Urgent jobs in the garden for October

• Remove non-compliant netting if you have not done so and fold it up so birds can’t get tangled in it if it is lying around. This net is illegal from 1 September.*
• Add potash or wood ash (both potassium) to soil to increase flower and fruit set.
• Tie hessian or cardboard around apple, pear and quince tree trunks for codling moth to lay in (remove and burn in 4 weeks time, then replace).
• Sow seeds in punnets and/or plant spring seedlings if beds are ready.
• Protect seedlings from cold, and especially frost, by draping fleece fabric around and over them. Protect from snails and slugs by a variety of means. Protect from birds scratching seed or seedlings out by placing a wood paling over direct sown seed until it shoots, and moulded wire netting or similar over mounds of compost where zucchini, pumpkin and cucumber seedlings are planted. (To mould wire place it over a bucket or similar and push into a mound shape. If you can peg it down, even better).
• Plant tomatoes deeply so only the top pairs of leaves are visible. This produces stronger plants that take in more water as roots will grow out of the soft, buried stems.
• Sow root vegetables in garden beds.
• Pinch out tips of broad beans to prevent blackfly infestation.
• Check stone fruit trees for aphid infestation and spray with white oil (homemade recipes on the internet) having first sprayed with a jet of water to remove as many as possible. Recent humid weather has caused both tips or whole branches to be heavily infested.
• Fertilise citrus trees with citrus fertiliser around the drip line. Avoid nitrogen based manures which cause soft leaf growth exposing leaves to damage from Citrus Leafminer. Treat Leafminer with white oil (homemade recipes on the internet).
• Implement your Queensland Fruit Fly prevention strategy**:
  •  spray citrus trees  including all fruit now with kaolin clay, and then stone fruit when fruit is small
  •  put out pheromone lures (Wild May) to monitor presence of male fruit fly
  •  put out protein baits to kill both male and female flies
  •  net after flowers have been pollinated.
• Check and clean out dripline. Replace absent drippers or risers.

 From 1 September 2021, a person must only use netting with a mesh size no greater than 5mm x 5mm at full stretch to protect household fruiting plants. Failure to comply with this regulation could result in a fine under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Regulations 2019.

** To follow a step by step Queensland Fruit Fly strategy, go to our Queensland Fruit Fly page 

 Buy lure bottles, Wild May and kaolin clay from our shop. Contactless pick up available.