Vege patch to-do list
NZ Gardener’s guide to planting and sowing in harmony with the lunar cycle.
This month’s moon calendar, and edible crops to sow and tend now.
• Now is the time to sow, sow, sow.
While the gardening dilettante might wait until warmer temperatures and longer days of September or even October to start thinking about edible crops for the season ahead, you, as a reader of NZ Gardener, know that August is when real gardeners get a jump on the season ahead. Now is the month to start tomatoes, capsicums and chillies from seed in trays indoors, or in your glasshouse (don’t have a glasshouse? You need to build the one on our cover!). This is especially important if you want to grow unusual or heirloom varieties which are hard or impossible to buy as seedlings. These solanaceous crops are all heat lovers, and germination will happen more reliably and more quickly if the soil is warm. You can buy seedstarting heat mats, or just keep the seedlings in your hot water cupboard (take them out as soon as germination occurs) or on top of an appliance that throws off heat such as the fridge. There’s all sorts of other suggestions for DIY seedling heatpads online, but to be honest, I think a lot would either get too hot, not be safe to use near water or cost as much to buy as parts as you’d need to spend to buy a readymade one! You can also sow broad beans and peas direct, and brassicas, spinach, silverbeet, lettuces and onions in trays inside.
• It’s also time to mulch, mulch, mulch.
Mulching now will help stop weed seeds near the surface of the soil germinating when it warms up, plus help keep water in the soil. If you use an organic mulch, it will gradually break down and add to the organic matter available to your crops, and improve your soil biology too. You can buy mulch by the bag or the trailerload (unless your garden is tiny, go for the trailerload, you won’t regret it). But you can also use pea straw, compost (bought or homemade), seaweed, paper or cardboard, old woollen carpets, pine needles, grass clippings or other green waste (although avoid anything that might be viable and weedy), aged manure or a mix of all of the above!
• Protect fruit trees from disease.
Give pipfruit and stonefruit trees a copper spray while dormant to protect them against fungal infections – such as leaf curl and brown rot – later in the season. If you had problems with such afflictions last year, or live in a humid part of the country, repeat every week or 10 days until the first leaves appear. Also before the leaves appear, take a chance to do any necessary formative pruning – it reduces the shock to the tree to prune while dormant and it’s (much) easier to see the shape of the tree while the branches are bare! Jo McCarroll