What you need to do now to get your garden ready for spring

It’s the time of year when gardens are in transition. The summer veggies are done, the leaves are dropping and it’s time to think about how to over-winter the garden and get it in great shape for spring.

If that all feels a little overwhelming, gardening expert Lynda Hallinan has you covered.

At this time of year, the rake and mower are your friends, she says.

Related stories:

“Leaves are a great source of free carbon to add into your garden. So, you can build up the soil naturally because you need lots of carbon to balance out all the green waste that we dig into gardens.

“When the autumn leaves fall, don't waste them, rake them up and then layer them into either a new garden or a compost bin or even just into black plastic garbage bags and poke some holes in them, chuck some water in and let them break down.”

But don't let them fall and form an impermeable layer, she says.

“A blanket of heavy, wet, soggy leaves creates almost an impenetrable barrier for what's underneath.

“And leaves take a long time to die down naturally. So, they might be sitting there for six months, by which time any plants that you had underneath them will have rotted out."

She has even resorted to the dreaded leaf blower at her own property in the foothills of the Hunua Ranges, south-east of Auckland.

“I've never wanted one, but man they’re great. What I do is I blow the leaves into the middle of the lawn and then I just mow them up with my lawnmower so that they end up mixed up and pre-shredded with the grass clippings.

“So, you've got the perfect soil-builder ready to go. Just go dump the catcher where you want to start a new garden.”

As well as leaves, many gardens will have fallen fruit lying around. What’s the best way to deal with those piles of rotting apples?

“Put them on your lawn and just mow over them because most of them at this time of the year are full of wasps. So, they're being picked at by birds and the wasps are getting in.

“So just mow them up, but otherwise you have to dig a trench and bury them because you can't really leave them sitting round rotting in piles.”

Now is a good time to think of soil health, and cover crops are big part of that story, she says. Cover crops, AKA green manure, replenish nutrients, protect the soil and can be dug back into the soil come spring.

“When your summer garden comes out, most people don't need that space. You probably need half or even a quarter of the growing space in winter that you use in summer. And so those empty beds have to be covered with something otherwise you will grow weeds.

“Also, if you're in a heavy rain environment and you don't cover that soil, then you'll end up with the situation where all the goodness in the soil that you've built up over the spring and summer is wasted by it leaching out in winter.”

You can grow almost anything to cover bare soil, she says, it needn’t just be traditional choices such as mustard, lupin and buckwheat.

“If you don’t want to go for a traditional cover crop, you can plant broad beans, or if you live in a frost-free climate, you can do purple tansy.”

Iceland poppies are a favourite at her property.

“They have little fairy pods, and they flower through winter and into spring, whereas most other poppies start in spring and flower on. So, I've found poppies are a great.

Calendula, she says, also add colour, and cover, to a bare garden bed.

“They are a fantastic flowery cover crop that does the same job, they cover the soil and they're really nice. They look cheerful through winter, which is important.

“And you can eat the flower petals too in salads if you want to. Because winter gardens do not look great It's nice to put things in there that are cheerful.”

It’s not too late to get some winter veg in now either, Hallinan says.

“Broad beans for eating as well as cover, you can get on with that and there's lots of different varieties.

“I'm still planting winter brassicas, cabbages, cauliflower and broccoli.”

Choose sprouting varieties of brassica, Hallinan suggests.

“Traditional big-hearted broccoli and cauliflower really should have been in by now, you can still plant seedlings of the sprouting varieties, tender stems is a great broccoli that has smaller heads, and you can eat the stems, and there's a new cauliflower that I just bought from the garden centre in punnets and they're absolutely massive seedlings and it's called iStem, it's like a sprouting mini cauliflower.”

These types of cut-and-come-again veggies are ideal to grow now, as are the cold hardy Asian greens such as bok choy, she says.

Leeks, garlic and peas can also be planted, although she recommends climbing pea varieties.

“Climbing peas as opposed to the dwarf peas, because if you think about this logically and rationally, a pea plant takes up exactly the same amount of ground space, whether it grows knee high or it grows to human height.”

The sugar snap climbing pea is “fantastic,” she says.

“The most big peas in the pod of any variety I’ve grown and that's what you want, lots of big, fat peas packed in tight because some grow these huge pods with like two or three peas in them.”

With warm soils and, hopefully, good rain it’s time to plant shrubs and trees, she says.

“They bed in and then they'll sit through their winter dormancy and then they'll be good to go in spring.

“Whereas if you plant them straight in spring, if you get a bit of dry weather, they will just sort of shrivel up and die. Whereas once they've been in the ground for a few months, they should be fine.”

But don’t be tempted to hook into the pruning just yet, she says, even if the roses are looking bedraggled.

“If you prune hedges and roses and all those things now, pruning encourages new growth. And so, they'll burst back into life and then that that new growth will be quite susceptible to frost damage.

“So, it's better to wait until winter when things are really quite hardened off and then go hard out pruning.”

For a splash of late winter-early spring colour, splurge on bulbs now, she says.

“Spring bulbs are in garden centres waiting to be planted now.
So if you want tulips or daffodils or freesias or anemones all those things you can go and buy them and they're not they're not that expensive.

“You might pay up to a dollar per bulb, but actually a dollar for a really good flower isn't that much, if you think about what you'd pay for a really good bunch of flowers from a florist, you're not going to get 30 flowers in a $30 bunch.”

Slugs and snails are on the march and Hallinan's philosophy is to go hard once.

“I’m an organic gardener; I don't use any sprays, I don't use any pesticides but Lordy the slugs and snails that we have. So, I will twice a year bomb the whole garden with slug bait.”

She uses a weather resistant brand. Otherwise go slug hunting with the kids, she says.

“Just get out there with a torch at night and a bucket of salty water.”

Allow some things to flower over winter to help our pollinator friends when food for them is scarce, she says.

“If you haven't picked a cauliflower or broccoli and it's bolted to seed, just leave those yellow flowers.

“Leave the plant with all of its yellow flowers in the ground, because actually, brassicas have lots of goodness for bees in winter and you often see poor old bumble bees struggling their ways around the garden.”

When you’re tidying and tripping out spent borders, that trusty push mower doubles as a useful mulcher, she says.

“If you've got a lawn, dump all your waste on it and then just go up and down, up and down until it's all on the catcher.

“Most people don't mulch green waste, but actually if you chuck it all into your compost bin whole it sits there for a long time, just munch it up with the lawn mower.”

And don’t forget the catcher.

“It's quite handy because your catcher is about the right amount to shovel around existing plants.”