It’s a betwixt and between month in the garden at our place. This is what happens of course – in nature not everything goes according to plan.
Our brassicas are growing beautifully with all the rain.
Remember to keep them hilled up so they don’t get battered around in the wind and rain. Ours are not being attacked by the slugs and snails at this point in time. But down at our community garden you can see one area that is.
Do you see why possibly this area is plagued and not others? We think it’s probably the pile of feijoa cuttings up the back that need to be mulched – the perfect habitat for snails. The damage could also be the work of slugs. Remember our yeast trap mixture to catch slugs and snails is 1 teaspoon white sugar and 1 teaspoon dried yeast to 1 cup warm water. Stir well to dissolve the sugar and yeast. It foams up and the smell attracts them. They drown and you can feed them to the birds.
It should have been time to harvest our kumara, but with all the rain, the kumara is growing madly, probably making up for a bit of a lean time during the summer drought.
With the kumara in this bed still, I can’t sow my green manure crop yet.
Rob has tucked up the garden beds he’s not planting in over winter, rather than sowing green manure.
There’s chicken manure, coffee grounds, barley straw and dried out comfrey leaves in there (he dries the comfrey out so it doesn’t take root in the bed) then over goes a weed mat cover. When the covers come off in spring, the ground is all ready to be planted into.
I would have made new plants out of the runners from my strawberries 6 weeks ago, but I’m buying new plants this year, because the leaves on my current plants have had a spotty fungal disease which has reduced their vigour and fruiting. Time for some new blood.
The Camarosa strawberry plants that I like aren’t in the shops yet, but hopefully we’ll get those in the ground towards the end of the month.
And then there’s our feijoas! We’ve had 6 good years and then boom, this year we get guava moth! 😔
There’s nothing doing really until spring, but I’ll clear away round the base of each tree when the fruit is over and add a handful of Morganics and some grass clippings round each tree base for the winter. In spring, I’ll apply neem granules to the soil around the trees and hang neem granules in little bags on each tree. Then I’ll spray with Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) which is a biological control. I’ve just finished reading Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ – the book that inspired the ecological movement – and she mentions how Bt was discovered all the way back in 1911. We’re working on making Bt available in household-size packs in our shop – will let you know when that’s ready. We’ll see if that combo heads the guava moth off.
Getting in my last lot of carrots – Full Moon this coming week is a good time to do it. Too cold to sow them again until springtime. Here’s Rob sowing carrots.
And finally it’s a good time to get citrus in. We had a burst water pipe and our lemons succumbed from wet feet. I’ve been waiting until it gets a bit cooler to replant them. See Rob planting citrus here.
Green capsicums starring this month – plants put in late, leftovers from the community garden.
Happy autumn gardening from Jan and Rob! 😊
4 Responses
Hello Jan and Rob, thanks again for your monthly blog post.
I struggle with getting carrots to germinate so it was good to watch robs video from 2017. I note you use volcanic rock dust to add phosphorus. Where can I buy this?
Many thanks
Julie
Hi Julie The key for me regarding germination of carrots is only sowing in spring and autumn (but that is a 6-month period) and keeping the soil constantly moist during the germination time. The Morganics fertiliser we sell has a base of rock dust with other beneficial additives, so a good all-round organic fertiliser. Read about it here… https://organicediblegarden.co.nz/product/morganics-fertiliser/ As well, Biofert has a fertiliser called BioPhos, also with a rock dust base, and Rob thinks it’s a good product… https://centrallandscapes.co.nz/products/biofert-biophos-fertiliser-25kg 😊
Really love the prospect of being anle to get house garden sized amount of Bt from you guys. GREAT idea. Thanks in advance
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