Green Fingers October Garden Guide NZ

The spring equinox has passed, and we are now officially in Spring! October is the month we take advantage of the winter preparation we begin to plant. Green Fingers has created a helpful guide below which will give you all the information you need for a successful summer garden.

Compost

Compost should already be in the garden, but any leftovers can be spread around and placed into any new plant holes dug. Now is the perfect time to restart that compost pile. Throw any wood pruning in the bottom and continue to cover with lawn clippings through the Spring.

Fertilise

October is the perfect month to fertilise the garden. Deciduous plants are waking up and any new plantings will love a good fertilise to begin their lives. Begin by giving your garden a good dose of Green Fingers Liquid Seaweed to feed the soil and beneficial soil microbes. Next give all your gardens a well-balanced granule fertiliser and then follow this all up with a regular fortnightly spray of Green Fingers General Garden foliar fertiliser and you will quickly have a lush garden oasis

Plant

October is the month of planting. For those in the North Island the start of the month is perfect, whereas those in the South may want to delay planting until the end of the month (Labour Day). October is the best month to plant your Dahlias, Potatoes, Tomatoes Sweet Peas, Strawberries, Capsicums, summer vegetables and summer annuals.

Prune

While most of the garden pruning will have been completed. October is often the best month to plan the pruning of your Camellias, Rhododendrons and Azaleas. As all 3 of these plants produce their following years flower buds during the summer, any pruning after that will remove these buds and also prevent the plant flowering the following year. Due to this the best time to prune these 3 types of shrubs is October/November, as soon as they have finished flowering. Ensure you prune the shrubs back a bit harder than desired as they will vegetative growth bursts following the pruning and also during Autumn.

Pest control

As the weather warms up, the pests also begin to wake up. October is a good month to begin your rose spray program, check for black aphids on fruiting trees and begin to lay slug control. Slug control is especially important if you are starting Dahlia tubers and vegetables in the ground as slugs can completely decimate young sprouts. If you are not too keen on the thought of chemical pest control, you could try giving beneficial insects a go. These are typically predator and parasitic insects which predate and parasitise other insects such as aphids, thrips, mealy bugs, various mites and whitefly. These can be purchased from Bioforce – https://www.bioforce.co.nz

That's it!

That is all you need to know for this month, now get out to your garden and have an awesome October!