Grant Douglas's Garden Diary

Week 49: Second week of December

Ooops, what happened to last week? Let's just be polite and say I had a "senior moment" and suddenly it was this week.

Not much has changed anyway, except that we had a much appreciated 30mm of rain - forecast says more at the end of the week. That would be nice. For anyone who hasn't put in those long term Summer crops such as Melons, Tomatoes, Peppers, Pumpkins, Egg Plant, you'll almost definitely too late for sowing to get a reasonable crop and marginal for putting in plants but there is plenty of planting and sowing still to be done.

If you put in Zuchini, Cucumber, Beans, and Corn early, you probably should be putting in another planting or sowing to keep a succession going through the Summer. For some reason my Zuchini plants are already huge and so a good way of coping with not having them take up too much room, is to put in another planting and pulling out the big plants when the new ones are ready. I might even do this a third time during the season. This can also be true for outside Cucumbers which crop best when they're young.

Beans and Corn definitely have a limited production life and so only by planting a succession will you have them all Summer. In the case of Sweet Corn just be aware that different varieties take different times to mature and so plan your harvesting accordingly e.g. the Supersweet Corn variety Marika takes 70 to 80 days, while the Honey and Pearl variety takes 100 to 105 days, so if you sowed these at the same time, you would actually end up with a reasonable succession.

Time to be getting in those main crop Potatoes.

Sowing or Planting this week:

Tomatoes, Peppers, Chillis, Egg Plant (Marginal - plants only)
Basil
Beetroot
Beans - Scarlet, Runner (Shiney Fardenlosa), Dwarf Butter (2nd sowing)
Cabbage (Red and Green)
Cauliflower (Frieda - Summer variety)
Celeriac (for transplanting or direct)
Cucumber/Gherkins (am trying Lebanese Cucumbers this year - short type with very tender skin)
Kohl Rabi
Kumaras
Leeks
Lettuce (Loose-leaf Fancy and Hearting (Webbs or Greatlakes)
Onions
Pepinos
Potatoes - keep a succession of plantings going for new Potatoes, plus planting for main crop (storage)
Pumpkin/Squash
Red Onions
Silverbeet and Perpetual Spinach
Spinach (New Zealand)
Spring Onions
Sprouting Broccoli
Sweet Corn
Watermelon/Rockmelon
Yams
Zuchini

Sow Direct:

Carrots - main crop varieties
Corn Salad
Corriander/Dill
Mescalin Mix
Parsnips
Rocket
Radish

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