Garden Advice › Garden Tips of the Month
Garden Tips October 2015
What to do in the garden in October
ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK - style
Take another look at that public garden stalwart - Libertia peregrinans. That's a NZ iris to us lay people. It's a plant that really captures the 'orange' in garden tones, its leaves are deeply coloured after a hefty bout of cool temperatures this winter. Play it up with your dahlias, rudbeckias and bright canna lilies.
LOVE AT FIRST BITE - pest control
Or not, if the caterpillars of the codling moth hatch inside your beautiful crop as the apples grow...
Apples trees everywhere are producing the blossom that drops and leaves young fruit exposed to the very aggressive moth. Try using pheromone traps (that's the sticky stuff you hang in the tree) and there's a reasonable chance you'll deal with the little blighters.
There's another great remedy - Success Ultra. Digger Dan used this last season and had perfect apples for a change - not apple hotels for crawly caterpillars. The trick is to begin the spray programme now as the petals fall and only spray for 4 times in the season. The spray is a naturalyte, yet does the same job as a chemical. Environmentally that's better!
THE GREEN ROOM - lawns
When did the lawn become a mud bath? After 3 straight months of rain if you
live in Auckland! If this is the case try to stay off it for a while, hoping it
gets a little drier. However you can broadcast a white powdery substance called
Gypsum all over it. Strangely it's the stuff in gib board on the walls
(but don't go tearing your living room down okay?) Don't be put off by the look
of icing sugar all over the back yard - just repeat it in 2 weeks.
Gypsum will 'open up' hard clay soils, allowing water penetrate and
generally making the grass happy. (As in the song). Get gypsum from your
nearest Central Landscape yard.
Spring Renovation: With the weather warming up and hopefully drying out you
will want to turn your attention to your lawn. After a long, wet winter even
existing lawns need some TLC and the sooner you do this the better your lawn
will look heading into summer and that all important BBQ season. if your lawn
is looking tired, yellow, full of weeds or just a little thin then it's time
for a spring renovation.
If you looking at sowing a new lawn or re-doing an existing one, now is a great
time to use SRL (self-repairing lawn) This new and innovative rye grass will
provide you with a genuine low maintenance lawn option, with its fine dark leaf
and 50% less mowing you will be the envy of the street.
Check out the website or pop in and talk to your local Central yard for more
information.
How to renovate:
1. Fertilise with or Garden Supreme to encourage strong growth.
2. Spray weeds with Broadsword selective weed killer to control broadleaf
weeds.
3. About 3-4 weeks later scarify the lawn heavily to create a good seed bed.
4. Oversow bare or weak areas with the appropriate Prolawn seed blend and
fertilise with Turfmaster Starter
FAST FOOD - Veggie garden
October is the 'now' month for growing food. Basically if you plant it now
you can pretty much eat it all summer.
Grow organically, it tastes better and if we all stopped using chemical
fertilisers, there would be less of them leaching into the storm water system
and heading out to poison our fish! Living Earth's BioGro certified Organic
Veggie Mix and BioGro organic certified Liquid Compost are the
perfect companions to grow you natural, healthy food.
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TOMATO time - remember unless they're labelled 'bush' types they're going to grow tall - to up to 2 metres high, so they're best planted with the stake at the beginning… Little plant, big stake, funny, but correct way to do it! Bush types are sweet (literally) too - easy to grow and no need to stake - surprisingly good croppers!
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Zucchini (Courgette to you) - they're easy to grow and there are some good organic dark green varieties around that are self-fertile if you haven't much space. Once you get them in production don't let them grow to marrow size - people just don't eat them. Over production of small sweet ones is a good way to introduce yourselves to the neighbours or supply the local food bank.
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Love your lettuce - they're amazingly quick and easy to grow and they don't need all the sun in the vegetable garden - half a day will do it! Varieties such as Cos are great for Caesar salad, conventional 'Great Lakes' type is the perfect crispy leaf in sandwiches and 'Drunken Women' - well that's' one of the hardiest heritage lettuce varieties, with a faint blush to the leaf…….
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But wait for a month to grow beans and basil - they're temperamental!
BEAUTY IN NATURE
Its petal fall time - spring blooms don't kick around for all
that long, due to their often fragile nature. Don't mourn the dropping of these
magnolia blooms - they served their purpose to attract delicious insects which
feed the breeding birds! Love the effect on your lawn - but clear the leaves
after a week, otherwise the grass may begin to yellow off and sulk!
YUM (harvesting food)
Got a wealth of coloured stem silver beet (also known as Swiss
chard)? So pretty and so good for you.
Silver Beet Pie
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Grab several bunches. Remove and wash the leaves chopping coarsely. Use about half the stems and slice them finely, washing them as well.
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Sauté some onion in a pan then add the stems and stir a bit.
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Add the leaves and cook off all the pan ingredients until the moisture is gone
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In a bowl mix up 2 cups of cheeses - eg cottage, soft goat's, feta and parmesan, adding salt, pepper and nutmeg.
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Mix in the silver beet, an egg (lightly beaten) and some chopped coriander or mint.
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Thaw a roll of Paneton Bakery's superb butter flaky pastry. Place the filling along one side of it lengthways and lift the flap over it, pressing the edges together all round. Brush with egg on the top and bake at 190 degrees for 40minutes.
GET WELL SOON: Health straight from the source - Beat colds
and 'flu the way Nature intended… Digger Dan used lemons travelled from
Tairua and honey from Mangawhai's Worsfold Farm.
WET, WET, WET - In water-logged soils avoid doing
anything until the rain lessens and the temperatures stay constantly in the
upper teens. If you need to, put down a row of boards or organic mulch to tread
on, that can be repatriated later and work on the surrounding garden, without
treading on it. Gently forking over soils that are more free-draining, adding
compost as you go to reinvigorate the soil and replace nutrients that have
washed through.
After planting, or even after you've simply turned the
soil, mulch will, strange as it seems, help the soil. It acts like this: when
the rain hits the bigger mulch pieces the water will run down the sides into
the soil, allowing more even dispersal, rather than the water congregating in
dips or at the low point of the garden bed. The best mulch that will do this:
Central Landscape & Garden Supplies BLACKGOLD Mulch.
You can scrape back the mulch for planting, then replace it and you have an
excellent weed suppression cover. Extra compost in the mulch will gradually add
more nutrients to the soil below.
HOT TIP: Place tiny terracotta pots on the ends of low garden stakes to prevent eye-gouging when gardening - unless you want to look like an All Black!
DID YOU KNOW? That sweet honey scent in the evenings just now is most likely coming from the karo flower, a NZ tree botanical name Pittosporum crassifolium. You might mistake it for a pohutukawa tree. (How about that on top of the red peak flag?)
NO IT'S NOT A FUNGUS - This succulent with its perfectly formed rosettes got a nasty shock recently when hailstones pitted its fleshy leaves. Sadly, it won't recover, but new growth will look prettier.
Garden Thought of the Month:
"One of the healthiest ways to gamble is with a spade and a package of
garden seeds."
Dan Bennett
