Retention

Janice and I took three days off last weekend and rested up with friends in Napier in warm, sunny weather. We also saw the show “Cats”. Great relaxation it was - as we both almost fell asleep during the first act. The weekend, however, was great.

Back to work today and there’s plenty to do. I’m still waiting for a break in the Wanganui weather to ready the second plastic house for recovering. It will come – just so long as it’s before late November when the delphiniums it holds are in flower and we’re trying to pollinate them please. Orders for plants are steady and we’ve noted a trend over the past few seasons for gardeners to order more cutting grown varieties. This is great news as they produce a wonderful show when grown in blocks of like clones.

The delphinium plants are enjoying the cool, damp weather and growing very quickly. Please though, don’t send us weather similar to that which plagued the English a few months ago. We don’t need that diseased stuff down here.

The new plastic house we’re building for our expanded seed production is waiting on drier weather and for me to pull my finger out and..... get the grass eaten off, shift a few plants and a rabbit fence, order the white weed mat floor covering, water tanks, drain pipes etc. etc. Not much really but it needs to be done in the next week as we could start building in late October.

Last week saw the completion of a retaining wall at the edge of the parking area behind the house garage. This will be useful . Not only will it stop the prospect of the orchard falling onto the parking area below but it will also allow visitors a little more room to park their cars. The wall has steps set at one end to make access to the orchard easier and tidies up the approach to the house. While the digger was here we also had a track cut from the car park up to the top of the lawn – to give tractor access to the orchard and future garden, and some other drainage work at the nursery.

I haven’t received many questions about delphiniums in the past few weeks. This is not normal. One of the main reasons for setting up this blog was to build a delphinium culture resource so I’m hoping I get asked a few curly ones soon.

Enough for now. I’m still lethargic from a relaxed weekend.

Cheers

Terry

Pollinators Wanted

Ok, this is it. Spring in New Zealand doesn't hang around. The plum blossom is over, the peach almost finished, apples just starting and the fruits on the native Puriri tree are turning red. Wood pigeons will soon be getting drunk on them.

It is clearly time to panic - the first delphinium spikes have buds in them already! This season will be a big one as we are building another 900 square metre plastic growing house which we hope to fill with delphiniums for pollination and have a seed crop from them. We are also renewing the covers on our old houses (one out of two are complete) which are already filling up with mother stock for the first pollination. The images show the old plastic, covered with pine pollen, being removed.

To complicate matters a little we have agreed to supply a couple of hundred flowering delphiniums in 8 litre pots in and around the time of the Ellerslie Flower Show in mid November. Our mail order sales of young delphinium plants have been good this spring and we are looking forward to October when many gardeners in New Zealand have nursed their existing borders and are looking for a new challenge...gotta have more delphiniums!

The main focus of our attention however is ensuring that we have sufficient parent plant material for our pollination and that the female parents are matched by male parents that will flower at the same time - sometimes a worry. It is also important that we recruit half a dozen good pollinators, usually students, over the summer. Being seasonal work it is difficult to retain staff from year to year and every new season is a challenge.

What makes this even more interesting is that although new pollinators are all trained the same way and appear to do the work in the same fashion, results vary markedly. Although apparently a mundane job our best pollinators have traditionally been very intelligent people with a genuine interest in horticulture. If you are very intelligent, and you obviously are if you're reading this, and would like a few month's playing with flowers in New Zealand then why not give me a call 64 6 3421733. Age doesn't matter as long as you're seventeen or over.

Ok, tis spring and I'm needed outside

Cheers

Staff Treats

Janice and I had a great day today. Both of our permanent staff have been here about a year now so we decided to take them out for a treat. Janice had read of a great scheme another boss had tried when he wanted to treat his staff, so we gave it a go.

On Monday we told them that Thursday would not be a normal working day but instead, we would meet them in a Wanganui for coffee at 9:30am and then take them somewhere. No clues were given. As we had a consignment of seeds to take to Palmerston North for a phytosanitary certificate we decided that that would be the destination. We didn’t, of course, tell the two staff members (Edita and Debbie). We just set off on our mystery day.

Palmerston North is about an hour’s drive away. They’d already had three days to wonder what this was all about so were quite hyped up when we arrived. They were even more excited when we gave them $100 each and told them that they had an hour to spend it and that it must be on things for themselves. Not for the kids. Not for the kitchen. Just for them. They had instructions to keep the receipts and that the one who was closest to spending the entire $100 would receive a further surprise.

After the hour was up (they took about 1hour and a quarter actually) Janice and I had finished our business and we took Edita and Debbie to lunch at an Italian restaurant in the city. Here we had them “show and tell” and add up their receipts. They’d spent well on, surprise, surprise, clothes. They had both had a lot of fun and so had we. It was a treat for all. After lunch we drove home and they had the rest of the day off.

The extra surprise went to Deddie – two free tickets to the Last Night of the Proms concert in Wanganui on Saturday night.

I had a great time after arriving home too, mulching some blossoming plum trees with compost and mowing the lawn, finishing just as the light faded.

This was a great day and one I would recommend to all employers. Debbie and Edita are good workers and really loved the appreciation.....and the nursery is about to get really busy.

Back to work tomorrow.

Spring

Woops, I’ve not written for a few days.

Spring is certainly here, the poplars are coming into leaf, the plums are flowering, the tulips are waiting to catch the rain, the magpies are defending their nests and the delphiniums, like the lawns, are growing all too quickly.

Janice is very busy either sending out seed orders, writing up plant orders, blogging, quilting, maintaining the office and keeping in contact with the kids and grandkids.

My mother, Glenys Dowdeswell, who lives in Auckland, regularly visits dad who has Alzheimer’s disease and is being cared for in a secure institution in that city. Alex, my brother, is in the south island of New Zealand scouting sites for photography in his quest to produce an iconic book of New Zealanders in their own country. It has take two years so far, full time, he’s a perfectionist. Daughter Emma, in her mid thirties, has finally been offered a permanent job in a large New Zealand company testing software. She had only managed to get year-long contracts to date. She’s rather chuffed as she has just passed some new international exams for this type of work. Son John sounds as happy as ever and, being in Auckland also, gets to see my dad each week too. I really envy him that. Daughter Sarah has just enjoyed a week of sick kids and cabin fever. All in all life progresses very well for the Dowdeswell families.

Last week the company who supplies our potting compost, Dalton’s Ltd, increased the price from $185 to $275per cubic metre. Really! Naturally, this week has been spent checking out other suppliers and it seems we may have found a winner. Natural Bark and Compost Ltd of Foxton (one hour south of Wanganui) will do the mix for around $185 delivered – but there’s more. This company produce a compost which is a mixture of chicken manure and granulated bark. It looks wonderful, real garden friendly looking stuff and has an analysis that suggests we may be able to use it instead of potting mix. This is great as it is more environmentally friendly and only $60 per cubic metre! Every cloud etc...

In the nursery Edita and Debbie are busy sending out plant orders, taking cuttings and potting up mother plants for next season’s seed crop. The latter is what we need the potting mix for at present. Next week will be a tad busy as the cuttings are coming thick and fast and there’s no let up in the plant orders. Seed orders are ticking over quite nicely too.

Ok, I’ll go out and take a photo of the plum tree for this blog and then tackle the mowing of the lawns.

Alice Artindale

Wednesday 25th August

Answering emails from people interested in delphiniums is often a major part of my day. A number of questions come up regularly so I’ve decided to post these questions and answers, or maybe a summary of them, to this blog from time to time.

Yesterday we had an enquiry from someone wanting to trace the old cultivar, Alice Artindale. This delphinium is double flowered with small florets that can look similar to a reflex chrysanthemum, only they are a blue/mauve colour never seen in chrysanthemums. The florets are compact and can be widely spaced up the stem.

This delphinium was created the same year as Jim Mann Taylor. I’ve no idea when that was but his parents were married in 1925. I know this because Jim has a genealogy web site at:
http://www.phlomis.plus.com/index.htm and tells us that delphinium “Alice Artindale has stood the test of time. Ted Barker of William Artindale and Son spotted the unusual plant and it was named after the boss's wife Alice”. There is an image of delphinium Alice Artindale on the web site of Dr David Bassett at http://www.david.bassett.care4free.net/topics2/fascinat_florets_5.htm.

Like all double flowered delphiniums Alice can be something of a chameleon and David’s image looks quite different to that of Jim Mann Taylor’s on the NCCPG plant heritage web site at http://www.nccpg.com/Gloucestershire/plantweek13b.html

Will the real Alice Artindale please take the stand!

Well, the question was “where can I buy plants of Alice Artindale?” I don’t know. I can do no better than refer you to the web site of the Delphinium Society http://www.delphinium.demon.co.uk/ and David and Jim at the web sites above.

If anyone knows Alice’s whereabouts could you please drop me a line or add a comment to this blog?

As I don't have an image of Alice Artindale this is a photo of our own Sarita. A double flowered delphinium similar in some respects to Alice.

Cheers

TerryD

Getting back into it

Saturday 25^th August

Today has been a day spent working on updating articles for the web site and writing promotion material for sellers of our seed and plants to use. Naturally I needed a few breaks and took time off this morning to quickly walk around the local Saturday market with Janice and then join our friends, Robert and Jennifer, for a cup of coffee (orange for me) and a game of crib at a local coffee house. I’m just back from the second break, a 38 minute bike ride, and procrastinating before getting ready to take Robert and Jennifer (again), who looked after aspects of our business while we were away last month, out for a thank-you dinner.

Six weeks away without much exercise turned a 35 minute bike ride into a 38 minute one. Mmmmm, there’s work to be done on that.

Speaking of work, Janice has been busy too, installing a new computer. The one in the packing shed finally gave up the ghost while we were away so my old machine will go up to the shed and I’ll have the new one. This is the first time I’ve ever had the new, high spec pc as it usually goes to Janice, who knows how to use these things.

This week has seen the taking of cuttings start in earnest, preparing for the new seed production season. We’re more than doubling the covered growing area this season, adding another 850 square metre plastic growing house which I hope will be completed in time to grow a seed crop before the end of summer. With the expansion of our delphinium plant business in New Zealand (mail order and to nurseries) plus the increase in seed production, this season may be a tad busy! Oh, I forgot to mention the returning of much of our land into native bush - we’re making a start on that this year too.

The image is a native wood pigeon, the Kereru, on the elm outside our living room. These birds love to perch on the trees around the house and in the native bush.

Delphiniums on Iron Mountain

One of the highlights of our trip to Oregon last month was a visit to Iron Mountain, near the town of Sisters in the Cascade mountain range. Alice Doyle of Loghouse plants had suggested we might just have the timing right and Stephen Murphy, a very good friend from Mt Vernon, drove me there while Janice was checking out the quilts in Sisters. Boy, did we have the timing right!
It was a hot, sunny morning and as we arrived and began wandering up to the alpine meadow it was obvious that there was much in flower. This image shows a mass of various delphinium species along with Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja) species, artemisia, myosotis and much more. Not being a great plantsman it was good to have Stephen's company and help with identification. There was only one down side to the trip. Here I am, quite fit from regular biking and walking and what do I do but pull a calf muscle before reaching the top...too much sitting in cars and planes I guess. This restricted me a little for the next week or so but didn't stop me having a great time in Mt Vernon that night when the whole town put on a fantastic fireworks display for us. I remember the date - July 4th.