Gardening A-Z

For the best vegetables use well-rotted compost to add nutrients and texture to your soil, promoting greater worm activity and better growing conditions.

Rotate your crops to get the best soil yield and to keep down pest and disease levels.

I would like to have a small veggie garden that grows enough to keep me going year round.  I'm not sure how much to plant or when to plant it.  I don't have a large garden area.

I'm wanting to start a raised bed vegetable garden using old railway sleepers. However I'm concerned about the creosote seeping from the sleepers into the soil. Are railway sleepers safe to use for a vegetable garden? Should I line with polythene or use macrocapa or something else.

I recently brought some onions described as "bunching or pickling" onions.  What is "bunching" and do the onions need any special care?

I've planted some scarlet runner seedlings out into my veggie garden last week, worked general garden fertilizer into the soil as well.  Now the ends of the leaves are growing yellow.  Do you know what is causing it?  We've had strong wind one day since and hot days - although at night I wet them after a hot day so they don't dry out. I've had advice to put some lime in as a side dressing, bur not sure if that's the problem. Thanks.

This sounds like white butterfly, white fly or leaf hoppers.

Daylight saving has finished and, as if in sympathy, the weather has responded with frequent showers and cooler days, to add to the misery of shorter evenings.

However it’s not all doom and gloom, as winter’s approach provides the green thumbed amongst us with a challenge to maintain healthy gardens, irrespective of seasonal change.

With this challenge comes the need to re-evaluate factors such as temperature, pests, soil preparation and, particularly importantly, which varieties should be planted at this time of year to get the best from your garden.

Are your lettuces the size of tomatoes? Do your beans look more like peas? Does your vegetable garden need help – desperately?

Fear not! says our gardening expert, Henri Ham of Awapuni Nurseries. We have some great vegetable growing advice for those who lack a green thumb, and now is just the right time to plant some really interesting veges that will add a little pizzazz to your Christmas table.

As every parent knows, getting kids to eat anything that’s good for them can be an uphill battle, especially when it comes to vegetables. The best solution may be to get them to help you plant them.

“Autumn is a great time to plant hardy vegetables,” says Awapuni’s gardening expert Tod Palenski.

New reports show fruit and vegetable prices rose 3.6 percent in July, with lettuce up a whopping 32.4 percent on the previous month. Instead of swapping fresh for frozen, or going without altogether, Awapuni gardening guru, Tod Palenski, recommends Kiwis get back into growing their own.

What can I spray the oxalis with that will not poison the area for future vegetables?

Stopping your veges from going to seed is all about planting at the right time of the year.  You need to plant when the temperature is relatively stable.  For example, if you plant during the middle of winter, the season quickly turns to spring, the soil temperature increases quite rapidly and your veges go to seed.

This is a common problem with barassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage etc) and happens with the changing of the season.  To help eliminate this problem plant your seedlings at the start of a season as opposed to half-way through or closer to the end.