May Gardening Guide: Ensuring a productive garden all year

It's a good time to plant celery, broccoli, onions, peas, kale and cabbage. Photo / Supplied

It takes years of practice, learning and experience before a gardener can ensure a productive garden throughout the year.

For many gardeners, autumn is arguably the busiest planting season. It's the time to plan staggered planting, turn over the soil, clean up the leaves, weed, trim, mulch, prepare the garden for spring and, this year, some of us in New Zealand are still harvesting the last of the summer crops.

Garden Maintenance

Rake leaves up (leaves can be used for compost or mulch).
Enrich your soil.
Trim your hedges.
Fertilise your citrus plants.
Mulch vegetable and fruit gardens.
Move or cover frost-tender plants.
Harvest feijoa and last of passionfruit.
Turn over soil and replenish gardens.
Plant winter flowering annuals.
Deadhead flowers to encourage growth during spring.
Get your bird feeders out.
Look after your lawn.
Plan for spring.

What you could be planting in May. Photo / Supplied

Edible Garden

Replenish your soil with a fresh load of compost and natural fertilisers like sheep pellets. A good range of inputs will improve the diversity of micro organisms in your soil. It's a good time to plant celery, broccoli, onions, peas, kale and cabbage.

Use the staggered planting approach to ensure a continuous supply.

If you have some free space, you may consider cover crops like mustard or the native blue lupin (a nitrogen-fixer).

A pro tip for seedlings is seaweed solution.

If you have an abundance of chillies, you may want to dry them for future use.

Flower Garden

Plant your winter flowering annuals and divide your perennials. It's a great time to plant polyanthus, pansy, cornflower, poppy, statice, and lobelia. Purple and blue flowers are known to attract bees the most.

Lobelias look beautiful when paired with pansies in hanging baskets. Whilst potted pansy and polyanthus simply look wonderful lined up on patios. Awapuni Nurseries has about 20 pansy varieties - blue, yellow, red, pink, and pastel in many different-sized blooms.

Meanwhile, calendula, also known as winter marigold, is a favourite among many gardeners because it repels many pests, attracts pollinators and blooms profusely in winter.

For many gardeners, autumn is arguably the busiest planting season. Photo / Supplied

Herb Garden

Consider planting cold-hardy herbs like parsley varieties Italian flat leaf and curled.

Natives

There's still some time for planting the hedges.

Pittosporum varieties are fast-growing trees. You may also want to consider flowering natives like akeake green, kowhai, hebes, manuka and kanuka to attract pollinators to your garden as well as serve as habitat for native birds.