South Australia - 22nd April 2002

• I like the way television cooks tell us how easily a dish is prepared. It’s a pity we don’t get the same precaution when buying plants. Especially bedding plants, like the annual flowers that gardeners buy with such high hopes and unless prepared to apply considerable care will rue the purchase.
• There are however exceptions and some plants that seem to thrive on neglect and actually flower well when not given loads of fertilizer. In the ‘leave me alone basket, unless you are prepared to load heaps of attention on me’ are bedding plants such as Cinerarias, Iceland Poppies and Schizanthus. In order they are prone to leaf minor that requires regular spraying, a delicate balance of fertilizer and watering and the Poor Man’s Orchid is just a tasty meal for snails in most gardens.
• But if minimal care is your priority then try these for your winter garden: Alyssum, Nigella, Lobelia, Stocks, Carnation Poppies, Hollyhocks, Antirrhinum, Virginia Stocks and then both Linaria and Scarlet Flax which need to be direct seeded where they are to flower. All of these will flower well and grow on our natural rainfall without lashings of fertilizer.
• Speaking of water, I can’t believe that so many local gardeners are still watering their gardens to a summer watering regime. That is daily at night. With mild days and low rates of evaporation, we need to switch to morning watering if at all. Night watering only fuels the chill factor. A heavy dew by the way is still only 0.2mm of precipitation, so don’t be lulled into that false sense of security and stop watering pots altogether!
• Roses are flowering well at the moment and it’s a sound practice to be still feeding them with potassium supplements. It won’t make them flower any longer, but it makes the flowers sturdier and more able to withstand fungal diseases, as we approach those cooler days of Keats’s “mists and mellow fruitfulness”.
• The slugs that come out at night and eat your dog’s food are Leopard Slugs and they also eat black slugs, all snails and slow creatures of the night, so don’t do stomping them under foot in your snail and slug purge. The Leopards are ones with the spots and brown-stripped sides. Good guys!
• If you are looking for bedding plants that fall into the minimal care category, then look no further for your stunning winter display: Alyssum, Nigella, Lobelia, Stocks, Carnation Poppies, Hollyhocks and Antirrhinum can all be planted from seedlings or as seed. Virginia Stocks, Linaria and Scarlet Flax all need to be direct seeded where they are to flower. All of these will flower well and grow on our natural rainfall without lashings of fertilizer.
• Roses are flowering well at the moment and it’s a sound practice to be still feeding them with potassium supplements. It won’t make them flower any longer, but it makes the flowers sturdier and more able to withstand fungal diseases, as we approach those cooler days of Keats’s “mists and mellow fruitfulness”.
• A had a question from a local gardener last week about how to kill the tiny weeds that fill the gaps in his pavers, organically! Well not much survives boiling water and it won’t hurt your pavers either. Surprisingly how we overlook the most obvious, but a similar method is being used commercially on broadacre crops in the US at present to sterilize the soil, with great success. The device that dispenses the steam is about the size of a Collins class sub, but in the home garden a kettle will do!
• The crop of Winter Grass is about to emerge in the average home lawn especially in shaded patches. It is the main grass in the turf on Football Park too, but in the home garden is generally reviled. Since it thrives on low nutrient soil, I think feeding your lawn at present, with a water-soluble fertilizer, can discourage it, to the point where the lawn grasses can out-compete it. Especially grasses such as Kikuyu, Kentucky Blue Grass, Fescue and Bent. Most Couch cultivars have lost their vigour by now in our gardens, so they fall prey all to easily to the Winter Grass.
• Sour sobs are moving already, so if you have any hope of controlling them, now is the time to get vigilant. Also feeding them and keeping them pulled, before they set too many tiny corm offsets, is the best method of control.
• The slugs that come out at night and eat your dog’s food are Leopard Slugs and they also eat black slugs, all snails and slow creatures of the night, so don’t do stomping them under foot in your snail and slug purge. The Leopards are ones with the spots and brown-stripped sides. Good guys!
• Hills folk are well placed to make the most of the bulb sales, as stores try to clear their autumn stocks rather than discard or return them. In the really cold areas, with regular frosts, most bulbs can be planted for at least another two months. If the bulbs you source or have stored, are starting to shoot, then it’s a better bet to plant them into pots or large containers, where the soil temperatures are higher and they will continue to grow strongly.
• A heavy morning dew by the way, is still only 0.2mm of precipitation, so don’t be lulled into that false sense of security and stop watering pots altogether! Pots dry out in winter and although there is a warmer media in a pot, plants will not make use of that unless well watered.
• That warmer media also causes control release prills (those round fertilizer droplets) to release their nutrient more rapidly too and because of the regular watering the nutrient leaches readily. So don’t stop fertilizing your potted plants in winter, if they are getting the sunshine and regular watering.