It’s a good time to observe and take note of plants that are doing well in your area and what works and doesn’t work in peoples gardens. 

We are coming close to the winter solstice and it’s time to plant some fruit trees and winter vegetables in Melbourne! This is when the widest range of deciduous fruit and nut trees are available in nurseries because it’s best to plant them while they are dormant in the winter. And of course it gives us an excuse to get back out there and warm up with some vigorous digging! Check our Facebook page for a list of what’s coming in this season.

• Think about where the light falls in your garden in summer as well as winter, and about how much space you have before you rush out and come home with a car load of trees. Dwarf fruit trees are a great option for smaller gardens and can even be grown in large pots. Vines like grapes and kiwi fruits give wonderful shade in summer and let precious winter sun in. Also their ability to take up vertical space is a plus. Berries provide a fantastic yield in a small space, whether they are cane berries like raspberries and boysenberries, or bush berries like blueberries and currants. Bare-rooted plants should be pruned before they are planted out with the exception of apricots and sweet cherries which are best pruned while the sap is still flowing in Autumn. Dig in some compost or enriched planting mix before you plant and you’ll be giving your trees the best chance of success.
• Get your pruning gear in good shape for the work it will be doing in July on established fruit and nut trees in the garden. Sharp and clean secateurs and pruning saws will save you time and energy and prevent damage to your trees.
• Use all those lovely crisp brown leaves falling from deciduous street trees to your advantage and rake them up for the compost. Leaves provide much needed carbon and having a bag of them in the shed is a sure-fire way to get your carbon-nitrogen ratio correct and speed up your compost. If you have larger leaves from plane trees- its great if you can shred them up in a mulched or run over them with a lawn mower.
• There is still time to get your garlic and shallot bulbs planted, and don’t forget about leeks and spring onions. Intermediate and long day onions like NZ Cream Gold can still be planted for a January harvest.
• Divide your strawberries, jerusalem artichokes, horseradish, turmeric, rhubarb and asparagus. Many of these plants will be available now as bare root stock so prepare the soil and think about how many you can fit in! Remember asparagus is a long game and needs room to develop extensive roots but the payoff is worth it.
• Protect young seedlings from slugs and snails with copper tape around old pots with the bottoms cut out, and place some beer traps around level with the soil in the veggie patch.
• Succession sow coriander, rocket and mizuna every fortnight to have a regular supply. Try a few different winter leafy greens like mustard, tatsoi, mibuna, lamb’s lettuce, rapini, radicchio, endive and chinese broccoli. Stunners like kohlrabi, romanesco broccoli and purple cauliflower can brighten up the winter veggie patch and the kitchen table. Edible flowers like nasturtiums, calendulas, pansies and violas supply gorgeous colour on cold rainy days.
• Winter is still an okay to plant Indigenous tube stock, they just wont grow much until things warm up a bit- but you’ll have a head start on Spring planting and contributing to wildlife habitat in your area…
• Consider installing a bird bath, water bowl or nesting box in your garden. Review what’s flowering in your garden and if you are providing for wildlife all through the year or just at certain times. Many Australian native plants flower well in the cooler months and are a good way to fill any gaps in flowering.
• Move your indoor plants into the brightest position possible and wait to do any re-potting until spring or early summer as they can suffer worse transplant shock in the cold weather. If you have heating on remember that house plants can dry out quickly so check soil for moisture levels. Bring any small tropical plants you have in pots onto a deck or inside to reduce their damage from the cold.

The cold is upon us and while some days are crisp and frosty the glorious winter sun draws us out into the garden, armed with a nice hot cuppa, some good gloves, and a sharp pair of secateurs.

The calm pace of winter gardening is a sharp contrast to the frenzy of planting that takes place in spring and autumn. There’s still plenty of winter vegetables to plant and things to do in the garden in July if you are feeling active, but if not you can just rake in some green manure seed and hibernate for the month.

• If you have established fruit trees now is the time to get pruning to increase your fruit yield in summer. The first rule is to prune out any dead, diseased or dying wood, and then any branches that are crossing each other. Do some research into the particular tree you are working on so you can recognise the fruiting wood and avoid inadvertently pruning it off. Keep your prunings to stick into garden beds to deter birds and cats. Nice long, straight twigs can even be dried out and used as stakes.
• Bare root fruit and nut trees can be planted now. Consider a double graft to ensure you have good pollination and maximise space.
• Citrus gall wasp should be pruned out now to prevent them hatching and re-infecting your tree in spring. The infected stems should be bagged for a few months to solarise them.
• Use the quiet time to reflect on your garden design and build any structures that will improve your growing space. Is it time to rethink your space? Find some inspiration from the community? CERES’ Garden Design course is an excellent resource.
• Climbing peas will be looking for something to hold onto so get out the stakes and string and make some tripods. For broad beans place some stakes around the perimeter of your patch and tie some string around them to prevent fragile stems from blowing over in the wind.
• Rain can leach precious nutrients out of the winter vege patch so top up with liquid fertiliser such as worm juice or fish emulsion. Plant more spinach, lettuce, parsley, coriander, asian greens and sprouting broccoli to ensure a steady supply of greens. Beetroot is also a great crop as the tops can be harvested for a colourful salad mix.
• Compost is breaking down slowly this time of year but will benefit greatly from aeration and the addition of carbon (shredded paper, cardboard, dry leaves). If you haven’t already got a worm farm think about establishing one before it starts to get warmer.
• There are some great edible weeds about like young nettles and chickweed. Go for a forage and look up some new recipes!

As we head into the final winter month, there is an anticipatory spring thrill in the air.

It’s definitely time to start thinking about spring in the garden. Planning and preparing is paramount at this time, as when the soil warms up it will be a planting frenzy! To help get you in the mood just look at our native plants, an absolute joy at this time of year. Boronia is in bud and will soon fill the air with its heady fragrance. Hardenbergia is flowering and the golden haze of wattle starts to dot the landscape.

• Plant asparagus, seed potatoes, bare rooted strawberries, bare rooted fruit trees and rhubarb crowns.
• If you haven’t already sprayed your stone fruit trees for leaf curl, do it now before the buds open. You need to spray with a copper spray or lime sulphur – preferably in July while the tree is completely dormant, and then again, at bud swell. Leaf curl affects peach, nectarines, almonds and other Prunus species. Once the blistered, curled foliage appears on your tree it is too late to spray, but be careful to practice good garden hygiene by picking up any fallen affected leaves.
• Continue to plant leafy greens including spinach, lettuce, kale, sorrel, mibuna, mizuna as well as parsley, rocket, coriander. Plant beetroot, spring onion, sprouting broccoli and radishes and a late crop of peas.
• Crank up your compost heap by turning more regularly and ensuring you have a good balance of carbon to nitrogen e.g for every one bucket of kitchen scraps you have 2 bucket of sawdust or autumn leaves.
• Prepare the beds that you aren’t using. Dig in compost, worm castings and manure and add a layer of pea straw in preparation for spring planting.
• Plant green manure seed to improve the soil in fallow beds, adding nitrogen and organic matter to create rich fertile soil.
• Give your citrus and fruit trees trees a once over, top dress with compost, a sprinkle of potash, mulch and attend to any gall wasp.
• Take to any citrus galls with a potato peeler to expose and kill the larvae inside ideally before the end of August. It is important to do this before the wasps emerge, from September to November depending on weather. We have a kaolin clay spray available in the Nursery which forms a barrier to prevent gall wasps from hatching or laying eggs- its important that you reapply this throughout the season. We do not recommend the use of yellow sticky traps for gall wasp as they also trap beneficial insects.
• If you have troubles with pear and cherry slug in the past, now is the time to create a mulch barrier to stop them from emerging from below the ground. Water tree first then mulch around base with newspaper (10 page thick) or cardboard. Make sure you wet it down before mulching.
• Alas fruit fly is becoming more of a pest in Melbourne as the climate warms. For now, the first stage of dealing with this pest is to monitor if it is in your garden using a pheromone to attract male fruit flies. If it is in your garden you can use a trap to attract male and female fruit fly. We sell a product in the Nursery or you can look for recipes online.
• Checkout our range of tube stock indigenous to the northern plains of Melbourne, the ideal plants to attract local fauna to your garden.
• Plant flowers for joy and for attracting beneficial insects. Nasturtium, lobelia, alyssum, pansies, violas and many more can be planted now for spring colour.
• Go for a bush walk. A favourite activity of ours is searching for terrestrial orchids in late winter. We love seeing them, tiny and important, growing in their minuscule majesty under tall trees or on heathlands. We are very lucky to have hundreds of native orchid species and many of them can be found very close to Melbourne.

September is such an exciting time of year for gardeners and nature lovers and here at CERES Nursery we are keen to enhance your spring experience whether you are a new or established gardener.

When we speak to customers in the Nursery there is a great sense of eagerness (impatience?) for spring planting to be underway and I find myself advising many times over that it is important to wait.

• Wait for the soil to warm up. Wait for the temperature to become consistently warmer at night.
• Wait until seedlings are big and strong enough to be planted out into the garden.
• Prepare the soil for planting. Incorporate plenty of compost and well-rotted manure into the soil.
• Top this off with a mulch such as pea-straw, lucerne or sugar cane mulch. You can also add other products such as dolomite lime, rock dust and potash if you wish to boost nutrient levels in the soil for vegetable production.
• Propagate seeds in mini hothouses or on a sunny windowsill.
• Continue to plant coriander, rocket, parsley, spring onions, lettuce, kale, mizuna, mibuna, tatsoi, carrots, beetroot and spinach.
• Mid to late September if the weather warms up consider planting zucchini, cucumber, pumpkin, tomatoes, squash, chillies, eggplant, capsicum and beans.
• Don’t forget flowers! Plant borage, chamomile, violas, marigolds, nasturtiums, snapdragons, cosmos and sunflowers to add colour and attract insects.

October in the garden is a joyful and busy time for gardeners as we see plants surge forth as the weather warms up.

If you planted seedlings a bit too early over September they may not have grown much but should start to take off now. Make the most of walking and exploring gardens in your local area- take a note of plants you admire and what’s growing well, where… keen observation (and earth worms) are a gardeners BFF’s!

• Plant summer vegetables including tomatoes, cucumber, pumpkin, zucchini, corn, chilli, capsicum, eggplant, beans and melons.
• Try some new varieties of CERES Honey Lane organic tomatoes.
• Plant sunflowers, cosmos, marigolds, alyssum, snap dragons, violas, lobelia and local wildflowers and grasses to add colour and diversity to the garden. Edible flowers such as borage will flowering prolifically- don’t forget to add some to a salad or cake decoration.
• Continue to plant year round veggies such as spring onions, silverbeet, beetroot, carrots and kale and herbs. Leafy greens can be planted in a shadier part of the garden during the warmer months.
• Bush foods such as finger lime and mountain pepper should be flowering and beginning to form fruit. Keep up water consistently during this time and mulch plants to avoid fruit drop.
• Native thyme and native mint bush (Prostantheria incisa and Prostanthera rotundifolia) should be pruned back after flowering to keep compact.
• Murnong tubers can be dug up in spring and summer- but always leave some plants in the ground to continue seeding. There are many other edible native tubers such as Chocolate and Vanilla Lilly and Ptilotus.
• Early to mid spring is a good time to prune back shrubs after flowering to help keep growth compact.
• Summer herbs, such as all the basils (Sweet, Greek, Ruby, Thai), Lemon grass, Tarragon, Sage and all the mints are in their element.
• Keep weeds under control with ongoing hand weeding. Weeds compete with other plants for water, space and nutrition. Use mulch to smother them and out-compete them with prostrate herbs and flowers.
• Collect snails and slugs to reduce the population in the garden and check underneath leaves for caterpillars, aphids and whitefly.
• Protect seedlings with fine gauge netting to prevent chewing insects and possums feasting on them.
• The rising climate has seen an increase in the occurrence of fruit fly in Victoria. It is important, once flowering has finished on fruit trees, to cover with insect netting to protect your fruit and slow the spread of this pest species.
• Thinning some fruits on fruit trees will help ensure a better quality harvest.
• Try ‘beer traps’ if snails are getting to your strawberries before you. Train and tie bramble berries to wires or framework.
• Make sure your worm farm is in a shaded position before weather heats up.
• Test irrigation to help over warmer months – we are fast heading to the time of year when things can dry out very quickly.
• With many birds and reptiles more active and moving with the warmer weather, assess whether your garden is able to cater for different creatures. Bird baths, sunning rocks, flowering plants for nectar and insect attracting, ponds, insect hotels and nest boxes are all useful additions to make your garden more wildlife friendly and can be easily installed.
• Indoor plants will benefit from potting up a size and feeding. If the sunlight conditions have altered indoors – depending on plant species you may need to move plants into or out of direct light.
• If you are seeking more space to garden with, explore your surrounding area… perhaps there is a patch of nature strip somewhere that you can help tend to?