Grant Douglas's Garden Diary

Week 23: Second week of June

This week's flower to make you feel better about a dreary, wet winter is Wintersweet - not showy, all it's leaves gone, but such a wonderful.

Probably not many people doing stuff in the garden this week, but plenty of work with your fruit trees and bushes and planning for next season. As I said last week, now is a good time to review what went well, and what didn't last season.

If nothing in your garden thrived particularly well last season, the most likely causes are water or nutrient levels. Plants cannot grow unless their food supply is adequate. If you take a non-organic approach it is easy enough to throw on highly soluble fertilizers but if you want to do your best in protecting your soil and it's life, then a different approach needs to be taken.

Ideally, copious quantities of well-made compost will supply all the nutrients that a plant will need, as well as improving the soil structure, but a lot of people struggle, for various reasons, to make enough to cover their needs so sometimes we may have to depend on animal and mineral fertilisers to make up the shortfall.

The three major nutrients needed by plants are nitrogen (for leafy, rapid growth), phosphate for root-growth and plant strength and potash for abundant flowering and fruiting. Nitrogen can be supplied using animal manures, fish meal, blood and bone and other things, but phosphates and potash can be harder.

Fertiliser N.Z. in Ranzau Road in Appleby Ph: do a natural mineral garden fertiliser pack. It contains reactive rock phosphate and natural potassium sulphate and elemental sulphur. It's $20 for an 8kg bag and if my calculations are right, this should be plenty to do a large home garden. All the components of this fertiliser are organic (acceptable by Bio-gro).

For larger areas, they do a 50/50 mix of potassium sulphate and reactive rock phosphate in 25kg bags. I'm not on commission from the company, but it sounds like a useful product to know about. Because of the make-up of these naturally occurring fertilisers they are much slower acting than conventional chemical fertilisers, and so they must be applied in plenty of time before the start of a new season.

Sowing or Planting this week:
Broad Beans (I am trying a new variety for me this year called Imperial Green, where the beans stay green, even after cooking)
Garlic
Lettuce (Loose-leaf Fancy and Triumph Hearting - not outside now, but in containers, in a protected place e.g. Greenhouse, veranda)
Red Onions - protect soil surface from heavy rains (Heard the other day about the use of carpet underfelt - sounds like good idea. Just get it off as soon as germination takes place)
Shallots
Spinach (winter varieties eg. Hybrid No.7) - not outside now, but in containers as above

Sow Direct: (in containers, protected as above)
Corn Salad
Mescalin Mix
Rocket

Preparation of beds for Strawberries and Asparagus.

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