August: Caring for your fruit trees
There are a few important jobs in the orchard this month. The last of the dormant sprays need to go on If you had a serious case of blackspot or leaf curl you may be considering a lime sulfur spray....
View ArticleHow to feed and mulch your fruit trees
The fruit trees are at their sweetest at this time of year – the promise of a harvest in the bees supping on the pretty blossoms. Are the bees in your fruit trees? The early plums are setting fruit...
View ArticleNeem those aphids into oblivion!
Yes they are starting to arrive – the sucking insects. The first flutter of whitefly in my greenhouse dwarf beans and the first few aphids on the unopened buds on my roses. There may also be scale on...
View ArticleManaging Pear/ Apple Scab (and other fruit tree fungi)
A mild winter followed by a wet spring means only one thing – Fungus. And this spring the fungi are having a party in my Winter Nellis (in the form of pear scab). To tell you the truth, I take it...
View Article5 ways to beat the Tomato Potato Psyllid
It’s the psyllid season. With a potential to wipe out up to 80% of your gorgeous tomato crop it’s an important pest to understand. Managing psyllids is extra time and extra money, but come on guys –...
View ArticleSave Your Seedlings From The Birds
I know its spring when divots appear in my vegie patch, and mulch is flung all over. Starlings and Blackbirds are in heaven here with plenty of nest making goodness and a bounty of worms for dinner....
View ArticleHelp, My Tomato Has Wilted!
There’s nothing sadder than a crop gone awry, all that love and care down the tubes. In this case we have a wilted (past the point of recovery) tomato. When something goes awry in the vegie patch look...
View ArticleCoping with Green Vegetable Bugs
The Importance of the Right Name When learning about a pest, begin your journey by finding out it’s scientific name. The bug I’m ruminating on today is the Green Vegetable Bug Nezara Viridula, also...
View ArticleA Planting Plan to Entice the Beneficial Insects
More insects are on your side, than not. There’s an army of beneficial insects willing to help your cause, should you wish it. Parasitic wasps, hoverflies (pictured), bees, bumble bees and ladybirds,...
View ArticleCunning Ways with Pests
Heat and harvest come to this – pests. It’s easy to malign them, “Damn things!”, but pests are not malicious, they’ve come because you’ve served dinner. Aphids, leafhoppers, green vegetable bugs – put...
View ArticleThe Broadbeans Have Spots!
Chocolate spot is a broadbean thing that typically happens at this time of year. Like rust is a celery thing, or black spot an apple thing – all crops have a thing they do when life’s not completely to...
View ArticleOh Brave New World – My Copper Free Orchard
The early plums are bursting out! The bees are in! Mid season plums are on the move! If copper is your thing then get it on as the buds move. Which means right at the beginning while they’re still a...
View ArticleGet Ready For Psyllids
Boy, did we panic about psyllids when they first arrived on our shores. And rightly so! Our tomato and potato crops got hammered as we figured out how to cope with them. And figure it out we did. We’ve...
View ArticleWhen To Harvest Kumara, Perfectly Ripe Pumpkins and Early Garlic
When To Harvest Kumara My kumara aren’t huge this year (that’s what happens when summer doesn’t arrive). I’ve had a poke around in the soil and there appears to be a higher rate of smalls than usual, a...
View ArticleTo Copper Spray, Or Not?
Cankers, oozing sap, fruit scab, fruit rot, leaf spots, leaf curl or mildew are all signs bacteria or fungus are ruling the roost in your orchard. Today, I want to look at two ways to manage these...
View ArticleOf Lemon Tree Borer And Puriri Grubs
This hole in my Tydemans Late Apple shows a puriri larvae is in occupancy. That vertical scar and diamond shaped hole is the giveaway. Things that drill into the trunks of your trees, eating the wood...
View ArticleBreak The Pest Cycle
The heat, all that tasty food, a bit of plant stress = pests! Here are two ways to bust inside that egg-larvae-adult-sex-birth cycle, and keep numbers down. 1. A Daily Harvest So simple, so obvious –...
View ArticleWinter Preps, Mighty Broccoli And Death To Cabbage Whites
Aside from keeping everything alive with regular watering and feeding, our most pressing job is sowing and planting the winter food garden. No mean feat when it’s hot and dry. Planting Tips For Hot...
View ArticleSpring Disease: Managing Fungus
Edible Backyard Spring Disease: Managing Fungus By far and away the most common cause of garden disease is airborne fungi and the mild moist conditions of spring set the scene for primary infections of...
View ArticleHow To Deal with Garlic Rust
Edible Backyard How To Deal with Garlic Rust Despite all my good preps, my garlic succumbed to rust. Aggghhhh! I’ve been a proud garlic grower for 23 years. Kilo braids were my summer pocket money when...
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