Planting Guides - month by month - follow these proven tips  

 

AUGUST

 

Nurture your soil

Prepare beds for summer crops- add compost, manure, potash.

Make compost from grass clippings and garden dross. Turn later in the month.

Turn in green manure crop(preferably barley) to rot down before planting tomatoes in that plot.

Feed citrus trees under drip line.

Water before and after feeding.

 

Plant care

Sow seeds:

Legumes – Direct or in milk pots - peas

Leaf- lettuce

Brassicas – brussel sprouts, cabbage,

Allium – leek, spring onions in punnets

Solanaceous - aubergine, capsicum, chilli, tomatoes in a warm position or in a mini greenhouse. When pumpkin seeds are sprouting in compost the soil is warm enough to sow in plots.

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Plant seedlings:

Allium – leeks, onions, garlic bulbs

Root – carrots, turnips

Perennials – Globe artichokes

Set out seed potatoes in the light to encourage strong shoots.

Plant seed potatoes.

Lift and divide clumps of herbs.

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Maintenance

Keep broad beans growing strongly with  fortnightly feeds of liquid fertiliser.

Prune and feed citrus along dripline with composted manure and mulch well.

Spray citrus with pest oil for scale.

Complete pruning of grapes.

Watch out for slugs and snails on tender new shoots.

Pull weeds before they seed.

Clean seedtrays ready for spring planting

 

Harvest

This month is great for - beetroot, broccoli, broad beans, carrots, leeks, lettuce, mitzuna, onions, parsnip, peas, silverbeet, spinach, tatsoi,

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TIPS   Some prolific plants for Spring/Summer

Cucurbits:

Cucumber: Giant Russian, Green Gem,

Lemon

Pumpkin: Jack Be Little, Waltham Butternut

Rockmelon: Noir des Carmes

Watermelon: Northern Sweet

Zucchini: Black Beauty, Golden Arch Crooknet, Rondo de Nice,Yellow Straightneck

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Solanaceous:

Aubergine: Black Beauty, Rosa Bianca,  Thai Green, Turkish Orange

Capsicum: Californian Wonder, Jimmy Nardello

Chilli: Jalepeno, Serrano

Tomato climbing: Baby Red Pear,Beams Yellow Pear,Beefsteak, Black Cherry,Break O Day,Broad Ripple,Yellow Currant,Cheroke Purple,daydream, Golden Sunray, Green Zebra, Grosse Lisse, harbinger, Lemon Drop

Moneymaker, mortgage lifter, Oxheart,

Ponderosa Pink, Purple Calabash, Raspberry,Red Cloud, Red Fig,Snow White, Speckled Roman,Sunray(Golden Orange),

Super Sioux, tigerella, Tommy Toe, verna

Orange, Yellow Pear

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Legumes:

 Bush beans: Brown Beauty, Cheroke Wax, Snake Bean, Strike, Windsor Long P od

Climbing Beans:Blue Lake, Climbing Princess, Lazy Housewife,Purple King,Zebra