Autumn Gardening in Central Otago: What You Need to Know
For me the autumn garden is full of hardy vegetables and just a small amount of leafy greens.
So, Autumn Gardening in Central Otago: What You Need to Know...
The tomatoes and summer-loving vegetables have been cleared from the garden. The beans that were in for drying have been picked and stored to use over winter. My parsley and coriander are ticking along nicely and will stay around for most of the winter if a bit slow to grow.
What's Next For Autumn?
Ahead of me is getting the beds cleared, fed and covered. For the coming season I'm planning on not planting in half of my beds. It's a mix of I have been really pushing the beds and they need some love spent on them and after having a busy season in the kitchen I've made the decision to not put some much pressure on myself. Instead of veggies going in I'm upping my flower game, which really who can say that's bad.
Getting Garlicky
I will prepare a bed for my garlic now so everything has time to break down as garlic doesn't like fresh horse manure. The garlic will go in on the shortest day. Once I start to see the tops popping up then I will cover with mulch, as in previous years I've mulch as soon as I've planted the cloves and we've had a wet winter and they have rotted in the ground. These are lessons I've learnt which set me in the right direction the following season.
Surprise Pumpkins
Pumpkins have been harvested and are currently curing before I store them. I hadn't planted any pumpkins but apparently, there was a seed in the compost I spread last winter and I'm not complaining because as it generally happens the plants I didn't intentionally plant are the most healthy. I put it down to the old saying that only the strongest survive and this is the prime example.
When storing pumpkins make sure you leave the stem on or if by chance you've lost the stem use this first. Remember the thicker the skin the longer it's last-crown pumpkins will store very well but butternuts are very short term.
"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.” — Anne Bradstreet
Comments