Get you plants ready for Spring!
Spring Maintenance tips
Prepping & Planting
Spring will turn up the vibrancy in your life, bringing out the blooms, such as magnolias, blossom trees, daffodils and tulips. It’s also time for an end of winter garden spruce up, to get that bed ready for prepping and planting. Spring brings a time full of opportunity to plan your crops for the coming season, prepare the soil and plant some vegetables.
During August it’s time to think about planting sprouting seed potatoes. Most potato crops take about three months to mature, so they need to be in the ground in September for a Christmas harvest.
Buds on fruit trees may be starting to swell, ready to blossom as the days get longer and the temperatures warmer. Now is also the perfect time to plant strawberries for a summer harvest.
Mulch
Mulch has many benefits for your garden. It protects plants from extreme temperatures, keeps roots and soil moist, suppresses weed growth, adds valuable nitrogen to your soil as it breaks down and creates an overall well-maintained look.
If you don’t have any mulch on hand you can make your own using grass clippings from the lawn, pine needles and straw you might already have.
Pruning
Pruning promotes flowering, fruiting, reduces the size of the tree for a more natural harvest, allows more sunlight and air movement through the plant, prevents pests from nesting, encourages even ripening, removes dead or diseased branches and shapes the plant. Pruning differs for all plants. Let us talk you through pruning for commonly found garden plants.
Roses
Prune mid to late winter
Make all cuts on a 45º angle, just above an outward-facing bud
Generally aim to cut the main branches back by half and clear the centre of the plant to allow good air movement, leaving at least three to four main canes in an open vase shape
Collect any diseased leaves and stems that fall off your rose to stop the spread of disease
Fruit Trees
Not all fruiting plants require an annual prune, and some new dwarf cultivars of apples, peaches, apricots and nectarines have been created to eliminate the need for yearly pruning and maintenance.
Apples and pears - prune every winter to ensure a good crop of fruit the following season.
Feijoas, olives, figs and citrus - prune after harvest finishes. In cold areas, don’t prune citrus until after the frosts have passed. It is not necessary to prune every year.
Nectarines, peaches, and plums - These fruits don’t need pruning every season, and it’s important not to prune in winter as it can spread the spores of silver leaf, which stone fruits are prone. Prune stone fruit trees in late summer after fruiting has finished; however, it can be done in early-mid autumn if necessary.
Grapes and kiwifruit - prune in winter, back to 3-5 buds and tie back any long new branches or canes to train into shape.
Cherries and blueberries - don’t require a lot of pruning, other than to shape and remove dead or diseased wood—both fruit on the same wood for years. The best time to prune is after fruit appears in summer or autumn.