Welcome to the beginning of Winter, but I see the forecasters are saying it’ll be a mild winter. Good for we gardeners!
It’s so mild in our neck of the woods in fact that we are still eating lettuces out of the garden. And I’ve dared to plant the few straggler lettuce seedlings that I still had.

On the other hand, our first broccoli is ready for eating.

I have a smaller patch following the first brassica bed, and after harvesting our kumara, I’ve planted another whole bed of brassica seedlings where they were. The kumara were well and truly ready.

I pulled off the foliage, then reasonably carefully forked parts of the bed and uncovered a good haul. I did scag a few with the fork and these will have to be eaten first. They are now hardening off (2-3 days in dry weather – cover if it’s going to rain).

Today we’ve completed sturdy shelving in our storage safe. I had been using a wire basket system in the cupboard, but it wasn’t coping with the weight of the food. I’ll wrap each good sized kumara individually in newspaper. Some of the tiddlers will go together.
The soil where the kumara were is so deeply worked and friable. I added chicken manure, compost and Morganics fertiliser (a good feed up, as brassicas are in the ground for a good amount of time) and gave it a light work-through with the fork, and in the brassica seedlings went. The were watered and the bed netted.


The old strawberry plants are out and on the biomass pile for hot compost. In that space I sowed carrots, beetroot, spring onions and radish.



And the new strawberry plants are in their new home now. The bed they went into had been a bit neglected so in that space I trenched in chicken manure and a big lot of vermicast from our Hungry Bin, a layer of compost and a generous application of elemental sulphur prills (strawberries like an acidic soil) before planting.


You can plant them on mounds, but the main thing is to have the bed mounded up (to ensure the crowns of the plants don’t rot; in other words, you need good drainage). The foliage on the plants is small, but you can see how well-developed the root system is.

Apply Morganics multi-mineral fertiliser round each plant before watering in and netting. I’ll put straw round them in due course but will just wait up until they grow a bit bigger.

In all my weeding to prepare the beds I’ve found a whole pile of violets, so have transplanted those into the troughs of the onion bed. They’ll help suppress weeds which onions don’t like, and they don’t take away any nutrients from the onions.


The garlic is all germinated and I’ve applied some liquid seaweed to them to keep them healthy. Will do this regularly from now on.

And I’ve found sooty mould on my mandarin in a container on the back patio. It’s colder here and doesn’t get much of a through draught which will be the reason.

I made up an oil spray of 1 litre of water, 1 tablespoon of oil and a squirt of dishwashing liquid. Using the spray, I cleaned all the mould off the leaves with a cloth, then applied more oil spray to protect the leaves. We’ll see if that’s enough of a treatment in due course.

So all beds are planted up now. I continue to grow on more brassicas to replace those we eat. And now I can put my attention to cleaning up the paths which are full of weeds! And make a hot compost to deal to all the biomass from spent crops.

Just to say I won’t be around in August to send out orders from our shop, so if there’s anything you might like for the month of August, do get in before then. The shop will also be closed from 10-14 June for website maintenance.
Happy gardening!
Jan and Rob
2 Responses
Hi Jan,
As always its so interesting and informative to read what you have been doing and how good your garden looks.
Please can you tell me what Sulphur prills are and where to buy the product,have never heard of them and do you only use them for Strawberries
Hi Beryl It’s elemental sulphur from Fertco… https://www.fertco.co.nz/shop/product/558627/elemental-sulphur-prills-ndash-biogro/?variantId=1585175 I just rang them and they told me where my local supplier was who could order it for me. I use it everywhere, except on the brassica beds as they like it alkaline. It’s been a revelation for my garden which for some reason had become quite alkaline.