|
The ‘Lisbon’ is our best lemon by far for this area and fruits and flowers for
its second crop at the same time, which is no mean effort and our most popular orange in
this area is the ‘Washington Navel’. They both need a feed now to set a good
canopy of flower in a few months time for winter fruit set. Use a ‘balanced’
water-soluble citrus fertilizer.
That bitter thick skin that we often get on grapefruit and mandarins is a result of a
lack of zinc in the soil. Organic gardeners probably have plenty of zinc in their soil,
but it gets locked up in our local soils and is not available. Easily addressed with a
foliar spray of zinc and manganese at this time of year and then soil pH is not an issue.
Spray late afternoon or at night when the sun is off the foliage.
Too much nitrogen causes the puffy fruits on mandarins, so that’s why we apply a
‘balanced’ water-soluble citrus fertilizer. Too much of a good thing is no good,
so adhere to the label recommendations when applying the fertilizer! Applications of blood
‘n bone are next to useless on citrus!
Annie’s Cyclamen are still flowering. I bought them for potted colour for her last
winter and fully expected to turf them out when they stopped flowering. I mean at $5.00 a
pot they are cheaper than a bunch of flowers, but after a feed each month they won’t
stop flowering. I don’t have the heart to withdraw the water.
If you grow Dahlias even as the ‘annual’ seedlings or Chrysanthemums, they
both need plenty of fertilizer at present. They need water-soluble nutrient as well as the
organic pellets. I use the Neutrog™ Rapid Raiser pellets, because it’s made at
Callington and uses up most of the Adelaide Hills’ dead chickens, whereas the
‘lifter product is made of chicken litter sweepings and is enriched chemically, so
that it leaves a salt residue. The choice is yours.
The hot spell last week has left tomatoes, capsicum and chillies looking devastated.
Feed them with potash and much with organic pellets and remove old dead foliage. They may
make a recovery. Tomato flowers will only set fruit when temperatures drop below 27°C, so
we can expect an improvement in fruit set soon.
|
