SPRING GREEN NOTES

FRUIT FLY - YOU CAN BEAT IT!

We offer a range of strategies and some exciting new options to beat this pest. An effective and easy organic solution is to simply cover either the fruit or the fruit cluster. It sounds time consuming but can be surprisingly easy and fast compared to the process of donning protective gear and spraying a chemical control The choice you make depends on the scale of what you need to protect.

SEED SOWING

After a very cold winter, we are looking forward to a productive spring in the garden. In frosty areas like ours, it will be too cold to put out frost-tender seedlings until mid-September. Keep a garden diary so that you have a record of the last frost for the year, to help next year’s planning, as it can be very disappointing to have seedlings burnt to a crisp that you have lovingly raised. We like to get an early start with many spring vegetables, especially tomatoes, by starting them in a warm spot ahead of time. We use Mini Propagators for this and a heated propagator tray, but the top of a hot water system or a sunny spot on a veranda works well. Remember to use a good quality seed-raising mix as it has the necessary aeration to allow seeds to germinate successfully. For more information see..... Successful Seed Raising. A great benefit of raising seeds yourself is you have such an enormous range to choose from compared to bought seedling punnets.

For those of you who have to deal with frosted gardens, remember that spraying a seaweed fertiliser such as Natrakelp will help reduce damage to frost-tender plants. Even though frost-burnt foliage is unsightly, resist the desire to cut it off until all danger of frost is past.

ASPARAGUS
By now, if you are lucky enough to have a bed of asparagus, the old tops should have been cut off and compost and well-rotted manure applied to feed the bed for its spring flush of growth. Asparagus is easy to grow in a subtropical climate as it thrives on the rain and has no problems with pests or diseases. In fact in old, abandoned gardens, asparagus can be seen growing years later amongst tall grass and weeds. We harvest by a rule-of-thumb, if the spears are thicker than a pencil we cut them before the spears branch, usually at approx. 20 cm high, if they are skinnier, we leave them to develop and feed the crown. Fresh asparagus is delicious steamed with a Hollandaise sauce, flavoured with fresh dill. More information on growing asparagus ....

Hollandaise Sauce.
Have you been put off by the time consuming method using a whisk and double saucepan? Try this; it takes only minutes to make in a blender!

• 125 g butter (4 ozs)
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• salt to taste
• fresh herbs

Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat. Heat to bubbling but do not let brown. Meanwhile, place in blender the other ingredients. Cover the blender, switch to low speed, immediately uncover and pour in the hot butter in a steady stream. When all the butter is incorporated, turn off. If using herbs, add chopped herbs and switch on until combined. If too thick, thin it with a little hot water.

GARDEN CALENDAR

This information mainly applies to northern NSW and Queensland and other subtropical zones.

JULY AND AUGUST

• Prune winter-flowering grevilleas, by removing seed heads and cutting long shoots back by a third, to promote bushiness.

• Bananas need management to produce good-sized bunches including regular removal of suckers. Each clump of bananas should be made up of a mature plant, a half-grown plant and one sucker only. Allowing all the suckers to grow will mean that bunches are either small or non-existent. Preference in sucker selection should be given to those with spear-shaped rather than round leaves and on the side of the plant that you wish the clump to move in. Fertilise with 400g of complete organic fertiliser after the emergence of the first new suckers and again 8 weeks later. Mulch well. Tidy the plant by removing yellowing, old leaves and if a bunch has developed, remove the flower bell. The flower bell drips nectar and attracts possums and bats; it also uses nutrients better saved for the fruit. Banana bags help fruit ripen and keep the birds away. Bags are half blue and half silver to reflect heat.

• Established passionfruit vines should be fertilised in early spring, use up to 1 kg of blood and bone with 100g of sulphate of potash added, spread onto moist soil and mulch well.

• Prune citrus lightly in spring after all danger of frost has passed. Pruning is only necessary to remove deadwood and keep the centre of the tree open and branches from crossing. Always remove shoots or suckers from below the graft as soon as possible, as they steal vigour from the tree and if left too long, leave large wounds for disease to enter when they are cut. Raising the ‘skirt’ so that foliage does not touch the ground will make fertilising and mulching jobs easier. To ‘skirt’ a tree remove low shoots so that the lower edge of the canopy is 60 cm clear of the ground.

• Citrus trees are very hungry feeders with high requirements for trace elements; a regular spray with a seaweed fertiliser such as Natrakelp will supply trace elements. Fertilise citrus in early spring, a one-year-old tree will need 4 to 8 kg of well-rotted animal manure, a mature tree will need between 20 and 40 kg of well-rotted animal manure. Only apply fertiliser to moist ground then mulch well, keeping the mulch and manure well clear of the trunk, to avoid collar-rot. Never place fertiliser close to the trunk or in heaps; spread it as evenly as possible to just past the drip-line of the tree. Check for Citrus Gall Wasp on lemons and grapefruits, which cause swellings on the twigs, prune off and burn immediately. More information on organic citrus care......

• Divide Queensland Arrowroot to increase the quantities you have of this useful plant. Our fruit trees have a semi-circle of Arrowroot planted a few metres below each one, to make mulching the trees quick and easy. This also traps any down-slope movement of soil and nutrients.

• If your peach or nectarine trees had peach-leaf curl last year, they will need to be sprayed with Lime Sulphur before the buds swell. Once fruit have formed, thin fruit to one peach per node and bag the fruit, to protect from fruit fly.

• Custard apples should be pruned now, cut back leaders, remove water shoots, prune laterals and skirt trees. Band trees, such as citrus and custard apple, with sticky barriers, use horticultural glue, to keep ants and other crawling pests out of trees. Sticky barriers are very effective at reducing scale attacks.

• Make sure fruit fly traps are in place by late August.

• Pineapples should have old fruit stalks removed, leave up to 3 of the strongest and healthiest suckers that are nearest ground level to bear the next crop. The soil should be acidic so avoid using any lime or dolomite in the planting area. Apply a complete fertiliser at the rate of 20 g per plant in September. Always mulch pineapples extremely thickly to avoid the need to weed near those spiky leaves.

• This is a good time to clean out a water garden. Divide waterlilies every year if they are in a container, every 3 years if they are on the bottom of the pond. Re-pot into fresh, slightly clay soil with either pulverised cow manure or a slow-release fertiliser added. Binding the fertiliser into solid clay balls helps to stop it floating away from the roots. Top with a thick layer of sand or clean gravel to stop the water becoming murky.

SEPTEMBER

• Test the pH, excessive acidity or alkalinity will interfere with uptake of nutrients by plants. Remember never to apply lime at the same time as fertilisers as this leads to a loss of nitrogen, caused by it converting to ammonia and off-gassing. Allow 3 weeks between liming and fertiliser applications. Never add lime to a compost heap as this also leads to a large loss of nutrient into the atmosphere.

• Fertilise pawpaws (1 kg of pelleted fowl manure per m2). If your soils are boron deficient then add 5 g to the mix, as pawpaws need plenty of boron. Remember that green pawpaws can be eaten as a vegetable. They make a good substitute for squash in a curry and are delicious in a salad.

• Put least-toxic snail pellets out in containers close to young seedlings.

• A wide range of fertilisers are available, with the word ‘organic’ being used rather freely. A good choice for the home gardener is an ‘organically certified’ poultry manure in pelleted form. Use up to 300g to the square metre in the vegetable garden, only ever apply to moist soil. Blood & Bone is a popular choice with organic gardeners, it is much higher in nitrogen (N) & phosphate (P) than pelleted poultry manure but it can be lower in potassium (K).

• Weed control starts now, keep any bare ground mulched. In orchards you can get rid of all household paper scraps by soaking in water prior to spreading on the ground. Cover with at least 5 sheets of newspaper or flattened cardboard boxes. Cover this with mulch. Try the least-toxic herbicide product called Slasher.
   

OCTOBER

• Citrus Leaf Miner causes ugly distorted leaves with silvery trails in the leaf tissue. Pest Oil is a non-toxic control, spray when new growth is about 1 cm long, reapply every 2-3 weeks. October and February are crucial times to spray.

• Train vines regularly. Plant a new passionfruit, as they only last a few years before succumbing to Woody Passionfruit Virus.

• Providing a bird bath in a sheltered position in your garden has pest control benefits! It will attract the small, insectivorous birds that do a great job cleaning up scale and aphids.
  Watch for aphids on soft shoots of citrus and roses, check for beneficial insects such as Hoverflies and Ladybeetle larvae before controlling them. If some of the aphids look like little brown balloons, they have been parasitised by a micro-wasp. Spray Natrasoap as a least toxic control in the absence of predators.

• Prune spring-flowering shrubs when flowering finishes.