In the last month of summer, our harvests are starting to roll in thick and fast. Stone fruit is reaching the end of the season while pip fruits like pears and apples are just beginning. Early main crop plantings of potatoes are ready to store for winter.
At this stage of the season, our attention turns to preventing disease and pests, as well as keeping moisture and nutrient levels up to maintain production.
It’s also time to start looking towards autumn and winter crops to keep your garden productive into next spring.
General tasks this month include:
- Fertilising and watering all crops to help maintain production.
- Sowing autumn and winter crops.
- Harvesting summer crops and processing them for storage.
- Saving seeds.
Zones
Some districts can get away with things others can’t at different times of the year.
Living in the Far North, I have a very long growing season and can still grow some things my friends further south don’t have time for.
So where necessary, I’ll be referring to the zones shown on this map if the advice only applies to some areas.
Root crops
Everyone should be getting leeks in the ground this month! If you haven’t grown your own seedlings, pick up a punnet and get them in as early as possible.
Planting Leeks
It’s time to plant leeks! There’s a bit of a trick to harvesting a good leek, so here’s what you need to do.
Zone A and B gardeners can also direct-sow beetroot and carrot seed for winter roasts.
Direct Sowing Guide
Direct sowing is spreading seed in the place you want to grow it. This is the best way of getting good results for some crops. Find out which ones!
All zones can direct-sow radishes. Plant a few each week or fortnight to keep them coming. If you happen to struggle with hard, compacted soils, large varieties like daikon are both tasty, and great for breaking them up.
Greens to plant
If you live in Zone A, then you can get in one more round of climbing beans. Soak for an hour in warm water and sow directly in the ground and make sure they have something to climb up.
It’s also a good time for everyone to get brassicas in. You can sow seeds or plant seedlings. Broccoli, cabbages, cauliflowers, brussels sprouts, kale, and Chinese cabbages like pak choi prefer the cooler weather of autumn and spring, but getting them in or going now gives them a great boost while it’s still quite warm.
Make sure you cover them with bug net to keep the white butterfly off while they’re still active.
White Cabbage Butterfly
A deep dive into white butterfly – one of the most common and destructive pests in Kiwi gardens.
It’s a good time to plant lettuce as (theoretically at least), it should be cooling off and they’ll be less likely to run to seed or become bitter.
Fungal diseases
Did you know the way to tell the difference between powdery mildew and downy mildew is where they start on the leaf?
Downy mildew starts on the underside, while powdery mildew starts on top. I remember it by thinking that the ‘down’ in downy = underneath.
A leaf from a cucumber plant affected with powdery mildew.
It is especially likely to attack your cucurbits – cucumbers, pumpkins, melons, and courgettes.
Most plants will grow and produce through an infection, but if you’d like to take a crack at keeping it at bay, the Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture have some easy-to-make sprays using kitchen ingredients you can try.
Harvests
You might be seeing your potatoes dying back. It doesn’t mean they’re dead! It’s just time to dig them up.
If you planted a ‘main crop’ variety, you can store them by drying them off in a dark dry place.
Harvesting and Storing Potatoes
How we store our main-season potatoes to get us through the cold months.
If you planted kūmara this year, then you can carefully dig around your vines to check on them – and yes, you can have one for dinner if you find it.
You’ll want to lift them before your first frost – for us that’s still a few months away, but if you’ve attempted them in Zone C, you may want to think about lifting towards the end of the month.
Many seeds are also maturing. If you want to save some for planting next season, then it’s time to get seed saving.
Seed Saving
A deep dive into how to save money by saving seeds from your garden. An important skill for any gardener.
If you don’t have time to save seed, you can always just fling the seedheads around your beds for a bit of chaos gardening. That’s usually more my style and it means I now have a dozen or so herbs and vegetables in my garden that for the most part, grow themselves.
Melons and pumpkins are also ripening. If you want to keep your pumpkins over winter, wait until the stem turns brown before keeping in a cool dark place.
Citrus
It’s a good time to get a fertiliser on your citrus. The biggest rule in my book is liquid fertilisers for citrus in pots, and solid fertilisers for those in the ground.
If pest control is becoming an issue for you, you can get on top of it now before it stunts your fruit.
I put quite a lot of information about fertilising and spraying citrus in the March garden guide.
March in the garden
A look at tasks for the March garden.
If your trees haven’t been mulched yet, that’s also a great idea right now. Better late than never.
Stone fruit
Harvests of apricots, nectarines, peaches, plums, and cherries continue.
Stone fruit like to be pruned while actively growing, so they have a good chance to heal before going dormant for the winter. So once you (or the birds) have finished stripping the fruit, it’s time to get out the pruners.
If you want some help figuring out how to do that, you can grab a copy of my guide to pruning fruit trees by signing up to the mailing list at the bottom of the page.
If you’ve had trouble with diseases in your trees, dispose of all the diseased fruit, leaves, and branches in an off-site green waste.
Pip fruit
Harvest is incoming. If birds are an issue for you, it’s a good time to cover them in bird net.
A couple of our windblown apples. On the left, this apple isn’t ready – the seeds are still white. On the right, they are almost there, but they’re not quite at dark brown. They are both juicy and made a great apple crumble regardless.
The surest sign to know they’re ripe is to cut one in half and see if the seeds are dark brown. If they are, they’re ready.
Make the most of it
The days are getting a bit shorter and darker now, so make the most of those after-work hours and do what you can, while you can.
I’m a big believer that every effort comes back in a big way in the garden. The trick is to do a little bit, often.
It’s less about doing it all, and more about doing what you can. It all adds up.
And we’ll all miss these long hazy evenings in a few months, so go spend 10 minutes planting seedlings or pulling a few weeds.
Future-You won’t regret it.
