• It is harvest time. Don’t delay on getting the onions in lest they start rotting or going back into regrowth, which they will do as soon as it rains. Main crop potatoes should be lifted as soon as they are ready. Pumpkins and melons should also be maturing and are best picked, not left to lie in the open.
• As crops are cleared in the vegetable garden, it is a good opportunity to have a general clean-up and to sow a green crop if you don’t intend to replant immediately. Green crops replenish the soil, add texture and nitrogen. At this time of the year, our preference is for lupins, oats or ryegrass which will be dug in by springtime.
• Most winter vegetables should be in the ground by now though you can still continue sowing all the brassicas and leafy greens such as silver beet and winter spinach.
•   If you can keep water up to them, you can start sowing fresh lawns and over sowing bare patches. Cover fresh sown areas with bird netting or old shade cloth to protect the germinating seed.
• Don’t delay any longer on lifting and dividing spring bulbs and garden centres should have their best selections of dry bulbs in store now.
• It is a good time to start dividing up perennials but make sure that you water them in as you replant. Perennials perform best if you lift and divide clumps every two to three years.
• If you live in a colder area and have sharply clipped hedges, don’t leave it much longer before you give them their last trim before the end of winter. Clipping them forces them back into growth and it is that soft growth that can get frosted.

From the school of We Finally Got Around To It, it really is your last chance this summer to prune cherry trees. These are trees you don’t winter prune because you open them up to silver blight and cherry trees are short lived enough in our climate without making it worse.

• Next task here is to follow our own advice from a few weeks ago and remove the raspberry canes that fruited this year. Next summer’s fruit is set on new canes so the old ones are superfluous now. Raspberries are a rewarding crop for the home garden if you have some sort of netted cage to grow them in (keeping out the birds) but nobody here is exactly rushing to carry out the pruning.
• Autumn is certainly here and the heat has gone out of the sun but if you feel drawn back to planting, make sure you soak the root balls in a bucket of water until the bubbles stop rising before you plant. We are still very dry and watering a plant in will not suffice. If the potting mix around the roots has dried out, it will just repel water unless it is soaked first. You can not rush or skimp on this process without risking the plant.
• Keep preparing ground for autumn sowing into lawns. Push hoeing or raking off each crop of fresh weeds pays dividends in the long term.
• If you have a grape vine outdoors, do not expect any crop at all unless you have covered it with bird netting. The birds do not understand about waiting until the fruit is ripe before eating it and once they have pecked pretty well every grape in search of the perfect specimen, the wasps move in on the pecked ones.
• With the gentle rains, diseases can get away almost overnight on vulnerable crops like tomatoes. Keep up the copper sprays with special attention after even light rain. The humidity is the problem. Potatoes may need a spray against late blight unless you are growing some of the more resistant, modern varieties. Blight will kill the top and work its way down to the tubers. It was late blight which was one of the causes of the Irish potato famines. Potatoes are the fourth largest global food crop. Our guess is that they come in behind rice, wheat and probably soy. Given that they have only been around for 400 years, their rise in global popularity is astonishing.
• Side dress young vegetable crops with fertiliser if they need it to encourage them to continue growing strongly and keep the water up to them. Research shows that fertilising while the plant is growing by sprinkling around it can give better results than raking in all the fertiliser when you are first planting the crop. Cropping in a vegetable garden is no different to cropping in the field – unless you are alternating with green crops which you dig in and adding large quantities of good compost or other fertilisers, then constantly cropping the same area depletes the soil of goodness over time. You must keep feeding the soil.

Summer bunnies amongst us may have to accept that the full heat of summer has gone for another year, making a somewhat early departure this season, but keen gardeners will be relieved that conditions are becoming kinder for planting and cultivation. Keep thinking drought mode until we get some serious rain however.

• Start deadheading agapanthus as they finish flowering, especially if the plants are adjacent to waterways or to reserves. Most agapanthus have been ruled noxious weeds in Northland and Auckland now because of their seeding habits. Our summer roadsides and gardens would be dull without them but increased vigilance may slow any tendency to become a major problem. If you are buying them, look for sterile varieties which don’t set seed.
• Deadheading dahlias will extend their flowering season. Dwarf marigolds can also provide late summer colour if you like them. Some of us don’t.
• If you raise your annuals from seed (which is hugely cheaper than buying potted colour), you can be thinking about sowing seed for winter and early spring crops. They do most of their growing before winter and then slow down in cold temperatures before bursting into flower. Keep them disbudded, however, while they get established. Once they start to flower, they can rush to seed and die prematurely.
• Start thinking about wrenching large shrubs and trees that you plan to move in autumn or winter. Plan to take as large a root ball as you can physically manage.
• Lettuce, kale, broccoli, cauli and cabbage can all be planted from either seed or baby plants. Those with a warm spot could still get a late sowing of dwarf beans in but it is the last chance. They will develop into winter and the cold then holds them for an extended picking.

As we admired a beautifully crafted waxeye nest which had come down with a branch, Mark regretted that he had never tried to document the changing fashions in birds’ nests over the decades. This one was held together with fine threads of blue synthetic baling twine and did look very decorative. Other nests we have found over the years incorporate the soft plastic strips which we use for budding and grafting, the black plastic tape we use to tie plants to bamboo stakes and even the odd Tuflok label gets recycled to cushion eggs and babies. We wonder if the birds will ever get to build their nests entirely out of near indestructible plastics and synthetics that they pick up. It is a slightly alarming reminder of how much non bio degradable debris is lying around, even in an establishment where we try to reduce its impact.

The rains this week were timely, even though there has not been sufficient to bring moisture levels back up to normal. But as far as container plants and the vegetable garden go, it is more efficient use of water to keep those levels up now rather than to let it all become bone dry again and then start watering. A little often is much better than a lot occasionally.

• If you feel you must and haven’t yet done so, spray for thrips on rhododendrons – those nasty leaf sucking critters that turn the leaves silver and weaken the plant. An insecticide is required – ask at your local garden centre which ones are recommended for home gardeners. But unless it is a pretty special variety, we advocate avoiding spraying. Open up around the plant to allow more light and air movement. If the plant is really suffering, dig it out and replace it with a healthier option. Not all rhododendrons get thrips and some get them much worse than others.
• The same can said for roses. If you want to avoid the need to spray, take a critical look now at which ones in your garden look good and which ones don’t justify their place. I am afraid Burgundy Iceberg is destined for the burning heap here whereas all the Flower Carpets, the rugosas, Sparkler (white) and a few others whose names I need to locate again are still looking just fine.
• Our onion crop is non existent this year (after a brilliant harvest last year) but others who are more successful will be harvesting them as the tops die down. Onions need a cool, well ventilated situation to store well.
• We are at least picking green beans but sadly the heritage variety, Borlotto Fire Tongue, does not cut the mustard. Heritage may equal old and unmodified but does not necessarily equal tasty and tender. These are stringy darned things that we won’t be growing again. The modern varieties are cropping better and taste better.
• At least the rain this week makes it easier to start planting some winter vegetables, especially those varieties started from seed – brassicas (except brussel sprouts – too late now), carrots, spinach, silver beet and salad veg.
• Keep melons watered well. Watch out for aphids and white butterfly, especially on brassicas.

With no rain forecast yet and the need to conserve water, there is not a whole lot most of us can be doing in the garden. We don’t expect this sort of extended dry spell in Taranaki but other parts of the country cope with it most years. And at least the autumn rains will come in due course, unlike large parts of Australia who have no such prospect.

• So a reminder that moving container plants to shaded areas or plunging them in the garden will reduce their need for water. If the water flows out the bottom of the pot as fast as you pour it in the top, it means you are wasting water because the mix is so dry that the water is running straight through and not being absorbed. Using a surfactant will help water absorption. A squirt of liquid detergent will also work.
• Watering in the evening or early morning will mean that more water is absorbed. Rather than leaving a hose in one place to give a deep soak, repeatedly passing over an area with a fine spray (in other words, copying the action of banned sprinklers or emulating a light rain) will do more to soak an area and direct the water to where it is most needed. It takes longer but if you do it properly, you won’t have to do it so often.
• Do not forget to keep an eye on the water level in the goldfish pond. If the level drops too much and the water heats up, it is not good for the fish.
• Many of the spring bulbs are starting to move already and as soon as the rains come, they will all bolt in to growth. You can tell when they are starting to grow by the fresh white root which forms. So do not delay on digging up overcrowded patches that you may have earmarked for attention last spring. By far the largest proportion of our bulbs in this country are South African in origin, particularly those whose growth is triggered by autumn rains.
• Spray citrus trees with summer strength copper and oil for mites. This also helps protect against botrytis which can strike later on and makes the leaves turn brown and cause the fruit to fall off.
• A further reminder to prune flowering cherry trees now. We will admit that Mark still has to do ours. Remove witches brooms (the patches of dense foliage which look different to the main part of the tree – these will never flower and tend to take over) and shape the trees as required.
• An update on monarch butterflies – if you have run out of swan plants, bigger caterpillars at least will eat pumpkin and pupate. Their golden excrement has a certain novelty value and is an indicator that they are happily digesting the pumpkin. It does not appear that you can raise young caterpillars entirely on pumpkin.