Megan Palmer

Emilie McVey wrote:I had always thought wood chips were a great idea for the garden.  In 2022 I managed to secure a chip drop with a local landscaping company, and I shoveled my paths and garden beds 4” thick.

Before the end of the gardening season and into the next (and the next and the next!) I experienced all sorts of problems with diseases, including botytris, anthracnose, rust, fusarium, verticillium, per the county master gardener.  The master gardener explained that the fresh wood chips unbalanced the soil nutrients (used too much nitrogen while breaking down? Can’t quite remember).   The soil became so drained that the diseases got a foothold.  Anyway, it’s been a disaster I am still trying to recover, and learn, from.

The MG said that wood chips need to be aged/dried before adding to the garden and paths.  Was she mistaken and I simply had lousy luck with the fresh wood chips?

All the diseases that you mention are also associated with overly wet conditions and/or poorly drained soils.  What are your annual rainfall figures?

I have been using fresh woodchips as a mulch for over ten years and not noticed an increase in diseases.

I don't incorporate the chips into the soil, it stays on the surface but I do incorporate well rotted chicken manure prior to planting.  My beds are raised in ground.

If we happen to get the right type of wood chips, I get a bonus crop of winecaps some years.

katie makos wrote:I will also look into whether I can source comfrey seeds from somewhere to try.

You mentioned that you don’t have much spare ground so it may be better to source comfrey root cuttings from plants that don’t set seeds. Comfrey grows readily from root cuttings.

There are a couple of arborists who drop their wood chips at our community garden, they get used up really quickly.

This variety of thyme grows locally in our region and is known as wild thyme.  It grows in poor soils over hot, dry summers up to 30C and winters go down to -6C.

The cultivated thyme has rounded leaves that are larger although the flavour is less intense. There is also a variegated cultivar that is lemon scented.

The plant in your photo doesn't appear to be thyme.

We have a warming drawer under the main part of our oven that gets used for storing baking trays and I keep my eggshells there.

I also have a jar on the bench but found that the shells can go mouldy if there's any egg white left in them so they need to be dried out.

Hubby prefers to put them into the jar so I just transfer them to the oven warming drawer.

In winter, the egg shell collection tray gets put on top of our woodburner and when the shells get brittle enough to crush, they are fed back to the chooks and/or sprinkled under the apple trees or around tomato plants.

I will have to find an Ebb Tide, they are sold in NZ and love that it’s a scented David Austin rose.

The description of the scent alone is enough to make me want it, let alone the glorious colour.

Beau is the sweetest, most affectionate little scoundrel. He just turned 4.

There's a formal rose garden in our local park but sadly, they replanted it several years ago and replaced most of the roses with unscented ones.

The scent feom the original rose bushes was heavenly, the scent was so heady as we walked amongst the beds. Now I need to go up to each shrub and bury my nose into the flowers to catch a whiff😒

They still look spectacular though.

Your roses are beautiful, the scents must be amazing. Do you remember the names of any of them?

The colour of the purple one is stunning.

Hugo Morvan wrote:
On topic, i think rooting hormone can be handy, but there are alternatives and using a stronger one is worse and doesn't always lead to the same results as much in my limited experience depends on variety used..

I have used rooting hormone powders in the past but seldom do any more as I've found that by simply taking multiple cuttings, plonking them all in a pot and keeping them watered but not over watered yields at least 60% strike rate.

There is a beautiful yellow floribunda highly fragrant rose named Friesia bred in the mid 70's that was given to me as a cutting that I have shared with many friends.

It is easily grown from cuttings and flowers within the second year as a tiny plant.

Lovage??