Aug 25, 2010
What
to Do in the Garden in September
Written by Living Earth for Auckland Landscape
Supplies Customers
The Veggie Bed
• Spring has arrived and the range of veggies you can grow just got a whole lot
wider with the warm spring weather: there are plenty of colourful lettuces that
look really good in the veggie plot, plus rocket or mesclun mix, varieties that
you can pick as you go. Or sow some Chinese snow peas – they cost a fortune to
buy at the supermarket and fresh from the garden, the taste is unbelievable.
• Soil for the veggie bed: we make our Living Earth Organic Veggie Mix
especially for you to grow safe, healthy veggies at home. It contains our
fantastic Living Earth Compost and every batch we make has been rigorously
tested, so we know you’re getting the best brew in which to grow your food.
Veggie Mix has a fantastic texture, organic fertilisers and is 100% weed free.
• Don’t forget the spuds – they’ll need a few weeks to sprout before you plant,
(just store them in a dry place ‘til the ‘eyes’ are a couple of cm long). And
you can plant yams, parsnips and pumpkins now too.
• School holidays start later this month – Grab a few hours with the children
and get some seeds going, so they can have their own garden experience. Any
leftover Living Earth Lawn Mix is an ideal seed-raising mix, with its
fertiliser and free-draining texture. Successful seeds for kids include
carrots, peas, and radishes (most children won’t eat radishes, but they give a
quick result through the holiday fortnight and honestly, they’re excellent
sliced through coleslaw). Do not forget giant sunflowers, or if you’re limited
by space order Sunflower ‘Teddy Bear’ or ‘Incredible Dwarf’
The Rest of the Garden
• Soil Conditioning: It’s important to get the soil right for both established
plants and new additions you’ll be adding to the garden. A good soil has
excellent structure and nutrients and you can add this by digging in plenty of
our 100% weed free Living Earth Compost. Come summer, it will aid water
retention too.
• We are often asked: What do I add to existing beds of garden that are a
couple of years old? More Living Earth Compost of course – treat it like
conditioning ordinary garden soils.
• Planting: Once your soil’s ready there are plenty of trees, shrubs and
annuals available now. Just remember that from now on, plants in small
containers and planter bags dry out very quickly, so soak every plant in a
bucket of water until the bubbles stop rising. That way you can be sure the
roots are nice and moist before they go into the ground.
And remember, our Garden Mix is a fantastic complete planting mix for all this
season’s gardening....
• Climbers: It’s a great time to establish climbers against an existing wall,
or a climbing frame. Choose from big flowered hybrid clematis or our NZ beauty,
Clematis paniculata, or there’s the showy pandorea or the Chinese star jasmine,
Trachelospernum jasminoides. If you’re into growing food, climbing edibles
include passionfruit, grapes, cocktail size kiwifruit, as well as berry fruits
such as loganberry and boysenberry.
• Plant a hedge: Low hedges such as buxus, corokia or lavender can go in now,
as can taller pittosporum, Eugenia (lillypilly) and griselinia. (Griselinia
needs some trichopel in the planting soil to ward off its enemy, the pathogen
Phytophthora). After planting, all of these varieties would benefit from a
light trim, to get them even and start them growing together as a hedge.
The Flower Garden
• Much has been written lately about the need for more natural gardens.
Increased numbers of flowers attract beneficial insects that will keep the
numbers of garden nasties at bay. It’s true that, on balance the more flowering
interest you can provide over the spring through to autumn, the better chance
you have of attracting the pollinators and the predator insects. So choose a
wide range of flowering plants this year (add some salvias and lavenders for
late season blooms) and be selective about deadheading – if a cluster of garden
friendlies is showing interest long after the flowers have gone to seed, leave
the spent blooms on a few more weeks...
The Lawn
• As the soil temperature rises, grass begins to grow quickly. Use our Living
Earth Lawn Mix or Ultrasoil to fill in dips in the lawn and layer our Lawn Mix
to a depth of around 30mm if you are sowing new turf. It’s a free-draining mix,
a blend of compost, fine bark and sand and we’ve added fertiliser, so the
germinating seed will establish quickly.
• Irrigation is a must when sowing lawns – daily until at least 10 days after
germination, then regularly through spring and summer.
• It’s still good time to spray or dig out tenacious broadleaf weeds, so that
new grass can fill these spaces. It’s also time to get rid of Onehunga Weed,
the prickly little plant that is the scourge of children running barefoot
across the grass in summer.
We Cover Auckland
88a Merton Road, St Johns, Ph 09 521 3412, Fax 09 521 3912 or 0508 TO LANDSCAPE
337 Lincoln Road, Henderson, Ph 838 6654, Fax 838 6659 or 0508 TO LANDSCAPE
Website : www.aucklandlandscapesupplies.co.nz
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