Living memories Weekend gardener
Sow Flanders poppies on Anzac Day
Red soldier poppies ( Papaver rhoeas) can be sown on or around Anzac Day innew Zealand.
Poppies look fantastic growing en masse. If you want a classic wild flower drift, then sprinkle seeds directly over bare soil – spray or clear weeds first – rake them in lightly and water.
You can grow poppies in pots too, or start them in seed trays and plant them as seedling in early spring.
Ideally give poppies good drainage and full sun, but they are so easy to grow they are almost a weed and once established should self-sow every year.
Poppies sown now will bloom next spring in time for Armistice Day on november 11.
Growth slows down as it gets cool
But you can still sow broad beans, Asian greens, peas and silverbeet this month. In warmer regions, sneak in a round of beetroot, carrots, radishes, lettuces and coriander, while in places where it’s already pretty cold try swedes and turnips, whichwill taste all the sweeter after a frost.
You can plant most brassica seedlings now too, they should grow fairly quickly for the next fewweeks before it really cools down. Try broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and kale. In southern places, plant seedlings of brussels sprouts, but don’t bother in warmer regions as these adorable miniature cabbages won’t heart up well without a bit of winter chill. While there are good reasons to start edible crops from seed, there’s actually an argument for planting brassicas as seedlings. Hearting brassicas such as cabbage and caulis need a fair bit of space, and so a punnet of six is all many gardeners might have room for. Even if you’ve got loads of space, you’re better planting a few brassica seedlings every few weeks rather than lots on one day. You don’t want to be faced with dozens of cabbages and cauliflowers all needing to be eaten at once.
Do a big autumn orchard clean up
It’s a greatway to prevent this year’s pests and diseases overwintering, and new ones getting established. Rake up leaves as they fall and add this valuable carbon to your compost. Pick up windfall fruit too, but dispose of it in your rubbish not your compost, just in case it’s home to any unwanted bugs.
Remove any mummified (grey shrivelled) fruit clinging to the branches and dispose of that in case it’s harbouring disease spores.
Apply copper oxychloride at leaf fall (but after harvest) to smother the fungal spores and bacteria that cause diseases including leaf curl, bacterial blast and leaf spot. Good coverage is required as fungal diseases can live on in cracks and crevices, so apply until your trees are dripping wet.