. You know, if you had a lot of disease in, you'd probably go with the shotgun mix is what we call it.
Mel Bush
So a bit of both. Okay. Lovely. From Robert in Lauderdale. Hello, Robert says, g'day chaps. When I was growing centuries ago, we had, was that when you were growing, Robert, centuries ago, we had clover lawns. Why don't we use, great question, Robert. Bees. Look, I used to, what do you mean bees?
Chris Whitford
Clover. Flowers.
Mel Bush
Yeah. But why aren't we growing clover anymore?
Chris Whitford
Oh, we still grow clover for animals to eat it, but we don't grow them as lawns because they bring in the bees and the bees bite the little kitties when they run around the lawns.
Mel Bush
But we want bees. We should be growing it again.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, but not on our children's feet. Clover used to be seen as a pest in a lawn. And actually what happens is clover and grass, they're complimentary plants. The clover produces nitrogen. The grass grows really fast, loves the clover, shades the clover out, clover dies. Lawns run out of nitrogen, lawns die, clover grows back again. And you get this oscillating between clover and grass over the year of a normal lawn. But because of the, you know, worry with bee stings and that and things that cause bites, people went away from clover naturally in their lawns. But from a biological thing, clover's are great because they're putting nitrogen into the soil.
Mel Bush
Yes. I wonder, can you still, can you buy clover to, you know, plant in your...
Chris Whitford
Yeah, you can put clover in. You know, there's white clover, Kenya white clover is still commonly grown as a pasture crop. Growers, you know, we grow acres of it to get seeds. So we put it in for dairy farmers and cattle growers and that sort of thing. But in lawn mixes, we've got a bit fussy.
Mel Bush
Like Robert, I do. I remember vividly and, you know, used to go around Kenya looking for a four leaf clover. Never ever found one, but there you go. So you can. Oh, can I grow clover even if I've got a sandy soil and just do it the same as a lawn?
Chris Whitford
Yeah, we used to get clover on the Granite Belt, which is pure sand. So it's, the main thing is the clover, you need a little bit of phosphorus to grow your clover a bit better. And the thing is it does cut down your need for nitrogen. Interesting. Lawns are so hungry. That's one of the reasons we put clover grass mixtures in for our cattle, because we can get a free shot of nitrogen for our grass, for our dairy cattle by growing a legume.
Mel Bush
I'm going to go looking for it. From Beck, who's in Burnie. Hello, Beck. Hi guys. When is the best time to plant a fig tree? I have one that is about 30 to 40 centimetres and I'm not sure when I should put it in the ground.
Chris Whitford
You could probably start now. Yeah. Yeah. If you've got it, I'd probably be getting the soil ready and the hole ready now and maybe in a couple of weeks' time. So dig a decent hole. If it's clay, you might want to raise that bed a bit higher so it's got a bit of nice quality soil on the top. Put some long-term fertiliser maybe in the bottom below the root zone so that the fig can chase it, because figs will chase food. They're a very hungry plant, but they reward you with beautiful crops. Lots of sun though. Make sure it's in a full sun position. Yeah.
Mel Bush
I've got a very small, the same as Beck fig tree, but it does... Are they very slow growing? It seems...
Chris Whitford
In Tassie, they tend to be, but no, they're not really. In the warmer climates, we've got a warm summer, which we haven't seen that for a while. They grow really... They will grow quite fast. They'll put on half a metre to a metre of growth in a year when they're really active. But it's getting that fruit to be mature. That's what I've struggled with. I figured Mount Stewart, I'd be better off to take it over to Midway Point and I'd get a crop all the time. Whereas at Mount Stuart, I'm lucky to get two or three before it gets too cold.
Mel Bush
Yeah, there you go. Just temperature dependent. From Julie. Hello, Julie. Is it a good idea to lay wads of newspaper around newly planted miller lucas? Should I add mulch on top of that? I want to stop weeds and also keep moisture in.
Chris Whitford
Okay. The trouble with wads of newspaper is sometimes they actually are so good that they stop the water getting in. Ah, of course. So I would tend to probably, if you put them in, put a pitchfork or a fork through them so the water when it hits the paper can get into those holes and get into the soil. And by all means, put your mulch on top of that. But just be aware, modern newspapers, modern inks, modern print, they're not as good as the old fashioned ones. They're a lot more oily and sometimes they can be problematic. But I have found at times if you use too much newspaper, you actually can't wet underneath. So you think you're watering it, but all you're doing is watering newspaper. It doesn't tend to grow very well.
Mel Bush
Yeah. And of course, what you're waiting for is, well, I guess the newspaper to break down.
Chris Whitford
But it doesn't break down as much as it used to. It's just the additives they make papers with these days aren't always as good.
Mel Bush
From Jason. I have a fruit tree enclosure on Bruny Island. Are they wild, Jason? Are they trying to get away? A talented man called Adam built for me. I laid straw, then black plastic over the top, hoping to kill some of the grass seed. I'm now ready for planting, but need to pick up the soil level before planting. The enclosure will have 10 fruit trees in it. It's around five by four metres and I need to pick up the soil by 500 mil. What soil would you recommend putting it in and where should I get it from? Veggie mix might be a bit expensive. This is right in your wheelhouse.
Chris Whitford
OK, 10 cubic metres of soil. Where you would get it from? Good question. You're probably going to have to buy it in. You can make your own soil mixes with a combination of sand, bull manure or cow manure and some organic matter, but that's going to break down. You really would want some clay material in there if you could get it. The problem is with Bruny Island, you've probably got sand everywhere around you. Yeah. And the sandy stuff is going to be problematic as it won't hold moisture. So you need to get something that's going to add moisture to it. If you use just straight manure, it's going to break down in 12 months. So you will lose that value. You probably want some what we call hardwood fine, something that will not rot as fast. You could try some sugar cane mulch. That'll last for at least 12 months, but again, it's going to break down. It's really problematic to get good quality soils down here because we've got too much sand around and not enough nice, lovely red dirt up from Stanley.
Mel Bush
But it might be a case of just having to go with the trailer.
Chris Whitford
Yeah, look, I think you're going to have to buy it. It's going to cost you, but you're going to have to keep building that up. Just be aware that it will reduce by 25 per cent that veggie mix. You'll lose 25 per cent of its volume after 12 months because of the organic matter they use in it. So you're going to have to keep topping that up.
Mel Bush
Good luck. But it sounds like you've got a good thing going there, Jason. Chris Whitford, that's all we've got time for with Gardening Talkback.