Autumn zing for veges
Autumn has arrived and with the first touch of frost here in the South Island the growing season is slowing down. March is a wonderful time to be harvesting the last of our late summer crops such as tomatoes, beans and corn. It’s also a good time to start preserving and bottling extra veggies from the garden to use over the cooler months. This is also a wonderful activity to get the whole family involved in while we are all at home together over the next month.
After a long dry summer your garden is most likely looking a bit run down as we near the completion of our summer harvest. Taking care of your garden at the end of the season will ensure that it continues to perform well and now is the time to boost up soil nutrients with the help of products like Earth Zing. It’s a completely natural product containing organic ingredients which benefit your soil including fishmeal, seaweed meal humates, microorganisms and basalt rock flour which are mixed with plant-based by-products.
Once you have finished harvesting the last of your crops, it’s time to start preparing your garden patch for the next season. There’s nothing better than having a continuous supply of veggies throughout the cooler months.
- Clearing away and disposing of any diseased material
- Any good bulky material, green or dry can be composted either in a dedicated compost heap or simply added back into the soil.
- You can add material back into the soil by:
- Chopping up green material e.g. – cabbage and cauliflower leaves and leaving them on the soil surface to dry and break down
- Digging a shallow trench and then add debris into the trench. When full, cover the debris with soil and then lightly cover over with mulch. This is a great way to dispose of stalks and leaves from sweet corn and pumpkins.
- Increase the soil biology and organic soil matter by adding Earth Zing when trenching crop debris into the soil.
- Armour your soil surface
- Plant a green cover or manure crop into areas of bare soil or spots where you have removed a previously grown crop.
- (Ideal green manure or cover crops include)
- Lupins
- Mustard
- Rye corn
- Mulch the soil surface with materials such as pea straw or composted bark
Add Earth Zing to boost soil nutrients before you add your layer of mulch. This will help to improve your garden soil for future crops.
Armouring your soil with one of the above choices will protect the soil from winter rains plus help build-up the soil organic matter over the late autumn, winter and early spring months.
Enjoy your autumn gardening and see you next month.
Mr Bokashi








