January

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October

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December

KITCHEN GARDEN

Vegetables

• Careful attention is needed on weeding, watering and spraying. Work around the stems of plants with a long handled hoe and chop the young weed seedlings back into the soil.
• To keep your veggie supply going throughout summer, keep planting/sowing your favourites, including beans, corn, beetroot, broccoli, carrots, cabbages, capsicum, leeks, zucchini, lettuce, spinach and silver beet, fennel, cauliflower, cabbage, tomatoes, basil and all the other delicious herbs.
• Tomatoes will be growing rapidly. Tie them to their stakes to help support the fruit as it starts forming. Tomatoes need to be well fed so remember to liquid feed with Tomorite or Thrive Liquid Tomato Food. Side dress monthly with Tui Tomato Food or every six weeks with a couple of Jobes Tomato Spikes.
• Watch out for aphid, white fly or thrips on tomatoes as they will carry disease. Protect your plants by dusting both sides of the leaves with Yates Tomato Dust.
• Eggplant and capsicum seedlings can be planted out in the warmest, most sunny growing position where they will get maximum summer heat.
• Plant out globe artichokes. Artichokes will not need to be watered as this can cause the stems to rot a ground level.
• If earwigs are a problem, balls of crunched up newspaper will attract them to shelter in. You can then take these to the rose garden where the earwigs will feast on unwanted aphids.
• Keep mounding your potatoes up as they grow, either with more soil or compost.
• Dust your cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli and other seedlings with Derris Dust to control white butterfly caterpillars and use Tui Quash to control slugs and snails.

Fruit

• Keep passionfruit well watered as they have a shallow root system and dry out quickly. Fertilise monthly. Spray passion vine hoppers when they appear with Pyrethrum or Tui Ecopest. Spray in the evening when the sun is off the plants. Spray with Champion Copper to prevent fungal diseases
• Continue spraying pip and stone fruit with Yates Greenguard for black spot and brown rot control.
• Spray tamarillos with Yates Greenguard for control of powdery mildew.
• Citrus should be sprayed with Champion Copper to prevent verrucosis and leaf curl. Spray with Conqueror Oil applied at summer strength to remove wax scale.
• Plum, pear and quince trees will need to be protected from pear slug by spraying Yates Target.
• Brown rot affects stonefruit and occurs on fruit as it nears maturity and when weather is cool and damp. Spray with Yates Fungus Fighter every two weeks from bud burst to harvest.
• Plum and peach trees are often affected by curly leaf or bladder plum. The crop as well as the leaves can be severely affected. Once the symptoms are visible it is too late to spray. A winter spray programme is essential.
• Fruit trees grown in containers will need to be kept regularly watered and fed with slow release and liquid fertilizers.
• Avoid any pruning of fruit trees at this time of the year as this will increase the chances of bacteria spreading and infecting trees.
• Growth in grapevines should slowed by pinching out the excess growth beyond a point where the fruit has set.
• Spray grape vines with Yates Guardall to prevent botrytis, a destructive fungal disease that will destroy grape crops.

ORNAMENTAL GARDEN

• Plant your own Christmas tree – the flowering of our magnificent pohutukawa is perfectly timed. Metrosideros ‘Vibrance’ is a small and showy form easily kept clipped to size. 4 x 2.5m.
• The soft new growth on box plants will be hardening so its time to give hedges and topiaries their annual trim to shape. Feed with Yates Dynamic Lifter Pellets and a liquid foliar food.
• Christmas Lilies are available and make a great display for indoor or out. Once they finish flowering, let the stems die down and then re-pot for next years display.
• Calla Lilies (Zantedeschias) are available in stunning colours to brighten up your garden or use inside as a potted plant. They will grow in most soils if kept moist and given a sunny spot. Keep children and pets away from them as they have a poisonous ingredient called oxalic acid in them.
• The flower garden will flourish with an application of a monthly liquid feed. Keep weeds under control. Apply a layer of mulch after heavy rain as this will keep weeds at bay and hold in moisture over summer. For extra effect, sprinkle Saturaid on the soil before laying mulch. It stops water run-off on the surface of the soil and breaks down the soil’s surface tension therefore meaning that more water actually gets down to the root of the plants creating effective watering and fertilizing. It is totally safe and non-toxic to all plants and it will start working immediately. All you need to do is sprinkle it on the surface of your garden beds, or if you are planting new plants, mix some in with the soil. It can be used all over your garden.
• Continue planting summer annual seedlings to fill in empty spaces or create colourful containers. There is an abundance available of petunia, marigold, impatiens, cosmos, ageratum, zinnia, nicotiana, cleome, aster, salvia, begonia and dianthus. Settle in young seedling by watering on Yates Black Magic Seedling Fertiliser.

LAWNS

• Mow the lawns at least once a week.
• Raise the cutting blades of the mower to reduce stress on the summer lawn.
• A good soaking three times a week will keep lawns green.