Spring has sprung and you know what that means — time to prep your veggie garden for the warmer months ahead.
As soil starts to warm up, beneficial microbes underground start to multiply, which means spring provides the perfect opportunity to build your soil and grow healthier plants.
Whether you’re a seasoned veggie gardener or just starting out, our 6 must-know tips below will help you make the most of your spring gardening efforts.
Start Summer Veggie Seeds Indoors
Summer might feel ages away, but you actually need to start planting warm-weather seeds NOW to ensure a bumper harvest in a few months’ time. That's especially true for those of you living in cool, temperate and mild temperate climates of Australia.
In early spring, it's best to start the germination process indoors, where the temperature remains more stable. This helps protect your plant babies from the cold overnight.
Keep them on a sunny northern-facing windowsill if you can, and ensure the soil remains moist but not wet.
Just getting started with veggie gardening and feeling overwhelmed by all the choices? We got you.
Easiest plants for beginners to grow from seed for a fool-proof summer harvest:
- Annual herbs such as basil, dill and parsley — these are ‘cut and come again’ varieties, so you can harvest from them for many weeks.
- Zucchini — but just one or two plants will do, otherwise you’ll end up with enough zucchinis to feed your whole neighbourhood!
- Climbing beans — shove a few stakes or bamboo poles into the ground and watch these beauties head for the sky while growing loads of beans for you.
- Cherry tomatoes — these are much less fussy than full-size tomatoes and will give you a rolling harvest for weeks.
- Radishes — have an almost 100% germination rate and grow satisfyingly quickly. Kids love to grow them for this reason! Plant a small row every fortnight and you'll have bucketloads of radishes through until early summer.
Extra tip: If you want your spring veggie and flower seeds to germinate quicker, try pre-soaking them first. Studies show seeds soaked in Food2Soil biofertilisers can germinate up to five days earlier. That’s thanks to billions of live beneficial microbes, which also help your seedlings produce bigger, tastier yields.
Feed Your Soil to Feed Your Plants
To be a good gardener, you’ve really got to master growing good soil — living beneficial soil microbes, to be exact.
And these underground helpers are most active as the soil warms up, so spring is the perfect time to give them a boost.
How to boost your soil ecosystem:
- Focus on gardening organically — nasty chemicals kill your soil good guys, so avoid them as much as possible.
- Try not to disturb the soil too much — opt for no-dig methods as much as possible.
- Top up garden beds with organic matter — compost and mulch are great.
- Swap from a synthetic or organic fertiliser to our Food2Soil liquid biofertilisers, which are biologically alive with all those good microbes your garden needs. Adding them to your soil is a simple as pulling out the watering can.
Extra tip: Fast-growing plants such as annual veggies and lawns will benefit from a fertilising feed of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium plus trace minerals, to support their growth in the months ahead. (Food2Soil biofertilisers contain all of this, so you can boost your soil microbes while feeding your plants.)
Spring Clean Your Garden
Spring cleaning isn't just an indoors task — your garden benefits from a tidy up too.
Deadhead wintering flowering plants, prune overgrown shrubs and remove dead wood. This will help support strong and healthy new growth.
Stay on top of weeds by scything, mowing or hand pulling them before they go to seed. Then add some mulch atop the soil afterwards to help prevent weeds from growing back.
Collect and Store Rainwater for the Hot Months Ahead
In Australia, adequate water supply in the dry months is always a priority and concern for most gardeners.
An easy water-saving tip is to place a few 5-10L buckets outside ahead of rainy days to collect extra water, which you can then pour onto your garden on drier spring days.
You can also collect greywater from your shower and kitchen too, as long as you're using chemical-free shampoos and detergents. This water shouldn't go onto annual veggies, but is safe for fruit trees and ornamentals.
Give Your Fruit Trees Extra Care During Bud Burst
To help prep your fruit trees for warmer weather, reduce competition by weeding from their trunk right out to the dripline (the point where the foliage stops if you draw a straight line to the earth), if you can.
Then, add a think layer of mulch to prevent weeds from growing back, while improving water retention and giving your soil microbes some delicious organic matter to munch on. Just leave a few centimetres gap around the bark of the tree, to prevent rot and other fungal problems.
A simple way to help fruit trees resist pests and disease
For deciduous trees coming back to life after a bare winter, you can give them a head start by:
- Keeping an eye out for the 'bud burst' stage. This is when your fruit tree gathers all of its energy into the buds, ready to bust into bloom and unfold new petals and leaves.
- Just before bud burst, spray the whole tree with a natural Food2Soil biofertiliser. The live microbes within convert nutrients into forms your plants can more easily absorb, so they grow stronger and are most easily able to ward off pests and disease.
If you missed bud burst, it’s not too late! You can spray your fruit trees with biofertiliser at any time of the year — but know that a well-timing spring spray has the best outcome for controlling pests and diseases.
Preserve and Ferment Excess Winter Vegetables
Your cool-weather veggie crops — such as broccoli, beets and leeks — might only have a few more weeks of life left in them, so don't let any last harvests go to waste.
And if you have excess cabbage? We thoroughly recommend making a delicious sauerkraut ferment, which is simple and easy to do at home.
What's more, sauerkraut is great for your gut microbiome. As a fermented product, it helps improve good bacteria in your gut, which leads to a range of excellent health benefits — much like our fermented Food2Soil biofertilisers do for soils.
Here’s a great sauerkraut recipe from our friends at Pip Magazine.
Happy spring gardening!
+ Essential Plant Care Starter Kit:
Ready to get growing this spring? Don't miss our bundled two-biofertiliser starter kit. It contains the two essentials for creating healthy, strong and pest-resistant plants this spring, no matter what you’re growing — veggies, fruit trees, indoor and potted plants, ornamentals, Australian natives and even lawn.
Buy the spring essentials bundle and save $7!