Spring start

It’s not too early to get cracking on your vege garden

Warmer weather isn’t too far away, so it’s time to think about fresh and delicious home-grown salad ingredients like lettuce.

Yates Lettuce Cut Come Again grows a continual supply of delightfully fresh and colourful salad leaves. Simply snip leaves off the plant as you need them. They’ll be ready to harvest in just six weeks after sowing, so get your salad bowl ready!

How to Grow:

Sow Yates Lettuce Cut & Come Again seed direct where they are to grow in a sunny or partly shaded spot in the vege garden or pots.

Keep the soil or potting mix moist and seedlings will pop up in around 4-7 days.

It’s important to regularly feed your lettuces to promote healthy growth and a great harvest. Feed each week with Thrive Vegie Herb Liquid Plant Food, which is a complete and balanced plant food containing nitrogen for vibrant green leaf growth, phosphorus for strong root development and potassium for healthy plants.

Mulching around the lettuces with an organic mulch like pea or lucerne straw will help keep the soil moist. When watering lettuces, it’s best to water around

Mini, a dwarf tomato with masses of sweet bite-sized tomatoes.

Here’s how to get started:

Fill some empty seedling punnets with a good quality seed raising mix like Yates Black Magic.

Sow seed 3-6mm deep (check your chosen variety for the correct sowing depth), cover with seed raising mix and water gently.

Place the punnets in a warm, sunny spot. A brightly lit windowsill is ideal.

Keep the mix moist and seedlings will start to emerge in around 10 to 14 days.

When the seedlings are around 5cm tall, they can be transplanted into their final home, in either a garden bed that’s been enriched with some handfuls of Thrive Natural Blood Bone with Seaweed or a container. Only transplant out once there will be no more frosts!

Water in newly transplanted seedlings with Thrive Natural Seaweed Tonic, which will help to reduce transplant shock and get the seedlings off to a great start.

In a fortnight, start feeding each week with Thrive Tomato Liquid Plant Food, which will provide the tomatoes with a balanced diet of nutrients to promote lots of healthy growth and encourage lots of flowers which will turn into fruit. the base of the plant rather than overhead, which helps minimise the risk of disease.

Aphids can be attracted to and damage the tender young lettuce seedlings. Aphids can be black, grey, brown or very well camouflaged green. Control aphids by spraying each week with Natures Way Vegie Insect Spray Natrasoap Ready to Use, which is a soap based spray that’s certified for use in organic gardening.

Keep an eye out for voracious snails and slugs too, which can be controlled with a light sprinkling of Blitzem Snail Slug Pellets.

Tomato head start

For home-grown tomato-lovers in temperate areas it can seem like a very, very long winter.

Have you been just itching to get your tomatoes going? The arrival of August means that you can start off tomato seeds on a warm, bright windowsill, so the seedlings are ready for planting out as soon as any chance of frost has passed.

For tomato growing addicts with a vege patch, try Yates Tomato Mortgage Lifter Heirloom, an heirloom variety that produces lots of large, pink tinged fruit. For smaller spaces and pots, try Yates Tomato Patio