Two noticeable problems are happening at this time; one is curly leaf on stone fruit trees. I have discovered that grafted stone fruit trees are prone to the disease in the early part of the season and is near impossible to prevent.
Continue reading Some solutions to your gardening problems (Wally Richards)Category Archives: Gardening
NOVEMBER GARDENING (Wally Richards)
With the passing of our traditional planting time (Labour Weekend) we are at that point of the season where its about 8 weeks to the longest day. This means that over the next 16 weeks we are going to have more hours of sunlight than any other similar time of the year.
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LABOUR WEEKEND GARDENING
Labour Weekend puts us about bang in the middle of spring, which is the ideal time to get your gardens planted out for the summer and autumn.
Keen gardeners have already made significant progress in their gardens and likely are into the final touches and daily care patterns of watering and nipping out those odd weed seedlings that pop up.
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Companion Planting (Wally Richards)
A reader, in their email a while back, asked if I could write an article on Companion Planting. As many of us are busy planting out seedlings into our gardens, it is an opportune time to have a wee look at what can be planted next to each other for some benefits and what should not.
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The return of Spring & a popular gardening product (Wally Richards)
IT IS BACK!
One could say over the last week that Spring is back for most of the country which is great news in itself, but no a very popular product that we used to have a few years ago is now back and not only back but its formation has been improved on as well.
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PREPARING FOR SPRING (Wally Richards)
Here we are in the first days of October and only 3 weeks away from Labour Day which is the Traditional time to plant out the heat loving plants like cucumbers, capsicums, zucchini, corn and pumpkins etc. But in most of the country spring has not happened as normal.
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Steve Solomon on Heirloom Seeds and Seed Saving
Can heirloom seed make you self-sufficient? Are hybrids a trap?
Steve Solomon once believed the hype: open-pollinated heirlooms over hybrids will set you free. Then he ran a seed company and trialed both. Much of what is sold as “heirloom” is old, poorly maintained commercial stock. Saving seed isn’t as easy as one might think. This conversation is about what backyard seed saving can actually do, what it can’t, and how a gardener can keep varieties alive without a fantasy collapse kit.
Steve Solomon – The Intelligent Gardener
https://amzn.to/467HZHK
Steve Solomon – Gardening When It Counts
https://amzn.to/4zUrLiN
Free books and archive: https://soilandhealth.org
Image by Artur Pawlak from Pixabay
Growing from Seed (Wally Richards)
There are big savings to be made in growing your own plants from seed, if you go about it in the right manner. With flowers and vegetables you have a far greater range from seed selection than you do when compared to buying seedlings.
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September the First Month of Spring (Wally Richards)
This year in many places through out NZ it is a bit difficult to realise that September heralds the beginning of spring, starting another round of seasons. It is certainly a slow start, weather wise, to what we call lovely spring days but plants do not work by weather, they work by daylight hours, so we have plants on the move but gardeners slow to respond waiting for nicer spring weather.
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WHY DONT MY PLANTS GROW? (Wally Richards)
I am often asked this question by gardeners that find that some or all their plants dont make much growth if any. There are several possible reasons for that and a common one is NPK fertlisers locked up in the soil because of excessive use.
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THERE HAS NEVER EVER BEEN A BETTER or MORE NECESSARY TIME TO PLANT FOOD CROPS (Wally Richards)
Last week SPRING Specials see bottom of article
If you follow the many articles from various news sources on the Internet you will realise that there are some massive problems facing our food chain. The problems with Iran and America, the weather events including the current severe El Nino event is going to be causing much more problems than previous. A perfect storm.
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The Answer is in the Soil (Wally Richards)
If you want to grow plants successfully, you have to provide them with a growing medium that is going to help them to grow not only healthy but to their full potential.
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Tomato Time (Wally Richards)
On a visit to our local Mitre10 in Marton I see that the first of the new seasons tomato plants are available.Two varieties were on display, Early Girl and Sweet 100. The early girl is a good early tomato which I purchased one of as they were more established than the varieties I have germinated from my seed collection.
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Planting Potatoes (Wally Richards)
Now is a perfect time to plant a few potatoes to enjoy the real home grown flavor in a few months time. If you have ample land you can plant lots of potatoes to harvest later when mature, store and likely have all the spuds you need till you plant again next season.
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Some Gardening Tips (Wally Richards)
Gardening tips can help make gardening easier, they save you money and time as well as obtaining better results. You may like to cut out this article for future reference.
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Spring Planting (Wally Richards)
Growing your own food is like printing your own money … Ron Finley
Well here we are at the beginnings of August when a gardener’s ‘Winter Blues’ ends and a new season of planting and growing begins.
Continue reading Spring Planting (Wally Richards)PLANTING TIME (Wally Richards)
This is the very best time of the year for planting trees, shrubs, roses, perennials, garlic, strawberries and berry plants, also hardy vegetables and annual flowers.
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RAISED GARDENS for Vegetables or Flowers (Wally Richards)
Raised beds for gardening is a great way to make gardening easy and at the same time produce a good range of vegetables or flowers. The advantages as I see them are; less bending, tidy gardens, attractive gardens, less weeding, no digging, superior produce or plants, ease of watering, great drainage, ease of harvesting and a pleasure to garden even if you are not really into gardening.
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PROPAGATION SECRETS OF SEEDS (Wally Richards)
Propagation from seed is not only very rewarding it is also the most cost effective way of obtaining a wide variety of plants. There are untold plants that you could grow but if you only buy seedlings from a supplier or nursery then your limited to only have common varieties as it is not economical for nurseries to grow too larger range of any type of plant.
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Condys Crystals – a Gardening Boon (Wally Richards)
Potassium Permanganate (Condys Crystals) has numerous uses in both gardening and elsewhere.
The origin of the chemical and its common name is as follows:
In 1659 a German chemist, J.R. Glauber, fused a mixture of the mineral pyrolusite and potassium carbonate to obtain a material that, when dissolved in water, gave a green solution (potassium manganate) which slowly shifted to violet potassium permanganate and then finally red.
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Big Strawberries for You (Gardening – Wally Richards)
Welcome to the shortest day of the year readers. Tomorrow we are around the corner and heading to a new season. June is the first month of winter and the month that most of the different types of strawberry plants become available in garden centres.
Continue reading Big Strawberries for You (Gardening – Wally Richards)Winter chores in the garden (Wally Richards)
WINTER BLUES
Winter is a slow time for many gardeners with only the most enthusiastic donning their woollies and gum boots to venture forth in all weather to potter. On the bright side we are now close to the shortest day and though it will take a month or two to appreciate the extending day light hours, there are still some nice sunny days to take advantage of and get a few gardening chores done.
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Healthy soil, healthy plants (Wally Richards)
THE DEFINITION OF MADNESS
This week I received from the internet, on a social media platform, a picture of a man walking through a paddock planted up with vegetables.
The caption read ‘We are the only species that sprays toxic chemicals on to our food to prevent other creatures from eating it; then we go ahead and eat it ourselves? That must be the definition of Madness?’
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Growing Roses (Wally Richards)
Well the new seasons roses are now in (or will be in the next few days) and there are lots of neat roses to choose from along with new releases such as…
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Green Crops & Seed Storage (Wally Richards)
I am always please to have readers contact me and requesting an article on a topic that they would like to read about.
It gives me something to write about which is of general interest and after 50 odd years of writing columns on gardening sometimes one gets writers block about what to write about each week.
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Growing Garlic (Wally Richards)
I remember times gone by when you could take a clove of garlic, push it into some fertile growing medium and about 6 months later be rewarded with a fat bulb of cloves.
No problems easy as and nice to do.
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Gardening: LEAVES AND ROBBERS (Wally Richards)
I was asked by a reader recently what is best way to use leaf fall from deciduous trees which is happening right now.
In the past, people that had small woodlots would make a chicken wire hammock strung between two trees at waist high.
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Gardening: WINTER AND FROSTS (Wally Richards)
In New Zealand, the official winter months are June, July and August.
As a Southern Hemisphere country, these months bring the coldest temperatures, shortest days, and snow to the mountains, with July usually being the coldest month.
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Caring for your house plants in Winter (Wally Richards)
HOUSE PLANTS CARE IN WINTER
Winter can be a tough time for indoor plants if people don’t recognise the problems that the plants face.
The factors that affect indoor plants are, light, temperature and moisture levels.
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Wally’s Gardening News: GRASS GRUB TIME AND A ONE WEEK SPECIAL
From Wally Richards
New Zealand has its own native root eating grub that we call grass grubs and its official name is Costelytra zealandica.
Before European settlement grass grubs were contently feeding on the roots of native grasses and other nice tasting roots.
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