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- Black spot on your tomatoes already? Well one easy way to control it is
to stop watering your tomatoes at night, which leaves drops of cold water
on their foliage all night, that makes it easy for the black spot fungal
disease to spread. Best water tomatoes and capsicum in the morning then
the water on their leaves quickly evaporates as the sun rises.
- Bougainvillea pruned now, even back mercilessly to a stump, will break
out and make lots of new growth quickly. A really hard prune is required
from the vigorous cultivars every five years or the weight of the
scrambling bush will pull your pergola down.
- There is a lot of sooty fungus on some arid-area gum trees like
Eucalyptus torquata and the Agonis flexuosa cultivars at present, caused
by unseasonal humidity in spring. You can control the spread of this
ugly black fungus on the stems of these and other plants by spraying
with PestOil™ or a systemic fungicide. The PestOil™ actually works
better on the bark, since systemic fungicides don’t work well unless
the tissue can absorb the active agent and bark cannot act very well as
a membrane.
- As spring causes a lot of trees to break into rapid growth it’s the
time to keep a look out for a green break on variegated plants. This is
a reversion to the original green leaves rather than the more ornamental
yellow or cream variegation. Cut the all-green branches out,
particularly on the variegated forms of NZ Christmas Tree, Queensland
Box and any ornamental shrubs especially Euonymus and Coprosma.
- The Pineapple Guava trees, Acca sellowiana (syn Feijoa) are in full
bloom at present and what a stunning sight they are, but if you aim to
pick those tasty perfumed dull green fruits in February and March, now
is the time to feed them with some potassium sulphate, or many will fall
before they are ripe. Even when they are ripe some folk cannot recognize
them since they are pretty well camouflaged.
- While many gardeners are now busy mulching their bedding plants and
vegetable gardens to save water and provide that cool root run, they
require, the container grown plants are often overlooked, yet mulching
them is even more important. It stops you from washing the potting media
out when your water them, as well as all the other advantages your
in-ground plants get from mulching.
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