In the garden with Nell Carr
Paper daisies in a Dunorlan garden. Photo supplied.
Paper daisies
Paper daisies (Helichrysums), also known as everlastings or straw flowers, are useful plants for indoor decoration in the winter months when there are few fresh flowers available.
The flowers are in either cream or yellow colours, and there is one, H. milligani, which is endemic to Tasmania. It is a ground hugging plant which the gardening books claim to grow solely on the mountains.
However, I remember seeing them in native bush areas in the Deloraine district in the 1930s.
H. petiolatum, pictured growing on a Dunorlan fence, is a native of South Africa. It has soft grey hairy foliage and is extremely drought resistant.
H. hookeri was named for the famous Australian botanist Joseph Hooker who was responsible for finding and describing so many Tasmanian plants. It is native to NSW, Tasmania and Victoria, and the flowers are yellow.
H. scorpioides, the Button Everlasting, is native to all eastern states. Of the 30 odd varieties listed, only two are not native to Australia. Most of the species are valued for their interesting foliage, which is a feature of the winter garden scene, rather than for the flowers.
Vegetables
Sow lettuce, peas, turnips, plant spring onions and asparagus (two year crowns). The latter are conspicuous in plant shops at this time of year. They consist of a large bundle of long stringy roots.
Patience and hard work are rewarded when the time comes to harvest those delicious tender shoots, which seldom find their way as far as the kitchen.
Prepare a trench to spade depth and add a pre-planting fertilizer plus liberal quantities of compost. Set the crowns in the bottom and cover the roots with 20cm of soil and fill the trench, adding more fertilizer as the plants grow.
Do not harvest the first shoots in the first year.
