Well even though things are slowing down in the rest of the garden, the winter vege garden should just be ramping up. Broccoli, zucchini, beetroot along with a huge range of other winter fruits & vegetables will all be starting to produce now, so remember to fertilize to support their ongoing production.
If you don’t have a composting system, a worm farm is a great substitute. Of course if you have the room then most households can support both. It’s a fantastic way to recycle some of your kitchen waste and garden trimmings will get utilized as well. What you get is two fantastic products that you can add to your garden. The worm juice which collects at the bottom of the box can be mixed in a watering can and applied to plants or the vege garden as required and then there is the worm castings which accumulate over time and need to be removed from the farm. These can be added to your compost or directly into the garden. Both will make such a difference to the health of your plants. Well worth the initial investment & you are utilizing household scraps to benefit your plants!Now if you have planted any of the Cabbage Family out into your winter vege garden you are going to have to protect them from the Cabbage Moth. This little guy can be rampant at this time of year and even more so if the weather has been quite mild. The Cabbage Moth can cause great destruction in very little time and will see the end of any production should you not take measures against it. Basically if you plant any of the cabbage family in the warmer regions then you need to net for them. From what I can tell the moth is not very advantageous, but consider the size of the weave of your netting, the smaller the better!
Here at the Ezyplant productive garden we like to utilize our tunnel structure to support the netting. During summer we use it to support shade cloth to protect tomatoes and greens from the burning sun but then in Winter it is moved into another section of the vege patch to provide protection for our Cabbage family plantings. This year we planted some broccoli, cauliflower & sugarloaf which all now benefit & are allowed to flourish without threat. Our irrigation system has been installed so that sprinkler heads are located within the netted area, so watering is not an issue.
Want to make your own tunnel structure?? Here’s how!
You may want to use tomato stakes or your can cut some bamboo like we did and utilize that. Recycle what you can but ensure that it will provide the height & stability needed to support the netting.
Lengths of irrigation hose can then be threaded onto the bamboo which then get pushed into the soil to create the tunnel. The netting you use can be anything from an old lace type tablecloth to bird netting, like you see in the above image.
We used old bricks to hold the sides down to ensure the netting didn’t blow away.
This structure is easy to make, cost effective and can be utilized all year round!
Need some help getting started?
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