How to feed your garden in Spring

It’s August in NZ and the signs are that Spring is spring. My native clematis is about to flower, the Taiwanese cherry down the road is blooming, magnolias are in flower or coming on. I want my garden to hit the new growing season running so I’m starting to feed her. Here’s what I’m doing.

I want my evergreen shrubs and deciduous fruit trees to come on strong so last week I gave them a good feed of blood & bone (bnb). BNB is a great all purpose fertiliser, taking about six weeks before its available to plant roots. So my thinking is apply now and it will be available to the plants just as things are warming up and plants are ready to burst with growth. I spread generous handfuls around the plants and work it into the soil a bit. Doing so makes it more likely to end up where its supposed to be and less likely to wash away or harden on the surface. A caveat with BNB is that it’s attractive to pets to cats & dogs and not good for them. I’ve trained my dog to stay away from it but I challenge you to train a cat to stay away.

In a couple of weeks I’ll spread a handful of aged sheep manure around each plant. Aged sheep manure is gardening gold. It doesn’t need to break down or be composted and can be applied directly. And you don’t need much so an XL bag should last for a couple of applications on a medium-sized residential garden.

Two weeks after that its time for a root feed of liquid seaweed and I’ll start foliar feeding soon after. https://youtu.be/RGS6na32lOc?si=rAdkP8Ie7TT4JuPo.

I rinse and repeat at least once more in the growing season.

So that's me and my method for spring feeding my smallish residential garden. I haven’t discussed building soil by adding organic matter.and that’s a subject for another time.

Happy Spring!