Greenfingers’ - February 2000 Seasonal Tips for Adelaide, South Australia


	South Australia - February 2000
	Select the date from the list shown below for this months tip
	February 7^th	With all this warm weather, it's easy to be lulled along into thinking that nothing is happening in the vegetable garden. If you do, you will miss your autumn crops of broccoli, watercress, radish, red beet, kohl rabi, cabbage and cauliflow
	February 14^th	After the hot spells we epect this month, it will be time to feed the lawns too. They've certainly taken a hammering with heat and they loose the vigour easily. An organic or water soluble fertiliser can be used this month. My dog won't let be use the organic pellets, because he eats them as fast as I spread them!
	February 21^st	After a February rain once my wife Annie asked me why I was hand watering the plants along our driveway. I answered "It's the micro climate alongside the bricks... makes them thirstier". You see along a driveway water run-off is higher and so I plant my more water-dependent plants there and yet when using a sprinkler they actually get less water at the perimeter, plus in extended hot weather the radiant heat from the bricks, dries the soil faster, so they need a top up more frequently. Annie's barely convinced, but you must have similar areas?
	February 28^th	If you cut your overgrown Bougainvilleas back at present, they will still flower again in autumn and well into winter. You see they flower from new wood, not old, so the more tips the more flower. Well if you're a pedant... they are actually 'bracts', the flowers are tiny boring white specks hidden away in all that taffeta finery.