Top 10 Gardening Tips for August

Establish your garden for Spring

It is time to establish the spring garden, with its plethora of veges, flowers and fruit. Sow seed in trays for transplanting later and prepare garden beds with fertilizer and compost. Here's 10 helpful tips:

1. Prepare garden beds for spring planting. Replenish nutrients in the soil by adding organic matter such as compost and sheep pellets.
2. It's potato time! Sprout seed potatoes and prepare potato beds. Dig over beds to a depth of 30cm and add plenty of compost. Add potato food at planting.
3. Mulch now to discourage weeds from establishing when the soil warms up.
4. Plant late winter veges, water in with a seaweed plant tonic and lay slug and snail bait. 
5. Get a head start on tomatoes by raising early season seed indoors to be transplanted after the last frost.
6. Plant fruit trees - apple, pear, berry, feijoa, citrus, plum and peach. All fruit trees require a position in full sun and shelter from wind. Stake young trees to enable their roots to anchor themselves into the soil for the first few seasons.
7. Prune grapes and kiwifruit before the end of the month when the sap starts to move. Prune apples and pears. Do not prune peaches and plums until summer to limit the spread of silver leaf virus.
8. Leaf curl prevention - this is your final window to prevent leaf curl disease on stonefruit such as nectarines, plums and peaches. Spray with copper.
9. Feed camellia's to replenish reserves post-flowering. If a prune is required, the best time to do so is just after flowering has finished. For pest-control, camellia's are susceptible to attack from scale insects so keep an oil spray handy.
10. Lawn - Start feeding the lawn from late August.  Thicken tired and worn lawns by oversowing when soil the temperature begins to rise at the end of the month. For weed control, use a selective herbicide to remove weeds without damaging the lawn grass. Late winter to early spring is also a great time to keep moss in check.

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