Dividing (Splitting) Up Rhubarb

dividing rhubarb

Years ago I was given a Rhubarb plant from a work colleague.

I’ve talked before about the journey of this poor neglected plant into my garden. The short of it is that it was left to dry out, forgotten in a garage, then eventually sent my way where it got (accidentally this time) left for another day to dry out, then finally planted in the garden to flourish.

As I said in that post, Rhubarb plants are tough. They are extremely resilient and while I wouldn’t recommend treating them badly like my first plant was, they can tolerate a fair bit of unkindness.

It’s been at least 18 months since my Rhubarb plants found their current home, and at that time they were split off from the original plant to create 5 new plants.

Dividing Rhubarb up is not only useful for propagating more plants, it’s also important for keeping the original plant healthy. The bigger it gets, the thinner and fewer the stems tend to be, and the whole plant can get a little out of control.

Which is where our Rhubarb patch had got to.

dividing rhubarb

Read more

Pruning Raspberry Plants

pruning raspberries

The berries we grow in our garden are a firm favourite for our family.

Strawberries, Boysenberries, Blackberries, Blueberries and definitely Raspberries.

You can’t beat a bowl of Raspberries with a sprinkling of icing sugar or a scoop of vanilla icecream, or a jar of fresh home made Raspberry jam.

When we first planted our Raspberry patch, we planted just one cane. That was 4 years ago and this is just some of what we have now (there’s more on the other side of this same fence).

pruning raspberriesWell that was what we did have, before we got pruning.

You can see in this picture that there is a lot of woody looking canes, and it’s just a bit of a mess really.

This is what our Raspberry patch looks like at the end of the season. All the fruiting canes have died off, and the new canes that will fruit in the next Summer are strong and ready to go.

It’s at the end of every fruiting season that you need to prune back all your old Raspberry canes, and prepare your patch for the next season.

But a lot of people, new to growing Raspberries, aren’t sure which canes to prune away and which ones to leave.

I could give you the easy answer and say to just prune out the old, dead wood and leave the new canes, but you want to make sure you know exactly which is which before you get cutting, right?

Read more

Cherries Falling Off The Tree?

Cherry Drop

When our garden starts to bloom, it is the most beautiful and exciting sight. Because our garden is a predominantly edible garden, those blooms don’t just make our backyard look pretty, they also offer the promise of loads of fresh, …

Read more

Preserved Beetroot

Cooking Beetroot

Cooking BeetrootI’ve never been a fan of Beetroot. 

I think I was put off it as a kid when it would come in a burger (common addition to a New Zealand burger) and even if I took it out, it would leave a big, soggy, bright red stain on the burger bun that I would then have to eat around.

Or maybe it was from reading too many historical novels that would describe a hideous sounding meal including boiled beets.

Either way, they’ve never been a vegetable I’ve warmed too, and so it is another vegetable that I never used to grow.

Read more

Growing Perennial Chilli (or Chili) Plants

Perennial Chili Plant

Perennial Chili Plant

We absolutely love Chillies, and we eat A LOT of them. 

Which is why we absolutely have to grow our own, because if we didn’t, come Winter when they are out of season, they easily fetch up to $6 for 5 pretty sad looking red chillies and we’re refuse to pay that much for them.

We have been really lucky with our chilli plants and always get a pretty good crop. But it’s always sad to see these lovely ornamental plants shrivel up and die when Winter sets in.

Well it used to be sad, before we began growing our Chilli plants as perennials.

Read more

Propagating Boysenberry Plants

growing boysenberries

Boysenberry plants are a wonderful addition to any edible garden.

When allowed to thrive, they produce loads of fresh, sweet, fat fruit which is delicious whether it’s eaten straight off the bush, still warm from the Summer sun, preserved as Boysenberry jam or frozen and used through the year for fruit pies and smoothies.

As a kid, I remember a friend whose parents had the most prolific Boysenberry bush. We used to sit in the backyard after school and eat as many as we could until all the ripe berries were gone. I always hoped another lot would ripen before I was invited to go around again.

It’s no surprise then that when we first started our garden, and knew we wanted to make it an edible garden, one of the first plants I wanted was a Boysenberry plant.

Read more

Want to know more about gardening?

Fill in your email address in the form below and you'll receive all the latest updates directly in your in-box.

Thank you for subscribing.

Something went wrong.