Hope you’re either enjoying your holiday or not feeling too poorly about being back at work.
Just a quick couple of reminders of things to be doing in the garden in the heat of summer.
Firstly it’s not only us who are hot and thirsty. The birds, bees and beneficial insects are too. It’s a good idea to set up a water source for them at your place.
By making some water available, the birds won’t peck on your vegetables to extract moisture and the insects will seek out your garden to inhabit.
Speaking of birds and bees, our sunflowers are starting to burst – this variety is Kings Seeds ‘Feed for the Birds and Bees’. I’m really hoping the name is true to its word.
Secondly, it’s time to lay shade cloth over your lettuces and other similar leafy greens. It makes a huge difference to them growing quickly without bitterness and is super easy to do.
We have the first signs of powdery mildew on our pumpkins, so I’ve given all the cucurbits another dousing of liquid seaweed this week. Use a rose on your watering can and make sure you wet all the leaves. Best done first thing in the morning – before the leaves can be burnt and early enough for the leaves to dry out during the day.
Other alternatives are 1 part milk to 10 parts water or 1 teaspoon baking soda to every litre of water.
I’m shaking the seed heads of our sweetcorn to make sure we have evenly ripening kernels. The wind will do most of the job, but it doesn’t harm to give it a hand.
Also it’s a good time to sow or plant another cucumber and zucchini, to keep your supply up.
Otherwise hope you’re enjoying all the lovely fresh produce from your garden. I had a bit of confusion over whether all our tomato seeds had germinated – suspect it was a bit of a mixup in the packaging of the seeds (hand done by Bristol Seeds) and possibly also my labelling when sowing them, but we have representatives of all the seeds I thought I was growing, so I’m happy.
Happy summer gardening!
From Jan and Rob.
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8 Responses
Thank you both for this blog 🙏🏻My garden is in good health because of your advice. Everything is a bit slower to ripen down here in Rangiora, but all looking healthy. I planted the same Sunflowers and can’t wait for them to flower like yours. Thanks again, Diane
Of course it will be a bit slower, but lots to look forward to! Yes the sunflowers are lovely – good strong growers too 🙂
Thank you for your advice.
Love the calendar and I also bought some of the certified organic ‘natures organic fertilizer’ and the Neem granules.
Its my second order as you can see and taste the results!
Thanks for your feedback Janet. Yes the fertiliser is a fabulous one 🙂
Thanks for the tip about powdery mildew. What do you do for the little fluffy white fly on the brassicas?
Hi Helen That’s most likely woolly aphid. We would use Neem Tree Oil https://organicediblegarden.co.nz/product/neem-tree-oil-250ml/ applied 3 times in the evening, each application being 3 days apart. All the best 🙂
Thank you so much for continuing to give us gardening tips.
I have a small caterpillar in my nectarines, I think it’s the codling moth’s. I was wondering wether a spray of BT would be a good idea. I just wouldn’t want to kill the beneficial worms in my soil.
Hi Elise Yes that’s the best solution at this stage. A couple of applications won’t affect your soil life. All the best 🙂