Sow lettuce under cover
Aveyria is a fast growing lettuce that you can now sow under cover for a harvest in spring. This variety is characterized by its thick leaves and a large, firm, dark green apple. It is very resistant to lettuce diseases.
You can also sow it under a tunnel when the days start to grow again, from the end of December. This variety is also suitable for outdoor cultivation during the summer months.
Harvest the dried beans
Store them in a dry, ventilated room. You may have reserved 1 or 2 rows of beans for dry grain production. Consider them harvest when the leaves have all fallen, that is to say now or in a few weeks. But be careful, wait for the right day – a day without rain – to pick. To properly store your dried beans, make bunches of them that you hang in a dry, ventilated room, or even on the edge of a roof.
Planting the gray shallot
If you want to plant gray shallot, you must hurry to buy it. In fact, the poor conservation of this vegetable forces grain mills to stop their marketing in October and few of them offer cloves in February-March. You have until the end of November to plant them. From this date, only pink shallots keep perfectly and are therefore available while waiting for the next harvest (their conservation is often better than that of colored onions).
The gray shallot should now only be planted in regions with mild winters and without excessive humidity.
Moniliosis: protect your apple trees
Your apples are a light brown, then dark brown appearance ; the fruits dry out: this is moniliosis. It occurs on wounds made on fruits, on branches and on flowers, by storms, insects… but also by other diseases (scab, powdery mildew). So plan mixed or total treatments combining insecticides and fungicides.
From today, then at the end of leaf fall, carry out a copper treatment with Bordeaux mixture to disinfect the bark and protect the leaf scars.
During the winter, and every other year, do a “winter treatment” to remove moss, lichens and old bark as well as insect eggs and larvae.
Feed the persimmon
Many Japanese persimmon trees (khaki) remain poorly developed in France or see their fruits fall before maturity.
It seems that, given its origins, persimmon needs humidity both at the level of its roots and at the level of its foliage. Very often, the root system, which is not very extensive, does not find in the soil the water necessary to cover the needs of the leaves and fruits at the same time.
Flowering and the entire duration of fruit enlargement prove to be critical periods. So water as copiously as necessary.. Windy regions increase these water needs, due to significant drying out: soak the foliage at the end of the afternoon, to prevent the leaves from wilting.
Also bring organic manure with well-decomposed manure, topsoil, or mulch that you put at the base to limit evaporation. Supplement this with a complete mineral fertilizer rich in phosphoric acid and potash: 100 to 150 g/m2 depending on the dosage.
What to plant under pine trees?
Planting shrubs under pine trees poses some problems. The soil, dried out by the roots of the existing trees, is poor in fertilizing elements. In addition, the carpet formed by the needles becomes asphyxiating for other plants and the soil is often rendered sterile.
To have a better chance of recovery, change your soil to a depth of 50 cm; bring 1/4 of loam, 1/4 of peat and half of topsoil or well-rotted manure. The latter are richer than leaf mold.
When planting, add a complete fertilizer rich in nitrogen called “special conifer” at a rate of 80 to 100 g/m2. Renew this contribution every year. Water copiously when planting and then every summer to reduce the drying effect of the pines. Finally, clean the base of your shrubs by regularly removing the needle carpet.
The seaside lawn
If your garden is by the sea, you have to give up the “English” lawn. However, this does not prevent you from having a lawn, even if its appearance is slightly “tufted”. The grasses to be planted must withstand very difficult growing conditions: dry, arid soil, often salty in a windy situation and having to make do with spaced mowing (for holiday gardens).
The most resistant species are generally stolonifers (multiplying by stoIons like strawberries): quack grass (Cynodon dacty-Ion), creeping red fescue, bentgrass, creeping bentgrass, meadow bluegrass, Italian ryegrass.
A good sea grass is a mixture of all these seeds, and if each house (Clause, Vilmorin, Tézier…) has its particular formula, you can also buy local preparations which will have proven themselves in a situation identical to the your.