Winter maintenance and what to plant now.
Winter in Tasmania is anything but dreary days and colourless skies. Sure, we get the occasional icy morning and blustery wind that rubs your nose raw, but Tasmania has some of the most gorgeous blue-sky, butter yellow sunshiny days in winter, perfect for getting out and about in the patch.
Pruning
It’s the best time to rejuvenate and renovate your garden. Look upwards at deciduous trees and give them a good haircut. Most pome trees can be pruned now. Remove dead and damaged branches and add them to the compost pile. Remove all diseased branches and decaying and mummified fruit around trees and add them to the green waste bin to avoid the spread of diseases.
Weeding
As the winter rain replenishes our lawns, it also encourages weeds to pop up just about everywhere. Keep a look out for winter germinating weeds, such as vetch (vicia sativa), flickweed (cardamine hirsuta), and capeweed (arctotheca calendula) and remove them before they flower in spring. If you’ve started an asparagus patch in the garden, prepare to keep your weeding arm toned. Asparagus particularly despises competing with weeds.
Soil amendments
Rain can also help us assess which parts of the garden are getting sodden and cloggy. If you notice a patch getting particularly wet, dig a hole — if the hole fills in with water quickly, you might have clay. Winter is a great time to dig gypsum into clay soils, which attaches to the gypsum and creates big airy pockets to assist with drainage. Add plenty of organic matter, such as Tassie Naturals All in One Soil Conditioner, over the top to encourage worms and replenish beneficial microorganisms.
Veggie bed preparations
If you’re allowing veggie beds to go fallow, consider a green manure cover crop or introducing organic matter such as blood and bone, activated biochar, complete organic fertilisers and trace minerals. Not only will you be feeding beneficial microbes in the patch, but also ensuring next season’s produce will be more resilient to pests, fungal diseases and bacteria.
The glowing sense of achievement from doing these early winter jobs should be enough to warm you to your toes, but if you still need a pick me up after all of that, a hot chocolate at Station Café could be just the thing.
What to plant now
Sow direct: Garlic, green manure.
