- Keen veg growers will be starting to think about winter vegetables. If you use small plants, you have plenty of time but if you start from seed (which is of course much cheaper), you can be looking to sow most winter seeds (particularly brassicas) from now on. You have missed the boat on Brussels sprouts from seed. Winter vegetables grow through summer and autumn but you don’t want to get plants in too early or they can bolt to seed before you are ready to eat them. You can still sow a late crop of carrots.
- Many of the summer flowering clematis can be cut back hard if they have finished their flowering flush or are succumbing to mildew badly. Water them, feed them and they will romp away and start flowering again in about six weeks time.
- Rhododendrons, camellias and most flowering shrubs and trees (excluding roses, michelias and vireyas) have done most of their growing for the season so you are too late for heavy pruning this time around. Leave them for another six months unless they are fruit trees or flowering cherries. Otherwise you will be cutting off all the spring flowers.
- From the school of do as we say, not do as we do, the best time to prune raspberries is when the crop has just finished. Take out all this year’s fruiting canes. Next year’s fruit will come on the new growth.
- Try not to neglect container plants. They really need watering daily at this time and pots of annuals or perennials will benefit from a liquid feed. Hanging baskets are usually grossly overplanted so will need your TLC twice a day with water as well as a weekly liquid feed.
- Keep removing the laterals from tomato plants and grape vines and get a copper spray on the tomato plants to prevent blight.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden
Mark and Abbie Jury
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 