by Wally Richards
AT LAST WE ARE PAST THE WINTER SOLSTICE.
Yes on the 21st of June, while the Northern Hemisphere has their summer solstice, we had our winter solstice.
The shortest day means the longest night which also equates to the shortest hours of natural light.
Plants are really affected by these short light hours — one of the main reasons that growth is so slow during the middle of winter. Give plants 24/7 light and they never stop growing.
Over the next few weeks, your garden plants will start to respond to the increasing amount of light each day. Buds will start to swell as we enter into spring.
June is also the beginning of the new year of gardening and the time for you to start gardening for another season.
The first thing to do is to make a list of what you are going to grow this season in annual flowers and vegetables. Seed potatoes will be on some lists for sure.
Once you have your list, then you can visit your local garden centre and pick out the packets of seeds of the plants you wish to grow.
The hardy types can be started anytime now, for planting out after they are hardened off.
The time frame from obtaining seeds, germinating, pricking out, growing on and then hardening off is about 8 weeks or more.
That takes us into August and a nice early start.
Cabbages, lettuce, silverbeet are good early choices to start now.
Here is an extract from a gardening book that I wrote that can help.
Being the keen gardeners that many of us are, we use methods to beat the system.
For instance, a length of clear plastic film (grower’s plastic) and a number of lengths of No. 8 wire can be used to start of seeds or seedlings early in spring in open ground.
You bend the wire to form good sized loops which are placed about every 30cm [12 inches] into the prepared soil. The top of the loop should be about 30 cm above soil level.
The distance between where each end of the loops enter the ground should be 30 to 40 cm.
Lay your plastic film along the row of loops on the prevailing wind side, cover the plastic edge that’s laying on the ground (out side of the loops) with soil.
Now along the row, under the loops, sow your dwarf beans, carrots or parsnips etc.
Once sown and lightly watered in with MBL, bring the plastic over the hoops and secure to the ground with lengths of old 100 x 50 mm [4″ x 2″] wood.
The ends of this low tunnel house are also secured with wood. Old bricks is another alternative.
On sunny days there will be a build up of condensation inside the plastic which is not healthy if allowed to happen, day after day.
So you remove the wood and fold back the plastic to the earth side of the row, for a couple of hours, on nice sunny days.
The shelter and sun trap the plastic offers warms the soil and your seeds germinate.
Another trick you can use to warm the soil to aid germination and growth is to make a trench about 20 cm deep and the same wide.
Then mow the lawn and catch the lawn clippings which you will place in the bottom of the trench and trample down so you have a squashed layer about 10 cm thick. Over that you can cover with the soil removed or even better with a layer of good purchased compost which will be weed free, if from a good source.
The heat from the decomposing grasses will make a big difference this time of the year.
This method can be used to get an early planting of kumara slips and the grass also provides food for the plants.
Animal manures and Wallys products Ocean Solids, Unlocking your Soil and BioPhos can be sprinkled over the grass clippings before applying the compost.
You now have created a super garden bed for optimum growth and health.
The plastic allows the plants to establish quicker and can be left on till the plants’ foliage come near to touching the plastic.
It is important that you do pull back the plastic on some sunny days for a few hours.
A few days before removing the plastic for good, you need to harden up the plants and a spray of Vaporgard is ideal for this.
This method is a cheap way to grow rows of vegetables quickly, early in the season or sometimes late in the season for some crops.
For instance, a row of sweet corn seeds planted means you should have cobs to eat about a month before they become readily available.
Also remember you can increase growth of plants by spraying them with liquid sunshine which simply is a tablespoon of molasses into a litre of hot water to dissolve and then spray regularly over the foliage. Magic Botanic Liquid can be added to that as well to obtain even better results.
The above is designed to be done in a month or so but you can construct it any time and start to warm the soil under the plastic to later plant seeds.
Seedlings obtained from garden centres now can be planted under this tunnel of plastic, where they will grow much quicker and give you early crops of vegetables.
The plastic will give you protection from bird damage but slugs and snails maybe able to get to the plants, so spray the seedlings and soil under the plastic with Liquid Copper if they make an appearance.
A layer about 1 cm deep of sawdust around the seedlings and over the ground under the plastic can help. Spray the sawdust with the Liquid Copper about every 2 weeks.
Birds are hungry at this time and you will likely find that the flowers of your polyanthus are being eaten, especially the blue ones.
Place some Bird Repeller Ribbon to protect the flowers and else where throw out bread or cheap grain to feed the poor hungry birds.
As I have free ranging chooks in part of my backyard there are big populations of sparrows and other birds that wait in the trees at 8 am and 4 pm, which are the times the chooks get feed their pellets and wheat.
You can germinate hardy seeds in punnets on a sunny windowsill in a warm room.
But as soon as there is a show of germinating leaves place the punnet in the glasshouse or under a plastic tunnel as described above.
When the seedlings are big enough to transplant, prick out into punnets or cell packs (even better) and grow on till they are big enough to place in the garden under another plastic tunnel.
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