I’m sure all gardeners would agree with me that September is such a busy month in the garden. Fortunately, the weather has been fine lately, making it easier to get outdoors. Yesterday, I spent three hours repotting some of my chilli, capsicum and tomato seedlings into six-cell punnets, as they had outgrown their black plastic punnets. I also repotted some more Sweet 100 tomatoes into larger pots. I really enjoyed this little task. It’s very rewarding to see my little seedlings blossom into plants and I find the process of re-potting plants very therapeutic. Although they’ve moved up in the world, I’m keeping all of these heat-loving plants securely under cover in the greenhouse. Despite what you see in the garden centres at the moment, don’t be fooled, folks! Temperatures can fluctuate a lot at this time of the year, particularly at night.
Today, I did quite a bit of seed sowing – zucchini and some cape gooseberry seeds (Egmont Seeds) on my heat pads indoors and leeks, celery, kohlrabi (green and purple), silverbeet, spinach, chives and spring onions in punnets outdoors. I’m excited to be growing the variety “Spinach Oriental Imperial Green” from Egmont Seeds for the first time. As the weather has become a bit warmer, mum and I moved all of my marigolds and petunias from the greenhouse outside to our patio. Last night, I did a test and placed one punnet of each outside and they were still looking good in the morning, which I took as a good sign. This way, there’s more room in the greenhouse, which will no doubt be filled with zucchini, pumpkins and cucumbers in the coming weeks. Tomorrow, I’ve got plans to plant some cosmos and cornflower seedlings into the garden to brighten up the veggie patch. I’m also going to put in more cut and come again lettuce, as well as mesclun. I’ve got about a dozen punnets in the patio at the moment and I’ll probably plant them into containers. I’m also going to sow a packet of wildflowers from Egmont Seeds. I try and grow wildflowers every year to attract bees to the garden and help with pollinating fruiting veggies such as capsicums, chillies, zucchini, cucumbers and pumpkins. A couple of years ago, I sowed Wildflowers of the World from Yates seeds and I find that some of the flowers still come up again year after year by themselves. I try and sow fresh seed every year to fill in the gaps. I haven’t thought beyond that but tomorrow when I have some time I’ll reflect further on what else I need to do in the garden this week. For now, we are taking a bit of time out every day to sit outside on our outdoor furniture and admire the garden. It’s important to think ahead to what we will grow in future, but it’s also important to enjoy the present. We have been enjoying an abundance of produce from the garden, including cabbage (red and green), cauliflower, carrots, leeks, peas, spring onions, kale, asparagus and broccoli. I’ve included a photo of a typical harvest from our garden with this post. I’m also positively beaming at the sight of the spring garden which contains a number of different veggies in progress, including potatoes, broad beans, more cabbages and broccoli, strawberries and garlic. Despite how busy you are this spring, make sure you take a bit of time out to enjoy your garden too! It definitely won’t look this fresh and lush in summer. I promise l’ll include a photo of how our garden looks at the moment in a future post.
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Lettuce is a staple in our spring garden. We enjoy eating salad every day, sometimes as simple as having a bowl of leaves with a little dressing. You don’t always need to add tomatoes, cucumber and peppers, especially if they’re really expensive at the supermarket, as they are now. In autumn, I planted quite a few different varieties which kept us going during the winter. I have found that our best lettuce grows in winter and spring, when temperatures are cooler. As the weather becomes warmer, it starts bolting to seed or becomes quite bitter, which usually happens some time in December. This is a shame, as salads are a summer staple but we cope with the problem by making greek salads in the warmest months, which don’t require lettuce. By then, we have heaps of tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden, so this works out perfectly.
Unlike a lot of other veggies, lettuce requires very little care at all, making it perfect for new gardeners. In August, I started sowing and planting more lettuce in the garden at fortnightly intervals. A few days ago, I sowed and planted another round. I will put in some more plants around mid-September and also in October. I like to plant lettuce at regular intervals to ensure that we have a constant supply and it doesn’t all mature at once. I grow our lettuce both in containers and in the ground. We prefer the cut and come again varieties of lettuce, as you can pick what you want without having to pull out the whole plant. This avoids waste. This year, I have been sowing the following varieties: “Degli Ortolani” and “Parella Rossa” from Franchi seeds, “Cut and Come Again” and “Red Fire” from Egmont seeds and “Green Salad Bowl”, “Velvet Red” and “Rouge d’Hiver” from Kings seeds. I also sowed “Cut and Come again” and “Cos” from Yates seeds. I have grown “Cos” from Yates in the past with success and am looking forward to seeing how “Cut and Come again” performs for us. I sowed all of these seeds into punnets with some seed raising mix which I left in our patio. Lettuce germinates fine in cooler temperatures, so I haven’t found it necessary to use a heat pad. I will probably plant these seedlings in the ground once they are mature enough. Last spring, we grew Miners lettuce (Kings Seeds) for the first time, and absolutely loved its flavour. Luckily, it self-seeded merrily during autumn and we have so many productive plants at the moment that it’s not necessary for me to sow more seeds this spring. I also sowed some rocket seeds from the Yates seeds range direct to the ground a few days ago. Our favourite salad involving rocket contains pear, walnuts and blue cheese. It’s simply divine! We also like adding rocket to pizzas so that we have a green topping (olives don’t count!). The punnets I have been planting into containers are mainly ones that I purchased for 99 cents from Kings Plant Barn during their sale about a fortnight ago. These include the varieties “Lollo Bionda” and “Lollo Rosso” (which you can see from the picture accompanying this post), as well as some mixed cut and come again varieties. About a week ago, I also planted a dozen punnets of rocket, which have grown tremendously. It won’t be long before they’re ready to be harvested. We just pick rocket as we need to, as we do with our cut and come again lettuce. I also planted some Salnova lettuce which I found on clearance at the Warehouse into containers. These plants were even bigger and more established than the seedlings in punnets, so we were eating lettuce leaves from them practically as soon as we had purchased them and potted them up! These are also cut and come again varieties of lettuce and are perfect for beginner gardeners. The plants are very large, making them very easy to start with. For lettuce grown in the ground, I like to work a little Yates Thrive Natural Blood and Bone into the soil at the time of planting, to encourage the growth of healthy green foliage. I use this product for growing all leafy green veggies, such as kale, leeks, spring onions and bok choy. I normally don’t use an additional fertiliser if growing lettuce in containers, as the potting mix already contains enough nutrients to feed the plants for a few months. I do like to liquid feed both lettuce grown in the ground and plants in containers every week. I used to use Yates Thrive Veggie and Herb Liquid Plant Food, but now that I’m trying to be more organic I’m using Yates Thrive Fish Blood and Bone Plant Food and Yates Thrive Natural Fish and Seaweed, which I purchased from Mitre 10 last year during one of their garden club events. There was a sales rep from Yates on hand to provide product advice and these products were recommended to me as a good organic substitute. The last time I was at Mitre 10, one of the ladies who works in the garden centre told me that the next garden club event will be held in November, so I’ve added it to my diary. Indeed, one of the best things about these evenings is the opportunity to get expert advice from all of my favourite NZ gardening companies, including Yates! What lettuce varieties are you planting in the garden this year? I’m always interested in what other gardeners around the country are growing. Reproduced below is my latest entry in the Yates spring veggie growing challenge The summer garden would not be complete without eggplants. These heat-loving fruiting veggies can, in my experience, be a little more difficult to grow successfully than tomatoes and peppers. I think the main reason for this is that they require really warm temperatures in order to grow and fruit well. For this reason, I normally start seedlings a little later than tomatoes and peppers, usually in late August. I’ve still got most of my eggplants sitting on the heat pad, at varying stages of germination, which you can see in the photo accompanying this post. This might sound quite late to some people, but I’ve noticed that once the weather starts warming up in October, they really take off. By contrast, the seedlings which I started back in April and May germinated fine on the heat pad but once they were moved to the greenhouse, where temperatures are considerably cooler, they faltered and most of my plants ended up dying. This year, I’m growing a selection of round and long varieties. Round eggplants I’ve sowed include “Florence Round Purple” from Kings Seeds (which always performs reliably in the garden), as well as “Prosperosa” and “Tonda Bianca” from Franchi seeds. I also sowed the following varieties of long eggplants: “Dok”, “Asian Bride” and “Tsakoniki” from Kings seeds, as well as “Ping Tung” from Egmont Seeds. I have grown all of these varieties except Ping Tung in past summers. In previous years, I have also grown “Blacknite” and “Black Beauty” from Yates seeds with great success, so I recommend these varieties as well. It is also possible to purchase grafted eggplants from the garden centre. When I first started gardening, I used to do this as the plants were very large, making success practically fool proof. However, once I gained confidence and started raising eggplants from seed, I stopped buying them as we found the skin (which we usually eat as well as the flesh) very tough. Perhaps the reason lies in the grafting, as the produce often takes on the characteristics of the rootstock. For some reason, I didn’t have a very good season for eggplants last year, so I’m determined to ensure that my plants get off to a good start this year. As with my tomatoes and peppers, once seedlings grow big enough, I’ll move them off the heat pad but keep them inside the incubators to create a warm growing environment. The next step is to move them into the green house and place them inside the large Sistema crates I’ve been using to keep plants insulated. As the seedlings grow and develop a few leaves, I’ll repot them into 6-cell punnets. Once they are big enough, they will be repotted into 10 cm pots. My own plants probably won’t be very big by Labour weekend. They might still be in 6-cell punnets like previous years. If I want a head start on the season, I’ll simply have to purchase a couple of larger eggplants from the garden centre or Awapuni, a business which sends plants wrapped in newspaper by courier. I normally start planting eggplants into the garden from November onwards, sometimes even into early December. I’ve found that they’re a bit more sensitive to the cold than tomatoes and peppers. As with capsicums and chillies, I tend to grow our eggplants in large black plastic containers, as I find they do much better this way than being planted in the ground. It also saves space in the garden for root crops such as spuds and kumara, as well as creeping plants that need more space, such as pumpkins, squash and melons. I don’t normally find it necessary to stake eggplants as the plant can usually support the weight of the fruit. But other gardeners might have different experiences. If you do want to provide plant support, it’s a good idea to do so at the time of planting, to avoid damaging the roots of the plant later on. For best results, I like to liquid feed eggplants every week from the time of planting until about the end of December, when plants start to develop fruit. I like using Yates Thrive Tomato Liquid Plant Food. While formulated for tomatoes, it’s perfectly fine to use this product on other fruiting plants, such as peppers, zucchini, cucumber, pumpkins and melons. I don’t normally need to hand pollinate eggplants in order to obtain fruit, but I know some gardeners like or need to do this. Don’t forget to water your plants regularly and deeply. If they’re planted in containers like mine, they will dry out faster and therefore require watering more frequently. We enjoy using our eggplants in a variety of dishes, including parmigiana, lasagne, pizza and on antipasto platters. It can also be cut up and thrown onto the BBQ. We also sometimes use eggplants in Indian cuisine, such as curries. If you can’t get through all your eggplants at once, don’t worry. We find that they store well in the fridge for a few weeks, or you can do what we do and share some with neighbours and friends. Reproduced below is my fifth entry in the Yates spring veggie growing chellenge this year
In this post, I’m going to talk a bit about the capsicums and chillies we’re growing in the garden this summer. I’d also like to elaborate a bit about how I like to start the seed raising process. I’ve referred to heat pads and my greenhouse in previous posts, but I’d like to share a bit about the processes involved in starting seedlings from seed. Please remember that my way of doing things is not necessarily the best or only way of growing plants! I’m constantly learning, but there’s a few things that I’ve learnt along the way that work well for me. Every year, I eagerly look forward to growing capsicums and chillies in the summer. I’m not sure what it is about these fruiting vegetables that is so attractive. Perhaps it’s their beautiful glossy green foliage, the formation of attractive fruits which change colour with the sun or the delicious dishes we use them in. I think it’s a combination of all three. Normally I start raising capsicums and chillies undercover on my heat pad in August. As I mentioned in a previous post, I did do that this year, but I also started some even earlier, back in April and May, which I nurtured over the winter. These plants are doing very well and were repotted into 10 cm pots about a month ago, which you can see in the photo I have chosen to accompany this post. This year, I’m excited to be growing three new capsicum varieties, Muscato F1 from Kings Seeds which is an orange variety, Chinese Giant, also from Kings Seeds and Double Up F1 from Egmont Seeds. All were sowed back in April and are doing very well in the green house, as you can see from the photo. Last season, I grew the capsicums Colour Salad Selection, Californian Wonder and Giant Bell from the Yates seeds range with great success but I thought it would be nice to try growing something different this summer. I also grew the mini variety Jingle Belles from McGregors seeds last year and my two plants were extremely prolific. In addition to bell peppers, we also enjoy the longer style peppers, so I also sowed Cornos Red, Dulce Espana, Mama Mia Gialla and Mama Mia Rosso from Kings Seeds, as well as Palladio from Egmont Seeds. These are at different stages of growth in the greenhouse but all look incredibly healthy. As you can tell, we really love having capsicums in the garden! Every year, we always harvest so many chillies and have way more than we can possibly ever use. Normally, we freeze quite a few bags of chillies, which can then be used free-flow in dishes throughout the year. This year, I’m looking forward to growing “Bird’s Eye” from the Yates seed collection, as well as “Long Red Cayenne”. I’ve also sown Thai Super Chilli, Early Jalapeno and Sky Hot from Kings Seeds. I’ve also sown an assortment of random varieties given to me from a few different gardening friends, including Serrano, Rocoto, Hungarian Hot Wax, Bishop’s Crown, Indian Jawal, Trinidad Scorpian and Wildfire. Finally, I have sown a few sweet chillies, including Sweet Banana from McGregors, as well as Topepo Rosso and Lombardo from Franchi seeds. Treat capsicums and chillies as you would tomatoes. These heat-loving plants need warmth in order to germinate. Heat pads are ideal, but if you don’t have them or can’t afford to buy one, don’t worry. You can simply place seedlings in your hot water cupboard to aid the germination process. I’ve done this in the past, before I purchased two heat pads, and the seeds germinated fine. Just remember to take the plants out of the cupboard once they germinate, so the seedlings get some light (they can start looking quite yellow in there without any sunshine!). Another option, especially if you’re creative and good at tinkering around with electronics, is to make your own heat pad. This is what the husband of my best gardening friend Minette Tonoli did for her, and I swear her seedlings always germinate and grow faster than mine! The punnets I use to sow seeds in are the black plastic punnets which they sell plants in at Bunnings for under $2 (not the 6-cell ones, the ones that aren’t divided). I highly recommend that you use a good quality seed raising mix in order to get seedlings off to a good start. I like using Yates Black Magic Seed Raising Mix, which has a nice texture. I also like Gardn Gro’s seed raising mix, a small Auckland business that delivers a range of fertilisers and mixtures direct to your door. This is very convenient at this time of the year if you’re busy in the garden and don’t have time to go to the garden centre. Don’t use garden soil to germinate seedlings. You’ll probably find it doesn’t work so well and you don’t want weeds popping up in amongst your seedlings! I learnt the hard way when I first started gardening. You only need a little bit of seed raising mix per punnet, so a bag should go a long way. I recommend using a new bag every season as like all potting mixes, it does tend to lose its nutrients and dry up after awhile. I always have a bag on the go as I raise seedlings from seed pretty much throughout the year, not just in spring. In order to protect plants and create a warm growing environment, I place the punnets in incubators which sit on top of my heat pads. Last year, there were so many different things that I wanted to sow at the same time that I needed to use our hot water cupboard as well. I purchased these green plastic incubators from Bunnings for around $8 each a few years ago. Once seeds have started to germinate, I take the incubators off the heat pad but keep the seedlings inside them inside the house for awhile to grow a bit more, before moving them to the greenhouse. I keep all seedling punnets and potted plants in large Sistema crates in our greenhouse, which keep plants warmer especially at night, when the temperature can drop quite a bit. The only plants which don’t fit inside the crates are my larger Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes which you can view in the photo of my previous post. Unless it’s very cold, I lift the lids of the crates every day from around 10.30 am until 3 pm, to let the plants get some air and light. I water the plants as necessary. At the moment it’s quite cool so they don’t need watering very often, usually around once a week. Around about the start of October, as temperatures gradually increase, I’ll start moving these plants outdoors during the day to start the process of “hardening them off”. Normally, I start by doing this for two hours per day and increase it gradually until they remain outside the whole day but are back undercover overnight. It’s never a good idea to move plants directly from a warm indoor environment to the outdoors without doing it in stages. This way, plants can acclimatise to outdoor temperatures and they’ll be better equipped to survive. Usually by mid-October, I’ll start allowing plants to remain in our patio overnight because I want them to start getting used to being outdoors. After all, they will be planted into the garden around Labour weekend which isn’t too far away from then, and they need to get used to night time temperatures! In saying that, temperatures do vary from season to season, so the process gets adjusted accordingly. Learn to listen to your instincts and do what seems right for you. Usually your inner gardening voice isn’t wrong! I always grow my chillies and capsicums in large 35 litre black buckets as I’ve never had any luck growing them in the ground. It also saves space for veggies which creep everywhere and require more room, like pumpkins and melons. I find this system works well. The temperature in containers is generally a little warmer than the ground and black radiates heat. We are always rewarded with tons of fruit, much more than we could ever use ourselves so we enjoy sharing produce with neighbours, family and friends. If you’re going to grow peppers in containers like me, just make sure you use a good quality potting or container mix. Some mixtures contain water storage crystals, which helps to conserve moisture during the dry months. Alternatively, you can add a little Saturaid or similar product to the mixture at the time of planting. Normally, I don’t find that my peppers need to be staked but if you grow then in the ground, you may find that some support is necessary. If needed, it’s a good idea to insert a stake at the time of planting to avoid damaging the roots of the plant later on. Water capsicums and chillies regularly and deeply during the summer months. As with tomatoes, it’s a good idea to get into the habit of liquid feeding plants regularly to encourage flowering and the development of fruit. I like using Yates Thrive Tomato Liquid Plant Food. While formulated for tomatoes, it should be fine to use this product on other fruiting veggies such as peppers, zucchini, eggplants, pumpkins, cucumbers and melons. The seeds of capsicums and chillies are quite easy to save for sowing the following season, simply by scooping out seeds from inside the fruit when they are very ripe. Let them dry completely before storing them for next season. Be aware, however, that they do cross-pollinate, meaning that if you’re growing more than one type the off-spring might not be true to type ie identical to the parent plant. Reproduced below is my fourth entry in the Yates spring veggie growing challenge.
It wouldn’t be a summer garden without one of my favourite summer vegetables, the tomato. If you haven’t already done so, it’s still not too late to start sowing tomatoes from seed. It takes about eight weeks until they’re ready to be transplanted into the garden, so you’d probably be looking at doing so after the first week of November. Don’t panic if this sounds late, because it isn’t. Don’t forget that the general rule of thumb is to plant heat-loving veggies such as tomatoes, chillies, capsicums, eggplants and zucchini no earlier than Labour Weekend, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t plant these (and other) summer veggies for some time after that, even into early December. In fact, I like to stagger my plantings to ensure that everything doesn’t mature at once and we have a continuous supply of veggies over the summer. I also try to avoid planting everything out over Labour weekend as temperatures can still be quite temperamental, especially at night. There is often a huge difference between day and night time temperatures and fluctuation can stress sensitive heat-loving plants. As a consequence, they either die or their growth is stunted, so they end up producing poorly. Some of you may decide not to start tomatoes from seed, preferring to purchase seedlings or plants from the garden centre from now onwards. It’s up to you. When I first started gardening, I always used to buy seedlings and plants. Nowadays, I normally raise my tomatoes from seed, but this year, I ended up purchasing some seedlings from Kings Plant Barn. They were just 99 cents per punnet, which I thought was very good value. So, in addition to the seedlings which have just come off my heat pad and the slightly larger ones which are in the greenhouse which I started back in August, I also have the following varieties in 10 cm pots – Roma, Beefsteak, Moneymaker, Potentate (a truss-style tomato, which is an old favourite) and Grosse Lisse. In addition, I also have around a dozen much larger Sweet 100 cherry tomato plants, 8 of which were so tall that they had to be repotted into larger circular pots last weekend by the wwoofers who have been staying with us. I’m happy that I purchased plants as well as raising some from seed for two reasons. Firstly, the plants from the garden centre will give me a head start on the season, as they’re much larger than my own seedlings. Secondly, the seedlings which I raised from seed will ensure that I have an interesting range of tomatoes in the garden this year, as the varieties found in garden centres tend to be very run of the mill. There’s nothing wrong with tried and true varieties, but it’s always nice to grow something a bit different every season and sometimes the best (or indeed only) way to do that is to sow from seed. As you may recall from an earlier post, I tried to get a head start on my own seedlings by sowing some tomato seeds in April and May. Unfortunately, these plants didn’t survive the winter as it can get quite cold in the greenhouse, which isn’t heated artificially unlike commercial greenhouses. The one exception to this is my Black Krim tomato seedlings from Yates seeds, which are incredibly healthy and are in 10cm pots. My closest gardening friend Minette Tonoli, who I consider an expert in all things related to plants, has an explanation. According to Minette, Black Krim is a much more robust variety, given its origins in Crimea, where even the summers can be quite cool by comparison with other parts of the world. In any event, I’m pleased that these seedlings are performing well as this variety is particularly delicious. We had a Black Krim tomato plant in our garden last year, which came from a packet of mixed tomato seeds “Heirloom Favourites”, also from Yates. Since the other varieties that I sowed in April and May didn’t survive, I sowed quite a few different varieties on my heat pad in August. From the Yates seed collection, I sowed Mortgage Lifter, Moneymaker and Beefsteak. I sowed a cherry tomato called Rapunzel from Egmont Seeds, which performed very well in the garden last year. I also sowed the lovely truss tomato Principe Borghese from Franchi seeds, which also did very well last summer. Minette gave me quite a few different varieties which she saved from her garden last summer, so I sowed those seeds as well. Minette’s seeds included “Banana Legs”, “Berkeley tie die pink tomato”, “Blueberries”, “Green Grape”, “Orange Bourgoin”and “Indigo Fireball”. It will be interesting to see how these more exotic varieties perform alongside my more tried and true tomatoes. Last summer, we grew tomatoes very successfully in hanging baskets. I therefore sowed “Tumbling Tom Red” and “Tumbling Tom Yellow”, both from Egmont seeds. I managed to purchase these very varieties as plants from Bunnings last year, which were marked down to just $1 each. I was very impressed with how productive the plants were. During winter, the Warehouse had 41 cm hanging baskets on clearance for just $7 each, so I bought eight baskets, to add to our existing five baskets. I hope that these seedlings survive so I can plant them in all of the baskets. Last season, we also discovered how delicious yellow tomatoes could be. I had purchased a single Yellow Plum potted tomato from Palmers, which I planted ahead of my own seedlings as they were too small to plant out by Labour Weekend. The plant matured in early January and was incredibly productive. We really enjoyed them. This year, I purchased a packet of Yellow Plum tomato seeds from King Seeds, as well as the variety Yellow Pear from Egmont. I’m also growing Jaune Flamme from Kings Seeds. I also decided to give Patio Choice Yellow a try, which is new to the King Seeds collection. I’ll probably grow this variety in some large pots. While I’m on the subject of seeds, I’d like to make a little note that I always source seeds within NZ (although some of them may of course be imported from other countries). That way, I know that seed suppliers have already taken the appropriate measures with regard to MAP. I can be confident that they won’t damage the environment in any way by introducing pests and diseases to the country. While it does limit the range of what I can grow by comparison with what’s available in other countries, this is very important to me. The process of importing seed properly is difficult and expensive from what I understand, so for me, it’s best left to the experts. There is still so much more available within NZ than I could ever possibly hope to grow and fit into our garden! I’ve noticed that some varieties are no longer being imported into NZ, such as Principe Borghese. Going forwards, I’m going to try and make more of an effort to save tomato seeds like my gardening friend Minette, so I can ensure the continuation of these varieties in my garden and so I have seed to share with gardening friends like Minette. I’ve never saved seeds from tomato plants before, so it gives me a new challenge for the garden this summer. Finally, I’d like to finish with a few tomato growing tips. Tomatoes need lots of sunshine in order to ripen, so make sure you plant them in your sunniest spot in the garden! Try to avoid planting tomatoes in the same area that potatoes have grown, as they belong to the same plant family and it might encourage diseases and pests. I’ve read that it’s not a good idea to plant tomatoes where they have grown before, but it’s something that I can’t avoid doing and I think is okay in my own garden as we plant lots of winter veggies in the area in between summers. At the time of planting seedlings, get plants off to a strong start by adding a little tomato fertiliser, such as Yates Gro-Plus tomato food. After planting, liquid feed tomatoes weekly with Yates Thrive Tomato Liquid Plant Food. As mentioned in my second post, it’s a good idea to stake tomatoes for support, as the weight of fruit can place a burden on the plant. I like to stake tomatoes at the time of planting, to avoid damaging the roots later on. You might want to place a label next to the plant so you are able to distinguish between the different varieties you have planted in the garden. Something you may want to do to encourage the growth of fruit rather than foliage is to remove the laterals as your plants grow. Laterals are the small shoots which appear between the main stem and side branches off the plant. This way, the plant can put all its energy into the existing fruit which has developed off the side branches. I also like removing the lower leaves on the plant, as they often become a bit diseased and I don’t want it spreading to the rest of the plant. This was advice originally given to me by our neighbour, whose tomatoes always look fantastic. Remember to water your plants regularly and deeply, but try to avoid wetting the foliage (leaves) because it can lead to blight. This brings me to my last point. Unfortunately, I can’t offer much advice with regard to pests and diseases affecting tomato plants, as we’ve fortunately not had any issues in the past (touch wood for this year!). However, I do know that blight and the tomato potato psyllid (TPP) have been problems faced by other gardeners in the country. It’s probably best to talk to someone at your local garden centre if you do experience any problems. Alternatively, you can do what I do and contact someone via the Yates website, who will happily answer your question! Possible Yates products which might help with pest and disease control for tomatoes include Tomato Dust (which I’ve often eyed curiously at Bunnings) and Success. I do have some Yates Success spray in the garage, which I won in a competition run by the NZ Gardener magazine a few years ago, but have never needed to use it. If you’re trying to grow organically, as we are, you might want to consider the Yates spray Natures Way Fungus Spray, which I’ve used safely on our passionfruit vine and celery seedlings in previous seasons, as mentioned in a previous post. The photo accompanying this post is of our large Sweet 100 cherry tomato plants in the greenhouse, which were originally purchased as small seedlings in a punnet from Kings Plant Barn. They have grown so much over the past fortnight. I wonder if they will need to be repotted again before Labour Weekend! In this post, I have reproduced my third entry in the Yates spring veggie growing challenge, which I am entering this year.
Herbs have a very importance place in our garden. They are generally incredibly easy to grow. We really enjoy adding them to dishes to bring out their flavour. As they can be very expensive to purchase, they’re a good thing to have in the garden. It also avoids waste, as you can just pick what you need. Herbs are also important for medicinal reasons, although we don’t really use our herbs for this purpose. September is a good month to start growing herbs from seed and plant out seedlings. In the past couple of days, I have been doing quite a bit of both and will continue to do this later in the month. As I mentioned in my first post, I purchased lots of seedling punnets from Kings Plant Barn a couple of weeks ago, as they had reduced them to just 99 cents each. When September began, I planted coriander and parsley seedlings (both triple curled and Italian) into our garden. I purchased a few punnets of chives but the plants are still quite small, so I’ve left them to grow a bit bigger before I plant them out later in the month. I also had some Yates Italian Plain Leaf parsley and Rocket seeds which expire this year, so I sowed them directly into our front garden, next to some existing Italian parsley and rocket plants. I also ordered some herb seedlings from a great mail order company called Awapuni, who deliver seedlings wrapped in newspaper direct to your door, saving you the hassle of having to go to the garden centre! Their plants are always a bit more established than the seedlings in punnets which you would find at the garden centre, so I put in some of their triple curled and Italian parsley so we could get a head start on growing. Last year, we had hardly any parsley in the garden, but this year, it seems that I may have gone the other way because we have so much now! We love using parsley in salads, omelettes, soups and other dishes. It’s a very versatile herb. Because there was a problem with my order and I didn’t receive all my plants at once, when Awapuni dispatched the remainder of my order, they included some complimentary plants as a way of apologising, which was very kind of them. The second part of the order arrived yesterday. One of the items was a large bundle of mixed herb seedlings, including some incredibly healthy looking thyme, oregano and dill seedlings, as well as some coriander and triple curled parsley. I planted the thyme and oregano in pots soon after the plants arrived. I added them to our patio, which already contains quite a few different herbs in pots, including pizza thyme, marjoram and sage. The wwoofers who are staying with us at the moment helped me plant the coriander and dill in our herb garden at the back, near our washing line. It’s looking pretty packed right now! I do have a packet of Yates Dill seeds in my seed collection, but I may just hang onto them until next year since I received those complimentary plants from Awapuni unexpectedly. They don’t expire until next year anyway. We don’t use dill as much as the other herbs in our garden but when we do, it’s mostly to have with salmon. We also used to use dill in the recipe when we bottled gherkins from the garden in summer, but now that mum and I both have Type 2 diabetes, we don’t tend to do that anymore due to the amount of sugar used in preserving recipes. In addition to some mature dill and coriander plants in our herb garden at the back of our house, we also have mint, chives, Italian parsley, triple curled parsley and rosemary, all of which were planted as seedlings during the winter. Normally we always have mint in the garden (it can get quite invasive!), but while wwoofers were weeding our herb garden back in April, they unfortunately pulled it all out as I forgot to tell them to leave it there! We were therefore in a somewhat unusual situation of having to purchase some mint plants from Bunnings when they left! As temperatures increase in spring, I’ll sow more coriander. I have a packet of Yates coriander seeds, which I have sown in the past with good results. Like dill, coriander does best when sown direct, as its roots really resent being transplanted. I’ve noticed that coriander performs best in our herb garden at the back, where there is only partial sun. If planted in full sun, it tends to bolt to seed. I’ve also noticed that it tends to perform better in the garden beds than in pots, so I’ve put it all in our herb garden at the back of the house. We love using coriander in raita to have with falafel salad (I’m on a health kick and trying to be low carb, which is why I no longer have a wrap). We also enjoy using coriander in Asian and Indian cuisine. It is a key ingredient for homemade Vietnamese rice paper rolls. We haven’t made them for awhile, but it’s something I’m looking forward to making when I have a bit more time on my hands. In spring, we always have blue borage in the garden. A few seasons ago, I sowed a packet of Yates blue borage seeds and since then, it comes up by itself year after year. We don’t use the flowers or leaves for anything, it instead functions as a bee-attracting plant to aid pollination in the garden. I do understand that the leaves and flowers can be used as a herb and also for medicinal purposes. Luckily, our catnip overwintered so well that I won’t need to sow any more this spring. Not only does Ginger, our cat, enjoy smelling and lying on it but it also attracts nearly every other cat in the neighbourhood! We also have a tub of catmint in our back garden by the washing line which overwinters every year, although Ginger isn’t too fussed with it. When the cat grass which I sowed with the wwoofers two days ago germinates, I’ll put one of the trays near each of the catnip and catmint. Ginger has little corners of the garden which are devoted to her, but she generally enjoys and appreciates the garden, especially while we are working in it. It’s lovely to have some company while I’m working, especially when we don’t have wwoofers staying with us. One herb that is essential to our summer garden is basil, but it’s still a little early to be thinking about sowing it yet. I just love it – its appearance, the flavour, the fragrance – everything about it! Over the years I’ve been gardening, I’ve found that basil does best when sown direct around about the beginning of November. Normally I grow basil in pots, to save space. I have a packet of the variety “Genovese” from the Yates range, as well as Italiano Classico from Franchi seeds, which is a firm favourite in our garden every summer. These two types of basil have large leaves and are perfect for making pesto, which we enjoy with a variety of dishes, including as a base on pizza (just like they do in Genoa in Italy!) and pasta. Sometimes we enjoy it just shredded and sprinkled over tomatoes from our garden drizzled with some olive oil, salt and cracked black pepper. Yum! Even though I’ve been gardening for about six years now, every now and then I’ll have a moment when I ask myself whether it’s the right time to sow or grow a particular veggie or herb. Or I’ll want to grow something new and I’m unsure of when I should sow the seeds. Admittedly I can be lazy and just message my best gardening friend Minette Tonoli, who knows everything there is to know about gardening. But my ultimate go-to hand book on gardening is the Yates Garden Guide. It’s basically a bible for gardeners, with information on what to sow when, as well as how to care for different plants. I try to update my copy whenever I can afford to, so I always stay up to date with developments in gardening. Another tip from me is to keep a gardening diary, so you have a record of all the different things you’ve sowed and when you’ve done so. It can be very helpful to refer back to sowing dates. If you have a very large garden like ours, it’s hard to remember everything you’ve been doing! It can also be interesting to compare your entries with previous seasons so you know when to do things and what works in your own microclimate. You can purchase the NZ Gardener diary, as I’ve done in previous years, although these days I tend to note sowing dates in a column on an excel spreadsheet which doubles as my seed catalogue because I find there’s not enough space in commercial diaries to record all my sowings! It need not be anything fancy, even a basic exercise or note book will do the job. I’ve included a picture of our herb garden at the back, so you can see the progress we have made on it over the past few days. It's day two of the Yates spring veggie growing challenge! Reproduced below is my second post in the competition...
In this post, I’d like to talk a bit about garden maintenance in spring, namely protecting and supporting plants, feeding plants, spraying and weeding. If plants are kept under cover, they may also need to be watered. This is something that I’ve been doing a lot of since September began, with the help of the wwoofers who are staying with us. While seed raising and planting seedlings is very gratifying, it’s also important to care for seedlings once they’re planted out into the garden. Some seedlings and plants need protection over winter and early spring because the leaves are sensitive to frosts. I’ve also found that some types of seedlings newly planted during the winter or early spring months can require some protection from cold, too. Last month, I planted lots of punnets of broccoli seedlings to replace the ones that had been harvested in July. I covered each plant with a cloche, a plastic milk bottle cut in half placed over the seedling. Over the past couple of weeks, these seedlings have grown quite a bit, so it is time to remove the cover. This is something that the wwoofers staying with us at the moment, a young Danish couple, did with me this morning. Now that the broccoli seedlings will be exposed, something to bear in mind is that they will need protection from the dreaded white butterfly as temperatures increase! If it’s not one thing, it’s always something else! To protect plants from the white butterfly, I use Yates Derris Dust from the Natures Way range. Since these products are organic, I don’t feel quite so bad using them on brassicas when I have to. Sometimes, plants are too large for a cloche, but at the same time need protection from frosts. Last year, I grew tamarillo plants from seed for the first time. I sowed seeds in spring, then nurtured and repotted the seedlings during the summer. By the start of autumn, I planted out six seedlings. Only two have survived, but they look very healthy and grew a lot over the winter months, much to my surprise. I think this is due to two reasons. Firstly, they are in a fairly sheltered location, near our house and beside our banana and lemon trees. The seedlings which were planted in a more exposed area of the garden all died. Secondly, I sprayed the leaves with a liquid frost cloth which I bought from Wally’s online store (it’s something that Country Trading also stock, in fact, exactly the same product). This coating provides protection from light frosts. I also used the same spray on the young passionfruit seedlings I also grew from seed last spring, which I planted at the back of our house to replace our old vine which died last year. So far, I have had good results with this product and would highly recommend it to other gardeners who need to provide protection for frost sensitive plants over the cooler months. Given how expensive tamarillos were in the supermarket this winter, it’s not that expensive especially as you don’t use that much of the product and I think it’s a worthwhile long-term investment. Something else that is really important to start thinking about in spring is plant support. Yesterday, amongst other tasks, wwoofers helped me by fastening broad beans to stakes with some string. Back in late summer, I sowed the broad bean varieties “Evergreen” and “Exhibition Long Pod” (both from Yates seeds). They grew steadily over autumn and winter and have developed lots of flowers. Last month, the wwoofers staying with us at the time helped me tie them to their stakes for support. Since then, they have grown even taller, so the plants needed to be secured higher up. This is something that Merete and Jasper (the Danish couple wwoofing with us at the moment) helped me with yesterday. Of course, tomatoes need to be staked too, especially as they start to develop fruit. Some of my Sweet 100 cherry tomato plants outgrew their 10cm pots, so they had to be repotted into bigger, circular pots. As these plants are very tall, I inserted a thin wooden stake in each one and secured each plant to its stake with some string, as we did with the broad beans. At the moment, they’re in the greenhouse. When they go out into the garden after Labour Weekend, they’ll probably need something a bit bigger. A couple of months ago, I was incredibly lucky to find green plant stakes in bundles of 6 for just $1 at Bunnings. Normally you would pay a couple of dollars for just one of these stakes! Because gardening can be a very expensive hobby, it’s nice to occasionally nab a bargain. Sometimes, plant support can take other forms than stakes. Yesterday, I sowed some sweet pea seeds around a metal obelisk (“Bijou” and “Potted Fragrance Semi Dwarf” from Yates seeds). Sweet peas are among my favourite spring flowers and provide much colour in amongst the veggie seedlings. I like to sow peas (both edible and ornamental) in April so they can grow over the winter months and flower earlier. While I sowed edible peas in autumn, I forgot to sow ornamental sweet peas, hence doing them now. While I love sowing seeds and planting out new seedlings, it’s also important to care for them once they are in the garden. To me, plants need more than just water and sunshine in order to really thrive. For this reason, I feed my plants regularly, both at the time of planting and as they grow on a weekly basis. When planting new seedlings, I like to use a little Thrive all purple granular fertiliser, from Yates. This ensures that seedlings get off to a strong and healthy start. For anything leafy and green, I usually just use a little Yates Thrive Natural Blood and Bone fertiliser, which ensures the growth of healthy green foliage. Once planted in the garden, I use a water soluble fertiliser on plants weekly during spring and early summer. I have a wide range of products from the Yates range. For veggie seedlings, I like to use the Natural Fish and seaweed soluble fertiliser, or the Fish Blood and Bone plant food. I also recently purchased some Yates Thrive Easy Pods from Bunnings, which I intend to use on the fruiting veggies when I plant them out over Labour Weekend. I also have some specialised Thrive soluble fertilisers, for the strawberries, tomatoes, veggies and herbs, roses and citrus. Each of these products is tailored to different plants, making their use in the garden even more effective. If all else fails, I always have some Yates Thrive all purpose soluble fertiliser, which usually does the trick! I guess I can also use some of the Thrive Easy Pods in the same manner, as they seem to be more generic in nature than the specialised fertilisers. Today, Merete and Jasper helped me liquid feed the entire garden, no easy feat armed with a watering can! Of course, it’s possible to purchase liquid fertilisers which connect to your hose, making the application for large areas much easier. They are very easy to use and it saves you from trampling over plants, especially as spring progresses and plants start growing rapidly. I’ve already stocked up on some Yates Thrive Natural Fish and Seaweed hose on fertiliser to use later in the season, when growth becomes more dense. For the moment, however, it is possible to get around with a watering can. Last week, it took the wwoofers and myself an hour to cover the entire garden between the three of us, which isn’t too bad. For many gardeners, spring marks the start of an active spraying regime. As I am trying to grow as organically and sustainably as possible, I try to avoid using non-organic sprays on edibles. During the winter months, I used Yates Lime Sulphur on our roses and fruit trees, to help prevent fungal diseases in summer. Since spring began, I switched to using Yates Liquid Copper on our roses and fruit trees. I also sprayed our passionfruit vines and tamarillo plants (both grown by seed last year) with Liquid Copper. A few years ago, the fruit on our passionfruit vine was covered with grease spots which dropped off the vine prematurely while still green. We didn’t have any fruit that season. After getting in touch with Yates via the website and outlining the problem, I was advised to spray the vine with Yates Liquid Copper in spring, before flowering and fruiting, as a preventative measure. As copper is an organic spray, I feel comfortable using it on edibles. I hope that it will also help prevent brown rot and leaf curl on our dwarf peach and nectarine trees this season. I’m fairly new to fruit trees, having planted a mini orchard consisting of dwarf fruit trees just last year, so I’m still learning how to best care for them to ensure that they remain healthy and productive. One of the very few veggie seedlings that I’ll need to spray in early summer is celery, which always succumbs to rust due to moisture from rain and watering the garden. Normally, I sow celery in mid September. I have found the organic spray Yates Natures Way Fungus Spray a good compromise given my stance on spraying edibles. I sprayed my seedlings at fortnightly intervals from December onwards and we enjoyed a good crop of celery over the winter. For other gardeners struggling to grow decent passionfruit and celery due to fungal issues, I highly recommend these organic sprays from the Yates range. If you’re ever unsure which product to use, you can always leave a message on the Yates website (or sometimes even engage in live chat!) and someone will put you on the right track. When summer begins in December, I’ll switch to using the Yates spray Super Shield on my roses, as it’s more appropriate in warmer weather. Just be sure never to use this product on edibles, as it’s not designed for this purpose! For my roses in summer, I alternative between using Super Shield and Mavrick Insect and Mite spray, also from Yates. I think it’s good to rotate sprays so you can protect plants from different pests and diseases and avoid plants getting too used to the same spray, making it less effective. Finally, weeding the garden regularly is really important for plant health, not to mention the appearance of the garden! Admittedly, it’s not my favourite task in the garden, but in saying that it can be really satisfying after a day’s weeding (or even just an hour!), when the garden looks nice and tidy. Weeds compete with plants for nutrients, including plant food, water, air and light. Today, the wwoofers and I spend some time pulling out weeds in the garden. In spring, there is usually quite a bit of rain, which causes weeds to grow rapidly, compared with summer which is typically hot and dry. Finally, don’t forget that any plants kept under cover will need to be watered! A daily task for me is to spray the seedlings on my heat pads with water. Normally, I only need to water the plants in our green house once a week, but I always make sure I lift the lids of the large Sistema crates I’ve been keeping seedlings in (which function as a mini hothouse within the greenhouse) so that the plants get some air and light during the day. At this time of the year, it’s not necessary to water the garden as temperatures are still quite cold and it rains frequently. However, as temperatures increase in October, it will probably become necessary to incorporate this task into our gardening regime, perhaps only every other day at first. After Labour Weekend, we normally water the garden every day. The picture I have chosen to accompany this post is a sneak peek of some of the Yates products which I have been using to keep the plants in our garden strong and healthy. No, it’s not a shelf at Bunnings! I like to keep our gardening “pantry” well stocked! This year, I have decided to enter the Yates spring veggie growing challenge. This is an annual competition held every spring by one of New Zealand's largest gardening companies. Participants complete a blog outlining progress in their garden during spring and early summer. Prizes are given to the best entries. Over the coming months, I will be posting my blog entries for the contest. Here is my first entry: Greetings fellow gardeners! Despite being a seasoned gardener (excuse the pun!) of many years, I've never actually taken part in the Yates spring veggie challenge despite being aware of its existence for many years now. I think what put me off was the idea of having to blog regularly. It’s hard enough to keep up with the garden, never mind finding the time to write about it as well! For some reason, the competition crossed my mind today, perhaps because spring has only recently begun. This year, I’ve decided to enter for two reasons. Firstly, I have gotten into the habit of writing about our garden regularly, as I started my own blog this year (see the blog section under the tab “Anita’s Garden” of my website, www.anitakundu.co.nz). I don’t update my blog every day, but I see the challenge as a way of encouraging me to write more about what I’m doing to the garden. Hopefully, this will be of interest to others. Secondly, and linked to this, is the thought that the competition will motivate me to make this year’s garden even better and more successful than previous seasons. I’m always trying to expand the range of what I grow and ensure that crops perform even better than before! Before I describe where I am currently with our garden and my plans over the coming weeks, let me first introduce myself since I’m new to this site. My name is Anita Kundu. I am 37 years old and live on a suburban sized section in the Auckland suburb of Manukau. I am a former lawyer. I share our home with my mother Sue and our lovely tortoiseshell cat, Ginger. I started gardening about six years ago when my father passed away. I found it to be a kind of therapy for me to cope with my grief. I started out growing solely flowers, but have since extended the garden to encompass vegetables, roses and fruit trees. Our garden featured in an article in the April 2017 edition of the NZ Gardener magazine. We also host wwoofers (that is, foreign travellers with working holiday visas) who stay with us in exchange for some assistance around the garden. All in all, the garden is an important part of who we are as people. Every year, I look forward to spring as for me, it marks the start of the gardening year. I garden year round and tend to start my seedlings for spring and summer well in advance, during autumn and winter. For this reason, I have already made quite a bit of progress with regard to the spring and summer garden. In this post, I thought that I would provide a potted summary (excuse the gardening pun again!) of what I have been doing in preparation for spring over the past few months, as well as a description of what I have been doing in the garden since spring actually began. I normally start preparing for the summer garden by sowing heat loving veggies such as tomatoes, eggplants, chillies and capsicums under cover on electronic heat pads which I keep in our lounge. I usually start sowing these seeds in August as it takes awhile for them to germinate and grow large enough until they can be transplanted outside around Labour Weekend. I did do this, but this year, I also did something a little different. Every year, by Labour weekend, my seedlings are tiny compared to the size of plants in garden centres. So it becomes very tempting to buy plants as well so I can have a head start to the season! As we now have a greenhouse (we converted our unused spa pool room into a place where we can keep seedlings warm in the cooler months), I decided to sow tomato, eggplants, chillies and capsicums even earlier, in April and May. By getting a head start, I hoped that these seedlings would survive the winter period and be much larger by October. In any event, I thought it would be interesting to compare the progress of both sowings and it would make for good reading material for my blog. I’m pleased to report that the chillies and capsicums that I sowed back in April and May have done marvellously. In August, the wwoofers who were here at the time, a young French couple, repotted my seedlings into 10cm pots. Unfortunately, the eggplants and tomatoes didn’t fare very well, so I’ll be relying on the seeds that I sowed in August to provide our plants for this summer. So far, they look very healthy, but it’s too early to pot them up into 6-cell punnets. I’ll post a picture in a future post. I can’t post everything in this one or there will be nothing to tell and show next week! We are very fortunate to be harvesting quite a few different veggies from the garden including asparagus (which I started from seed five years ago), peas (I sowed the variety Easy Peasy from Egmont Seeds back in April, which grew tremendously well over winter), green and red cabbages, cauliflower, kale and lettuce (all of which were purchased as seedlings from Bunnings). I will include a photo of our harvest in a future post, so you have an idea of what we have been eating from the garden. Since the beginning of September, the garden has been a hive of activity! The wwoofers who are currently staying with us, a young Danish couple, helped me by planting leeks and spring onions into one of our garden beds. These plants were purchased as seedlings from Kings Plant Barn, who recently had a very lucrative special on seedling punnets, selling them for just 99c each. This area of the garden doesn’t receive full sun, unlike the other garden beds. Over the years, I’ve worked out that leeks and spring onions do very well in this particular area, as they seem to enjoy a bit of shade in the afternoon. While they were doing that, I planted more coriander and parsley seedlings (both triple curled and Italian, again purchased from Kings Plant Barn) into our herb garden at the back of our house, by the washing line. I also purchased quite a few punnets of lettuce and rocket from Kings, which I planted into circular pots. I prefer cut and come again varieties of lettuce as you can just pick what you need, which avoids waste. Over the past two days, we have also been sowing carrots into 35 litre buckets. I prefer growing carrots this way for two reasons. Firstly, it saves space, so I can devote ground area to different plants, especially ones such as pumpkins and melons which need the space to crawl. Secondly, the temperature in containers is always a little warmer, making it easier for seeds to germinate. Additionally, it is a good way for me to recycle old potting mix (I used mixture from our chilli and capsicum plants over summer). Carrots do better in old mixture as fresh potting mix causes their roots to become forked. Another tip to avoid forked carrots is to sow seed direct, as they hate being transplanted! Some of the seeds in my collection are from Yates, and among the varieties of carrots that I sowed was “Early Chantenay”. I’m looking forward to seeing how this variety fares. I also like the variety “Baby” from Yates, so I sowed a packet of that as well. I also planted out more punnets of spinach and Silverbeet which I purchased from Kings during their sale. In our “greens” garden, I sowed some more rocket direct yesterday. In a foil tray, I sowed some microgreens this morning – mizuna from Yates and fenugreek seeds from an Indian greengrocer. In just a few weeks, we’ll be able to add them to our salads and other dishes. For Ginger, our cat, I sowed some cat grass in trays. Cats seek this out to lie on and nibble at. Later in the morning, I sowed some passionfruit seeds on the heat pad. We lost our main vine at the back of our house. Unfortunately, passionfruit vines have a limited life span of approximately five years, after which time they need to be replaced. I also sowed some white borage seeds directly into our garden, which a gardening friend of mine gave to me. I have blue borage in the garden which is flowering at the moment and am very keen to try the white kind, too. Borage is a fantastic bee-attracting flower, which aids the pollination of flowering veggies such as beans, tomatoes, peppers and zucchini. I also sowed more lettuce seeds, as the ones that I sowed last month had a patchy germination rate. I find that seeds germinate more reliably as the temperatures become warmer, which is why I’m waiting a few weeks before sowing leeks, celery, chives and (more) spring onions. Today was very, very cold so I’ve decided to wait a few more weeks before planting out our lovely, healthy punnets of beetroot seedlings which I also purchased from Kings Plant Barn during their sale. While beetroot isn’t as frost sensitive as say tomatoes or capsicums, I have noticed that they’re definitely more temperamental than say lettuce or spring onions. I’m waiting for ground temperatures to increase before I sow wildflowers in the garden, to help attract bees and beneficial insects. I also have four punnets each of cosmos and cornflowers which I will wait until mid September to plant out. These early summer flowering annuals help attract bees to the garden, which aids the pollination of fruiting veggies, as discussed before. I also intend to sow parsnips and radish direct into the garden around the same time. In the past, I’ve noticed that seed doesn’t germinate well if sown early in the month, as ground temperatures can be quite cool, especially if it rains a lot. Normally I wait until later in September before I start sowing cucurbits such as zucchini, pumpkins and cucumbers on my heat pads indoors. I have quite a few varieties from the Yates seed collection, including one of my favourite pumpkins, Queensland Blue. I always wait until even early October to start my melons, as they’re even more sensitive to the cold. This has been a very long post, much longer than I originally intended! It may be that similar to my blog, I write fewer, longer posts which summarise my activities over a period of a week or fortnight, as opposed to writing a daily update in journal format. I hope you have found this post interesting and informative. Any feedback – comments, suggestions or otherwise – is highly valued! Good luck to all gardeners out there, whether you’re participating in the Yates spring gardening challenge or not! I wish you all the very best for the coming season. |
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