Time for removal and renewal

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 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 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

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. I once planted a single lemongrass seedling in a half wine barrel where it grew and grew and grew until it occupied the entire thing. In the end it was well over 2m tall. Now that’s a big herb!