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- As the spring days warm up, we can expect to see a few bedding plants and
container grown plants sag and look decidedly ‘how’s your father’.
This is caused by the soft growth recently formed, being put under its first
real test of warm soil and warm weather.
- Sure you can water more, but a more permanent effect is to water with a
liquid seaweed or kelp extract that increases the turgidity in the soft
stems and helps the plants ward off the full impact of a sudden warm spell.
I water with a liquid fertilizer at the same time to provide all the
nutrients needed for that growth too.
- Use organic pellets by all means, but use them to improve soil structure
and provide the essential organic buffer in your soil, so that nutrients can
be taken up by, your plants, but seldom is an organic pellet enough on its
own to provide the nutrients to set fruit or form flowers on bedding plants.
- I’ve mentioned recently about the need to apply copper hydroxide, copper
oxychloride or Bordeaux Mixture as a fungicide to ward off a host of fungal
diseases that can creep up on us in the garden on roses, vines and fruit
trees as the weather warms and humidity remains high, but I should have
reminded you that you need to do that weekly at present, because so many of
last week’s buds are leaves this week and may have escaped protection.
- Keep an eye out for aphids too, they won’t be long before they are
breeding up on the roses and citrus. Pull up any "Common Sow
Thistles" in your garden as they help the Citrus Aphids to over-winter.
- I sowed some seed of the long white Daikon Japanese Raddish last weekend
and in just four days they were up and are now 5cm tall. My trick is to
press a broom handle into the soil to make an impression, then sprinkle seed
along the trench, then back-fill with sharp sand, not soil. That way they
germinate fast, don’t damp-off and you know where the sown seed is.
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