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If
your Apricots have small brown scab marks on them and the leaves have tiny holes
in them, they are effected with the bacterial disease called ‘Shot-hole’,
but it’s too late to go spraying them with Kocide™ this year. Better to just
stew them or dry them. The taste is not effected, just the yield and the looks.
· There
are some lovely Asiatic Liliums in pots around at the moment, but what you are
not told is that when they have finished flowering, you can plant them in a
sunny border with good drainage and they will establish to flower year after
year just before Christmas.
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Now
that the weather is sure to warm up, it’s time to be dosing your pots with a
deep watering of kelp or seaweed extract and some fish emulsion. This keeps the
plants turgid and less prone to wilting when they dry out, as they are sure to
on occasions.
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Feed
you rhubarb and silverbeet with superphosphate. They tend to get plenty of
nitrogen from most gardeners, either organic or water soluble, but super is
usually overlooked and they hunger for it. We think of super for potatoes and
turnips and other root crops (except carrots) but often forget the huge roots on
rhubarb and silverbeet. Newly planted conifers also need super too, so if your
live Christmas tree gets planted, don’t forget to top-dress it with
superphosphate.
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While
it’s not too late to sow seed of eggplant, cucumber, capsicum and tomatoes,
they will certainly get away to bear fruit much faster as seedlings from now on.
The seedlings are also more likely to be improved F1 varieties too rather than
the generally more disease-prone open pollinated types. I know that’s a
debateable point, but the F1 tomatoes for instance leave the old open pollinated
types for dead, with yield and disease resistance.
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Pumpkins
and zucchini can be sown from seed right now, as can cabbage and cauliflower
because they grow fast in warm soils and will yield in the cool of autumn.
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