Vege patch to-do list
This month’s moon calendar, plus edible crops to sow and plant now
• Spring is here so get growing (and sowing).
The weather in early spring can still be fairly temperamental, with cold spells, late frosts and heavy rain all possibilities in certain parts of the country. If the weather where you are is still unsettled, don’t be in any hurry to plant outside. You can start almost any summer crop indoors in trays though. Peppers, chillies, tomatoes, eggplants, pumpkins and cucumbers sown now should be a good size by late October or early November, by which time it’ll actually be warm enough to shift them outside.
• Direct sow cold-hardy herbs and roots.
All root crops do best sown direct as they tend to bolt straight to seed if their roots are disturbed. (Although at a pinch you can buy a punnet of seedlings at the garden centre and transplant – just do so with particular care.) Sow a few rows of beetroot, radishes, turnips and carrots now. Coriander and dill can be sown direct now too – they both have a long tap root and hate having their roots disturbed, so always do best when sown direct rather than transplanted. Pop in some more cold-hardy peas and broad beans now too.
• Start leafy crops in trays or pots.
Slugs and snails love the cool and moist conditions of early spring and will be on the wing – or rather on the giant slimy foot – at night this month. You can sow lettuces and Asian greens now, but start them in trays and transplant later so the pesky gastropods don’t make a meal of them before they can get established.
• Look out for leaf curl on stone fruit.
You’ll often spot blisters and bumps on the new leaves of peaches, nectarines and apricots in early spring. Don’t worry too much – the fungal disease leaf curl doesn’t greatly affect a tree’s yield and the affected leaves should naturally fall off and be replaced with fresh foliage. (Just be sure to pick them up from under the tree and dispose of them.) Make a note to spray your trees with copper next autumn and again at the end of winter, prior to bud burst, to prevent reinfection next spring.
• Mulch your strawberry plants!
Strawberries should be flowering this month and will soon be forming fruit. If the berries sit in direct contact with the soil they tend to rot, so mulch the soil around your plants with a layer of pine needles or black plastic.
• Start spuds now for December 25!
If you followed last month’s advice, your chitted potatoes should be ready to plant, and you can do so just as soon as you are sure the risk of the last frost has passed. If you didn’t get around to chitting your spuds last month, never mind, you can do so now, or plant seed potatoes without sprouting them first. Chitted potatoes should be up in two or three weeks, and non-chitted spuds will take about a month to appear above ground. Early spuds like ’Swift’ and ‘Rocket’ take 70 to 90 days from when the foliage first appears to harvest so plant them this month to guarantee you’ll have them ready for your festive potato salad and new spuds with mint!
• Celery loves cool spring conditions.
Get celery plants in now so that they can get established before the weather gets hot and the soil gets dry. If this crop dries out it will bolt straight to seed, so keep the moisture up, and mulch around the plants to retain the spring rains in your soil. Celery is quite slow to grow so give it a helping hand with a dose of liquid fertiliser every few weeks to deliver fat, crisp stalks.
• Take steps to combat codling moth.
The trick to controlling codling moths is taking action against them at the only vulnerable stage of their life-cycle. Once the larvae are safe inside your developing apples, it’s too late to treat them. So as soon as your apple tree starts blooming, hang a pheromone trap in the branches (you can buy them at your garden centre). The trap emits a scent which the male moths mistake for a willing girlfriend, so when the male moths are active they will fly in and get stuck. Check your traps every couple of days and when you start catching about a dozen moths a week, spray your trees with a low-toxic caterpillar-specific spray like Nature’s Way Caterpillar Killer.
• Take action against weeds now too!
They’re easier to pull out when just emerging. Once they get established, it’s harder work digging them out and there’s the risk they’ll set seed… in which case they’ll be here to stay!
• Keep an eye on new seedlings.
Vege plants are vulnerable to all sorts of things when starting out, from hungry birds, to slugs and snails, to sudden sunny spells if you forget about them in a mini glasshouse or hotbox. (It gets hot in there pretty quickly.) Offer ventilation on sunny days, shelter from inclement weather and treat them to a boost of Yates Thrive Natural Seaweed Tonic to help them get established.
• Give greedy rhubarb a big feed.
Your rhubarb plant will have died down over winter, but it should be starting to grow again as the weather warms up. This plant is what is called a gross feeder, and loves a good meal of organic matter. Pile on sheep pellets, compost and a handful of general garden fertiliser. You can divide older, congested rhubarb crowns now too.
• Set aside space for bee-friendly plants.
September is Bee Awareness month, and NZ Gardener, in partnership with Gardena, is giving every reader a free packet of bee-friendly wildflower seed to sow at your place. These flowers will not only produce a beautiful display in spring and summer, they are also all pollen- and nectar-rich varieties that will attract beneficial pollinators, which, in turn, will increase your fruit and vege yield. The wildflower mix includes purple tansy, which attracts bees, butterflies and helpful hoverflies who predate on all sorts of sap-sucking insects, and fantastically bee-friendly nigella, Shirley poppies, yarrow and alyssum. Once you have sown it, remember to add your address to our Plan Bee map (see page 19). If you want to add more bee-friendly plants to your garden look for the old-fashioned forms with a single row of petals – which make landing and retrieving nectar easier – rather than fancy double forms.
• Seedlings looking a bit sad?
The most common problem with new seedlings is damping off, a fungal disease where seedlings either fail to pop up at all, or rot away and collapse. These can’t be saved, so get rid of them and start again. It is more likely to occur in damp, overcrowded conditions so avoid over-watering and don’t sow your seedlings too close together.