A busy month with quite a few important activities in it.
As we’re in the Full Moon phase right now, we’ll start with root crops. Our early potatoes, but the ones that take a bit longer than others, namely Jersey Bennes (same for Cliffs Kidney) are ready to go in the ground.
We give them one last soak in liquid seaweed.
While they soak, we prepare the bed.
If your soil is compacted, fork it through first by gently inserting your fork and lifting the soil, but not turning it over. Create nice deep trenches and heap the soil up on either side, patting it down firmly so it keeps its shape.
Place your chitted potatoes in the trenches about 25cm apart. Sprinkle Neem granules over them to ward off psyllids and just cover the seed potatoes with soil from the mounds. We finish the planting off with an application of our multi-mineral Morganics fertiliser which has a good proportion of phosphorus for strong root growth. Laying in comfrey leaves in the trenches is a great way to boost yield, but our comfrey plants don’t have enough good growth on them yet. When we come to hill the potatoes up, we can add the comfrey leaves in then.
Water and net.
When the Jersey Bennes come out of the liquid seaweed solution, we pop our super quick early potatoes in for a soak – these are Rocket and Swift. They’re basically ready to go as you can see (long chits already), but we’ll hold off planting them, as having them ready for Christmas and the festive season is the aim.
In another spot we’re sowing seeds for root crops – parsnip, carrot, spring onion, beetroot and radish.
The soil in this bed is compacted and somewhat depleted, so we fork it over,
then trench in some of our vermicast from the Hungry Bin to replenish it and add volume.
We add some Morganics multi-mineral fertiliser at this stage then rake it over so it’s relatively fine and with the end of the rake create shallow troughs.
Sprinkle the seeds in evenly,
then knock back each side of the row with the rake head and tamp down gently but firmly. Water lightly and net. These seeds, particularly carrot, will need to be kept constantly moist to germinate well, so check regularly.
The potatoes have gone in the bed we had our lupins in. The lupins got pulled up at the end of last month in preparation for this planting.
Lupins are high in nitrogen which is not so great for root crops (the focus needs to be on the roots), so I gave them to the asparagus bed after having fed that bed first with chicken manure and Morganics.
We’re getting the first spears now. Love asparagus!
Now the other really important job just completed is pricking out our tomato seedlings into individual pots.
Firstly, wash out your pots in water to which a splash of white vinegar has been added – to help sterilise them.
Then fill with potting mix. We add a half a teaspoon of Morganics to each pot on filling, as the plants will be in these pots for 6-7 weeks and may get hungry towards the end.
You’ll need a dibber or similar to make nice deep holes and a knife to cut the seedlings out of their punnets. And pop a label into each pot.
Make sure your seedlings are kept on the dry side just prior to pricking out as they’ll come out more easily with less damage.
Hold onto the leaf, especially if, like these, they’re a bit leggy. You don’t want any damage to the stem.
Because we can make nice deep holes in these pots, we plant the seedlings deeply. This means the plant will be stronger with a bigger root and no gangly stem.
Water gently.
Then a test for your relationship with the person/people you live with – will they still love you at the end of 6 weeks after putting up with tons of tomato plants on the windowsill?! Closer to planting time we’ll put them outside to harden off.
Other jobs this month are feeding up your fruit trees. Both deciduous and evergreen can have a nitrogen fertiliser applied round the dripline as well as a multi-mineral fertiliser. This is a little tree, so with a bigger one your fertiliser is out to the end of the branches.
And lastly, I’m picking off the flowers that are appearing on our strawberries so that the energy goes into growing strong plants that will ultimately give us more fruit than if we let these flowers become fruit now.
We’re getting our Btk organised for dealing to guava moth on feijoas and codling moth on apples. Will put out a special post on that in the next week.
Enjoy the warmer and lighter days!
From Jan and Rob
5 Responses
Do I leave my home made Guava Moth traps on some of my feijoa trees all year round?
I have solar lights hung along my fence line which are directly behind my feijoa trees. My feijoa trees are planted along my fence line. They light up at night. Might they attract the Guava Moth at night?
Hi Trace Yes no harm in leaving guava moth traps up all year round. And yes, light does attract moths, so there’s a very good chance they will attract guava moths (sorry to say!) 😊
If I pick the flowers off my strawberries, will they still fruit this summer?
Hi Lisa Yes, it’s good to pick the flowers off now so the plants grow bigger and stronger, and fruit maturing when it’s warmer will be sweeter. Flowers will continually appear on your plants from now on. We pick them off for at least all of September. In October let them go and you’ll have lovely fruit in November 😊
Why do you put bird netting over your potatoes?