Prepare for frost
Cold comfort
Protect ornamental plants from cold as you would young children with warm coats, water proofing and a piggyback through the mud – that’s well-drained pillows of soil enriched with grit under your plants. Whether a plant dies down to underground storage organs or stays leafy makes a huge difference in how it can be cosseted. The likes of cannas, gingers and bulbs all go to sleep up top, leaving their roots or bulbs or roots insulated under the soil. These can be safely left outside, but in the coldest areas it pays to cover them with a blanket or fine bark, fallen leaves or straw. Leafy plants including pelargoniums, osteospermums, agaves and aloes are much more vulnerable to cold. Have frost cloth ready to throw over them like an overcoat. Hold in place with clothes pegs or, for sustained cold, build an enclosing frame of wood or bamboo covered with frost cloth.
Send tender plants on holiday to warmer climes – a verandah, greenhouse, conservatories or windowsills – somewhere well lit but not too warm. Cut down on watering so plants go dormant for the winter.
Plant more spinach and silverbeet
Silverbeet is a reliable and troublefree winter stalwart that suffers from a frankly undeserved culinary reputation! Try picking the leaves early, while they are tender, and panfrying with olive oil and lots of garlic. You can also throw in more flavour – try ginger, mustard seeds or cumin, or chilli. If the leaves get bigger and tougher, they can be cooked the same way, just boil quickly, cool under cold water and squeeze dry first. Spinach suits a May start too, but it’s harder to grow and particularly hates wet feet, so keep it in raised beds or containers. Or try perpetual spinach, which can be used like spinach (you won’t be able to tell the difference when it’s cooked) but is actually a silverbeet cultivar and just as easy to grow.
Don’t let pests get a headstart
Look for the eggs of passionvine hoppers on the stems of any plants that they’ve infested and snip off and burn affected foliage. Search for the eggs of green vege bugs on the underside of the leaves of plants they target and squash or burn them too. Give your fruit trees a copper spray this month to prevent any overwintering infections and remove mummified infected fruit still hanging on the trees.
Hunt for snails around the rims and underneath pots, and among the foliage of plants such as irises, rengarenga and brassicas. Slugs are harder to find but do just as much damage. Lure them to a place where you can regularly cull their numbers. Try half a grapefruit, cut side down on the soil, or a wooden plank that does double duty as a slug hangout and a boardwalk that stops you compacting garden soil. Feed carcasses to the birds (as long as you haven’t used slug bait).