A December planted zucchini, cucumber + a few tomatoes are awesome when late summer rolls around. Keep the harvests flowing in, in a regular way with regular, little plantings and sowings this month.
If it’s hot at yours, shade comes to the rescue. I plant all my summer seedlings out under a simple bivvy , an older plant that’s going to seed or amongst greencrops – what a difference! Much depends, of course, on your climate and the weather of the day.
- Heat lovers only need shade for a day or so if it’s roasting hot. If it’s cooler they’ll be AOK without it.
- Plants not so keen on the heat like leafy greens, need shade a little longer and may even need it for the duration. In hot or dry places, plant them where there is afternoon shade from a taller crop or building.
The trick to an epic summer garden is your daily garden stroll – it’s hardly a chore is it?! Catching problems early makes for simple solutions and a peaceful, easy life. Those little jobs done there and then keep everything steadily + happily ticking away. Squash a few aphids, clear windblown flowers off new seedlings, train plants onto frames, remove old past it foliage (hello compost!), pinch small laterals off tomatoes – a little each day, adds up to a lot of care = best garden ever.
What to plant + sow in December
If you look after your soil through summer with best watering, living mulches, homemade mulch, greencropping between crops, and liquid feeds, you’ll be able to plant winter crops late summer and autumn, without having to do major soil repair missions. Such a breeze! If there’s one thing on your mind as you head into summer – let it be soil care and watering.
If you’re going away, sow greencrops in every gap and make sure everything is properly hydrated before you go away.
Sow
Direct Sow
- Carrots and parsnip
- Sow coriander and rocket in part shade – beneath taller crops works well.
- Flowers like cosmos, bishops flower and cornflower to keep the bees and beneficials fed.
- Sow summer greencrops in every space: phacelia, buckwheat, mustard, marigold, bishops flower, daikon, flax, crimson clover or lupin are all great options. Make a mixture! The more diverse the ground cover the stronger your soils.
Tray Sow
- Climbing beans, dwarf beans, corn, cucumber, zucchini, tomato, dill, basil, chervil, red onion, spring onion
- Zinnia, anise hyssop, sunflower, cleome, migonette, love lies bleeding and loads of marigolds
Direct or tray sow
Transplant
- Corn, leeks, red onions, spring onions, potatoes, parsley and companion flowers
- Last call to plant out melons, squash, kumara and yams. They need to be in ground early summer at the latest if you want them ripe by autumn
- Plant tomatoes, basil, marigolds, zuchinni, melons, cucumber, dwarf beans, climbing beans and soya beans into the greenhouse, unless you live in warmer climes and can plant them outside
In Praise of Dwarf Beans
Dwarf beans are such a useful gap filler – they zoom from seed to harvest in 9 weeks! But unlike climbing beans they crop all in one go, and that’s it – c’est fini! For continuity of supply, sow a new little row every fortnight or month – whatever suits.
These are the bean for windy sites, because they are easy to tuck away out of the blast. Hold them up with a stake either end of the row and a bit of twine about the middle – no frames, another bonus!
Regular + odd jobs
- Harvest onions and garlic and get them up and curing. Especially if they are heading off to seed – the bulbs wont fatten anymore from here. Re sow the bed right away with a greencrop or plant a light feeder like beans or saladings.
- Make a compost pile or 3!
- Move worm farms out of the afternoon sun.
- Fossick beneath potatoes for the first new spuds of the season – treats!
- Stay chill about the pests. There’s lots you can do to minimise them – water properly, stop over feeding, stop feeding artificial fertilisers and grow a booomer population of beneficial insects. Meantime squash the ones you see on your daily check in.
Harvest herbs
Mint, thyme, lemon balm, roses, chamomile and oregano are lush and ripe for harvest right now. Catch leaf herbs before they flower, and flower herbs when they are at their height of perfection. Pick them in the morning after the dew has dried but before the sun burns off their oils. I dry them in my dehydrator.
They dry perfectly well, hanging in small bunches or laying in single layers in baskets or woven trays, somewhere warm, airy and out of direct sunlight.
Jars of homegrown herbs are super useful for winter in cooking, medicine and herb teas. They make lovely christmas pressys too.
Just love your newsy informative letters. I forward them to my two daughters , one lives in Manly West Brisbane and is an enviromental scientist. . What i would like to ask is that for the first time in quite a few years I have a bumper crop of apples, Prima. Granny Smith and the fascinating Monty’s Surprise. Monty seems to be thinning himself out without any help from me. Is this the norm?
Should I be thinning out the fruit on the others or just leave them? I mulch them with fallen leaves and lawn clippings and give them a bit of Blood and bone. Is this enough? And finally when should i cover them with netting? I have been getting the odd sodding possum this year!
Do yourself a favour, and also the enviroment, buy a Timms possum trap, they are totally pet proof and easy to operate,
cats cannot get into them and are instantly fatal to possums
cheers
yes Cliff, Timms traps are the best!
Cliff cats DO get into Timms trap – depends on the bait. Good for catching ferals (and hedgehogs). But I agree they seem to be the best trap for possums.
Thank for that Isobel
Yes Monty will do a bit of self thinning, double check your Monty has all it needs though ok.
Heres my article about how to thin fruit for you to read https://www.ediblebackyard.co.nz/how-to-thin-fruit-and-why-you-need-to-2/
yes thinning makes a massive difference to the health of your fruit trees. Getting a bit late now though – maybe look at it for next year.
Blood and bone and grassclippings is too heavy on the nitrogen for fruit trees – heres how I do it ok https://www.ediblebackyard.co.nz/how-to-feed-and-mulch-your-fruit-trees/
Trap the possums or cover with birdnet anytime you need – for me its as soon as the birds start eating the fruit so perhaps for you it when the possums begin munching 🙂
happy gardening Kath
Hi Kath, can I use grass clippings applied lightly, not in thick dumps, as mulch around veges and flower gardens? I’m having trouble being able to make enough compost, fast enough!
Thanks
oh indeed you can Carole. Before all my mulch maing herbs et all had established grass was my main go to. Increase the nutrition by letting it grow as long as you can before cutting. happy mulching!
Hi Kath , Ten days ago my garden was badly damaged by the worse hail storm I have ever experienced.
What should I do ? The blackcurrants are just bruised branches .
Will they recover in time or should I cut them right down so they will grow fresh for next season .
All the fruit has gone from all the trees .
Have been able to replant vegetables , it’s what to do with the fruiting trees .
So hard seeing the garden so sad and damaged .;
Thank you
I
It is hard seeing the garden damaged Inez – I feel your pain. Without seeing it, I recommend pruning back any shattered wood to good wood, and spraying with seaweed + EM, or similar straight after. Plants are incredibly resilient will move you with the way they rise up again. Keep a relaxed eye on your trees/ shrubs and trim out any wood that deteriorates. Don’t go for a wholesale hard prune at this time of year though ok, if you can avoid it. Bit hard to make this call remotely though. Once you are over the shock and disappointment, follow your gut here, Inez. All will be well, K x
Hi Kath,
At the moment my yellow zucchini plants are not producing any male flowers, only female. I only have two at this stage with younger ones coming through. Do you know what might be causing this? They are otherwise healthy and started off producing male and female flowers so I have harvested some already. Also any tips on helping the garden survive while I’m away fro 10 days over Christmas? I’m planning to mulch up and try and entice a neighbour to water a couple of times.
Thanks,
Shannon
Hi Shannon, I’ve never grown yellow zucchini before, but all squash do a male, female swap about at times – give it time. There’s nothing else you can do here apart from keeping a new plant coming on every few weeks so that you’ve got a mix of male/ female flowers to keep the balance. Try heritage varieties to see if there is a difference.
cheers Kath
Hi Kath,
Which EM product do you use? They all look a bit expansive.
Kind regards,
Christine
Love the apt typo. Yip EM costs a bit. Buy the concentrate is heaps better value. Garden concentrate 1. You can expand it which means add more water and molasses and warm it with an aquarium heater and turn 1 litre into 10, or 20 cant remember 🙂 All the info is on their website. The other way to get microbes going is activated compost – no idea if this is for sale I make my own, which obviously you can too. A couple hundred bucks to buy a ready made kit or if youre handy you can go online and find ways to make your own for next to nothing.
I meant expensive!
Thanks for your reply Kath. Are you able to do an article one month on activated compost? I enjoy getting your emails and always learn something new.
Kind regards,
Christine
Hop online and checkout Elain Ingham – the queen of compost tea! Also crafty gatherer sell an awesome little brewing kit for home gardeners – its the one I use… https://craftygatherer.co.nz/shop/aerated-compost-tea-brewer and they have really good info with it. 🙂
Just listened to one of her lectures and so so interesting. Thanks again Kath.
Kindest regards,
Christine
I really enjoy your garden stories and information – Usually one of the first things I do each morning, often still in my PJs is to walk through the garden, pullling a weed here and there, tying up a tomato, watering, talking and enjoying. No longer. My morning walks are full of sadness for the twisted and curling tomato plants, the scrawny curling struggling capsicums, the dahlias growing knobs rather than leaves. I have been badly hit with killer compost (clopyrolid weedkiller poisoning). I did what I never usually do, and imported a big truckload of garden mix and mushroom compost to fill 5 big new raised beds. All to make gardening easier and more fruitful as I grow older. As I’d run out of my own compost I also put mushroom compost here and there in the rest of the garden. I know you and your other gardener readers will understand the devastation I feel. I find that many other locals here in Raglan have had the same problem, and others all over the country. Even Charles Dowding suffered it a while back and has put out two great videos on it. So I’m in touch with others, and hopefully, this time around, a stop can be put to the use of this poisonous spray that farmers use to destroy broadleaf weeds in their paddocks. Then they make hay from the grass which is sold to, say, horse stables. The horse manure is then sold to comercial compost/soil companies, who then sell their compost to garden supply stores, who sell it to us. Our local supplier, Raglan Landscape supplies, deny the problem, so wont research where it may have come from in their compost. And no reimbursement of the cost, or removal of the soil. And i’m looking at up to 4 years before the poison is neutralised. I’ll be nearly 80 by then. Sorry for the moan, just want to share my story so that others may be forewarned – and you may have come across this Kath and have some ideas. I’m doing test pots of red clover and keeping the beds growing as advised by Charles D. Looking at adding more biological activity also – EM etc, but its a lot of cost, for no veges. Dont want to eat what does grow, such as brassicas, as they will be contaminated even though it doesn’t show. May we be free of this poison soon!!!
Oh Annie my heart goes out to you. Its so unfair. I can easily imagine the heartbreak you feel. I’ve been wailing about pyralids for years myself having experienced it in school gardens nearly 20 years ago! Yes that long and still the problem persists. https://www.ediblebackyard.co.nz/the-ins-and-outs-of-choosing-bought-compost/
Thanks for sharing your story – its the best we can do I is to keep talking about it and steering people towards compost suppliers that dont recycle greenwaste and that do give a damn that eventually suppliers who don’t care will fade away as no one will use them.
Mustard and daikon radish are good to sow to help cleanse soil and atleast there is something growing. You can also get soil tested – an expense I realise but may result in fast tracking the repair. My knowledge is sketchy here.
Will you grow somethings in containers? Or perhaps join a community garden?
Love Kath
Thank you Kath so much for your understanding response – just what I need at this time. I will take your advice and sow Mustard and Daikon. Yes, I’ll grow in containers and I do have some parts of the old garden which I think are clean. I’m growing red clover here an there as a quick turnaround test. The Hills Lab test costs $300 and sometimes comes back negative even though all the plants growing there show the signs of poisoning. When I phoned them they said that without knowing the exact chemicals involved it may not work. So I”ll continue to post my story where I can and perhaps dig out the soil from two of the five beds and put it on my verge which just grows grass. And go back to inground gardening where the contaminated soil was while leaving the rest growing crops as you suggest, and will test it again in Autumn. 20 years ago you had this!!! whew, horrifying. Thanks again!!
Hi Annie,
Just a comment for what it’s worth, fulvic acid is said to be good at cleaning up this sort of thing, it chelates heavy metals and chemical residues.
I hope you have a good source of organic veges in the meantime. What a shame.
Thankyou Liz, Kx
Hi Kathy, Thanks again. Most informative.
Christine
Hi Kath, always look forward to your monthly newsletter. This year has been very wet for us and for the first time I’m loosing all my carrot seedings to slugs :(. I have beer traps out and go squashing 3 times a week at night but i have not yet managed to get a crop of carrots. I notice you mentioned slug baits? I thought these were a no go for an organic garden so have been stubborn in not resorting to these to get a crop of carrots. Do you use any particular brand? are there any that are better than others in terms of not impacting the good guys etc. Cheers
Hi Mel, so sad when the slugs score the carrots! I use Tui Quash which has no chemicals – its iron and bran. The least toxic one I can find and well worth it at this sluggy time of year.
Awesome , el give that a try
Iron is a chemical! (actually its an element). Everything is made of chemicals! You and me, organic fertilisers, compost, and the plants we grow! Drives me crazy when people use the word “chemicals” when they really mean “man-made and/or harmful additives”.
Yes + thankyou! You are correct Wendy – lazy language on my part.
Ngā mihi Kath, your garden is looking great! I came to a workshop before the world went crazy in early 2020. I was taken by a plant in your garden that you said is great in a bottle of water too….flower looked like a mini coreopsis and I think you said it was Mexican marigold mint? my friend and I thought we’d grow some for the school garden ( and ours) so purchased some seeds from Koanga nurseries called sweet hyssop marigold a.k.a Mexican mint which has aromatic anise leaves. For some reason I can’t recall if yours was this same plant – I thought yours might have been minty or lemony? Please are you able to tell me if it is sweet anise hyssop or if there is another plant🤔 wishing you a productive abundant Christmas and look forward to 2021 and seeing what you might doing workshop wise Lee-Ann Newton
Hey Lee-Ann – Tagetes lemmonii is its name proper. Also called mountain marigold, mexican marigold and lemmons marigold – the nicknames make it confusing dont they! Tagetes lemmonii will get you to the correct plant. And yes it is super delish in a jug of water to flavour it. Kings seeds usually sell it and sometimes I see plants on trade me and Edible Garden in ashurst sells the plants too. Have an abundant summer!
Hi kath, I see your very busy answering questions!
Do you have any advice for bronze beetle on raspberries /hybrid berries,
I’ve tried neem to no avail…
Someone mentioned conquerer oil but that’s probably not a good idea on food crops.
I did see someone mention having a mustard crop established that they would prefer to eat but it’s too late for this year. The little buggers!
Hey Ana! Bronze beetles are tricky for sure. There are a number of strategies for you – its the coming together of all of them that steadily reduces populations. Because they lay and pupate in the ground, chickens are an awesome first line of defence. I get my chooks beneath my berries at the end of winter and leave them their until about now when the berries are forming and bring them back at the end of the season to do a clean up. Though bare disturbed ground flies in the face of my no dig philosophy in this case, it cleans up larvae and disturbs eggs and makes it unattractive to lay in. Neem does indeed work, after the chooks have been through thoroughly spray the foliage and bark. Not all Neem is created the equal though – use naturally neem. Find them online. Also spray as often as 3 days apart initially. If the beetle situation is really full on, add Neem granules on the soil after the chickens have been through and a few times throughout the season. Good luck mi amigo!
Thanks Kate for another great newsletter
2 questions for you, when you sow greencrop around your plants how big do you let them get before chopping them as mulch?
And do you take the laterals off your aubergines too?
I do indeed prune my aubergines – heres how https://www.ediblebackyard.co.nz/how-to-prune-and-delateral-tomatoes/ and as for chopping down the greencrop, its an entirely flexible thing born of necessity. Chop them in rhythm with whatever the garden needs at the time. In regards to the living mulch question, just chop them back at any stage to allow enough space for the growing plants. The crop takes priority in this instance. Enjoy!
Hi new to all this. I seem to be doing well with my tomatoes, thank you for the watering advice. However the potatoes I planted early in the season have brown and dying leaves, there is new growth coming through so I don’t know if there’s a pest problem or they’re ready to harvest?
Nga mihi
Hils in Northland
Could be many things Hils. Fossick underneath and grab any of the crop! Have a read through my potato growing guide, and check out my DIY soil test – key for beginner gardeners. Most crop issues are in the soil and/ or a response to weather. Takes time to set up a strong garden system, be patient and have a read through my start a garden guide and make sure you’ve laid a good foundation.
Hi Kath.
I’ve planted red onions this year, for the first time – three in a hole like you said – and they’re growing fast! But I can see the bulbs peeping up above the soil already, and they’re only little. Does this mean I didn’t plant them deeply enough? Can I heap mulch around them to cover them? Or are they meant to peep up?
Awesome all round! Its good you didn’t plant them deep otherwise they grow a fat neck and no bulb. Yes they are s’posed to peep up (cute!). By time they’ve fully fattened they’ll be almost sitting on top the soil. Mulch is fab between the plants to retain moisture and keep the roots cool and slow the weeds down but leave the neck and tops in the sun. Enjoy!
Thanks for your wonderful advice each month!! Have just dug new potatoes at our newish allotment in our community gardens and they have been feasted on by wireworm. I’ve only had the plot for 18 months. Grew pumpkins under black plastic there last summer to somewhat tame the weeds/comfrey.. Prior to this hadn’t been grown on for a while (years). Any successful control measures? Am thinking of trying nematode biological controls as doesn’t look like many other effective means to reduce damage otherwise. Will just continuing to bulid soil health w covercrops etc help?. Another suggestion I saw was to grow plants unaffected by wireworm but have struggled to find out what these might be. Keen for any advice. Many thanks!
Hey Rachel, ohhh allotments – I’m stoked to hear NZ is getting on the allotment buzz.
There’s a few things to do to reduce them, over time you understand – yes building soil and covercrops are a big part of that.
Useful to know what conditions wireworm (grubs) flourish in – moist, damp undisturbed soil with plenty of grassy sod around. Grains, root crops, lettuces and sunflowers are the most attractive crops for them.
Grow these dotted about rather than in blocks.
Wire worm has loads of natural predators – as per any grub, so continue building diversity around your vegie patch with a mix of perennials and herbs and companions (not grains as wireworms love them)
Disturb the soil by aerating, and let the birds at it – chickens are such good allies in this regard but you probably don’t have them on an allotment so birds it is. Once birds know there’s a feed they’ll stick around for more.
Crop rotation
Sow buckwheat and mustard before and after potatoes. I have in the past planted potatoes amongst strips of buckwheat.
Perhaps grow potatoes in buckets next year while you build and improve your soil, ergo building natural predators.
Transition any grassy edges by mulching and planting perennials around the outside.
Trap them – look online, before planting potatoes to reduce numbers.
Balance will come in time!
best
K x