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- Keep an eye on your pot plants. It’s surprising at this time of year, with a few
sunny days, how they dry out so quickly. Especially those with bulbs that are now in a
state of growth. So water them at least weekly.
- Early Jonquils that have already completed their flowering, need to be fed now so that
next year’s flower develops in the bulb, before they die down. Use a water-soluble
fertilizer, as a foliar feed, with some warm water and kelp extract to ward off the frost.
Of yes we can still expect a frost or two. Last recorded frost day for Adelaide is 14th
October!
- If you have a fine leaf lawn, now is the time to give it its first feed of the year.
However if yours is a couch lawn its too early to feed with chemical fertilizers, unless
you have cut it back really hard and then you can use a fine organic mulch liberally mixed
with aged chicken manure, much like top-dressing with sand and stand back! That’s
Dennis Richardson’s trick at McLaren Vale, if you’ve seen their open garden,
you’d have to agree the ‘Santa Anna’ couch lawn is our best.
- Don’t forget to keep spraying a water-soluble fertilizer on your annuals, every
fortnight. I know it sounds excessive, but they get very demanding at this time of year
and they will run out of flowering-oomph, unless you do.
- It’s time to start thinking tomatoes. Not planting them, but creating the right
spot in full sun and emptying a compost heap onto the spot where you will grow them.
Don’t dig the compost in. Rough dig the soil, add compost about 5cm thick and just
leave it until October, when you plant your Tomatoes out. That’s right October!
- You’ll need to start looking for seedlings soon, if you want robust disease free F1
hybrids like ‘Big Red’, ‘Mighty Red’ or ‘Dynamite’. All need
to be potted into 100mm (4") pots of a pretty poor potting mix, without fertilizer
and literally starved for the next six weeks. Water only when they wilt. Trust me! Of
course if your grow yours from seed they can be started under glass now too.
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