Centrals Tips March 2022

The fruit and vegetable garden

In vegetable areas that you’re not likely to use this winter, sow a green cover crop such as lupins or mustard seed or a three-way blend of peas, oats and mustard. Once mature it can be cut and left on the soil to break down adding nitrogen and other nutrients to the soil.

Plant out cabbage, Chinese cabbage, broccoli, tatsoi, pak choi, mizuna, spinach, silverbeet and spring onion seedlings.

Edible flowers for the vegetable patch that can be sown now: calendulas, violas and Iceland poppies.

Place straw beneath pumpkins and melons as they ripen. This avoids contact with increasingly damp soil that can rot the skins.

Sow parsley and coriander now, curly parsley makes great bright green edging for winter vegetable gardens.

Save heritage tomato seeds by pushing the flesh through a sieve, then drying the seed and storing in dry paper bag.

Forward thinking: get rid of weeds before they go to seed - this limits the ability for their seeds to invade the vegetable garden and come back to haunt you next year.

The ornamental garden

Plant out autumn-toned shrubs and flowers to complement the autumn colour ahead: tawny-coloured NZ grasses, orange flowered daylilies and bright foliage shrubs such as heucheras and NZ coprosmas.

New season’s spring flowering bulbs are available now, so choose from a brilliant range of tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths - potted bulbs can brought indoors as they flower.

Grow a great lawn with seed from our range and help it grow with Prolawn Lawn Starter – lightly water the seed each day to aid germination.

Trim hedges now for a crisp shape in the winter months. Where the plant roots have become exposed to the sun, add some Living Earth Garden Mix.

Kowhai caterpillar – is the foliage disappearing on your prized kowhai trees? Spray with organic Bugtrol to stop the damage. Notching in young cabbage trees can be stopped this way – spray into the centre of the leaves.