Ruud Kleinpaste: The pros and cons of the summer weather

Lots of moaning early January 2025: coolness and wetness in many different places. Wellington and Christchurch were the biggest moaners in New Zealand – the West Coast was just lovely.  

Canterbury (after a few good weeks in spring) started getting wetter and colder as Summer commenced.  

In the garden there was no amazing speed of growth, but that rainwater reminded me of a transplantation trick to get tomatoes, lettuce, spring onions, and other vegetables really taking root!  

Transplanting in a dry garden is tricky – you would have to water the young tomato plants twice a day to allow them to survive. 

That in itself is really tricky to execute. Too little water and the patch of soil is not wet enough to make the plants spread its roots. The young plants simply struggle to develop. Too much watering makes the young plants far too wet around the roots, causing all sorts of trouble, especially fungal diseases before the plants are even 30 centimetres tall.  

This year’s cool and wet weather pattern showed me the trick to avoid transplants woes:  

Soak your soil well before you plant the small vegetables.   

That literally makes the soil nice and moist on a large scale, rather than dryish in-between the spots where you dig in the young plants.  

This year no problems with a regular watering from the heavens – we could even have a Holiday without anybody needing to climb over the fence to water our vegetable plants!  

A rather wet summer does have its problems, especially with early ripening fruits such as peaches and —in our case— apricots!  

Regular wetness on these developing fruits often causes fungal diseases that can ruin and rot your crop in a matter of a few days. Brown rot is the obvious disease that moves rapidly through your tree(s).  

If you are quick enough you can harvest that fruit and cut off the brown patches and somehow “save the day”. 

But once that Brown Rot (aka Monilinia fructicola) is in the system you’ll be too late to keep it under control.  

Prevention is the best tactic: thin out the tree after fruiting by removing branches, allowing a lot more space for next season – it will be sunnier and quicker drying too! 

When you still get some brown rot, a preventative spray with copper-based fungicides, (organic, by the way!) especially after flowering, will reduce infection as the copper will kill the fungal spores the moment these land on the tiny developing fruit.  

Follow these sprays up every 2 or 3 weeks and the Brown Rot will start to moan about the brilliant weather that still doesn’t result in rotten fruit   

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at me.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
And joining me now route time past. How are you?

Speaker 3 (00:15):
I am very good, Francesca, you too. I heard your
little story about the tennis. I thought it was great.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
I don't mind the disruptor occasionally. Last time I spoke
to you, I mean speaking to you a little bit
over the summer road. You were on the West coast.
Did you have a lovely trip that the sunshine?

Speaker 3 (00:30):
I did have it. I did have a lovely trip.
It was far warmer than it was in christ Jet
and with my French son in law we went biking
all over their mountains and things like that. That really
tested my ability to actually keep up with the young ones.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm sure it's no problem for you whatsoever. You know,
you mentioned the weather there. It has been really this
It has been challenging, hasn't It's at some times and
at some parts over the summer so far. But that's
there's some silver linings to.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
This, there is. We talked about this, you know, for instance,
the Wellingtonians and the christ Church and have been really
moaning ever since the Actually we had a really nice spring.
It was hot and dry, and all that, and suddenly bang,
you're absolutely right. It has its advantages. And I actually
learned about these advantages due to the fact that we

(01:23):
had to go through it. Because when you have constant
rain or a regular rain, the water will soak into
the soil and goes to a depth of sometimes a
foot or two feet deep, and that is absolutely wonderful
if you want to plant plants. Now, I know you
do ornamentals, but you also do a bit of vegetables

(01:45):
and things like that. It says same with me. And
as soon as you've got a soil that is literally
hydrated with a lot of water, you are finding it
a lot easier to plant those plants and to keep
them going. And that's what happened to me. I had
a fabulous time so far.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
What about you, Yeah, no, no, we're all come pretty good. Actually,
it's it's wonderful to see the garden thriving without having
to put too much human intervention in place. We've had
a beautiful whet though on Auckland, so I've had to
water my cucumbers because they love them, they love the moisture,
and they're just they're taking off. And I'm very proud
of them. But you're though. The other day I was

(02:24):
decided to change some pots around and I had to
empty them, and it was that soil and their roads
solid it's concrete.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah yeah. And when you keep on having to water that,
you actually drain out a lot of nutrients and fertilizers
and things like that. But also things become letterally slapping away,
and that's really what you don't want. So I've had
a really good time with planting in that moist soil,
not over that moist, but good and moist. But then

(02:55):
to me, says tomatoes, no problem. They just kept on going.
They loved it in the tunnel house, they loved it outside.
But here comes to the other thing. With a regular
waterfall from the sky, there are other things that are problematic.
And I'll give you a little example. We got quite
a good lot of brown rot on our on our

(03:18):
fruit trees, and I'm talking about you know, peaches and
stuff like that, and you've got to be really careful
with that. So if you do have a lot of
water going before the next storm goes, what I would
do is chuck some copper sprays on those developing fruit.
That would stop those spores from that particular disease, the

(03:42):
rot in this case settling on your developing fruit, and
you will really save yourself a lot of hassel at
the end.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Do you have to repeat that?

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yes, okay, absolutely, And the reason is that these spores
basically live for maybe a couple of weeks or a week,
and then after that you get the next lot by
wind on the plants. And if your copper is based
basically deteriorated on the surface of your fruit, you'll need
to replace it with another quick copper spray. And the

(04:13):
cool thing about copper sprays is it's organic. It is
absolutely fabulous.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
And if you haven't got the time to be preventive
about it, and the rod is already seated, what's the solution.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Then the thing is to get them as soon as
you can. If you see the rod starting, get them
as soon as you can and cut off the rod,
and you'll find that the non rotting part of the
fruit is actually edible. It doesn't taste terrible. I mean,
unless it's reasonably if you like grown to a place

(04:45):
of time that you get some nice sweet fruit in it.
You know, if it's too early forget it, take it off,
get rid of it. So you can do that. But
the other thing, of course, what you can do then
is you prevent not only the copper or fungicides, you know,
if you like. But if you do that for two
or three weeks in the brown rod will start to

(05:07):
moan about the brilliant weather that you're getting basically, and
it still doesn't result, and it still doesn't result in
rotten fruit. That's what this is about, gotcha. Yes, thank you,
rod Well.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
It's been good not to have to have the neighbors
come over, hasn't it to water the garden?

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Exactly? It worked by shelf, Thank you, Thank you. Rude.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Always had to catch up with you.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live
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