{"id":3860,"date":"2017-01-01T21:01:57","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T08:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/?p=3860"},"modified":"2017-01-02T00:10:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-01T11:10:24","slug":"underplanting-the-orange-grove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/underplanting-the-orange-grove\/","title":{"rendered":"Underplanting the Orange Grove"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello, how are you doing out there after the excesses of the festive season? If you’re at the stage where finishing off that last\u00a0box of chocolates has started to feel\u00a0like something to\u00a0cross off the to-do list, you’re probably ready for a bit of exercise. Let’s go for a virtual walk down to the orange grove<\/a> and I’ll show you what Deborah and I have been planting.<\/p>\n

\"Comfrey<\/a>

Look a comfrey flower, right on the edge of the grove.<\/p><\/div>\n

As any citrus pest worth her salt knows, thirty-one\u00a0orange trees planted in close proximity\u00a0constitute an invitation to party hard. Ergo,\u00a0on moving onto the farmlet we were\u00a0greeted with evidence of the extensive carousing of\u00a0Northland aphids. The entire grove was\u00a0disfigured by <use your\u00a0ominous voice> Black. Sooty. Mould.\u00a0Yes, it really is a thing. It’s a fungus\u00a0that grows on ‘honeydew’.<\/p>\n

Honeydew\u00a0is what entomologists call the excrement of\u00a0aphids and scale beetles. Haha! Perhaps equestrians should start calling horse excrement\u00a0‘meadow-dew’. That would certainly put a new spin on poo pick-up<\/a> — ‘I say friends, let’s pop out to the paddock and gather us some fresh meadow-dew shall we?’.<\/p>\n

\"Comfrey\"<\/a>

Comfrey<\/p><\/div>\n

Anyway, I digress. Black sooty mould<\/a> is a sign that you have a nasty aphid or scale beetle infestation and those little critters are sucking the sap out of your trees. The mould is less damaging than the insect pests, but as it grows and\u00a0covers the\u00a0leaf surfaces it\u00a0reduces the tree’s ability to photosynthesise. A malnourished tree is a low health tree, and low health trees are more susceptible to attack by varmints of the sternorrhyncha suborder<\/a>. Cue\u00a0a downward spiral\u00a0of happy pests and sad trees.<\/p>\n

\"Bishop<\/a>

Parsley\u00a0dropwort, known locally as carrot weed.<\/p><\/div>\n

One way to quash aphid parties is to grow\u00a0plants in\u00a0your orchard that\u00a0encourage predator insects. Ladybirds, lacewings and praying mantises (yup, I checked, and that really is the plural of mantis)\u00a0suck the juices out of those sternorrhynchas like vampires at a nightclub<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you choose carefully your underplanting species can\u00a0also enhance soil fertility<\/a>, suppress grass (grass isn’t ideal in a citrus orchard\u00a0because it competes with the trees for food), and reduce the need for\u00a0watering by acting as a living mulch. Oh, and\u00a0they look pretty don’t you think?<\/p>\n

\"Nasturtium\"<\/a>

Nasturtiums.<\/p><\/div>\n

Luckily for us Deborah knew about\u00a0the Manukau Institute of Technology plant nursery<\/a>\u00a0(highly recommended), and before Christmas she stocked up on comfrey and nasturtiums\u00a0at $1 per plant. Earlier in the year we had transplanted some borage seedlings from the Kragbol’s Auckland garden, and\u00a0some\u00a0comfrey from the garden at our old house<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Queen<\/a>

Queen Anne’s Lace<\/p><\/div>\n

Our underplanting has a long way to go. Although the individual plants are thriving, at the moment the orange grove undergrowth still sports way\u00a0more out-of-control grass and tradescantia than it does\u00a0swathes of\u00a0pretty and beneficial herbs. Never mind, there is another\u00a0wave of propagating and planting on\u00a0the list\u00a0for autumn. With luck\u00a0we’ll get some decent rain around then which will\u00a0give our next batch of seedlings\u00a0a good start.<\/p>\n

Anyway, although it is very\u00a0early days, I’m pleased to report that I’ve noticed\u00a0quite a number\u00a0of Steelblue Ladybirds in the grove recently.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A\u00a0Steelblue Ladybird<\/a>, hard at work hunting aphids. What is super-cool is that if you look very carefully at her metallic sheen you can just make out my\u00a0reflection as I take the\u00a0photograph.<\/p><\/div>\n

And so far no Black Sooty Mould to be seen.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello, how are you doing out there after the excesses of the festive season? If you’re at the stage where finishing off that last\u00a0box of chocolates has started to feel\u00a0like something to\u00a0cross off the to-do list, you’re probably ready for… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,44,33,20,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bees","category-fruit-trees","category-gardening","category-orange-grove","category-plant-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3860"}],"version-history":[{"count":77,"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3945,"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3860\/revisions\/3945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}