In areas protected from late frosts, runner and butter beans can be sown. In most gardens, it is better to delay growing these tender vegetables outdoors and to get seed started under cover. This is also true of sweet corn and outdoor tomatoes.
From the time they germinate, runner beans, such as Scarlet Runner, take 90 days to mature, while dwarf or butter beans will produce crops in 60 days. The latter are generally recommended for smaller gardens, but a few runner beans can be grown anywhere they can climb.
If sowing them in their permanent position, put runner bean seeds about 5cm apart around a bean teepee or against the netting or trellis they are to climb.
Pinching out the tips to make bushier plants is a waste of effort, as it reduces the crop. Like climbing types, butter bean seeds should be set 5cm apart, with 60cm between rows.
Plant out cabbages, cauliflower, lettuces, parsley and silverbeet, and check that autumn-sown broad beans have adequate support.
Sow spinach and orach where they are to mature. Orach (Atriplex hortensis), or red mountain spinach, is a low-growing, purple-leaved vegetable, cooked like spinach.
Sow white turnips, spring onions and quick-maturing mini beetroot, such as Bonny Baby. Small beetroot plants can be transplanted to fill gaps.
Main-crop beetroot can be sown next month.
Turnips and beetroot should not be grown in soil where traces of animal manure remain, as this causes the roots to fork.
Main-crop potatoes Rua, Moonlight, Red Rascal (the improved form of Desiree), Red King, Heather, Iwa and Agria, for example, can be planted now in areas that experience hot summers. In cooler districts, wait until next month.
Lawns can be planted or renewed now. Rake any bare patches to give a slightly rough surface, then scatter with a lawn grass mix — usually chewings fescue and browntop seed in a 2:1 ratio — then cover with fine soil and press down lightly. Water if the soil is dry, then cover with netting to stop birds eating the seed.
Fruit
Grafting of apples, pears and other fruit trees is usually done this month.
This is an important way of saving heritage fruit trees, and courses on how to graft trees, particularly apples, are run each season by special interest groups. Raspberries put in over winter should be cut back to 30cm above the ground to encourage new stems (canes) to grow over summer for a better crop next year.
This treatment is also recommended for blackberries, tayberries, boysenberries, loganberries and marionberries.
New blackcurrant bushes should be pruned to about 25cm above the ground but red and white currants need only to have last season’s growth trimmed by about half.
This growth is identified by its lighter bark.
Gooseberries are pruned in the same way as redcurrants. — The Star Garden Book
