What to do in your garden this week...
• Vegetables
Cabbage, cauliflower and silverbeet can still be planted to stand over the winter. Ground from which potatoes have been lifted recently is ideal for these crops.
Sprinkle blood and bone (100g per sq m) on the soil around the plants - but not touching them - so rain in May and June can wash it into the soil. Compost can also be spread where these hardy vegetables are to be grown.
If soil is drawn up around the stems of Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli as they grow, it will not only aid drainage for the plants during the winter but also helps prevent them being blown over in strong winds.
Cauliflower heads can be damaged by rain and cold conditions as winter nears. Those maturing soon should be regularly checked and the outside leaves turned in on the centres, the curds, to help protect them and kept them white.
Because they like cool, moist conditions, leeks usually will keep growing until June.
Asparagus beds are worth the effort, as these perennial vegetables will produce crops for 20 years or more.
Keep the bed free of weeds but leave the plant's top growth until it yellows, then cut foliage close to the ground and apply well-rotted manure or compost into which chopped seaweed has been added.
• Flowers
Rose cuttings can be taken during the next few weeks.
Some roses thrive only when budded on to a stock with a more vigorous root system, while others - particularly heritage varieties - grow readily from cuttings.
Choose short pieces that have had a flower on them. Remove them from the main stem, ideally with a heel of the older growth. Cut off the dead flower, remove all the leaves except the top two, and thoroughly soak a deep container of potting mix before inserting the cutting, pushing them well down.
Cuttings do best if placed in a shady place, as cool temperatures increase the likelihood of roots forming. Pieces that develop successfully into plants should be left until late autumn next year before planting in their permanent home.
An alternative method is layering - bending a low branch to the ground and pinning it in sandy soil after cutting just above the point where the tiniest bud is visible.
Cover with more soil, water well and place a brick or heavy stone to hold the layered stem in place.
• Fruit
Autumn is the best time for planting soft fruits of the Rubus family (raspberries, blackberries, loganberries, marionberries, boysenberries and tayberries).
Raspberries and blackberries have been eaten in Europe for at least 35,000 years, but the blackberry was not cultivated commercially until 1835. Introduced into New Zealand in the 19th century, it rapidly became one of our worst weeds.
The loganberry, an American raspberry-blackberry cross, is named after its breeder, Judge J. H. Logan. Boysenberries are also American and the raspberry-loganberry-Pacific blackberry hybrid is named after Rudolph Boysen, who bred it in the early 1920s, but it was Walter Knott (of Knotts Berry Farm) who made them famous.
Tasman is a virtually thornless boysenberry variety. The tayberry, developed in Scotland in 1962, is a loganberry-like blackberry-raspberry cross. The fruit is somewhat larger than a boysenberry and ripens a little earlier.
'Waiau' and 'Aspiring' are popular red raspberry varieties, while two heritage raspberries, marketed as 'Ivory' (which has pinkish-yellow fruit) and 'Ebony' (dark purple), are also available.
