Central’s Tips February 2023

The fruit and vegetable garden

• Seeds that can be sown into the soil directly include radishes, beetroot, and carrots. Brassicas: cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower can be sown in trays for planting when it’s cooler

• Liquid feed with Aquaticus Garden Booster –it helps keep the soil healthy and adds nutrients for plants to use

• Autumn crops such as feijoas and passionfruit are developing now, so water deeply once a week

• Leek planting time: plant leeks with Garden Mix into 10mm deep holes - using a pencil works well. The soil will gradually close around the leek. Keep watered

• Thought you’d missed the basil season? Planting or sowing basil seed now is just fine

• Regularly harvesting zucchinis is an absolute must – they grow to marrow size very quickly and there are only so many times you can serve stuffed marrow in a summer season!

• Use an organic pesticide such as Bugtrol to control white butterfly on tomato plants etc. Spray very early before bees are active

• Late ripening apples and pears can still be thinned out if the fruit clusters are too crowded. This will allow good size fruit to develop

The ornamental garden

• Refresh pots and hanging baskets by adding new summer seedlings and foliage plants. A couple of weekly liquid fertilizer applications and they’ll come away again, lasting right through autumn

• Dahlias are the modern craze – these plants will go on flowering right through autumn if kept watered, staked and deadheaded

• Softwood cuttings (camellias, fuchsias eriostemons and lavenders) can be struck now. There’s nothing more satisfying than free plants. Youtube offers great ‘how to’s’ on propagation by cuttings

• Two NZ plants, the cabbage tree and the kowhai, suffer damage from caterpillars munching on fresh foliage in summer. A fortnightly spray with natural Bugtrol will deal to the problem

• Weeding is good – it lets desirable plants grow on in the summer heat. But don’t trim hedges and other evergreens – the exposed foliage will burn in the sun

• Fancy some flowers? Several reliable perennial plants will offer months of blooms including Peruvian lilies (alstroemerias), salvias, daisies, phlox, petunias and dahlias

• Luculias are bushy shrubs or small trees that produce pink or white flowers in autumn. Beautiful, scented flowers make them a garden delight – they’re in garden centres now