Weekend gardener: it’s garlic time
Garlic
Garlic may be planted from now until the shortest day in June. Choose a sunny spot with welldrained soil and dig in compost and blood and bone. For nonanimal alternatives, dig in alfalfa pellets, sold as rabbit food, and during the growing season apply kelp or seaweed fertiliser.
Use some of your biggest cloves from last season, or buy them from a garden centre, rather than the greengrocer as one sold for consumption are often sprayed with a growth inhibitor. Plant the cloves 10cm apart about 4cm deep with the pointed end facing up. Water well and mulch with peastraw or the like.
Once the shoots emerge, feed every fortnight with a liquid fertiliser high in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
Edibles
Sow a green manure crop without delay – for maximum effect sow multiple species such as oats, mustard and lupin. Rhizobia (the soil bacteria that fix nitrogen from the roots of legumes) don’t function in cool soil, so they have only another couple of months or so to do their thing. Green manure crops should be dug into the garden in late winter/early spring.
Beetroot, carrots, lettuce, mesclun, rocket, silver beet and spinach may still be sown.
Weed soft fruit, such as raspberries, blackcurrants and gooseberries and mulch with rotted manure or compost.
Plant spring cabbages and cauliflower.
Encourage strawberry plants’ runners to root by pinning them down with a bent wire. Once the runners are established (look for the new plants’ leaves growing atop them), the new plants may be moved to a new spot should the existing bed be getting crowded.
Ornamentals
Autumn-sown sweet peas tend to be stronger than spring-sown ones. Sow now in a sheltered sunny spot in well-drained and rich soil. Sweet peas are gross feeders – so dig in plenty of compost, rotted manure and a sprinkling of lime and blood and bone (or alfalfa pellets). Also provide something for them to climb up, such as a trellis or wire-netting.
The time to start sowing new lawns or repairing old ones is approaching. Such areas should be weed-free. Fresh soil may need to be brought to give new seed a better chance of success.
The type of lawn seed needs to be investigated – does it need to be hard-wearing or do you favour the lush velvet look?. Dog owners may prefer to have avoid dog urine burns on lawns by using clover instead of grasses.