Gardening and DIY: White butterfly patrol and top tomato tips

Cabbage white butterfly patrol. Photo / Paul Thompson

Be on the look-out for cabbage white butterflies. These common summer visitors are now on the wing and looking for your cabbages, kale, broccoli, rocket, mizuna, radishes, kohlrabi, brussel sprouts, turnips, swedes and cauliflowers to lay their eggs on.

Take them out with a badminton racket before they get a chance to lay and their hungry caterpillars turn plant leaves to holey Swiss cheese.

The small, yellow, bullet shaped eggs are laid on the underside of leaves and hatch into tiny green caterpillars. These can simply be rubbed off as you come across them. Caterpillars usually hang out in the shade on the underside of leaves where they feed on the soft leaf tissue, weakening the host plant.

Dusting plants with household flour has the effect of suffocating them - even if your neighbours might think you're confusing gardening with baking.

The other option is to pick them off as you see them, or just rub them on the leaf till they burst if they are small.

For more tips, info and images check POD Gardening's pest control page.

Top tomato tips

1. Tomatoes need a warm, sunny location - preferably sheltered from strong winds. A gentle breeze is fine.

2. Ideally, tomatoes should not be planted in the same soil two years running. Move their position around your garden each season to avoid a build up of diseases like blight. If you don't have room to do this then plant in tyre stacks, bin bags or containers instead.

3. When seedlings are at least the length of your forefinger in height and have several pairs of leaves they are ready to plant.

4. For all but bush varieties, plant about 50cm apart and push a good bamboo cane or stake (that's about 6 feet tall/1.8m) into the ground about a finger's length behind each seedling for support as it grows.

5. Protect your seedlings. If they are small enough use a juice bottle cloche until they outgrow it. Mulch around the base of plants with straw or pea straw to retain moisture and water in hot weather.

We'll give you more tomato tips in the coming weeks but if you are eager to know more now then check POD's tomato page.

For full-scale, seasonal edible gardening advice and inspiration see www.podgardening.co.nz or check out Pod Gardening on facebook.