| You can summer trim your roses this week and
have them back flowering in full bloom in just eight weeks, that’s a week after
Easter. Now a trim, means a removal of up to one third of the canopy and given the height
of some local bushes, that’s quite a bit of foliage. Of course if you are just removing your rose blooms for cut flowers, then the
recurrent flowering types are back into bud almost immediately, but sooner or later they
get long and leggy, lacking vigour in the buds. Hence the need to summer prune floribundas
and hybrid teas shrub roses.
Fertilize them immediately afterwards too, but that that
could go for any plants you prune at this time of year too, since there is still a lot of
growth season left for your climbers, herbaceous plants and certainly the lawn.
Lawns get sadly neglected after Christmas in this area.
They need at least two feeds between all that ho ho-ing and Easter. I recommend one feed
with the pulverised organic material or pellets if you have a dog that will leave them
alone, then a feed a month or so later with a water-soluble fertilizer. That way they get
the best of both nutrient worlds.
Speaking of Christmas, I have to finally admit that I have
at last killed the ‘one-was-alive’ Norwegian Spruce Christmas tree, that graced
our indoors through the festive season. Seems an over zealous hardening-off by yours truly
under a relentlessly cloudless sky was the culprit. Yes I admit it. Still at $20, I reckon
they’re good value.
Aren’t the Crepe Myrtles lovely this year with all
this heat? I haven’t seen a speck of powdery mildew either, which they are usually
most prone to. By the way the new dwarf "Indian Summer"™ varieties have far
greater resistance to mildew, so when we get one of those humid summers, they will look
just as good as they are all looking this year. |
