I cannot recall a February in New Zealand that was not always the hottest month of the year.
The nationwide average temperature in February 2026 was 16.9°C, which is 0.5°C below the 1991–2020 February average, making it the coolest February since 2012!
Even now heading towards the end of March it is wavering between cool and warm temperatures.
This does not bode well and we may have an early, long winter ahead of us.
So now is a good time to make our gardens ready for what ever Nature throws at them.
You can harden up your garden plants such as citrus trees, vegetables and ever greens by small applications every month of Wally Fruit & Flower Power.
As the weather cools and winter approaches, plants feel the chill like we do, but plants can’t put on a jersey like we can. Plant’s protection from chills and frosts comes from having adequate Potassium in their diet.
Thus us gardening commentators always suggest to gardeners to supply potash to their plants as winter starts to approach and to avoid too much nitrogen.
Commercial growers of plants and orchardists have a commercial product that they use to ensure their plants have sufficient Potassium and magnesium in their diet.
These two vital elements are blended together in the right balance as required for plants and available to you as Wallys Fruit & Flower Power. Use it to harden up for the months ahead.
If you have vegetable gardens that are not free draining and prone to wet cold soggy soil during winter you can improve the drainage by simply digging a trench around the bed about a spade depth and width.
Water from the now raised (in a sense) bed will drain into the trench where sun and wind will evaporate the water.
This will certainly help your winter crops stay in good health for your use.
The shorter day light hours means slow to little growth of your vegetable as they are not able to get long hours of sunlight to create the carbohydrates they need to grow.
For this reason we are now at the borderline of planting seedlings for them to reach maturity in early winter for us to harvest.
We can solve that problem by you making what I call ‘Liquid Sunshine’ which is a tablespoon of molasses into a litre of hot water to dissolve into which you also add 10 mils of Magic Botanic Liquid.
Place into a one litre trigger sprayer and every few days spray the foliage of your vegetable plants.
The more often you do this the better the growth will be.
When you buy your seedlings of vegetable such as cabbages and silverbeet look for the younger plants not the big older plants that may have suffered stress and would tend to go to seed after they establish in your garden.
Also when you get the plants home check the foliage for butterfly eggs which you can simply rub off.
To plant make a planting hole and into that put about a teaspoon or more of Wallys Real Blood & Bone and a pinch of Ocean Solids or if you dont have that available then a pinch of pink Himalayan salt.
Ocean solids has about 114 minerals and elements and pink Himalayan salt about 90.
The reason for the salt is to get more minerals into your food so you will be healthier.
As you are going to spraying the plants every few days with Liquid Sunshine you can check the brassicas for any caterpillar damage of eggs. Both caterpillars and eggs can be simply squashed which saves the need for spraying.
Another caterpillar control I have found excellent is to place a little Wallys Neem Tree Powder in the planting hole and some on the soil surface under the plant.
The way it works is the Neem properties are taken up by your brassicas and translocate through the foliage.
When a baby caterpillar hatches out and takes a bite of the leaf it gets a dose of Neem and stops eating to quickly starve to death.
You will see a number of little holes in the outer leaves of the plant where they took their one and only bite.
Some of you may have chili or capsicum plants growing in open ground, these plants are not annuals as they will produce for a couple of years or more.
So you can lift them and pot them into a suitable size container and place them where they are protected against the elements for another season.
If you still lose them in the winter, you really have not cost you more than your time.
If they are ok in spring then tidy them up, give them a feed of Wallys Secret Tomato food and have another years use plus an early start with a mature plant.
Gardeners with glasshouse where you have been growing tomatoes and other plants will by and large be coming to the end of their productive life in the next few months.
You can take some laterals off your tomato plants and strike them to have as potted plants through the winter but remove them from the glasshouse if you are going to fumigate.
Leave all finished plants in the house as they will have insects on them and taking them out will only move the pests to the outside.
Leave them in the house and fumigate by burning sulphur powder.
This is done by placing 2-3 tablespoons of Wally Sulphur powder onto a steel plate or hearth shove/spade.
You need a very strong flame to get it lite or use a fire starter to start.
Or a little methylated spirits onto a small part of the sulphur pile and lite that which will start it burning.
Once burning it is hard to put out till all finished and you need to get out of the house and close the door.
Leave for 24 hours then open door and vent the house.
Now thats done you can reuse the house for over winter growing what ever you would like to grow.
If you hang some Yellow sticky whitefly traps in the house and either some Neem Granules in small gauze bags or some flakes of Wallys Cat Repellent; the smell of these products disguises the smell of the plants inside the house and likely you will not be bothered with any pest problems.
Growing tomatoes and plants in winter in a glasshouse you must not over water in fact only small amounts of water as needed to keep the plants happy.
Best done early in the day so dryish by nightfall and colder temperatures.
Powdery mildews will be starting on various plants and if you want the plants to carry on a bit longer simply sprat them with Wallys Super Neem Tree Oil and that turns the leaves back to green instantly.
Frosts will be a problem even in a glasshouse so to protect plants that are frost tender you can either use Vaporgard or the new one, Wallys Spray on Frost Protection which will give better frost protection than Vaporgard. I will elaborate on their virtues in another article as we get nearer to winter.
This morning I could feel the nip in the air so a frost is a possibility where I am in Marton soon.
I will use the Spray on frost Protection today on my banana palms, passionfruit vine, avocados, tomatoes and chili plants including the plants in my glasshouses.
Better safe than sorry and the beauty of Wally Spray on Frost Protection it is protecting down to -16 degrees within 24 hours of application sprayed at the initial 50 mil per litre rate then at 25 mils per litre exactly one month later.
Mark your calendar if you miss the back up sprays then damage will likely occur.
Image credit: Wietske Boer
Products mentioned are from Wallys Range of products and can be found in some garden shops or by Mail Order on www.0800466464.co.nz
Problems ring me at: Phone 0800 466464
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