Vege patch to-do list
This month’s moon calendar, and edible crops to sow and tend now.
• Plant and sow now while soil is warm.
Or warmish at least! (Want to check? Feel free to try the method promoted by the late soil scientist Prof Thomas Walker, which was to sit your bare bottom on the soil. If you can sit comfortably, it’s warm enough to sow and plant.) You can sow broad beans, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflowers, Asian greens, onions, peas, silverbeet and spinach pretty much everywhere now, and carrots and winter lettuces up north and swedes and turnips down south. You can plant brassica, silverbeet and spinach seedlings all over too, and plant celery, kale and lettuces in warmer regions. In fact, even in colder regions, you can still plant seedlings in pots and planters. Not only can you position pots in the warmest and most sheltered spots, the soil temperature in containers is usually a degree or two warmer and the drainage is better than in garden beds. Whatever you are sowing and planting, get onto it as soon as possible this month so they get the benefit of any autumn warmth and are ready for the cold weather to come.
• Pop in some early garlic this month.
Last year we heard from dozens and dozens of readers affected by garlic rust. Planting garlic early means you harvest before this fungal disease really hits.
• Add colour with pots and baskets.
Specially planted pots and baskets are a great way to bring colour into the garden in winter. Ditch any tired potted colour still clinging on, refresh soil and replant pansies, primula or polyanthus (give each planter a teaspoon of dried blood for masses of flowers). You could also use perennials such as hellebores or cyclamen, or dwarf bulbs like small daffodils, hyacinths or crocuses. If you want something to trail down around the outside of the basket or planter, try ajuga, a variegated ivy or a prostrate rosemary. This year, I plan to dot a few pots around in my vege beds, and the hanging baskets will go at the back door. You could also use Leylandlatches, the nifty plant pot hangers that let you suspend pots on a vertical surface, to attached pots to your exterior wall.
• Check your fruit trees and berries.
Prune stone fruit, currants and most bramble berries now (but not autumnfruiting raspberries; do them next month) but don’t prune pipfruit, nuts, figs or oilves yet, wait until winter. Citrus and feijoas shouldn’t need much pruning as both naturally form into nice round shrubs, but if your plants have turned into dense thickets, now is a good time to open up the centre by removing inward growth.