RE: Slugs and snails, Oenothera and cardiocrinum

Moira Ryan wrote:

> How is your garden faring? So far we have been able to keep ahead of the
> drought thanks to watering and the odd most welcome shower so we can't
> really grumble like the poor South Island.

Well Moira, as I sit here listening to the rain drumming on the roof I 
can't help thinking that our drought may have broken, even if it hasn't 
elsewhere in the country. We have had to resort to watering a few of the 
more favoured plants on a few occasions, but in general I do not need to 
bother, thanks to a very moisture retentive subsoil and loam, and thick 
layers of mulch that I have been trying to build up over the last few 
years. The only difficult bits are on the steep hillsides under the large 
trees, as the tree roots take all the spare moisture. Still, this has been 
our driest summer since we moved here (8 years now) and the streams have 
gone dry twice already, which has only happened to us once before.

On a totally unrelated subject, this drier weather seems to have been just 
the thing for our Oenothera (evening primrose) plants to excel. We had a 
nice clump in the front of the house, in fairly poor soil, and they have 
grown as tall as the fence this year (about 6 feet) and seem to have been 
flowering for ever. Unfortunately we don't know the species and can only 
say that the flowers are yellow, but not a bright yellow. We have 
accidentally found a very good way to propagate them too. Last year Melanie 
cut them down after flowering had finished and I put the old stalks through 
my MTD chipper-shredder, along with everything else. The mulch ended up on 
the vegetable plot (less weeding required and no watering), but obviously 
had a lot of Oenothera seeds in it, and hundreds germinated. As we had 
decided to leave the vegetable plot to lie fallow this year we just left 
them and now have a huge mass of pretty yellow flowers. I do not intend to 
put this lot through the shredder when they are finished! Reminds me of Bob 
Munro, at Moss Green Garden in Akatarawa Road near here, who discovered by 
accident that you can get Cardiocrinum giganteum seeds to germinate by 
sucking them up with a vacuum cleaner and then emptying the vacuum bag onto 
the ground in a damp shady spot. The trip through the vacuum seems to 
stimulate the germination - he thought because the papery "ring" around the 
seed gets knocked off in the process.

Sorry, I've rambled on a bit.

Tim Dutton
"Raindrops", Kaitoke, Upper Hutt, New Zealand
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