Time for removal and renewal

KEEP SOWING SPRING ONIONS

Spring onions are such an easy crop to grow and tend to do well for much of the year so it makes sense to plant or sow seeds regularly. A bunch of five spring onions in the shops will set you back around $3, yet a packet of seed for the same price will give you 600.

To grow your own, sow seeds direct in rows or blocks in a sunny spot, cover with soil, firm down gently and water in lightly using the fine mist setting on your hose.

Seeds will germinate in around 10 days and can be thinned to 2cm apart to give them space to spread out. If you miss this step (and I admit I often do), it just means you will be harvesting slightly thinner onions in bunches rather than pulling out big, fat individual plants. Either way, the taste is the same.

GROW RHUBARB AND FEED YOUR EXISTING PLANTS

While there may be some plants that thrive without any added fertiliser, rhubarb isn’t one of them and in my experience, it will take everything you can give. Like asparagus, rhubarb is a longterm food crop and will go on providing stalks for many years once it gets established. Looking after it well in the first couple of years will ensure the crowns below are strong enough to allow for plentiful picking.

I’ve been growing rhubarb in two very large planters for a few years after scoring a few crowns from my mum’s 50-year-old redstemmed variety when she was dividing them and they’ve been happy in their new home here in Auckland. I keep mine well fed with regular applications of sheep pellets, fertiliser and castings and worm tea from my worm farm and keep the crowns mulched in summer (but not covering them completely in order to avoid rot).

Rhubarb is best planted during the cooler months of spring and autumn as it can struggle to establish in the heat of summer. If you don’t have access to crowns, your local garden centre will usually have single plants for sale or order a bundle of four plants online from Awapuni.co.nz.

Choose a sunny spot with welldrained, fertile soil, plant crowns 3-5cm deep and give them plenty of space to spread out. Rhubarb is a very large plant so it’s best given its own patch to grow in or at the very least, placed at the back of your garden so it’s out of the way.

Resist the urge to harvest any stalks during that first year. To pick, gently pull and twist the outer stalks rather than cutting or snapping them off which can lead to fungal problems.

SOW GREEN CROPS INTO EMPTY BEDS

If you’re pulling out spent summer crops with no plans to replant, it’s a good idea to sow green crops to help replenish the soil. Vegetable gardening is incredibly intensive and many nutrients are lost during the cycle of planting and harvesting during the spring and summer months. Green crops are a great source of organic matter and sown in late summer or early autumn and then cut down and dug back into the soil and left to break down before spring. Many green crops are also legumes (such as blue lupins, red clover, broad beans and peas), which fix nitrogen in the soil once they die. This nitrogen then becomes available for your vege crops to use. The broken-down plant material also improves the structure of the soil in your garden and while the crops are growing, help to suppress weeds and protect the soil from erosion during wet winters.

Sow green crop seed thickly now and then dig them in by midwinter. Don’t let the plants flower or the stems will become too woody and tough and be nothing short of a mission to deal with.

PULL OUT TIRED CROPS AND CUT BACK RUSTED MINT

It’s amazing how long some crops will hang on before succumbing to the heat of summer. I have a large wooden planter full of cavolo nero, sorrel, mint, Vietnamese mint and nasturtiums that up until last week were doing well and looking healthy. This week, they are all more than

a little worse for wear. My mint plants look ghastly with their rusted leaves so have all been cut back to the ground, the kale has been pulled out and the sorrel has had a good thinning. This column is adapted from the weekly e-zine, get growing, from New Zealand Gardener magazine. For gardening advice delivered to your inbox every Friday, sign up for Get Growing at: getgrowing.co.nz This has freed up space so I’ll sow some fast-growing coriander in there before the mint bursts back to life and overruns everything.

PLANT LEMONGRASS

Sometimes less is more and this is certainly true of zesty lemongrass. This clump-forming perennial grass is easy to grow and lasts for years so a single plant is all you’ll ever need. Grow in a sheltered spot in full sun with free-draining soil or keep it contained in a large pot. Lemongrass will enjoy being fed with a high-nitrogen liquid fertiliser when in its active growth phase in summer.