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- The heavy clay alkaline soils of this area frequently cause
lime-induced-chlorosis or a yellowing of the leaves that curiously leaves
the veins green on many of our acid-loving plants, which is a cause for
constant treatment with iron chelates (pronounced keelates). That is
unless you mulch regularly with old organic material and even then may
need to periodically apply iron chelates.
- You can also get an immediate response on chlorotic plants by applying
iron chelates as a foliar spray, but it does leave a dull khaki brown
stain on the leaves. Failure to treat any effected plants will diminish
vigour and certainly they flower less.
- In this area on the northern Adelaide Plains we have evaporation rates
of four times the rainfall (i.e. Parafield BoM data 2000mm evaporation
per year). That means that for all but six weeks a year water is being
lost from your soil profile, which highlights the need to mulch those
plants, such as your bedding plants and vegetables, that need more
water.
- 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™, Bug Oil™ 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.
- Have a close look under the leaves of your Hydrangeas at present and
it’s very likely they have two-spotted mites forming their covert
little webs and sucking your leaves dry. Control is unfortunately the
strongest miticides in gardening arsenal…Kelthane. It requires a full
body cover-up to spray and wash the rest straight away afterwards.
- Water soluble sulphur maintains reasonable control of two spotted
mites, but a miticide is needed to knock the bulk of the colony, then
spray the sulphur at two weekly intervals until it gets hot, then they
stop breeding.
- Do not over-water your tomatoes at present since the fusarium and
verticillium wilts are already striking down those cultivars that have
no resistance. If you start loosing tomatoes to wilts, remove the
offending variety immediately and replace with a resistant type like
Dynamite™, Mighty Red, Supermarmande and Vivian.
- Last year Dynamite™ was and still is called Dynamo in the rest of
Australia (except WA where it is the notorious Riverdale Red), incase
you were wondering where Dynamo went, since it is a very good tomato.
Vivian is also called Joy. This needs to be mentioned since so much
punnet stock is currently coming in from Victoria.
- If you aim to grow a cottage garden of low shrubby perennials, but the
selection all seems a bit of hit and miss, I saw a great range of six
packaged perennials (Romantic Cottage hats) recently colour co-ordinated
and it comes with a layout plan. I grabbed a white-blue pack for Annie’s
cottage garden.
- All this mild weather and moist soils lately has got everything
growing albeit rather softly and the lacy basket lerp are rampant on all
sorts of gum trees as well as the soft brown coccid scale that forms
colonies down the central vein of citrus, grapes, figs and all manner of
palms.
- The best course of action to control these soft bodied sap-suckers is
to spray a systemic insecticide such as Folimat®, Rogor or Confidor®
in the late afternoon after direct sun is off them and then follow up
next day with a spray of PestOil™, that leaves a thin film of
protective synthetic oil on the leaf. Which is not too cozy on the belly
if you are a sap sucker.
- Two spotted mite (once called red spider) is out of control in most
northern gardens at present on Hydrangeas, Fuchsias and a host of
closely related mites are busy on lots of other shrubby plants too.
Remedy is to spray a miticide, such as Kelthane (but use maximum safety
precautions, long sleeves, mask, glasses and wash any exposed areas
after wards. Follow up with a protective spray of water soluble sulphur
next day. The sulphur works best when its warm but only spray late
afternoon out of the sun or it can burn.
- If all this spraying offends you and you have an organic control for
lerps, scale or two spotted mites, I’d love to hear from you: e-mail
me malcannie@ozemail.com.au
- If you are planting any pots over the next few weeks and we get a spell
of hot weather, soak your pots in a diluted solution of one of the seaweed
or kelp extract products for 5 minutes prior to planting. That keeps them
turgid and you will get less heat-stress losses.
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