Garden Advice › Autumn

Growing food - Autumn edition

Hardy plants like feijoas, grape and passionfruit vines produce better crops with moist soil. BLACKGOLD Mulch is great for keeping the roots cool.
Plant out for autumn: Perfect time to plant brassicas, spinach, Florence fennel, beetroot and kohlrabi in rich well-composted soil. Cover the brassicas with netting to prevent white butterfly damage
Place straw under pumpkins and melons as they ripen: as the soil begins to cool, it will hold more
moisture, which can cause ripening crops to rot off.
Passion vine hopper is a small insect that devastates passionfruit vines and many other garden plants by sucking nutrients and leaving wounds on plants, where disease can enter. An effective spray is pyrethrum which is organically derived, but it must be done weekly for a few weeks to be effective. Spray in the evening when bees are not around

Perfect season to sow lawns -Living Earth Ultra Lawn, Prolawn seed range and Prolawn Turfmaster Starter are our best lawn growing combo!

Go for Gold in the late summer garden: there are many plants that reflect the seasonal change ahead and look good from now on - the leaves of maples and other trees begin to turn and a host of golden flowers such as rudbeckias, heleniums and some shades of daisy all reflect this.
Seasonal top-up of fertilizer: give the ornamentals in your garden a bit of a boost. That's camellias, rhododendrons and other acid lovers like daphnes, azaleas and magnolias. Sprinkle some acid based plant food around the drip line of these plants to feed them. And many other garden plants and hedges can be fed now by spreading Blood & Bone around them
Plant spring flowering bulbs - tulips, daffs, hyacinths and crocuses - if it's too early for your garden, they'll benefit from 6 weeks 'fridge time', stored in paper bags
Free Hedge Plants: Cuttings root best in a mixture of pumice sand and compost. Take the slightly brown wood of new shoots from the base of plants. Try cuttings of choisyas
camellias, pittosporum, rosemary, photinia and corokia. Keep them in light sun to part shade. NB (Box plants are easy: get cuttings started in a trench of well composted soil in a semi shaded spot)