Spring Gardening

If your garden is anything like mine after winter, there’s a fair bit of work to do. This year my broccoli and cabbage were not a great success, so I’m thinking my soil needs quite a bit of help.

Several years ago, I was fortunate enough to live across the road from well-known organic gardener and author, Dee Pignéguy, who put me onto using homemade seaweed fertilizer, which is brilliant for stronger, faster-growing plants that germinate and root more effectively, and have a better resistance to pests and disease. Here’s a link to Dee’s site. She’s available for in home organic gardening consultations.

I’ve read quite a bit about the benefits of weeding and removing old plants and then fertilizing and using compost on top of the garden bed without digging it over to avoid disrupting the complex ecosystem of the soil.

I don’t have a compost heap (yet), so I’m using Living Earth Organic Compost with crushed egg shells, old diced up bananas, and Epsom Salts mixed in. Once it’s done, I’ll leave it for a week and then start planting with the help of the Tui Planting Calendar as it’s specific to New Zealand (click this link for the pdf).

If you’d like some super simple gardening tips check out this article.

Triona