Coming up

Jane explores the plants behind our favourite Easter treats; Costa meets a chook expert to find out the best breeds for every situation; Tino starts preparing to plant a market garden and Millie learns all about making apple cider using a range of apple varieties.

Gardening Australia Weekly Quiz

A) 3 trillion   
B) 600 million   
C) 8 trillion

See next week's newsletter for the answer!

Answer to last week's quiz question:
Q) How many flowers do you need to harvest to get one kilo of saffron?
A) c - Around 220,000

What to plant this weekend

Tropical Climate Zone

• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Garlic
• Water Chestnut

• Beetroot
• Carrots
• Kale/Collards
• Spinac

• Cabbage
• Chives
• Lettuce
• Onion

• Broad beans
• Endive
• Leeks
• Oregano

• Chicory
• Florence fennel
• Mustard greens
• Turnips/Swedes

What to plant this weekend

COOL

• As our thoughts turn to eggs, make sure you save those eggshells! Grind them up for compost or place them around your brassicas to deter cabbage white butterfly.
• Perennial sages and salvias will benefit from a haircut this weekend. Give them a good chop, almost to the ground – you’ll see new growth coming away from the centre of the plants in no time
• With Autumn leaves falling, get out the rake and tidy these guys up. Running a mower over the top of raked leaves chops them up nice and fine – perfect to plump up your compost!

• Don’t be a bunny! Get a cracking crop of carrots sown this weekend in the garden. Sow seed into soft, fluffy soil in a nice sunny spot, and keep them moist while they germinate
• Divide clumping native plants like kangaroo paws, dianellas and lomandras by cutting into sections with a sharp spade, leaving around 5 shoots per cutting. Pot up in a protected spot.
• Start harvesting autumn raspberries, which should keep cropping right through until winter. If other critters are getting to the fruit before you are, some taut, well-installed netting should keep your crop safe.

• Share some succulent cuttings with friends! Take a small stem cutting or leaf, allow to dry for a couple of days and pop into free-draining potting mix – it’s that easy!
• If you’re planting on some sensational spring colour, it’s time to get your cold-loving bulbs into the fridge! Hyacinths, tulips and daffodils should be chilled now until planting time in winter
• Flowering now are the Easter Daisies, tough perennials that will provide colour for months. Whites, blues, pinks and purples, these old-fashioned Asters are stunners, and the bees love them!

• If you’ve got a sweet tooth, try growing Stevia. Known as the sugar herb, this tropical perennial is perfect for pots, and the leaves used as a sugar substitute.
• Improve a tired vegie bed with a DIY green manure mix using old, out of date seeds sown thickly. You’ll be surprised what grows – just make sure you till them into the ground before they flower.
• Indoors or out, Hoyas are a tropical must have. These wonderful waxflowers are tough, attractive, evergreen climbers, and put on bunches of beaut blooms from spring through autumn.

• Get stuck into Autumn fertilising. Give trees, shrubs and lawns some organic pelletised fertiliser, and feed the last of the summer vegies with a lovely liquid potash.
• A favoured food of bilbies are the bulbs of the bush onion (Cyperus bulbosus).  A great addition to gardens, these attractive perennial native grasses are fab in a sandy soil and produce showy seed heads.
• If you’ve got spare space in your patch, sow some mustard seeds. These fast-growing foliage plants will reward you with lovely leaves in as little as three weeks. Go on, spice up your life!