Septembers plate is refreshingly green: saladings, celery, parsley, cress, silverbeet, kale, nettle, broccoli shoots for Africa, the last of the cabbage and – joy oh joy the first of the asparagus. There’s so much cool stuff to do in the garden right now, so much prettiness, you want to be out there every spare moment.
In the Vegie Patch
Check in with your soil. This is the most important job, each month. Smell it, feel it and count the worms. Take its temperature. Align all your crop choices with their preferred soil warmth – particularly important in spring.
Put a concentrated effort into eating overwintering rootcrops still in the ground. As weather warms they’ll gear up to seed getting a hard core up the centre or they’ll start to crack and split and do other crazy things – get them up before they go past their best and along the way, make room for new stuff.
Sow
Direct Sow
- Carrots, parsnip, radish, daikon, mizuna, rocket, dill
- Calendula, cornflower, poppy, nasturtium, borage and sweetpeas
Tray Sow
- Saladings, silverbeet, kale, broccoli, cabbage, peas, parsley, chives, spring onions, red onions, brown onions and shallots
- Set up a heatpad for tomato, chilli, pepper, basil and aubergine, zucchini, cucumber, melon, squash, pumpkin, dwarf beans and climbing beans
Direct or Tray Sow
- Beetroot, spinach, saladings, bok choy, broadbeans, coriander
- Snapdragon, aquilegia, viola, wallflower, larkspur, hollyhock, cleome, marigold, zinnia, alyssum, cosmos
Transplant
- Celery, broccoli, cabbage, bok choy, kale, silverbeet, parsley, saladings, red onions, brown onions, spring onions, potatoes, peas
- Zucchini, cucumber, melon, dwarf beans, climbing beans, soya beans, basil, marigold, tomatoes, chillies, aubergines, basil and peppers in the greenhouse, or outside as soon as the soil hits 20 °C
Asparagus + Potatoes
Asparagus is popping up and soon to be part of dinner. If you’ve yet to weed or mulch the bed, be ever so careful – the spears break off with the slightest knock.
Fast growing potatoes like Liseta, Rocket or Swift or even Cliffs Kidney, planted now will be ready to harvest for the Christmas table. Best present ever! Plant them into buckets, sacks or a pile of organic matter if your soils are still cold and wet.
Slugs + Snails
Spring is all about mollusc prevention in my neck of the woods. I don’t mulch new seedlings at this time of year to help reduce slug damage as well as popping out at night for a slug and snail hunt – which is the very best way of all.
Toss any you find into a bucket of salty or limey water. Or collect them in a bucket, put a lid on and tip them into the chookyard in the morning. Keep on the job at this time of year, essential to prevent them annihilating your newly planted/ newly germinating seedlings.
Prepare the ground
Sort any weedy spots in your garden this month so the ground is ready to plant next month.
Do it the easy way and grab a bit of plastic, lay it on top of the weeds and weight it down. You could also use card and mulch or just thick mulch. Forget about it for a while and when you return all the weeds will have melted into the soil in the most nourishing of ways. Spread some compost and get ready to sow or plant!
Divide perennials
Divide and plant rhubarb and perennial herbs into any gaps in your perennial borders.
Add a few more every spring, and before you know it, your gardens will be jammed packed, no room for weeds and a continual display of flowers for the bees, the beneficials and you.
In the Greenhouse
Tie strings to overhead wires, ready for planting tomatoes and cucumbers sometime this month. Set up frames for climbing beans.
Plant out companion flowers like alyssum, bishops flower, calendula or borage to entice the bees and beneficial insects in. Get some by the entry and then dot then through all the way to the back like a trail of crumbs.
Spread a generous layer of compost over beds, sow greencrops in empty spaces, mulch pathways and get excited!
hi Kath, last year my raspberries, boysenberries and hortberry had an infestation of caterpillars in them and rendered the majority of the fruit inedible. The thing burrowed its way down the centre of the fruit to lay its eggs. Would you know what this is and how to avoid it this season?
Warmest regards,
Jo
Hi Jo – that’s a real bummer! Let me know if it was a small white worm or a caterpillar?
hi Kath, I think it was a small brown caterpillar from memory. There were lots of moths around the berries and we wondered if that was the final product?
Warmest regards
Jo
yip that’ll be it then raspberry bud moth (was ruling out the other option – a fruit fly relation).
Begin with pruning and burning your prunings. Tie your raspberries to the frame keeping them open and well spread so that the spray is effective. I’d use dipel or any spray with the active ingredient BT bacillus thurengensis, a caterpillar specific spray. You need to achieve good foliage coverage. When the eggs hatch out they bite the foliage and die – hurrah! Fortnightly sprays will keep up with egg hatchings. I hope you have a backpack sprayer to make this job easy.
My raspberry pest is shield bugs who suck the life out of them leaving corky berries – I too have to spray every fortnight but with Neem. Its a mission but Raspberries are so worth it!
hope this helps
love to hear how you get on
kind regards
Kath
hi Kath, thank you!! I’ll get spraying with dipel and let you know how it goes.
Happy gardening!
Jo
Hi Jo, we had those.worms in lots of our veggies, it’s called fall armyworm and now has a warning out from MPI. It’s about 1 inch long grey/brown with a darker stripe down the sides. It’s bad news!
Spring is such an exciting time of year. I’m from the northern hemisphere and I get such a kick out of seeing your season ramp up (asparagus!) while ours is starting to wind down (garlic!). Good luck in the garden!
Thanks for your note Maria. A bit of positive spring vibe is always welcome aye 🙂 Happy gardening K
I would like to have a contiuous supply of leeks through the winter and into the spring,I live in the Waikato.When should I sow the seeds?
Sow successionally through summer ok and plant some perennial leeks as back ups and gap fillers
Hi Kath
Could you recommend an alternative to pea straw to use around potted strawberry plants, hard to buy locally so wondered if seaweed would be ok..though it dries hard and woody? Much appreciated
Seaweed is best under the mulch to make the most of it, but you can get what locals call tea leaves from the beach which is the broken up woody seaweedy brew dumped at the tide line. Also you can use any runings/ crop waste/ leaf litter/ grass clippings and mix them together for an excellent mulch.
Happy gardening Kath
I use dried pine needles for mulching my strawberries, well any berries actually and asparagus too. They don’t mind the acidity.
Pine needles are fabbo beneath strawberries – they keep the fruits nice and clean! Use what you got – its the way!
Hi Kath, I planted out broccoli about a month ago and it had bolted and is starting to flower. Would you know why that could be?
Thanks, Holly
Probably temperature Holly – sudden changes from cold to hot can do that. Does that match what happened at yours?
Yes that’s probably it! We had a couple of nice warm spring weeks then turned cold again a few days ago. I’m in the top of the South Island so it fluctuates a bit at this time of the year.
Hi Kath
Great to get your newsletter this morning, giving me more ideas to add to the spring growth. I have a problem with tomato/potato psyllid here. ( I live in Raglan). So each year is a battle to keep my tomatoes producing. Potatoes arent a problem as they are easy to cover with fine mesh, and I grow them early. With Tomatoes, I add Need granules to the planting hole, and then spray with Neem and this does help – but its hit and miss. The only sure fire solution is to cover with mesh, but this makes it hard to access the plants to nip out side shoots and inhibits their growth (mechanically). Do you have this problem, and any solutions?
Thanks, Annie
Thank you!
Hey Annie – psyllids are a trick for sure. Neem is awesome though not hit and miss at all! You need to spray regularly to keep up with hatching eggs, start early – ie dont let the population get away on you, prune tomatoes so when you do spray you easily achieve complete cover, build beneficial insect populations up and use Naturally Neem cos not all Neem is made equal. Sucking insects are attracted to high nitrogen soils so think how you can pull back here and create a more balanced approach to soil care – mean time get on with the Neem 🙂 https://www.ediblebackyard.co.nz/5-ways-to-beat-the-tomato-potato-psyllid/. Wishing you beauty tomatoes this coming season! Kath
Thank you Kath, I”ll be persistent in regular sprays of Neem this season. And will mix it with EM and Ocean organics seaweed. I use organic Neem oil from Green Trading so hopefully it is one of the superior brands of Neem. Will check out Naturally Neem also. Thanks for all the good advice – may my beautiful heirlooms survive this season.
Good luck! And if the neem doesn’t work, dont give up – switch brands 🙂
Hi Kath,
I hope that you and your whanau are all well! Just wanting some clarification around which part of the ‘j’ of the kumara seedlings you face to the North when planting out please. Do you mean the tail piece? Many thanks
Yes – good question Michelle, the leafy tops above ground heading up and the piece that was attached to the mother makes the J and faces north.
interested in your intercropping suggestion. My garden tends to get rather weedy as the season wears on, and I have found that this ‘biodiversity’ is not are bad as I once thought. It is surprising what comes out of it and in the dry of summer, bare soil dries really quickly, the less beautiful but somewhat untidy weeds keep everything damper. However, planting closer (i.e. with different plants) would be a better idea! The potatoes in buckets in the glass house are a great idea – i might try it with yams as well. Our frost free season is a bit short for yams, but this might lengthen it a bit at either end, I hope, as the huge dark red yams available at supermarkets are nothing like as good as the older, smaller pink yams of days gone by.
I agree about the yams! Grab some from Sethas seeds, the yams they sell for seed are the best tasting ones I’ve grown. And they work really well in buckets too! Piling mulch on top of the weeds is much better for soil health and back health – its a win win. So too the paradigm shift from tidy to alive 🙂 Nice to hear from you, Kath
HI Kath, The interplanting makes perfect sense. We are in South Auckland on a small block sloping gently nor/west with a clay base soil. I wanted to start a food forest and 5 yrs ago on a 1/4 acre patch planted natives for wind filter from the south, then some nikau palms for sun/wind filters and then in the centre…bananas, sugar cane, babaco, with lemon balm as ground cover and canna lilies for chop and drop mulch in situ. It was all growing incrediblly well, till we added Kune kunes to eat the surrounding grass. They’ve destroyed most of it by ‘ploughing’ everything up and completely eaten all fruiting 20 bananas. I’m wondering if its a silly idea now to let them continue ‘ploughing up’ the 1/4 acre, and then come autumn heavily plant the whole area, so there is little or no grass and then re home them?
Ah yes – pigs are in heaven! Pigs root ground, its how they roll so if you dont want the ground turned over then pigs aren’t suited to your site. Such great animals to have on the team though. Unless you can make them work for you – fence off the bananas or grow them their own forest or rotate them through seasonally to help … too hard to say remotely Tricia. Theres no right or wrong though aye – you’ve tried the pigs and now know how they behave. If you cant make them work for you then may as well re home them for sure. The food forest sounds primo 🙂
Hi Kath thanks for that, I’m going to dig up all my root veg this afternoon! I have a question: I have a row of brassicas that I planted a couple of months ago in part of the garden that doesn’t get very good sunlight so they are still very puny specimens. Is it worth digging them up and replanting in places where I had really good brassicas that are now gone? Or are the plants doomed after languishing for so long? Thanks!
Have a play Alana – this is golden! Brassicas can transplant and produce – though in my experience brocolli will go straight to shoots rather than head, but shoots are still super valuable. Dig a few, leave a few – watch it play out. A bit of compost with the puny ones probs not a bad idea. Happy days!
Hi Kath.
I’ve just set up a raised bed system and trying the rotational crop method. Anyways my first two beds up and running have peas/beans and the second carrots and onions.
What companion planting woudl you reccomend? Do I ley them grow over each other or is it planting them next to each other in their own space if that makes sense. All new to me.
Cheers
Mel
Its over whelming when you start out aye! I’m probs going to annoy you by saying there is no definative answer!! Best way to learn is just to try things out and watch and learn. Heres my simple crop rotation method to help you work out what order to plant things in and get you on the road https://www.ediblebackyard.co.nz/?s=crop+rotation
My advice is keep it very simple at the start. Just grow one crop at a time while you find your feet. Getting to know each individual crop comes first ok – then once you feel comfy here spread out into layering up intercropping and mixing things up.
Hi Kath,
I trimmed down my asparagus fronds back in winter. Fed with manure and added a little extra sand where the crowns were exposing themselves. Then chopped the cut fronds into 10cm lengths to top the patch as a self-mulch. The first shoots are showing now but they’re struggling to break through the thick mulch layer and when they do appear, are not straight but all bent and squiggly. My patch is wild and hairy looking. Nothing like your picture above with tidy straight shoots breaking through a fine homogeneous mulch layer. Should I lift the mulch so they don’t have to work so hard to break through?
Thanks,
Kirstie
Hey Kirstie. Asparagus has a strong spirit and will push through a cow pat, deep mulch …. all manner of things. There is something else going on here. Poor drainage is the most common issue. Check in with the soil first of all – smell it and feel it. How old is your patch? How did it grow last year? Ponder these things and get back to me if you like.
Morning Kath, I’m way down south and have a healthy crop of broccoli and cauliflower just about ready to harvest in my glasshouse. Have I got time to do a crop of buckwheat before I plant tomatoes? Thanks
Oh yes, then sow the greencrop at the feet of the brassicas. Add in phacelia and or crimson clover if you have then to hand – they will also go down a treat. If you need to create a bit more space break off the lower, ratty leaves. You can plant your tomato seedlings into pockets in the greencrop, slashing back the greencrop as it grows. Enjoy!
Having recently found your blog and ordered you book online. I want to say how much I’m enjoying this newsletter and all the useful links. Also loving your fruit growing video. It’s provided a feel good focus at a time when there’s lots of negative news. I can’t wait for the book😊 ……thanks 🌿
Thats cool of you to say Jaynie. Thankyou.
Hi Kath.
I love reading your blog and getting lots of tips and tricks to use in my own garden.
I cut back my asparagus when it had died back and chucked them in the compost (I know to use them on the bed next time). I added some compost a few months ago and now that things are warming up the weeds are starting to creep through. I’d really like to add a mulch to slow the weeds.
So could I add on a mulch now even though the asparagus is coming through? And what would be the best mulch to use?
Thanks!
Oh yes great idea to get a mulch on now Hannah. If you by chance live near a beach then seaweed or the beach “tea leaves” that wash up is awesome – asparagus loves stuff from the sea seeing as thats where it originates from. If not then a lovely brew of grass clippings and leaves and whatever youve got that can create a dense cover to block light.
Hi Kath
I’m looking at purchasing a heating pad, can you tell me what brand you use please. Also what would be your recommendations on organic fertilisers both solid and foliage feed for Vega gardens and fruit trees. Looking forward to the arrival of your book loved the video….thanks so much
Mine has an eagle on it – so perhaps the brand is eagle 🙂 I’m pretty sure if you buy from a good NZ shop itll be a good un.
For fert I’m a huge fan of compost, mixed mulch and full spectrum mineral fertiliser FODDA – youll find it online.
Enjoy K
Hi Kath. As always your blog is so helpful.
Looking at the recent summer in the UK and Europe, I feel I need to be prepared for something similar in NZ. I have started making my own ollo pots but do you have any other recommendations .
Thats super cool – no Anne sorry I dont know anyone else, I think you are your own best bet here. Ola pots are hard to come by.
Hey Kath
I have some wonderful heritage shell out beans to plant this year. How close can you plant different types? Will they cross pollinate? Same with corn? Do I need to stagger the planting times?
Thanks for so much inspiration 🙏
Theoretically, there’s not supposed to be crossing going on between beans – as the flowers are perfect, but I have had it happen before although in that situation they were sharing the same trellis! Legumes are favoured by bees so providing lots of alternatives like phacelia, fennel etc about keep them off the beans. I don’t know an exact distance to give you – bees go along way though! Ask a seed saver perhaps. What I do now is to keep my shellout beans as far from each other as practical with lots of alternate nectar sources between.
Yes corn needs isolation from other varieties to save true to type – pretty hard crop to cage so yes either stagger the crops or keep them a few kilometres apart. For genetic strength you need atleast 100 plants of the same variety anyway. Weakness wont show for a few generations. A good community project – each grow one variety and share the crops!
Enjoy, K
Hi kath, following your advice i have planted lots of green crops in my new beds. Mostly lupin, mustard and oat. A friend told me she has such a problem with the lupin taking over and continuing to grow once chopped down and they ended up have a bad crop of potatoes it was so invasive. Any tips to prevent this? many thanks
Hmmm – the greencrop lupin? The idea is to harvest the lupin pre flowering or rather just as it gears up to flower. No flowers. No seeds. No spread. Though even when I do leave mine to flower, never have a run away issue with it. I wonder if your mate is talking of another lupin, of which there are a few.
Where lupin flourishes in a weedy way is generally in poorer soils – they add nitrogen you see – so I imagine, without being there! that the poor potato crop was more to do with her soil than the lupin itself.
Hope this helps
Kath
Hi Kath just wanted to check out a couple of things regarding temperatures. In the quick reference section for each crop (in your book) do the germination and transplant temps refer to soil or air temps? And also if certain crops need night temps over 13 degrees (as mentioned in the October calendar) before planting out, again is that referring to soil or air temp? Generally speaking how do soil temps compare to air temps? I’ve got seedlings coming ready but just want to get the timing right. Thanks so much.
Temps are for the soil. Night temps refers to air – air temps go up and down in a huge range whereas soil temps take a long time to change. You wont get soil going from 18 during the day down to 10 at night!
Use these temps as general guideline and they’ll give you a strong footing. Use them as a place to spring from in order to get to know and fully understand your own environment – which is at the heart of it. You are already way ahead of the game to be considering aligning crop choice with temperature!
hope this helps
Hi Kath. I have recently found your site and am very excited. I have done veggie gardening in the past with some successes and some failures. (who can’t grow zucchini??) We are moving to a house soon with a lot more land but in the house we are in currently I planted a green crop over winter as our soil has been terrible. I have weed wacked all the tops off but still need to deal with the actual plants (Living on the West Coast with non stop rain, working full time etc etc) Just a thought from one of your articles, would laying black plastic for a couple of weeks work to break it down rather than digging it all in? We are wanting to do the Eden garden system in our new home as back breaking digging is in my past.
Yes! Go the plastic! Check this article out here https://www.ediblebackyard.co.nz/easy-fixes-for-weedy-spots/
Hi there Kath. I hope where ever you have landed in this beautiful country of ours, you are enjoying your new adventure?
I seem to have a slater infestation! Over the last couple of years, I have noticed slaters are increasing their numbers substantially. Both in my vege garden and on my passionfruit. I have tried milk/yogurt traps, but they do not seem at all interested in those. Would Neem be suitable in this case do you think?
Wonderful slaters – recyclers par excellence! Though very tricky when they are eating seedlings off at the base. We built a metal rack to sit our seed trays on and I moved from wooden trays to plastic and between those 2 things solved my slater/ seedling issue. Tui Quash slug bait seemed to help as well, so too bottom watering the seed trays to get them damp all the way to the bottom – they all came running out when the trays were sitting in the water!
I’ve established my mixed fruit orchard and now planting my first veggie beds of mostly brassicas in soil that was previously heavy weeds/grasses, rural Upper Clutha location. This is especially good clay loam soil that required no tilling or amendments and the 1-2 month old transplants are doing well with Biomarinus fish product. However, I do have some pest eating on leaf edges and a few holes, not too badly YET, but I am fearful of it getting worse. You seem to recommend Neem oil but I am even afraid of using that because I feel my ecosystem (beneficials, etc) is relatively balanced and healthy overall. What do you think?
Lucky you for having such beautiful soil! You are on the right track Amy – considering your choices and listening to what your garden is showing you. First things first – remember that nothing is fatal, and that because of the way you have gardened, your garden has access to all the life it needs to heal. From pretty much anything. A few considered uses of Neem, for example wont ruin it. Not in the same way for instance, as glyphosate, though truth is, even healing from that is at our fingertips.
So, first things first – figure out exactly what is eating your plants. Then you can be targeted. Dawn and dusk are great times to quietly sit and watch. It may be snails resolved by night time snail harvests (and thrushes!). It may be a bird, resolved by birdnet. Highly unlikely to be a cabbage white butterfly caterpillar – way too early.
Enjoy the discovery! K
Hi Kath,
Can Cherry Laurel and Privet be used as mulch and compost in and around the vegetable garden?
Yes! Its perfect for mulching paths and perennials Viju
hi Kath,
I have your gardening book and read this site regularly. You often recommend applying a broad spectrum mineral fertiliser and I am wondering where I can purchase such a product and what name/brand you’d recommend.
Many thanks,
Jan
Hi Jan,
Try out some Fodda if you think your soil needs some extra. For me the mineral fert is only on a needs basis – if your homemade compost + greencrops + mulch combo aren’t working well and things are going awry. Checkout my “Useful stuff” page on my website for links.
cheers
K
Kia ora Kath,
The leaves of our tomato and basil plants in our Ōtautahi greenhouse were annihilated by silver y moth looper caterpilllars last summwr and autumn. How can I avoid this happening again? Is there some spring prep to do? I have your wonderful book but loopers aren’t in there.
Ngā mihi,
Claire
Hey Claire
Always big picture stuff with pests, enticing the right predators and feeding simply and steadily. Checkout the cabbage white info on pg 120 the same strategies apply. Also my natural pest management article on the website talks about caterpillars https://www.ediblebackyard.co.nz/natural-ways-with-pests/
all the best for this season!
K x
Kath! Your monthly newsletters and Edible Backyard book have helped me to transform my garden!! I love your approach to pests, I’m excited about all the new flowers and living compost I have planted, and this winter by sowing just a couple of things each week – our garden has supplied veggies to our table all winter!! I have a question about potatoes. I have been moving towards much less soil disruption and digging in my garden as little as possible. But what about spuds? Am I going to trash all the micro-critters if I dig a ditch for potatoes and keep mounding them as they grow?
Hey Mandy
Awesome!
Care is all you need and you obviously are caring greatly for your environment.
A little disturbance now and then is perfectly natural – birds scratch, bunnies dig, pigs root the ground – its also part of nature, its about balance, and on balance if we can disturb as little as possible, that’s perfect.
Enjoy
K x