Vege patch to-do list

This month’s moon calendar, and edible crops to sow and tend now.

• Ignore the cold and plan for summer!

It’s possible in August to start some summer crops such as tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and chillies from seed. You have to keep them inside, of course, but you’ll have great big plants ready for when it’s warm enough to move them outside in late October or early November. Use fresh seed-raising mix and keep the trays in a warm place. It’s much cheaper to grow from seed, and often it’s the only way you can grow some of the really unusual varieties you simply can’t buy commercially as seedlings – or sometimes even as seed! This year, for instance, I’m sowing a bush tomato I was given seed for at a Matariki celebration by Angela Clifford from the Food Farm in north Canterbury (which she calls ‘Cheviot’). It’s always fun to grow something with a romantic backstory, and play your own part in preserving those rare varieties.

• What else can you sow and plant?

Broad beans, peas, rocket and fast Asian greens can be sown direct in most parts of the country now. Try mesclun mix and lettuces in punnets or pots; and fill in any gaps with radishes. Plant spinach, silverbeet, broccoli, cauliflowers, lettuce and onion seedlings too, and ”chit” or sprout seed potatoes. In frost-free areas, you can plant spuds outside now.

• Divide and multiply strawberries.

You often see it suggested you multiply your strawberry plants by potting on the runners which the plants put out at the end of the season, but after a year or two strawberry plants also often form additional lateral crowns at the base of the original plant. You can lift your strawberries and tease or cut these apart and replant. Just make sure each crown has enough roots attached. Strawberries only produce well for four years or so, so it’s good to keep renewing your patch with fresh plants.

• And an update on my willow tree.

Last month I mentioned I had finally bitten the bullet to remove a gigantic willow from the bottom of my garden. Arborists came yesterday and this threestorey high monster was made into mulch in just a morning. It’s incredible how much space it opens up, and how much more sun that part of the garden gets now. Having havered about it for years, I am now so pleased I did it!

Winter is a great time to do an audit of your garden. Walk around and assess what’s overcrowded or overgrown; what needs to be divided or moved to a new spot. It’s hard to make the big calls sometimes – we are often emotionally attached to the plants in our gardens – but the payoff can be huge. Jo McCarroll