The soil is warming and it’s an exciting time in the vegetable garden to get crops on the table for the festive season, says gardening writer JACKIE WARBURTON.
Tomatoes, even in a sheltered spot, won’t start growing until the soil warms in mid-October. In fact, planting them too early doesn’t have any benefits – they need hot sun to ripen at the other end for harvesting.
However, now’s the perfect time to add calcium to the soil where the tomatoes are going to grow, which will go a long way to preventing blossom end rot and give tomatoes all the micro nutrients they need to grow and produce flowers.
Tomatoes need at least five hours of sun a day and need to be staked to keep them growing.
KEEP an eye on aphids that will start to emerge now. Spray neem oil on them if their numbers are too big to squish with gloved fingers.
Sprinkle a little wood ash around the roses if you want to increase the pH of the soil. Potassium or coffee grounds can be sprinkled around high nitrogen plants such as salad greens, but place it sparingly around fruiting and flowering plants.
Wood ash sprinkled around roses will help if the pH of the soil needs to be raised. Add potassium or Dynamic Lifter in the garden to improve the soil.
FLOWERING now is the long-lived Rhodanthemum African Eyes, a small and compact plant with a lovely silver foliage that grew through our cold winter. It’s a little slow and will only get to about 30 centimetres tall, but the profusion of long, bright, white flowering is what it is grown for. Give it a light prune after flowering.
A native that grows and flowers in much the same way is Chamomile Sunray (Rhodanthe anthemoides). It needs a little care and grows a bit taller than its counterpart.
WITH warmer temperatures insects are emerging from winter. Spitfire caterpillars are easy to see as they clump together during the day on the stems of gum trees and feed on the leaves at night.
They are not harmful to humans or animals, but have bristles as a defence. Kookaburras and other native birds feed on them, so leave them alone.
Sometimes their populations are bigger and defoliate some gums, but the damage won’t kill the tree, and it will reshoot quickly.
Bugs, caterpillars, butterflies and bees are all helpful in the biodiversity of the garden. They pollinate flowers and eat bad bugs, too.
Any sprays used in the garden will disrupt the life cycle of good bugs and it will take some time to get the insect balance back. So spray only as a last resort.
With spring, bees move pollen from flower to flower to pollinate fruit trees and nectar-feeding birds are busy eating bugs.
Occasionally it’s good to feed birds, but not too much and only use a natural bird nectar mix, fresh fruit and vegetables or worms.
Planting local grasses such as Poa grasses for their flowering seedheads are attractive to small birds and other wildlife.
Jottings
- Cover apple trees when temperatures are 15C to minimise codling moths.
- Prune viburnum hedges after flowering.
- Feed bulbs as they are dying down.
- Deadhead all flowering plants to encourage new growth.
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