Each year, gardening writers are presented with bucketloads of questions, often when they're juggling four bottles of milk in the grocery queue or have a mouthful of implements at the dentist.
Three years ago the questions were the "why has my lemon tree/grevillea/bottlebrush died" or "why isn't my agapanthus flowering" kind. All of them had the same answer: your garden needs more water.
"Just add water" was a simple solution, assuming you didn't minding lugging buckets of shower water out to the dahlias.
This year the problem is too much water, or rather, exactly enough rain for weeds to grow up to your waist as soon as you turn your back on them, trees that fail to set fruit, and flowers that ball up like a two-year-old having a tantrum instead of opening into gorgeous blooms. Sadly, the solutions aren't as easy as "water your garden".
And no matter what the season, there are always questions about possums...
Q. How can I stop the (insert favourite insult) possums eating my roses/citrus/apples/broccoli/parsley?
Put a possum collar on any tree or shrub trunk, pergola or fence post the possums are climbing up. Possums collars once had to be home-made but these days you have a choice of many inconspicuous commercial possum guards, from transparent fibreglass to shiny or painted metal, and they all do the job extremely well. You can even buy lengths of spikes that would stop a Roman chariot, much less your average ringtail.
Q. Why hasn't my fruit tree set fruit?
If it's already bloomed then sorry, that's it for the year. But whenever the weather is too wet, damp or misty for bees to fly - or if the air is too smoky or otherwise polluted, and the bees can't locate the flowers' scent - you can take a paint brush and act like a bee, transferring the yellow pollen from one flower to the stigma of another. You don't need to buzz while you do it. Many plants are "wind pollinated" but the wind doesn't do this as well in wet years either. Once again, it's up to you and the brush.
Q. Why do my corn cobs have more spaces than kernels?
In dry/wet/misty/smoky years, corn doesn't receive enough pollination for fat, well-filled corn cobs. Take the "tassels" - the top bits that look like grass seeds - and shake them over the green "silks" to transfer pollen. This may or may not be a good time to further your kids' education about how the birds and the bees can be assisted by a gardener.
Q. Why aren't my seeds germinating?
Your seeds may be rotting in the wet soil or they may germinate but die of "damping off", a fungal rot. The snails may also have snavelled them overnight. Try germinating seeds in punnets or boxes, then water them in with a dose of strong chamomile tea to kill the fungal spores. Place snail bait in home-made or commercial "bait stations" where pets and other creatures can't be harmed by them, but the snails are likely to creep in for shelter as well as a delicious bait snack.
Q. Why has my lemon tree/grevillea/bottlebrush died?
If your lemon tree/grevillea/bottlebrushalmost died in the drought, the dead roots have rotted and now the rot has spread. Plant new ones, but not in the same place.
Q. Why aren't my agapanthus/dahlias/nasturtiums etc flowering?
If it's cold and damp, flowers may "ball" instead of opening into gaudy beauty. But if you don't have a host of blooms at all this year, your tree/shrub/bulbs/rhizomes may be rotting from drought damage or just because they are wet, wet, wet. It's also possible that there are no flowers because the rest of your garden is growing like it's been scattered with fairy dust, and there are new branches casting too much shade for good flowering underneath them. Prune the branches, or move your blooms.
And the question everyone wants to ask but few do...
Q. Why doesn't my garden look as stunning as next door's?
Maybe your neighbours scatter on plant food; water when it's dry; buy summer annuals each spring and winter-blooming flowers each autumn or cannily planted enough shrubs and bulbs to have a thousand flowers on any day you care to name.
Add half a dozen superb shrubs to your garden now (ask at the garden centre for recommendations); order a few hundred cheap bulbs in bulk this February; plant pansies, Iceberg poppies or other winter bloomers in March, and yours will be the most floriferously gorgeous garden of them all.
This week I am:
- Planting seeds of a new kind of heat- and cold-resistant Iceberg-type lettuce called "Bernadinas" which should technically give us crisp lettuce hearts all winter and spring. I'll let you know if this miracle occurs.
- Picking great globulous agapanthus heads for the vase because with all the rain I can pick dozens and not make a dent in the garden display.
- Rejoicing in days with no rain whatsoever, and lines of new seedlings finally emerging.
- Wondering who will get the sweet corn crop this year - me or the bush rats.
- Finding flourishing dahlia plants where I'm sure I never planted them.
- Suddenly remembering I need to keep feeding the tomatoes if I want enough to boil down to passata to freeze this year.
