Even though it’s still wet, the days are warming up and getting longer. Now’s a good time to get your garden beds ready for spring. The lupins we planted as a green manure crop are just about to burst into flower so it’s time to dig them in.
They break down more quickly if they’re chopped up. You can use a sharp spade for this, but I find it easier to cut them into smaller pieces with hedge cutters.
Then we fork the ground over to aerate it.
A light dressing of lime is beneficial at the same time. It’ll help break the lupins down and add some much-needed calcium to the soil.
The beds we prepared in autumn with chicken manure, rock dust and oat straw and covered with black weed matting are breaking down nicely. The soil looks full of life and ready to be forked over in a few weeks’ time.
Crop Rotation
When planning the summer garden it’s a good idea to consider crop rotation…
This is a very simple but useful plan for growing healthy organic vegetables.
Potting up seedlings
The seeds we planted in August have germinated and are ready to be pricked out and potted up into punnets or larger pots.
We generally wait till mid-October to plant out the warmer crops like tomatoes, beans, peppers, cucumbers etc into the ground, but every year is different and we’ll wait to see what the season brings us.
Spring crops
Early spring crops like lettuce, rocket, Asian greens, kales, beetroot, spinach, chard and fennel can be planted now and will feed us until the heat-loving plants start producing.
Potatoes and kumara
Continue chitting potatoes for planting out when all chance of frost has passed. You can start chitting kumara but we don’t plant kumara until November.
Looking forward to spring planting! From Rob, Jan and the Team at OEG!
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4 Responses
Hi guys, We were away for the winter and my garden bed was totally overgrown when we came back… I would like to prepare the soil for planting now – any advice what I can do so I can get planting soon (this is my first year in the garden…).
Thanks a lot,
Anja
Hi Anja We would recommend weeding the garden thoroughly first, then using a fork, gently work over the soil, loosening and aerating it. Then we would add add an animal manure (well-rotted chicken or horse poo or sheep pellets), a general organic fertiliser like volcanic rock dust and finally a good layer of compost. Ideally leave it for 10 days to 2 weeks before planting so that the soil comes alive, all ready for planting in. Also in that time any weed seeds in the soil will have germinated, so you get the opportunity to get rid of them too. Have a look at this video… https://organicediblegarden.co.nz/2016/09/9-september-2016/ All the best 🙂
Looking at your crop rotation, wouldn’t you plant leafy crops after nitrogen fixing ones so there is plenty of leaf growth. If root crops are planted after N fixing ones don’t they grow too much top growth?
Hi Jeanette What we find is the nitrogen that’s added to the soil from nitrogen-fixing crops is not sufficient for green leafy crops – they need the nitrogen that comes from animal manures with all its urea. It’s also not enough nitrogen to grow the above-the-ground leafy component of root crops at the expense of the root. Root crops require some nitrogen as well as phosphorus and the amount that the nitrogen-fixing crop gives to the soil works well for a root crop. That is our finding anyway 🙂