Happy New Year on behalf of the entire team at Daves Garden Products and Southern Humates!
January is a month many of us kick back and relax and enjoy a well-deserved break, but don’t let all your hard work go to waste – make sure you maintain your garden in between trips to the beach!
What to plant in January:
Tomatoes, Silver beet/ Spinach, Kale, Beetroot, Chilli, Salad greens, Sweetcorn and Courgettes.
Your vegetable garden
Dig in Growth Booster Sheep Pellets before planting to replenish nutrients used by previous crops. Also take note that when humate is mixed in with a good compost it becomes an excellent water saver as the humic in the humate acts like a sponge and can hold its own weight in water up to 7 times!
For potatoes or main crops still in the ground, mould up soil around the leaves to encourage more tubers and to keep the sun off them. A side-dressing of Turbo Garden Blend will give them a timely boost.
Bird netting may be required to protect the ripening tomatoes. Continue staking these and keep pinching out new laterals that appear and remember to keep plants well-watered. For the best flavour, leave the fruit to ripen on the plant.
Fruit trees
Pick nectarines, passionfruit, cherries, blueberry, strawberries, raspberries, apricots, peaches, plums.
Plant more strawberries. Trim long runners back to the centre of strawberry plants, to encourage another batch of fruit. The runners can also be planted out as new strawberry plants. Mix organic humate to soil when planting strawberries – they react very favourably to this. Plant new lettuce and herbs regularly to ensure consistent harvesting. In season: dill, fennel, parsley and chives.
Add a layer of Turbo Garden Blend around the base of fruit trees to maintain moisture and keep the area weed free.
Flower Garden
Pick vibrant blooms including roses, hydrangeas, fuchsias, dianthus, delphiniums, lilies, gladiolus, sweet peas, agapanthus, sunflowers, geraniums, cosmos, sunflowers.
Plant petunias, impatiens, calendula, dahlias, echinacea, verbascum, verbena, alyssum, cosmos, gaillardia, marigolds, nemesia, dahlias.
Deadhead or cut back summer flowers to encourage a fresh batch of flowers. Weeds grow as fast as plants do at this time and compete for valuable moisture so pull or hoe them out before mulching for best results.
This is also the time to start harvesting fruit and vegetables that are becoming ready.
Pick veges every day to encourage continuous fruiting – especially peas, beans, eggplant, cucumbers and courgettes.
Pick your sweet corn cobs when the end tassels have begun to dry brown.
Tips:
Don’t let your soil fertility go backwards! Bolster it as best you can to avoid an epic soil building mission in autumn. Piling on a mixture of mulch is an easy way to keep soil in good condition. Moisten your soil first before topping it up. Beans and passionfruit will really benefit from it – they enjoy a cool root run. Make a mixture of old, ratty foliage, trimmings from rambunctious plants, slash down long grass in wild areas, forage for leaves, seaweed or mow the lawns and use the clippings. Remember to mix our organic humate amongst the mulch as this will improve the overall biology as well as assisting the breakdown of nutrients.
Happy Gardening, Dave