|
- Time to get in that first spray if you want to control peach curl leaf
this year. Any of the various copper compounds will do, but you must spray
in week’s time after the initial spray, which is best to correspond to the
stage at which buds are swelling and bursting. The copper compounds will not
affect flowering if that has commence or still under way. If you have
recalcitrant neighbours with peach trees, offer to spray their’s too!
- Many rose cultivars are certainly starting to break their dormancy and
make new growth (I know some never go dormant) so it’s time to feed them.
Best advice is to feed them frequently but at half strength. That makes for
sturdy bushes and lots of flowers over an extended season, rather than the
late spring hoorah then a long quite period. Of course not all roses are
recurrent flowering anyhow, but the most popular varieties certainly are.
- Any fertilizer for roses is better than none at all and that’s the
rationale behind the new Yates ‘Once a year fertilizer’, it has a quick
release then a slow release group of nutrients, but whatever you use rotate
your nutrients and use a high potassium foliar spray in that rotation too.
Young freshly planted roses get a good start if you use some superphosphate
too. All too often overlooked in gardens these days, where the use of so
called ‘complete fertilizers’ gets used for everything.
- If you are trying to grow apples or pears then you will have heard about
Codling Moth and failure to try and control their larvae just makes the bulk
of the fruit useless or full of cavities where they have beaten you to the
goodies. At one end of the toxicity scale you can spray carbaryl or at the
safer end there are pheromone sticky traps. I’ve had excellent results
from the pheromones since they take out most of the male moths and I sell
them on my website, because some retailers have such outrageous mark-up on
them.
Details at www.greenfingers.com.au
for mail orders or shop at your local garden centre.
- If you use coriander in your cooking, then a timely reminder to plant it
now and even the seed won’t bolt. There is a strain usually sold as a
potted plant that is a non-bolt variety and it will last for 3-5 months,
which is twice as long as I get from packet seed. Sow rocket seed now and it
will take off too. Ideal for that partly shaded spot that doesn’t get much
attention and one square metre is ample. Lovely as a salad pep-em-up. Annie
loves it on an open face toasted sandwich with avocado and grilled bacon
with a drizzle of sweet chilli sauce for Saturday lunch!
- Many rose cultivars are certainly starting to break their dormancy and
make new growth (I know some never go dormant) so it’s time to feed them.
Best advice is to feed them frequently but at half strength. That makes for
sturdy bushes and lots of flowers over an extended season, rather than the
late spring hoorah then a long quite period. Of course not all roses are
recurrent flowering anyhow, but the most popular varieties certainly are.
- The white flowering potato vine Solanum jasminoides, is an absolute winner
in this area, flowering nearly all year on a robust vine that will take the
occasional trim with impunity and bounce back. Well there’s just been
released for this spring planting a blue and white form called ‘Monet’s
Blue’ that’s just as hardy, for full sun or shaded areas and thrives on
our alkaline soil.
- I’m often asked for a small shrub that will flower its head off and look
good in a hot spot with out much water. Big ask? Well try Lantana ‘Moondancer’,
with its white to cream flowers that are sterile so no risk of it becoming a
weed. A compact shrub to about a metre for a rockery, or the seaside full
blast of wind that probably howls across your front garden.
- If you garden in the hills then your garden is probably pretty sodden
under foot at present, dig your garden beds over but leave them all rough
and don’t be tempted to smooth them out. That increases surface area and
improves drainage, warms the soil and assists aeration, but best of all it
turns a generation of annual weeds under as green manure. Of course if water
is lying there then it’s time to get a few bags of gypsum and spread it at
300 grams per square metre.
- Sow rocket seed now and it will take off. Ideal for that partly shaded
spot that doesn’t get much attention and one square metre is ample. Lovely
as a salad pep-em-up. Annie loves it on an open face toasted sandwich with
avocado and grilled bacon with a drizzle of sweet chilli sauce for Saturday
lunch!
- There is a temptation in the hills to get the slasher out to control the
weeds on the broad acre or in large gardens and although you may get some
satisfaction at the neat appearance, it just recycles the weed seeds and
provides a concentrated root run of weeds to out compete your plants for
nutrient and moisture later in the spring. Alternatives to consider are to
dig or rotary hoe, mulch heavily or spot spray persistent weeds with
glyphosate.
|
