Useful flowers and veges to grow in the garden in New Zealand in Spring

Useful flowers and veges make gardening even more rewarding.

It’s satisfying, saves money, and reduces packaging if you can grow even a few flowers and vegetables at home.

In spring, the soil in the garden starts to warm up, and plants and bulbs begin to put out spring growth and flowers. It is always beautiful to see all the daffodils popping out at this time of year.

Now is the time to think about planting spring and summer flowers and get the vegetable garden under way.

How to grow useful flowers and veges from seed

Click on the link below to read my in-depth guide to growing flowers and vegetables from seed. This is suitable for beginners as well as more experienced gardeners.

Read the article for detailed instructions on sowing seeds of useful flowers and veges.

What to grow in the flower garden

• Sow summer flower seeds into seed trays. Varieties to sow include alyssum, begonia, Californian poppy, cosmos, gerbera, marigold, nigella, petunia, sunflower and zinnia.
• You can also plant seedlings directly into the garden after the risk of frosts has gone. Flowering annuals include calendula, delphinium, forget-me-not, hollyhock, polyanthus, primula and pansies.
• Protect young seedlings from slugs and snails – you can use commercial slug pellets, or try other methods like crushed eggshells or using bark mulch (it deters the slugs and snails from crawling across it).
• Feed spring flowers with liquid feed, such as worm wee if you have a worm farm, or you can buy plant feed that you dilute and water on the plants regularly.
• Mulch around roses, trees, shrubs and flower beds. This helps stop the soil from drying out and suppresses weeds.
• Plant  dahlia tubers and gladioli corms for summer flowers.
• Plant new perennial plants like lavender, fuchsia and geraniums.
• Feed flowering spring bulbs in your garden.
• You can still prune plants such as fuchsias, hydrangeas, hibiscus and other flowering shrubs, by cutting back any diseased, dead or damaged branches.

What to grow in the vegetable garden

• Prepare your vegetable garden by digging in compost. This adds more nutrients and helps build up the soil structure.
• Sow vegetable seeds such as carrots, beetroot, silverbeet and peas, directly into your garden.
• Sow lettuces, leeks, cabbage, tomato, capsicum, courgette, cucumber and eggplant into trays of seed raising mix for transplanting later, after the risk of frost has passed.
• Protect seedlings from slugs and snails, using the same methods as for flowers listed above. Protect from birds by hanging up old cds or dvds on string above the vege garden, so they reflect the sunlight and scare away birds.
• Buy seed potatoes and put them in a tray in a sunny position for around a month before planting, so they can sprout. Plant them in the garden beds or in a pot or planted when the sprouts are around 2-4cm long. They need mounding up as they grow.
• Replant a herb garden with new annual plants, or grow them from seeds.
• Feed berry plants, citrus and fruit trees – there are commercial products available for each type of fruit tree, to give them the correct nutrients they need to grow a decent crop. Check out this post on organic fertilizers for fruit trees.
• Plant strawberries, blueberries, and rhubarb plants in spring, to give them time to establish before the heat of summer.

What useful flowers and veges are you planning to grow this year?

Leave a comment with your most successful crops, and your go-to plants.