| With the early leaf fall of so many of our
lovely deciduous street trees in this area it’s a bonus time to collect some from the
gutters to compost. It saves the council drains from leaf choke when it next rains and
keeps our waterways flowing a little more easily, plus they make very good compost. The perennial problem of Soursobs appearing in your lawn and in
garden beds has started. I think they can be fertilized to death but I’m still
waiting for evidence of that. They still come back as strong as ever every year. Hand
weeding is good exercise, but that’s about all. They can be sprayed with a selective
broad-leaf herbicide that has MCPA and Dicamba as its active agents, such as CRC’s
"Banweed Plus".
Don’t use any MCPA and Dicamba sprays if you still
have tomatoes on the vine, as the hormones in this spray effect the growth of tomatoes,
vines and many flowers and vegetables for several hundred metres on the downward wind
plume, in warm weather. The label also cautions that it not be used on Buffalo, Lippia or
Strawberry Clover lawns. Makes hand weeding seem attractive doesn’t it?
I noticed when digging up a patch of lawn last weekend,
that I had a highly water repellent patch, where obviously some fungus had colonised old
dead roots from a tree long since removed. This explained poor growth in patches of the
lawn, so I applied a wetting agent (Brunnings’ "Easy Wetta") and the
problem is already solved.
Don’t give up on your roses just yet. This mild
"Indian Summer" (a normal Adelaide autumn) has the Aphids very busily breeding
on them at present and it’s still worth keeping them aphid free, even if you only
spray them off with water or just squeeze then on the stems if you only have a few
infected stems. Resort to NIMBY sprays with pyrethrum in them if you must.
Keep watering your pots and container plants, because they
dry out quickly in this mild weather and feed them with a kelp or seaweed extract. That
fortifies them for when the cold nights come over the next month or two. You will notice
the difference immediately. |
