Ruud Kleinpaste: Overwatering and pruning back your plants

Dry conditions? Honestly, watering yourself silly is always an expensive exercise (especially in Wellington! Bottles of water are at least a dollar each…). Protect your soil from evaporation by chucking a heap of mulch in between your plants; I’ve just finished my firewood stash and the smaller branches are chippered into big bags of mulch. Timing is everything. Water tanks next to the house? Maybe now is a good idea to invest in some tanks, connected to your guttering, just saying… Raspberries: If you have harvested your spring-fruiting raspberries, they need pruning now. Get down on your hands and knees and prune off all the old “canes”; It’s easy to see which are old, brown canes with yellow old leaves and which ones are the new, fresh ones that will fruit for you next year. Raspberries also have this habit of producing heaps of runners and canes far, far away from the original bed! Either mow them down of translocate these new runners to a new row. They’ll survive that easily if done now, while the soil is warm. Add some fertiliser and everybody’s happy for next spring! Note: autumn raspberries still have a crop to go!!! Mid-summer is also the time to prune your plums when they have been harvested. I tend to do that now, with the summer heat still here. When you do it in late autumn or winter, the cooler, wetter weather can cause quite a few problems with diseases. Remember: stonefruit bears its fruit on young wood, but the European plums (such as prunes, Damson, and Greengage) tend to fruit heavily on 3–4-year-old branches. In our garden the Damson and Greengage are our jam work horses, so they can be shortened back to the well-established branches. Japanese plums tend to fruit on new wood, which means you can’t be as ruthless; Think ahead!! Vegies to sow/buy/plant: most of the winter crops: Prepare your patches – compost, dig-over, make friable with a fork Carrots in really good, stone-free soil. Well-drained and easy to penetrate for the roots (no forks in the carrots); Seed tape! Swedes and beetroots – again, well-drained soils that don’t stay wet too long (roots can rot in stagnant water Leeks – yep always a good winter vegetable, start while soil is warm (good germination) All the Brassicas can be sown or planted now, whatever you like; Caulies, Broccolinis, cabbages etc, etc. Protect from white butterfly larvae (still very prolific in the warm weather) – use “Success” (Yates) or fine netting that doesn’t let the mother whites onto the leaf surface. LISTEN ABOVE